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John Roberts’ year-end message was rightly taken to task for implying that criticism of the court’s corruption was inciting violence. If the Chief Justice can’t defend the right of the people to criticize the Supreme Court then they really have gone down the rabbit hole. But he made another point that’s worth looking at as well: Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the court, popular or not, have been followed. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected. I can’t think of any prominent Democrats making that argument but I suppose there might have been at one point.

Honestly, as 2025 begins, isn’t it finally time to reimagine American history? So, what do you think of this: George Trump, Abraham Trump, Ulysses S. Trump, Franklin D. Trump, Dwight D. Trump, John F. Trump, Lyndon B. Trump, and even Richard M. and George W. Trump. And yes, of course, on January 20th, Donald J. Trump (of all people) will once again be president of these distinctly (dis-)United States of America. As Joe Biden hobbles into… well, if not the future, then some unknown past, HE looms over us, the political equivalent of a giant armed drone about to be back in the skies of our lives. Of all the Americans whom, once upon a time, I couldn’t have dreamed... Read more

Source: [Un]Happy New Year appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

So Biden obviously did an excellent job as president but he is self-indulgent and lacking in accountability? Interesting. It’s also interesting that Baker notes the last time a president inherited such a prosperous country. You may recall that the press also vilified the man who accomplished it as being self-indulgent and lacking in accountability. The press will never forgive Democratic success.

. The balanced budget paradox is probably one of the most devastating phenomena haunting our modern economies. The harder politicians — usually on the advice of establishment economists — try to achieve balanced budgets for the public sector, the less likely they are to succeed in their endeavour. And the more the citizens have to […]

I’m afraid that’s exactly what they will be proposing. Trump wants a “one big beautiful reconciliation package.” Speaker Mike Johnson told Republicans on Saturday that President-elect Donald Trump wants one reconciliation package, instead of the planned two that Republican leadership has been pushing, three people in the room where discussions took place told POLITICO. Johnson’s message came as Republicans are meeting behind closed doors at Fort McNair to map out their strategy for passing a sweeping border, tax and energy package that will be the heart of their legislative agenda. Trump told Johnson that he wants “one big beautiful bill,” the Louisiana Republican recounted at the retreat, per three lawmakers. Trump’s decision is a break from Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s pitch for a two-bill strategy that would have seen Republicans pass a border and energy bill first followed by a tax bill. Johnson had also previously indicated there would be two bills — though that was viewed as more of a deference to Trump’s perceived preference and a way to notch quick wins for his agenda.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 05, 2025

By Tony Wikrent

 

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

[The Register, via The Big Picture 01-01-2025]

Perplexity offers several advantages over Google as a search engine, making it a compelling alternative for many.

Chesebro has admitted what he did and has been sanctioned numerous times, even pleading guilty in the Georgia case. But in the end it was a tiny price to pay and he was one of the few has paid anything. What a slap in the face to honest people everywhere that these people have been put back in power. It’s a shocking indictment of our country one from which I wonder if we’ll ever be able to recover.

You know that Elon Musk is sitting next to Donald Trump every night at Mar-a-Lago, talking to foreign leaders, kibitzing with fellow billionaires and whispering in the ear of the soon-to-be most powerful man on earth. You may have also heard that he’s exercising his own power on the internet to influence congressional leaders and fight for dominance over MAGA. He’s branching out. He wrote an op-ed in a conservative German newspaper endorsing the neo-Nazi right party, saying they are Germany’s only hope (and causing the editorial editor to resign from the paper.) And now there’s this: In the first three days of 2025, Elon Musk commandeered global politics through dozens of rapid-fire,often inflammatory posts to his 210 million followers on X. The world’s richest person called for the release of a jailed British far-right extremist. He shared a post pressing King Charles III to dissolve Parliament and order a new general election, as he posted memes and a flurry of attacks directed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

We are constantly assured that our governments don’t lie. But in this case the enormity goes beyond a mere cover-up to protect deemed “national security”. That war was a lie from beginning to end. In fact, the actions in 2003-04 endangered our national security for decades as did other acts of ill-considered military intervention, for Continue reading »

Rolling back your voting rights Michael Podhorzer finds, as Digby posted on Saturday: the defining feature of American politics this century is that neither party can “win” elections anymore; they can only be the “not-loser.”  Donald Trump was the not-loser in November. (It’s just what he wanted for Christmas.) Trump “won the same share of the eligible population” in 2024 as he did in 2020 while the Democrats’ share dropped 3.5% from 2020. Hurrah!The country did not turn more MAGA. That’s little consolation for the left and doesn’t change the facts on the ground. In an age where facts don’t seem to matter, those facts nevertheless could get suckier under Trump 2.0, writes Sam Levin for The Guardian: Donald Trump could use a second term atop the justice department to gut enforcement of US federal voting laws and deploy an agency that is supposed to protect the right to vote to undermine it, experts have warned. Trump has made no secret of his intention to punish his political enemies and subvert the American voting system.

Compare and contrast On this Sunday morning, a question springs to mind: How much of an idiot is “Captain Underpants“? Elon Musk is beside himself that President Biden awarded philanthropist George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his pursuit of “global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.” (Biden gave the award to 18 others, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.) Musk posted a meme mocked up to show Biden handing the medal to the evil Emperor Palpatine. “Must be the lighting,” he quipped. Naturally, the right is as incensed that their liberal bogeyman received the award as it wasn’t when Donald Trump awarded one to Rush Limbaugh during a State of the Union Address in recognition of Limbaugh’s Three Decades Hate. What draws attention to Musk besides his infantile sense of humor, his inability to string more than 10 words together in most of his tweets, and his turning Jack Dorsey’s world forum into a MAGA cesspool, is the contrast with a real genius.

