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Republicans want to force spending cuts by threat instead of legislating and the cuts theyre asking for are appalling

The shamelessness and recklessness of todays Republican party seems to know no bounds. As the deadline for raising the debt ceiling or defaulting rapidly approaches, the party continues to hold the country hostage, telling Democrats: give us what we want things we cannot get by going through normal democratic processes or we will pitch the global economy off a cliff.

Democrats in Congress are doing their best to get their Republican colleagues to behave rationally, but its notoriously difficult to negotiate with terrorists. The Republicans want major spending cuts, but they want to force those cuts through by threat instead of having to legislate normally. And the cuts theyre asking for are appalling: they include slashing funds to things like cancer research, rental assistance for the poor, support for schools with large numbers of low-income students, and pay for Americans in uniform. The Republican bill would end Bidens attempt at student loan debt relief, repeal tax breaks for renewables and clean energy while increasing reliance on fossil fuels, raise already-onerous work requirements to receive food stamps and welfare benefits, and decrease the efficiency and abilities of the IRS.

The Republican proposal would leave a great many Americans worse off but it would be a boon for oil executives and wealthy tax avoiders.

Its also an unconscionable display of bad faith and manipulation. This is not the first time that Congress has needed to raise the debt ceiling, and the stakes are so high that, traditionally, its been a bipartisan effort, with Democrats and Republicans alike largely agreeing that it would be wildly irresponsible and disgustingly devious to use such a vulnerable moment to strong-arm the opposing party. The big exception came during the Tea Party takeover of the Republican party in 2011, when Republicans also used raising the debt ceiling to start a fight. Those Tea Party radicals seemed crazy then but they had nothing on the absolutely unhinged lunatics of the Maga Republicans.

In a sane Congress operating in a functional country, everyone in Congress would agree that the US cannot default, and would behave accordingly. But this is not a sane Congress operating in a functional country, and thats 100% because of the far-right takeover of the Republican party.

Todays Republicans are a party of destruction. As much as they claim to want to make America great again, they seem much more intent on sowing division, fomenting chaos and embracing an ethos of nihilism. There is no school shooting brutal enough to make them reconsider Americas extreme gun laws; no pregnant woman who suffers enough to make them take a step back on criminalizing abortion; and virtually nothing their unelected leader Donald Trump can to do make them reject him allowing a deadly attack on the Capitol, being deemed a sexual abuser by a New York jury, and undermining Americas tradition of free and fair elections have not been enough to end the Republican partys love affair with Trump. As the party has not only embraced Trump but molded itself in his image, it has become all the more dangerous to the nation.

It was clear on 6 January 2021 that a dangerous number of Republicans had gone off the deep end, and were willing to take America down with them. Even after a rightwing mob attacked the Capitol complex in an attempt to overthrow the results of the presidential election, 147 congressional Republicans stood behind them, and voted to overturn the election results. These 147 elected officials voted against American democracy that day; they showed that they were willing to override the will of American voters in order to install their man in office. This is nothing short of fascistic, and it was a sign of dangers to come.

Now, that same party is pushing an unpopular agenda, but is filled with elected officials who either dont care or are totally delusional ideologues. Which is how we wound up watching the days tick down until a default. Democrats, and clear-thinking people, understand just how disastrous this would be: it would likely mean a global economic crash, a downgraded credit rating for the United States, and huge financial repercussions, including significant job losses, for Americans and for lots of people outside of our borders.

Too many Republicans, unfortunately, seem to be fine with that, perhaps because they also seem to enjoy burning things down and they seem bizarrely confident that theyll be able to blame the fallout on Biden.

They shouldnt be so sure. Its obvious what is happening here: Republicans want to get their way, and are willing to use any means to do so. The blame wont fall on Biden for failing to adequately negotiate with the extremists willing to threaten global financial stability to get their much-wanted cuts to cancer research and help for the poor. Blame will fall on the people who deserve blame: the Republicans acting like cartoon supervillains.

