"It's always been January 10th. Let's not mess with tradition"
Reading
Historian Joanne B. Freeman discusses previous battles over the speakership and it’s always fascinating to see how much of our current fights are rooted in our past. She concludes with this: It’s tempting to laugh at the strut and fret that took place in the House, much of it seemingly signifying nothing. But it was not just theatrics, and it was not a joke. It was a symptom of a dysfunctional party that is questionably anchored in a democratic politics, and a glaringly obvious sign of things to come. Given Mike Rogers’s near-lunge at Matt Gaetz on Friday night, it’s also an eerie echo of things past. The House has elected a speaker, but that won’t put an end to the internecine Republican battles. They will continue, entangling Congress and stymieing national politics in the process. Politics is a team sport that requires captains, congressional politics, even more so. Today’s congressional Republicans are not a team; they have no captain and they have displayed their failings for all the world to see.
Let me start with a confession: I no longer read all the way through newspaper stories about the war in Ukraine. After years of writing about war and torture, I’ve reached my limit. These days, I just can’t pore through the details of the ongoing nightmare there. It’s shameful, but I don’t want to know the names of the dead or examine images caught by brave photographers of half-exploded buildings, exposing details — a shoe, a chair, a doll, some half-destroyed possessions — of lives lost, while I remain safe and warm in San Francisco. Increasingly, I find that I just can’t bear it. And so I scan the headlines and the opening paragraphs, picking up just enough to grasp... Read more
Based on my Sunday cartoon above, you might think my little essaylette
today might be about labels. I’m not sure yet, but it might be. To find out
if I have anything meaningful to say on the subject, I’m going to start
typing and see where it leads us…
Despite giving hope for better management of the COVID pandemic, the Albanese Government has only continued the L-NP's reckless approach. read now...Opposition Leader the Dark Lord Peter Dutton remains undecided on what position his party will take on the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The Dark Lord has used the Parliamentary break to reflect on his past – like the time... Read More ›
Union over the line on numbers voting – and result expected to be in favour of industrial action Teachers are set to go on strike for decent pay after enough members returned ballots to meet the ‘50% plus one’ turnout threshold required under the government’s anti-union laws, according to reports Skwawkbox has received. The percentage […]
Bolsonaro followers are ransacking the presidential palace, the congress and the Supreme Court today. He is ensconced at Mar-a-lago with Trump right now: Who says America isn’t still an inspiration to the world? This WaPo article from November is pertinent: Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son, has visited Florida since the Oct. 30 vote, meeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago and strategizing with other political allies by phone. He spoke with former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who was in Arizona assisting the campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, about the power of the pro-Bolsonaro protests and potential challenges to the Brazilian election results, Bannon said. He lunched in South Florida with former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, now CEO of the social media company Gettr, and discussed online censorship and free speech, Miller said. Neither Trump nor Eduardo Bolsonaro responded to requests for comment. Those conversations have mirrored debates unfolding in Brasília, where Bolsonaro’s supporters are discussingnext steps for his populist conservative movement.
LFG!!!! … hopefully the US defaults this time…
Biden people throwing down:
WHITE HOUSE SAYS CONGRESS WILL HAVE TO RAISE U.S. DEBT LIMIT, WITHOUT CONDITIONS
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) January 8, 2023
Trump saying to use the ceiling to exact concessions from Democrats:
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 8, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World
Paul Krugman [New York Times, via The Big Picture 1-3-2023]
…the lesson I took from my moment of pettiness was that privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement. And surely, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous privilege corrupts enormously, in part because the very privileged are normally surrounded by people who would never dare tell them that they’re behaving badly.
“This would be unprecedented. This is not a “government shutdown” over budgetary disagreements. This is an intentional meltdown of the global financial system” If you are unfamiliar with Republican GOP debt ceiling hostage taking, take a few minutes to watch this video with Norm Ornstein on the subject. AEI Election Watch from Dave Troy on Vimeo. I don’t think we need to wonder whether or not if they will do it. Yes, the Democrats would all vote to raise the debt ceiling and would only need to pick off 5 Republicans to make it happen. However, these new rules changes mean the crazies are in charge of what comes to the floor. It’s going to be a nightmare.