Doctor Who has a wonderfully evil and clever Big Bad in The Master, a constantly retconned character, with Sacha Dhawan being the maddest yet.

Understanding the Physical and Social Constraints of the Public Sector

A curious one, this. We were looking through some old postcards (from the 1930s) and came across one with a picture of this church interior. Where’s that? Well, it turns out that it is just off the motorway on our journey between Bristol and Liverpool. A remarkable mosaic interior from the 1920s, modelled on originals […]

Back in August, I wrote about some of last year’s best Blu-ray reissues. Here’s a few more 2024 releases worth your consideration: City of Hope (Sony) – John Sayles’ sprawling 1991 drama about urban decay and political corruption (beautifully shot by Robert Richardson) is set in fictional Hudson City, New Jersey (Cincinnati stands in). Vincent Spano plays the central character, the ne’er-do-well son of a property developer (Tony Lo Bianco)  who has dubious ties with local mobsters.  Utilizing his patented network narrative structure,  Sayles weaves in many of his pet themes, such as family ties, culture clash, tests of faith, class warfare and local politics. There are similarities with the previous year’s Bonfire of the Vanities; but this is a far superior film. I see City of Hope as a precursor to The Wire. The populous cast (uniformly excellent) includes Chris Cooper, Joe Morton, Angela Bassett, David Straithairn, and Gina Gershon. Save the commentary track by Sayles, Sony’s Blu-ray edition is bereft of extras, but features a nice high-def transfer.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Here is another piece of Michael Podhorzer’s in-depth analysis of the election using some of the very reliable vote cast data. He finds that the problem is not that voters moved right — Trump got essentially the same proportion of the electorate he got in 2020 — it’s that a lot of Democrats decided not to vote, especially in Blue states. There may have been many reasons for the loss but it does not appear that it was a rousing endorsement of Trumpy fascism. One reason this happened is because Trump the pathological liar has the benefit of people not believing anything he says, which I would never have thought would be an asset for a politician but here we are: Anat adds: “Further, as we heard from this cohort across focus groups, they’re skeptical that electing Democrats would actually prove an effective check on MAGA’s power.” This is the one-two punch that knocked out Harris’s chances this year: disaffection with Democrats, combined with incredulity at the idea that Trump might actually implement the worst parts of the MAGA agenda. Why did they think the Democrats would be an ineffective check?

I’ ve been reading some of the reporting on the Las Vegas Tesla suicide attack and it just gets weirder and weirder. I won’t go into all the crazy stuff out there right now about Chinese drones and Afghan war crimes because it all seems way too out there to even analyze at the moment. You can click that link if you’re curious. But there is some easily verified stuff in the attacker’s “manifesto” that’s been released that isn’t getting any coverage and it’s ridiculous. Yes, he was obviously a disturbed man who suffered from PTSD after many deployments. He needed mental health help that he reportedly didn’t obtain from the military for fear of losing his position as a special forces specialist. But he was also a radicalized, red-pilled MAGA cultist little different than the ISIS radicalized former vet who killed all those people in New Orleans. Josh Marshall writes: [A]t least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iphone.

In this video, Tulsi Gabbard pledges her undying love and devotion to her guru Chris Butler who, as reported in the New Yorker, asks his followers to eat his toenails as a gesture of devotion. pic.twitter.com/GMjO26TBNI — I was warning about this back in 2005. (@brucewilson) January 3, 2025 Wonkette took a look at Gabbard’s cult in its inimitable fashion: The group is called Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), founded by an acid-dropping white surfer guy named Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, AKA Jagad Guru, AKA Sai Young, in the 1970s, as an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas, AKA the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.  Butler got his start as a guru teaching mediation and yoga, and was drawn to the Krishnas, but he didn’t want to shave his head or wear robes or do other Hare Krishna stuff. So he founded his own thing, which involved him living with two dozen 18-to-22-year-olds in a Quonset hut under a freeway, beating bongos and arranging his followers’ marriages. Two of his hut-dwellers were Tulsi Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, who joined the group in 1983.

Via Raw Story: Politico reported Friday evening that Johnson securing the 218 votes necessary to be speaker came with conditions. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is a member of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus, told the outlet that there would be potential “consequences” for the speaker if he failed to uphold his end of the bargain on certain sticking points “Let’s make no mistake about it. There will be things that are, in fact, red lines that we need to deliver,” Roy said, referencing Johnson’s reliance on Democratic votes to push a must-pass government funding bill across the finish line in late December. “We can have no more of the nonsense that happened before Christmas.” They changed the rule on the Motion to Vacate to require 9 votes to take out the Speaker. Roy pointed out that there were 9 votes that objected in one way or another to the speaker yesterday. He said there were more ready to join in if Johnson didn’t do exactly what they wanted him to do. It’s not going to be pretty. But nobody deserves it more than this wrecking crew.

The 2000 residents of Diego Garcia were forcibly removed to make way for a giant US military base. A repost from May 30, 2024 Will the same happen to the 593 Australian residents on the Cocos Islands that lies south of Sumatra in the Indian ocean? The Australian Government has committed over $600 million to the military Continue reading »