Closer than we knew Vanity Fair looks at the 13,000 addendum to the new paperback release of NY Times reporter Michael Schmidt’s Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President featuring a long profile of former Chief of Staff John Kelly: Last March, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Donald Trump reportedly told a room full of Republican National Committee donors that the US should “put the Chinese flag” on a bunch of military planes and “bomb the shit” out of Russia—and afterward, “we say, China did it, we didn’t do it, and then they start fighting with each other, and we sit back and watch.” Maybe you remember this, because it was a fucking insane thing to say. Or maybe you don’t, because Trump has said and done fucking insane things on a near-daily basis for many years now. Either way, it seems that this was not a one-off, and that suggesting the US attack another country and blame it on someone else is reportedly very much the 2024 presidential candidate’s thing.
Reading
The latest CPI report for the United States suggests that the inflation spike after 2020 was transitory in the rather weak sense that I understood the term “transitory.” I am curling in a bonspiel over the next few days, so I do have a long time to spend on this article, so I just want to outline my thinking on the topic of “transitory.”...Bond Economics
Transitoriness
Brian Romanchuk
Mostly about political economy.
India PunchlineBiden stoops to conquer Brazil’s Lula
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service and former ambassador
See also
Explains why Russia and China are militarily competitive with the US when their military budgets are far smaller.
Again, explained by Michael Hudson some time ago.
Everything upside down
Hugo Dionísio
Can you say ‘Forde Report’, Ms Kendall? Labour right-winger Liz Kendall has used an appearance on Peston to regurgitate the thoroughly discredited – even by the party’s own inquiry – lie about Corbyn and the EHRC report. Kendall claimed Corbyn had ‘only himself to blame’ for Keir Starmer’s rule-breaking withdrawal of the Labour party whip […]
On the news that AG Garland has appointed a Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s classified documents here’s Donald Trump’s response: The DOJ took months to decide to name a Special Counsel for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-lago but it only took a month or so to do it in Biden’s case. I suppose you might think that means the Biden case looks much worse than the Trump case ever did but that would be stupid. Garland did it because of politics and I suppose I don’t really blame him. It does fry me that they continue to think that naming Republicans (or someone who’s been out of the country for 5 years as Jack Smith has been) would somehow appease Trump and the GOP. They have made it an unofficial rule that only Republicans can be Special Counsels whether the subject is a Democrat or Republican and it hasn’t helped to legitimize these probes on the right one bit. They only care that a Democrat is taken down and if the prosecutor fails to do that they are either liberal symp or incompetent. Look at what they said about rock-ribbed Republicans James Comey and Robert Mueller. As for Trump, well just look at those posts above.
Supposedly titled 'The Prince IS the Pauper' — he's had to bin that idea after record sales of 'Spare'. read now...Jeff Beck (1944-2023)
"I realise now how offensive that was"
A dispatch from red America: Missouri has a lot of problems, but if you were in the statehouse today, you would have thought the biggest one was what female legislators wear. Peter Merideth (D-St. Louis) shared the news on Twitter, “Debating the house rules on the floor today, and the first amendment offered by a Republican is about making stricter the rules of what women have to wear in here.” “Yep, the caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of other is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (and specifically how many layers must cover their arms) to show respect in this chamber,” Merideth added. He also clarified that lawmakers “thought a couple women last year didn’t dress nicely enough for their standards.” I guess there was quite a debate but they ended up compromising by allowing women to wear cardigans to make sure their arms are covered if they didn’t want to wear a jacket. I wonder if they consulted with the Iranian Ayatollahs.
As the ACCC cracks down on Dominique Grubisa for alleged breach of Australian Consumer Law, she continues to peddle her snake oil asset protection product. read now...At the 1995 Source Awards, Outkast’s Andre3000, delivered his now iconic shot across the bow...
House Republicans want to assume the mantle of one of the nation's most iconic investigative committees, but the differences are stark.
The post Jim Jordan Is No Frank Church appeared first on The Intercept.
I mentioned the possibility of the Democrats and some swing district Republicans using the discharge petition as a way to get the debt ceiling raised against the will of the GOP House majority. It’s not a very promising route unfortunately. Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig explains(subscription only): The discharge petition may be ill-suited to raise the debt ceiling, which carries a hard deadline before causing economic calamity. The process for forcing a vote is clunky and time-consuming and some experts believe House leadership could throw up additional roadblocks along the way. “It’s kind of like trying to do open heart surgery with an ax,” Josh Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, told Semafor.
A Bank for International Settlements study says 60+ trillion dollars of off-the-books currency swaps could be a profound, systematic risk. Rob Johnson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.
Transcript
Paul Jay
Hi, I’m Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. In a few seconds, I’ll be back with Rob Johnson to talk about a ticking time bomb in the global financial system.
I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but there’s a story that appeared in the Business Press but received almost no attention in mass media. I think capitalism is in chaos and is out of solutions. If the climate crisis wasn’t enough to convince you, here’s another example.
New data shows the call for yearslong recession from monetary hawks like Summers has aged poorly.
The post Inflation Is Slowing — Without the Higher Unemployment Larry Summers Said Was Necessary appeared first on The Intercept.