Hopefully it doesnt come to that. Hopefully, Republicans come to their senses, allow the US to raise the debt ceiling without major concessions, and avoid torpedoing the world economy. But even if this immediate crisis is averted a big if the fact that were here in the first place signals just how dangerous Republicans have become. Many members of the Republican party have already made clear that they have no respect for American democracy, and no desire to maintain it. Now, even more members of the party are making clear that they have no respect for Americas role as a stabilizing global economic force.

This isnt playing hardball. Its hostage-taking. And unless Republicans manage to pull their party back from the brink, its only going to be one more sad example of Republicans attempt to make America into an untrustworthy, undemocratic shambles.

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The US debt ceiling crisis is more proof of Republicans cynicism and bad faith - The Guardian

Published 9:26 am Thursday, May 18, 2023

In a council meeting discussing code changes that would allow for downtown bars, Dr. Bramlett made an honest, respectable proposition that I dont see a bar as being anywhere but a place to go get drunk. However, I counter that bars have been the birthplace of much American innovation. The inspired and uninspired both drink.

Bars were the original social networking in America. Some examples would be the Sons of Liberty having met in Green Dragon Tavern when contemplating what would become the Boston Tea Party; George Washington and John Adams met the first time at City Tavern in Philadelphia; Abraham Lincoln was a bar tender in New Salem, Illinois; and the USMC was birthed in Tun Tavern.

Why not meet for tea or coffee? Why not meet in the library?A well run and maintained bar offers an atmosphere for a most excellent understanding of the social aspect of a city.

Who are the people and what do they think? Lawyers, laborers, doctors and joggers meet together at the bar. They learn from each other and they are introduced to new thoughts where iron can sharpen iron.

Entrepreneurs appreciate bars. When I entered new towns, the first place I would go was to a bar, not because I craved some ungodly poison, but because I wanted to hear what was happening, and more importantly, what people really wanted to happen in town. I gained insight and I had people introduce me to other people with similar interests. Business blossomed like a fresh burst of green after the summer rain.

No one can promise you a problem free city. As Proverbs 14:4 says, Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.

I encourage the city not to sacrifice a positive bar environment for an unrealistic philosophy that prohibiting liquor will keep downtown free of problems. It wont, but it could hinder local innovation.

Mr. Hicks, whom I have no connection to, has proven that he can maintain a positive business that has alcohol as its primary offering. It is doubtful that offering delicious whisky with the cigars available is going to create a ruckus. Such environments are more conducive to creating friendships, invention, businesses and stronger sense of community.

Downtowns are built for bars. The concentration is less straining on public safety resources. It is one of the densest zones because downtown is the place you go to be around others. Downtown isnt for those who want to be alone after 5 oclock. So why not open it up to one of Americas original and most well established social traditions?

I respect the concern. However, the stigma does not truly fit the reality. Albemarle has a growing, intelligent and innovative people arising, and they will appreciate the fellowship with added choices.

Thank you for looking after Albemarle, and I welcome you to a drink and a discussion anytime.

Ill buy you a water.

Bryan MaplesAlbemarle

Originally posted here:
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Albemarle needs bars - The Stanly News ... - Stanly News & Press

The month of May is now closing its doors. Have you attended some local events this month? Now is your last chance to.

Art in the Parks Workshop: Photography in the Park, Saturday, May 20, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.This workshop will be a photo walk through Historical Park and Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls. Attendees must meet up at 10 a.m. and network with other photographers. Around 10:30 a.m., photographers will be let loose to take photos of whatever strikes their fancy throughout the two parks. After having 45 minutes to capture images, at 11:30 a.m., attendees will meet back up and share what they have captured. This workshop is inclusive to anyone who has a camera, smartphone, or even a Polaroid camera. Click this link for more details.

