Tom wrote about the the ever slipping “mandate” this morning, quoting from that NY Times piece “The Landslide That Wasn’t.” Mar-a-lago is hopping mad: Trump transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Friday took aim at Politico and The New York Times for reporting on the fact that President-elect Trump didn’t win the popular vote by some resounding majority. It was not massive and it was not historic. In fact, Harris has now received almost a quarter of a million more votes than Trump did in the higher turnout election of 2020 — you remember the ine he bragged about being the highest number by any incumbent in history? Basically, we’re back to crowd size arguments. And if you ask a Trump supporter what’s going on they’ll either say the votes counted since election day are all fraudulent or that it’s fake news. Deal Leader got the greatest victory in the history of the world. Everyone knows that.
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One step forward two steps back: Women have made significant gains in Congress in recent elections, but that progress has stalled for the first time since 2016, falling short of the current record levels. The latest woman to lose her race is Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, with NBC News projecting her defeat to Republican Nick Begich in Alaska. One other female lawmaker, GOP Rep. Michelle Steel, is locked in a tight and uncalled race in Southern California, where she is currently trailing Democrat Derek Tran by a narrow margin. If Steel also loses, the number of women in the next Congress, including both the House and the Senate, will reach 150 (including the eventual winner of Iowa’s 1st District recount between GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Democrat Christina Bohannon). That means the next Congress could begin one fewer woman than the 151 who were in Congress on Election Day, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics — the first decline since 2010 and only the second since 1978. 151 out of 535. And shrinking.
“House Speaker Mike Johnson declared Wednesday that lawmakers and staff will have to use the restroom corresponding with their biological sex, a statement directed at Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to be elected to Congress, months before she is set to arrive on Capitol Hill.” — AP
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I needed to fix my lip liner, which got smudged after I drank coffee from my mug.
I had to go number two so urgently that it outweighed my crippling social anxiety around doing it at work.
I hadn’t applied makeup before coming into the office and wasn’t planning on wearing any that day, but then the cafeteria worker I chat with almost every day saw me and asked me if today was my first day here, so I needed to apply a full face of makeup.
Ultimately, this is the story of how the Israel lobby undermined America, wrecked the Middle East, and set a series of international crimes against humanity in motion. It’s official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress just months ago, is under indictment by the International Continue reading »
For some time now a considerable number of well-informed Australians have been warning Anthony Albanese and his government not to allow personal flattery and uncertain commitments to allow the United States to gain control of Australian foreign policy and defence policies. Yet unfortunately some leaders always know best, so the Albanese Cabinet has continued on Continue reading »
The horrific situation in the Middle East has landed Foreign Minister Penny Wong with a difficult and frustrating job. She is wedged between a so-far unacknowledged obligation to honour Australia’s legal commitments to condemn Israeli genocide and apartheid on the one hand, and on the other, a vociferous campaign by local Zionists and their supporters Continue reading »
Why won’t you hold Israel to account? You don’t have to wait for the rest of the world. You can be the leaders, you can be the leaders to hold Israel to account, for the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians, for the killing of Zoni Frankcom.” – Senator Mehreen Faruqi, addressing the Australian Continue reading »
Jo Martin on her debut with Big Finish Productions in Doctor Who: Once and Future: Coda: The Final Act and her return as the Fugitive Doctor.
Contrary to his customary bragging that he won the election in an unprecedented landslide, President Donald Trump’s percentage of the popular vote has fallen below 50% and every day it drops a little bit lower as the final votes are tallied up. According to the Cook Report, as of Tuesday, he was at 49.94 percent, and Harris was at 48.26, a difference of a mere 1.68%. He won fair and square but to call it an overwhelming mandate to dismantle the government is ridiculous. Obviously, Trump will always maintain that his victory was the greatest in history and that nobody’s ever seen anything like it. But in Washington it’s clear that Trump’s win was not the overwhelming validation of his agenda that we were told in the days after November 5th. Over 50% of the people voted against it, just as they did in 2020 and in 2016. Perhaps some Republicans waking up from their stupors and realizing this accounts for the fact that the fever broke yesterday for the first time since election day. Matt Gaetz withdrew his nomination for Attorney General proving, as my colleague Amanda Marcotte writes, resistance is not futile.
For more than a year, the world has watched in horror as Israel rains destruction upon the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip — obliterating homes, schools, and hospitals, killing many tens of thousands, and maiming many more. At the very least, as we are confronted with this ongoing genocidal onslaught, the belated decision of […]
Pam Bondi has replaced Matt Gaetz in Trump’s attorney general slot. Her lobbying clients include the GEO Group, among many others.
The post Pam Bondi, Trump’s New AG Pick, Lobbied for Private Prisons and Amazon appeared first on The Intercept.
A new documentary exposes never-before-seen video of the Israeli leader — and argues he’s prolonged the Gaza War to evade corruption charges.
Also, our numbers matter Heading into Season 2 of “The Apprentice Goes To Washington,” we are already seeing Donald Trump’s flacks insisting he won a mandate bigger even than his first inauguration crowd. Even without Sean Spicer around to parrot it, you know know the line by heart: “Like nobody’s ever seen.” There will be big strong men with tears in their eyes agog at Dear Leader’s yuge mandate, etc. Not so. The New York Times subhead reads: “The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century.” But if Trump is still breathing, he’s still selling the rubes crap like Trump steaks and Trump sneakers and Trump NFTs and Trump Bibles: The disconnect goes beyond predictable Trumpian braggadocio. The incoming president and his team are trying to cement the impression of a “resounding margin,” as one aide called it, to make Mr. Trump seem more popular than he is and strengthen his hand in forcing through his agenda in the months to come. […] With some votes still being counted, the tally used by The New York Times showed Mr.
The treaty represents a rare victory for international law and the “rules-based order” the UK is meant to stand for
The ICC finally issued Netanyahu’s warrant, but only after surviving a barrage of threats, legal sabotage, and coordinated smears from Washington and Tel Aviv.
The post Six Months of Lies and Pressure: How US and Israeli Interference Stalled Netanyahu’s ICC Arrest Warrant appeared first on MintPress News.
“I am trying to repel audiences and pull them in at the same time,
so they gain a different kind of awareness of what they’re watching.”
How many Trump supporters share his agenda? Adam Serwer considers how easily voters he spoke to across the South dismissed Donald Trump’s worst traits as media propaganda: During the last weeks of the campaign, when I was traveling in the South speaking with Trump voters, I encountered a tendency to deny easily verifiable negative facts about Trump. For example, one Trump voter I spoke with asked me why Democrats were “calling Trump Hitler.” The reason was that one of Trump’s former chiefs of staff, the retired Marine general John Kelly, had relayed the story about Trump wanting “the kind of generals that Hitler had,” and saying that “Hitler did some good things.” “Look back on the history of Donald Trump, whom they’re trying to call racist,” one Georgia voter named Steve, who declined to give his last name, told me. “If you ask somebody, ‘Well, what has he said that’s actually racist?,’ usually they can’t come up with one thing.
Rivals marks David Tennant as the UK's MVP of TV actors, headlining more hit television franchises than any other actor in the 21st Century.
I guess I’m what you’d call a swing voter, Jerry. I am not one to align myself with any political party. I listen to each candidate’s positions on the big issues, review their political career, that sort of thing. I voted for Democrats, and I voted for Republicans. I’m sure you remember that after eight comparatively sane, relatively progressive years, I believed it was in America’s best interest to shake things up a bit back in 2016. Really plunge into that horrifying cosmic abyss, you know?