This piece by Dan Pfeiffer in the NY Times makes the case. This has got to stop: After months of unity, some Democrats, reverting to their natural state of disarray, are breaking ranks to pressure the president to the table. A poll from Echelon Insights showed that voters support the idea of negotiating over the debt limit. Mr. Biden’s strategy is undoubtedly risky. But from the perspective of someone who had a front-row seat inside the White House to the last two debt-limit standoffs between a Democratic president and a Republican House, Mr. Biden’s refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling is the best strategy. Facing an urgent deadline and a daunting political context — with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, joined to an unstable, far-right bloc of Republican representatives who limit his maneuverability — the president can ideally find a way to extend discussions around the debt ceiling and fiscal issues. Otherwise, he will have to find a way around the House. The president must know that Mr. McCarthy is not a negotiating partner who can be trusted to deliver.
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The slow failure of our infrastructure is a crisis that everyone knows about, but no one wants to talk about. We all see the problems and know they’re getting worse, but addressing them head-on is politically tricky. For most people, it’s simply easier to stay silent. Well, I’m not most people. I’m a farmer with one wolf, one goat, and one head of cabbage, and American infrastructure has failed me.
Every day when I go to the market, I have to cross a river using only a rowboat. That’s already an outdated system, but it gets worse. Thanks to a chronic lack of upkeep enabled by a culture of inertia in Washington, the rowboat can hold only me and one of my three items. This creates serious problems, which our political system is ill-equipped to handle.
Politicians just aren’t familiar with the constant struggles and challenges Americans like me face. When I attempted to speak to my senator at a Town Hall, he suggested that I simply take the goat across, row back, take the cabbage across, row back, and finally take the wolf across. When I tried to explain why that wasn’t possible, he moved to the next question.
One of the Georgia fake electors says he was just doing what Trump’s lawyers told him to do: Lawyers representing David Shafer, the embattled chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, are arguing their client should not be charged with any crimes for his actions following the 2020 election because he was following advice provided by attorneys working for former President Donald Trump, according to a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week. Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on “repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel” when he organized a group of “contingent” electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus “eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,” according to a copy of the May 5 letter. The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer.
The post Gordrag’s Bane appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Don’t repeat the mistakes of 2016 Yes, it’s Mike Allen. But remember how wrong we were in 2016. No way was America crazy enough to elect Donald Trump as president: Call it the Trump Law of Inverse Reactions: Everything that would seem to hurt the former president only makes him stronger. Why it matters: Trump’s grip over Republicans seems stronger than ever — and chances of beating President Biden are as high as ever. Allen checks off the Trump investigations, the 34 felony indictments, the expected indictments, the rape trial and the rest, like he’s Arlo Guthrie ticking off the 24-8×10 color glossy pictures, etc. And that’s not to mention the two impeachments. (Allen doesn’t.) And still Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. The 18% have gone down the rabbit hole, turned the hole inside out, flattened reality and formed it into a Möbius strip. They are beyond saving. What of the rest of us? “Trump far surpasses Biden in being seen as having the mental sharpness and the physical health it takes to serve effectively as president,” reports ABC News.
How a CIA-linked social media spying tool may have been used to monitor, censor, suppress, and even ban anyone who liked, linked, or commented on the Biden Hunter laptop story.
The post Did Intel-Linked Dataminr Play Sinister Role in Hunter Biden Laptop Suppression? appeared first on MintPress News.
A year after Israel killed the Palestinian American journalist, an FBI probe remains pending, yet the U.S. has gone silent on her death.
The post Shireen Abu Akleh’s Colleagues Are Still Waiting for Justice appeared first on The Intercept.
The way mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, draws most of its men from Russia’s prison system. Wagner offers “freedom” from Putin’s labor camps only to send those released convicts to the front lines of the conflict, often on brutal suicide missions. At least the Russian president and his state-run media make no secret of his regime’s alliance with Wagner. The American government, on the other hand, seldom acknowledges its own version of the privatization of war — the tens of thousands of private security contractors it’s used... Read more
Source: The Army We Don’t See appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
It is almost as though Queen Elizabeth’s death has brought down the old scaffolding, writes Jonathan Lis
Culture wars are real ones We should have taken her more seriously. It was the summer of 2018 when a Twitter user named Amanda Blount inadvertantly launched a viral meme mocking Alex Jones’ claim that Democrats were planning to launch a second civil war over the July 4th holiday to unseat President Trump. Mimicking the Ken Burns miniseries, lefties had a field day with #secondcivilwarletters. Since then, “every accusation is a confession” has gained traction on the left. What conservatives accuse the left of doing is often what the extremist right is actually doing. A second civil war by “patriots” could look like the scattered, low-grade terrorism actually playing out across the country every day. Jeff Sharlet’s “January 6 Was Only the Beginning” appeared in the July/August 2022 issue of Vanity Fair. But hearing his audiobook reading in “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War” delivers more punch. He lived it. He was there. At a Sacramento rally for MAGA martyr Ashli Babbitt.
Have you, yourself, described it as being bespoke?
If yes, it is absolutely bespoke.
If not, it might still be bespoke. Don’t get discouraged.
Was this item/experience/thing made specifically for you?
If so, congrats. It’s by definition bespoke.
If not, could you potentially lie to people and say it was made specifically for you? If you do this effectively and they believe you, then the item is (essentially) bespoke. As they say, bespoke is in the eye of the bespeaker.
Did you buy it off an Instagram advertisement?
It’s definitely bespoke. All items mass-produced and sold on Instagram legally have to be bespoke.
If not, did you buy it from Joanna Gaines’s Hearth & Hand Target collection? If yes, it’s bespoke too. If not, what’s your beef with Chip and Joanna? Do happy and successful couples make you feel insecure? Doesn’t sound like a very bespoke opinion to me.
Were you wearing a funny hat when you bought the bespoke item?
On the anniversary of VE Day, Mark Temnycky argues that Europe is more united than it has been since World War Two, but still needs to secure two more nations against Russian aggression
In the wake of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and brutal suppression of its culture, Matt Smith says Eurovision can provide another story of international solidarity and appreciation
Otto English joined the crowds to see if he would feel any emotion at the crowning of a new king. He did. Rage.
The prospect of luxury gifts and outside cash is designed to halt the historical trend of GOP appointees becoming more liberal.
Eddie Lopez was born in February 1942, the little brother to sisters Alice, Mary, and Bessie. His parents, Esteban (Stephen) and Bessie had met on their way to India while working with a travelling opera company, Bessie as a singer and Stephen as a manager. By the time Eddie was born they were settled in […]
We mark the fifth anniversary of Tribune’s relaunch in 2023, a landmark we will celebrate at the annual rally this September. It has been a hard road — when we inherited the magazine it had no subscriber list, no money, and no functioning website. Today, it is the largest socialist publication in Britain since the […]
There was a time — in the 1970s and into the early 1980s — when there were as many as fifty industrial correspondents in the British media. Whether it was in print or on broadcast, you would struggle to tune in to the news without hearing about workers’ issues. Many of the country’s most prominent […]
In the 1970s, there were more than fifty industrial correspondents reporting the day-to-day news of the trade union movement. The Financial Times alone employed six on its labour desk. The period marked the high-water mark of British trade unionism, with 13 million members. The decline of trade union membership in the wake of Thatcherism and […]
On this week’s Movies vs. Capitalism, Rivka and Frank discuss 2005’s subversive action-thriller V for Vendetta.