I find this particularly sad. I’m not sure there is anything positive about any aspect of this event.
One of the lessons of using that “defund the police” syntax in 2020 is it demotivated police considerably. They left the forces where such syntax was used and otherwise did the very minimum. Violent crime went up, and those cities had difficulty replacing departed officers with new, less-experienced ones.
Improve policing, surely. Shrink police funding and police forces. Not a great idea.
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Of course those who refuse to accept any fault in the police will not be persuaded by any slogan, but surely the aim is to convince the large portion of the public who recognise the need for a controlled, disciplined and unprejudiced police force and are disturbed by the obvious corrupt and racist tendencies in the force.
This group is unlikely to rally around the Defund campaign.
Giving your opponent a stick to beat you with is not a good plan.
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If at first you don’t succeed…
What a fucking shambles.
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Presumably , had the teacher been armed (like the gun nuts want) or had a ‘good guy with a gun’ been around , then the child would have been killed.
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Watch here the moment when Mike Rogers of Alabama had to be restrained from lunging at Gaetz.
I don’t think this Congress will get anything done at all. Necessary votes like raising the debt ceiling (which is a spectacle that any sensible Congress would end forever) and passing a budget should be both scary and entertaining. Those may only pass with 212 Democrat votes and a handful of safe Republicans.
You have to wonder who those safe Republicans will be. At some point, this may start causing irrevocable damage to the GOP in some regions, because of just how often it is likely to happen - when you end up voting with the Democrats 5-6 times on these matters where there is no real negotiation space (like the debt ceiling, or continuing the government’s operations), at some point you have the same relationship with the Democrats that Sanders does.
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They use the same excuse to not do their job every time they are publicly criticized for doing so badly
I remain concerned that the Republican Party is beholden to an extremist fringe. They are post truth people, conspiracy driven, and will continue to coarsen American politics to the point that it is almost irretrievable. Any half decent Republicans appear to have left the building.
Coming soon, at the least:
An investigation into the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
(There should be one into why that war started, and lasted so many years, not that it ended).
An investigation in Hunter Biden, trying to pin something onto the big dog, Joe Biden.
(Nothing to see here, never mind Trump gave government positions to unqualified family members, and the whole family made a fortune from his time in office. Jared. Saudi. Start there).
An investigation into losing control of our borders.
(Draconian policy incoming, to punish people trying to come here).
An investigation into Covid origins.
(Shitshow, but Fauci will not have a peaceful retirement, and will be called up to testify in front of these goons).
And on and on it goes. Laws strengthened to lessen voter freedom, and make it harder to vote will be coming too.
Trump was impeached, twice, for substantial reasons.
He is also under review for criminal charges relating to the Capitol insurrection.
We are about to have a few years of whataboutism to deflect from all that.
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Yes, all their mistakes are reported enthusiastically by the media. None of their many positive deeds make the press. And the media treat miscreants who antagonize police as heroes. How would you feel if that were your job?
The next 2 years are going to be either an utter waste of time in government, or see the fracturing of the House GOP caucus. The Speaker’s office is weaker than it has been since the eighteenth century, in a set of institutions that had evolved to have strong Speakers in order to get anything done. The House will struggle to even pass a bill, forget the notion of a bill that will pass a Senate they don’t control. So mostly you will see performative House committees, which will presumably be delayed endlessly by Democratic trench warfare.
If I was that upset about it I’d reflect on what I was doing wrong, or get another job.
Not continue to ruin lives by refusing to acknowledge the problems. Cops get paid a lot to not hold themselves to a higher standard.
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They have no way to stop the types of committees @RedOverTheWater is describing. We’ll surely learn all kinds of stuff about Hunter’s laptop, but it will pale when compared to Jan 6 Committee. Repubs will try to equate the two. I don’t think it will shed good light upon them. It’s just possible this version of the House will be another good advertisement for Dems in 2026.
Is there actually anything else to learn other than that you can’t conclude anything from it even if there was something to be concluded because of the way the laptop was passed around? Pretty sure I’ve read allusions to how some of the “incriminating files” were actually discovered through forensic investigation to have been added by the Republican “investigators”.
They’ll spend millions to inform us what porn sites he visited and the specific prostitutes with whom he snorted coke. Real national security stuff.
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The kind of “research” that the Republican Party specialises in.
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Gaetz will head that committee. That’s the deal he cut to vote “present.”
There are no ways to stop the formation of those committees, but there are loads of ways to delay them - the major mistake the Republicans made with the January 6 committee was not joining it.