Lacey Spring Fun Fair, Weekends, May 21-21, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.Since 1988, the Lacey Spring Fun Fair has provided FREE activities and entertainment for thousands. Join them this year for wild rides, live performances, vendors, and delicious food concessions! There is limited free parking on-site, but no worries! Take one of the free shuttles from South Sound Center to the fair. Pick-up is near Civic Plaza Pavilion (by Applebees). Shuttles leave every 15 minutes both to and from the center and Saint Martins University. Click this link for more details.

The Greatest Show Tunes, Saturday, May 20, from 7 p.m.Join the center as it features the talented Dental Community and a host of their friends, including Debbis Dance, along with vocalists Gayla Duerr, Talia Hastie, Tommy D, and Irina Laer. This mash-up of musical theater and pop is led by the esteemed 18-member Olympia Jazz Senators under the direction of Ben McDonald. Sit back and be captivated by an evening of entertainment benefiting the Olympia Union Gospel Missions (ougm.org) No-Fee Dental Clinic. Click this link for more details.

Indian Summer Golf and Country Club Princess Tea Party, Sunday, May 21, from 2 p.m.The Indian Summer Golf and Country Club is hosting its annual Princess Tea event! They are inviting all grandmothers, mothers, daughters, and friends! So come dressed in your best. Princess dresses are strongly encouraged for the High Tea event. Click this link for more details.

Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia Spring Concert, Sunday, May 21, 6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m.Another season draws to a close for Student Orchestras of Greater Olympia! Student violin soloist Maria Aurelio will perform a beautiful work by Antonn Dvork, and will honor the Class of 2023 graduating seniors. The Conservatory Orchestra will also play Mexican composer Arturo Mrquez Danzn No. 2, made famous in part by the Simn Bolvar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Click this link for more details.

18th Annual SPSCC Student Art Exhibition, Monday, May 22, 12 p.m. - 6 p.m.South Puget Sound Community Colleges art faculty selects outstanding work created by students in studio art classes during the 2022-23 year. Works include ceramics, drawing, painting, printmaking, digital photography, mixed media, 2D and 3D design exercises, and sculpture. A continuous slide show of student work is also included in the exhibition. Click this link for more details.

Books & Bites, Thursday, May 25, 5 - 6 p.m.Books & Bites is meeting in person and at a new time! New members are always welcome! Share your favorite books and authors at this book club for adults while learning about new reads you may enjoy. Snacks are provided. Click this link for more details.

Excerpt from:
What's happening for the last week of May? - The Jolt News

Opinion

These hardline rightwing Conservatives arent fighting the next election, their battle is for the ideological soul of the party

Tue 16 May 2023 03.00 EDT

Its been almost six months now since the last Tory leadership contest. So perhaps it was inevitable that another one would be along soon. No, not another attempted Boris Johnson comeback, despite the best efforts of nostalgic grassroots Tories gathering for a rally last weekend in Bournemouth. The contest much of the cabinet is now less than subtly limbering up for is the one that would follow defeat at the next election, and which some Tories think could yet provoke a historic split in the party.

The row currently engulfing Rishi Sunaks government over immigration can only be properly understood in the context of the electorate some expect to be facing before too long; not the country at large so much as the sliver of it represented by card-carrying Conservative members, many still resentful about having first Johnson and then Liz Truss taken away from them.

For an idea of what those theoretical future hustings might sound like, look to this weeks National Conservatism conference, a gathering of British and American culture warriors brought together by a US thinktank and positioned as a more genteel version of the Republican Tea Party rallies.

The speech by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, set the tone for a movement billed as championing the muscular nation state and traditional nuclear family against the dreaded forces of wokery. Braverman wants it known that she and she alone can give the angriest part of the Tory base what it wants: to yank up the immigration drawbridge at all costs, even if that means leaving farmers crops rotting in the fields or decimating universities income from foreign students. Kemi Badenoch, the next most blatant frontrunner in the next leadership contest, isnt due to speak shes in Switzerland for trade talks but her representative on Earth, Michael Gove, will be there and can doubtless fill her in. Other promised speakers include notorious historian David Starkey, last seen on GB News before the coronation accusing Rishi Sunak of not being fully grounded in our culture; deputy party chairman Lee bring back the death penalty Anderson; and the former Brexit negotiator David Frost.