Another Message Board Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Mastodon here I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging […]
The rise of the far right has unfolded in plain sight. But many people didn’t want to see it. During the Obama years I took a lot of grief for writing about Newt Gingrich and his leadership in the radicalization of the Republican Party. The criticism came from progressives. They thought I was focusing too much on the GOP when I should have been criticizing the Democrats. (I did criticize the Democrats plenty BTW.) But it greatly irritated quite a few people that I followed the developments on the right so closely because they just didn’t take it that seriously. That I kept going back to Newt was considered to be some kind of dodge. If you go back and read this blog over the past 20 years you will see that I got a whole lot of things wrong. Tons. But I was right about this. Here’s Robert Draper on Newt and the GOP NutHouse: Newt Gingrich was disdainful. After watching days of House Republicans failing to elect a speaker, Mr. Gingrich, the most famous of all recent G.O.P. House speakers, vented about the hard-right holdouts, among them Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. “There’s no deal you can make with Gaetz,” Mr.
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When I was a kid, there was one superhero movie every 5 years and it was bad and we all felt ashamed and THAT'S THE WAY WE LIKED IT.
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In November 2022, I brought a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the Australian Government to disclose the basis of its non-acceptance of the reports that apartheid exists in Israel. Last week, DFAT rejected the request on the risible basis that to process it would “unreasonably divert the department’s resources.” I refer to my earlier Continue reading »
From China’s socialist path to Latin America’s left turn and Asean’s neutral stance, more countries are quietly but firmly spurning the Western world order. Instead, they seek to favour national interests, a more democratic form of international politics and mutual respect. The global significance of 2022 has been grossly underestimated. Its importance to world history Continue reading »
“There is a battle in the US between so called hardliners, so called neocons or neoconservatives, and those who want cooperative relations with China.” Jeffrey Sachs, director at the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, shares his views with CGTN anchor Wang Guan in an extract reproduced below: “There is a battle in the Continue reading »
Many have argued that our civilisation may collapse before the end of this century. In contrast Aboriginal people have survived in this country for at least 50,000 years. In the latter half of 2023, Australians will be required to vote on ‘an indigenous voice to parliament’. It’s intended this will provide indigenous Australians a direct Continue reading »
A recent New York Times commentary by conservative columnist Bret Stephens asks this question: “Are We Sleepwalking Through a ‘Decisive Decade’?” To which he answers resoundingly, in so many words, yes. “We” is all of us: American society as a whole — but, more precisely, the policy officials and military leaders who purport to guide Continue reading »
“As long as Germany declares the Jews to be an inferior race, poisoning and persecuting them, decent, self-respecting Jews cannot deal with Germany in any way, buy or sell or maintain any manner of commerce with Germany or travel on German Boats.” With this clarion call born of principle and necessity, a respected Rabbi and leader of Continue reading »
Wall Street’s takeover of the American rental market really took off during Obama’s foreclosure regime as the firms snapped up properties (including from many small landlords) at bargain prices. The pace has continued to accelerat…
There’s constant media talk of a housing shortage to explain the US homelessness crisis, but according to the lawsuit against RealPage, one of its tactics is also keeping units off the market in order to drive up prices.…
By tightening its grip on the American rental market, Wall Street has helped cement the idea of a home as a commodity, spurred the assetization of housing, and embedded these assets in the international financial system. And an growing number of smaller landlords have learned to function like the big dogs on Wall Street.…
Speculative landlords are incentivized to evict tenants by the promise of higher rents, higher sale prices for vacated buildings, or the possibility of just leaving them vacant as the lawsuits against RealPage shows....
Enraged Crocodile Destroys Lawnmower to Get Back at Noisy Zookeeper (Thanks to Matt Filar and pharmaross)
This is quite possibly true, but also I think the man is tired.