What’s the point of continuing? CNN reported: “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt whether he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if reelected. “I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said. The discussions between Smith and DOJ leadership are expected to last several days. Justice Department officials are looking at options for how to wind down the two criminal cases while also complying with a 2020 memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel about indictments or prosecutions of sitting presidents. Marcy Wheeler: They’re not mentioning a fairly obvious detail. According to governing regulations, when a Special Counsel finishes his work, he must write a report to the Attorney General. Closing documentation. At the conclusion of the Special Counsel’s work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel. So if Smith is totally done, he has to write a report.
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With a new defense pact in the works, Biden’s push to finalize a US-Saudi alliance risks entangling America in volatile conflicts and heightening nuclear tensions in the Middle East.
The post Biden’s Last Minute US-Saudi Deal Could Open Door Nuclear Arms Race appeared first on MintPress News.
Peter Dutton’s traditional owner, Gina Rinehart, has taken time out of her Donald Trump themed celebrations to get on the phone and demand that her favourite toy, Dutton, get an orange spray tan ASAP. ”As leader of the Coalition I... Read More ›
“In all likelihood, crypto deregulation is coming,” said a consumer advocate. “It looks like a tragedy waiting to happen.”
The post Crypto Sweep Puts Congress on Notice: Vote With Us or We’ll Come After You With Millions appeared first on The Intercept.
“In all likelihood, crypto deregulation is coming,” said a consumer advocate. “It looks like a tragedy waiting to happen.”
The post Crypto Sweep Puts Congress on Notice: Vote With Us or We’ll Come After You With Millions appeared first on The Intercept.
Once, there was a deceitful, misogynistic shepherd boy. He spent his days spewing racist lies, showing off the large flock his father had handed to him, and fondling sheep. Then, one day, he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! A wolf is coming!”
The villagers came running up the hill to drive the wolf away. But when they arrived, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the look on their faces.
“Holy crap, this guy is full of good ideas,” said the villagers. “Get a load of this great, great guy and his fantastic ideas about wolves.”
“What wolves? There’s no wolf,” said the one villager who used the village library.
“Shut up, you fucking elitist prick,” said the villagers. “Everybody knows there are wolves.”
“Hell yeah, there are wolves,” laughed the shepherd boy. “Give me money. I am your president now.”
And the villagers declared the shepherd boy president.
It was Trump’s lead on the core issues that matter to voters that won him the election – a language the Democrats didn't know how to speak, writes US-based Alexandra Hall Hall
As the national debt increases it acts as a self-equilibrating force, gradually diminishing the further need for its growth and finally reaching an equilibrium level where its tendency to grow comes completely to an end. The greater the national debt the greater is the quantity of private wealth. The reason for this is simply that […]
The takesabout this election, hot and otherwise, are already coming fast and furious and I expect they will continue with tedious regularity for some time to come. I’m guilty of it myself jabbering away on podcasts and radio shows yesterday on no sleep and too much adrenaline. I’ll share some of those thoughts here as I get my head straight over the next little while. But I have been reading a lot of instant reaction pieces and I must say that more than anything I persuaded by the anti-incumbency analysis which I posted about yesterday. Here’s another argument laying that out from Derek Thompson in the Atlantic: A better, more comprehensive way to explain the outcome is to conceptualize 2024 as the second pandemic election. Trump’s victory is a reverberation of trends set in motion in 2020. In politics, as in nature, the largest tsunami generated by an earthquake is often not the first wave but the next one. The pandemic was a health emergency, followed by an economic emergency. Both trends were global. But only the former was widely seen as international and directly caused by the pandemic.
Institutional ramparts and simple joys It remains to be seen whether or not reports of this country’s demise are greatly exaggerated. On the demise side, a majority of Americans on Tuesday chose to end this nation’s 250-year experiment in self-government. Not that they know it yet. This week, argues Brian Beutler, they handed “unchecked power to a narcissistic criminal demagogue because the price of bacon increased.” They may also, in fact, have surrendered their sovereignty without firing a shot. (What will the more militant do with the guns and ammo they’ve stocked for the coming civil war about which they’ve fantasized?) On the greatly exaggerated side are people like Beutler in England, who, being shielded from Trumpism by the Atlantic Ocean, have perspective lacked by those of us staring down its barrel.
Harris could have focused on how U.S. foreign policy pushes immigrants to leave their homes. Instead, she ran on border security.
The post Harris Ran to Trump’s Right on Immigration — and Gained Absolutely Nothing For It appeared first on The Intercept.
As the dust settles over election day, it’s worth reflecting that it’s not only the election results that have been at stake, but the future of the presidency and its powers. Over the course of the first quarter of this century, the American presidency has accumulated ever more power, rendering the office increasingly less constrained by either Congress or the courts. With Donald Trump’s reelection, the slide toward a dangerously empowered president has reached a moment of reckoning, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs and warfare. Presidential Powers Throughout American history, presidents have repeatedly sought to increase their powers, nowhere more so than in the context of war. As historian James Patterson has pointed out, “War and the threat... Read more
On “It’s not who we are” Americans believe their own bullshit. A large faction, for example, believes the United States was founded under divine guidance as a nation of, by, and for Christians. Never mind that Christians built the country by ethnically cleansing indigenous populations and built its economy on the backs of enslaved Africans. We carry around pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution, wave our flags, brand ourselves Team Freedom, think reality TV is unscripted, and pretend professional wrestling is real. We’re simplistic and jingoistic like “great again.” It’s not just a right-wing behavior. “We are the United States of America,” President Biden ends many speeches, so many that you know the rest. After particularly ugly episodes, politicians reflexively declare, this is “not who we are.” Biden’s closing always struck me as quaint, a little hoary, but sincere and well-meaning. “It’s not who we are” grates, another lie we tell ourselves while whistling past the graveyard the way Biden ceremoniously crosses himself with a grin. On Tuesday, America proved the lie.
Once again, Donald Trump has won the American presidency. In the autopsy, pundits will cite broad factors of the electoral environment like inflation, immigration, distrust of liberal institutions, the right-wing echo chamber of alternative media, and backlash to the Biden foreign policy doctrine to explain the victory.
However, this discounts a simpler explanation: Donald Trump is a generationally savvy electoral juggernaut who made every possible correct decision in his campaign, earning his win by perfectly calibrating his strategy and demonstrating exemplary policy acumen.
An all-seeing strategist and leader on the order of Sun Tzu or Caesar, Trump has left his opponents only to cower at his towering intellect—and, perhaps, if they are lucky, attempt to divine a lesson or two from his glorious example. They include:
Bring up Hannibal Lecter as much as possible.
Dude, that movie is awesome.
Make shit up.
Did you see that they’re eating dogs and assassinating squirrels?