While theyll insist they arent being disloyal, the overall spirit is ideologically and temperamentally at odds with both Sunaks coolly technocratic government and the remnants of an older, steady-as-she-goes Conservative tradition that has been on the back foot ever since David Cameron lost his Brexit referendum. (Its also anathema to younger Tories worried that banging on about the empire, or arguing that working mothers should be helped to stay at home with their children, is electorally toxic to anyone under 40.) No wonder Sunak has decided now may be an opportune time to invite all Conservative MPs to a free buffet in his back garden.

If the National Conservative branding makes this group feel like a party within a party, thats increasingly what it is. British Conservatism has been an uneasy coalition for a long time now, with the 2016 split between Brexiters and remainers evolving into something more like a split between populists and realists. The former are focused on campaigning, a world where complex questions always have easy answers; the latter are at least attempting to be in the business of governing, with all its awkward tradeoffs. The former tell the Tory base whatever it wants to hear about immigration, insisting that any problems will solve themselves if Britain just trains more HGV drivers. The latter including chancellor Jeremy Hunt, education secretary Gillian Keegan and Sunak himself arent necessarily bleeding-heart liberals so much as realists, focused on growth.

Barely capable of pulling together in power, its hard to imagine them coexisting blissfully amid the bitter acrimony of defeat. The question is whether, in the shellshocked aftermath of such a loss, British National Conservatives could seize control of their party much as the USs Tea Party zealots did to the Republicans. Whats telling is that what now passes for moderate Conservatism currently lacks both an obvious leadership candidate to stand against them if Sunak falls though the sword-bearing Penny Mordaunt may be its best bet and a set of even vaguely buzzy new ideas.

For now, the rival factions remain awkwardly gaffer-taped together by electoral maths. Having seen what happened to colleagues who defected to the short-lived Change UK, despairing moderate Tories understand that any new breakaway party would effectively die an electoral death under first-past-the-post. But some are now privately pinning their hopes on the prospect, however unlikely, of a future Labour minority government being persuaded into electoral reform. Under a PR-type system, a breakaway party could finally become viable. As in any divorce, the question to be answered in a leadership contest would be which side got custody of the house keeping the established Conservative brand name and which was deemed the splinter party, forced to move out.

Are National Conservatives the real Tories now, or cuckoos still capable of being expelled from the nest? Would Conservative members interpret being beaten by Labour as a sign that they somehow still hadnt moved far enough right, or as a warning that the country had had enough of populists, thanks? Considering how long it took both the post-1997 Conservatives and post-2010 Labour party to understand why they actually lost, it would be brave to bet on a defeated party in 2024 jumping to the obvious conclusion. Keep an eye on this conference, lest it be the shape of things to come.

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Tory populists have a real enemy in their sights theyre gunning for the Tory realists - The Guardian

Parents get an endless supply of rules and unsolicited opinions about what to do and what not to do with their kids.

But the truth is "there's no handbook," Shari Rogers, a licensed clinical social worker at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, tells TODAY.com. Every child is different, every parent is different and what might work for you may change from day to day, says Rogers, who is the mom of a 16-year-old boy and specializes in working with children and adolescents with eating disorders.

More than anything, "Parents shouldn't feel like they're doing something wrong," Rogers says. "Everything's trial and error... No parent wants to be judged."

But the experts TODAY.com spoke to say there are some tips from both personal experience and research that could be useful for parents.

"Being a child psychologist,I use so many of our techniques with my child," Shannon Dorsey, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Washington and parent of a 9-year-old son, tells TODAY.com. Dorsey, whose research focuses on evidence-based mental health treatment for children, says she's found a few of those strategies particularly helpful.

This tends to come up when kids are locked into a certain behavior and parents need them to do something else. For instance, maybe they need to clean up their toys before going to the park, which a child may not be too excited about.

"But one thing we know from clinical psychology is validating emotion is very important," Dorsey says. "So, you can see your child be upset and you can still expect a behavior, but you can also validate that emotion."

You can say something like, "I see that you're feeling really angry and frustrated, but we still need to clean up the toys before we can leave for the park," Dorsey explains.

If children grow up without feeling their emotions validated including negative emotions, can lead "kids to not trust their feelings, not know that they're valid and not know and not realize that there's a difference between how you feel and what you do with your body," Dorsey says.

For example, those children may have a hard time recognizing that being angry doesn't need to translate to hitting or kicking, she adds.

What exactly is special time? It's just five minutes during which "you play with your child and you focus on what they want to do," Dorsey explains. "You're not giving any instructions and not asking a lot of questions, but really being focused on them."

For example, Dorsey often sits down and lets her son direct them in playing with Legos.

"You're not teaching them something, you're not coaching, you're not tutoring," she says. "It's a different role for parents to play and it pays dividends for your relationship."

Rogers, who often works nights and weekends to accommodate families' schedules, says she really tries to maximize the time she and her son have to spend together.

In fact, the two have them have a nighttime "tea party" routine before he goes to bed during which they'll watch sports or a TV show together, drink tea and talk about their days. "He doesn't seem like somebody who'd sit down and have tea with his mom," Rogers jokes, "butI make a point of being able to talk to him after the end of my day."

Dorsey has three keywords for parents when setting limits: consistency, predictability and follow-through.

When it comes to setting rules for bedtime routines or screen time, it's crucial for parents to be consistent and predictable, meaning the limit or bedtime is the same and "you're not going to sometimes enforce a rule and other times not," Dorsey explains.

Then you need to actually enforce the rule. "You give your kid an expectation and you say there's going to be a consequence (if they don't meet that expectation)," she says, such as losing TV time or not being able to go to the park. Adding reminders, like alerting kids that they have five minutes left before their time is up, often helps, Dorsey adds.

But your mileage may vary especially as kids get older and start wanting more independence, Rogers says.

"I say to clients a lot, like 'You don't want to engage in a power struggle as a parent,'" she says. "Sometimes we're just going to say no." In her own life as a parent, though, it doesn't always work so well, she says, and it might even be more or less successful on different days.

That said, when it comes to rules around screen time, on sick days and when parents dont have childcare, all that goes out the window, Dorsey says, and parents shouldnt judge themselves for that.

Because Ive worked with eating disorders so much, I never talk to (my son) about food in that way, Rogers says. "I never talk about wanting to go on a diet no one in our house does."

In her home, "we don't ever say any foods aren't good foods," she adds. "Seeing people who really struggle so much with (eating disorders), it's just been on my conscience."

Instead, she lets her son make his own decisions about food during the day. And, when they do talk about food, it's Rogers reminds him that skipping meals can trigger his migraines. "I do often say to him, '(Food is) like medicine for you. You can't not eat,'" Rogers says.

"Kids will bring up a lot of things at bedtime that might be important to talk through," Dorsey says, such as friction with other kids at school. But"the more tired a kid is, the less emotional resources they have to bring to bear on a stressful topic," she says.

So, drawing on the other tips she described above, Dorsey will first validate her son's feelings then suggest they talk about it in the morning or after school the next day and then follow through on that promise.

"Iwill often say, 'These are so important. We're going to talk about them, but let's talk about them in the morning. So let's switch the channel in your mind to another topic,'" she explains. From there, they'll read a book or sing a song together and continue their bedtime routine.

"Children are better at addressing problems and challenges if they're well rested, they're fed and it's the time to do it," Dorsey says. Drawing on the power of distraction and redirecting attention at bedtime makes it that much easier to talk through the next day.

Sarah Jacoby is a health reporter at TODAY.

Read more:
I'm A Child Psychologist I Never Do These 5 Things With My Kid - TODAY