And $6 boxes of cereal Between degrees I worked as a waiter. I preferred tips on a credit card. Yes, that made them more reportable. But it also made them bigger. Customers seemed more generous when the cash didn’t come directly out of their wallets. They felt the bite more when they plopped down cash. Americans’ sense that their personal economy remains unwell may stem from something like that. Great economic data is abstract. Six-dollar boxes of breakfast cereal are not. Nor five dollars for a dozen eggs. That’s what Americans feel most, The Atlantic‘s Gilad Edelman explains: Working with Leger, a North American polling firm, we asked 1,005 Americans how they felt about the economy. As with other recent polls, this one painted a gloomy picture. Only 20 percent of people said that the economy has gotten better over the past year, compared with the 44 percent who said it has gotten worse. (There was a big partisan split, but even among self-identified Democrats, only 33 percent said the economy has improved.) Then we asked them to choose, from a long list, what factors they consider when deciding how the national economy is doing.
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He thinks it’s working for him Of course it’s Miller who’s put the Nazi talk back into the discourse. Trump doesn’t know from “vermin.” He would just say “rat.” Trump is an instinctive fascist not an ideological one. And that may even be worse: IN THE DAYS following Donald Trump’s remarks that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the 2024 GOP frontrunner was met with a wave of Democratic and media criticism, likening his speech to Nazi rhetoric. In response to the Adolf Hitler comparisons, Trump has privately vowed to further amp up the volume on his extreme, anti-immigrant messaging, according to two sources who’ve spoken to him since his rally in New Hampshire last weekend. “He wants the media to choke on his words,” one of these sources says.
It couldn’t happen to a nice bunch of zealots I’m sure you’ll recall that the NRA recently had a little “controversy” when it turned out that their revered leader Wayne LaPierre was livin’ the life of a Clarence Thomas on the members’ dues. Well, things have gotten even worse: While the events contributing to the NRA’s freefall have been well-documented, a review of the gun rights group’s tax filings and political spending over the last 15 years provides some of the clearest evidence of its downfall—showing just how badly the legal setbacks and mismanagement have ravaged the once-formidable gun lobbying giant. The NRA’s most recent tax return, filed in November of this year for 2022, reveals dramatic declines along almost every conceivable metric: revenue, assets, member dues, lobbying, and political spending—with conversely sharp increases in legal costs and deficits. And as the NRA’s power and influence has waned, gun violence has perversely soared, particularly suicides, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
I just wanted to give a shout out to all of my faithful readers to thank them for stopping by Hullabaloo to read our scribbles and put a little something in the old Christmas stocking. I’m a very lucky person and I know it. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, whether it’s about church, football, food, family or extra sleep. Or all of the above. cheers,digby As I have done here every Christmas since 2003, here’s my Christmas wish for all of us: Merry Christmas everyone!
What’s this I hear about Trump running away with the general election? Nobody on your TV is going to tell you this, so I will: Polls mean nothing right now, as you know. But these are no more meaningless than any of the others. The sad reality is that this race is inexplicably close and Democrats are going to have to work their asses off. Too many people have forgotten what a nightmare Trump was and unfortunately tens of millions of people loved him then and love him now. (That’s what should keep us up at night…) Still, considering the relentless doom and gloom about Biden over the past few months, I think we should take heart in the fact that despite the sour mood in the country at least half the people haven’t lost their minds. Happy Hollandaise!
Trump showed the GOP they can be as racist as they want to be They don’t care about no woke criticism. They’re just going for it: Donald Trump is getting headlines for saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” But for months the GOP race for president has been shadowed by xenophobia, as some candidates or those backing them have embraced racist and white nationalist themes. It’s partly a reflection of how Trump has moved Republican politics toward the harder-edged, “us vs. them” view that now dominates the GOP’s base and is reshaping its membership in Congress. This is from Axios. It’s nice that they’ve noticed it’s not just Trump. It’s very important to report this because there may be a handful of people who have always voted Republican who are not exactly on board with the crudeness of this.
Anti-abortion zealots aren’t going to adopt them, that’s for sure We know they don’t care about babies once they’re out of the womb. Why would they want to adopt them? Reminder: Sixty percent of kids who have lost Medicaid coverage this year came from just nine states, all of which are Republican-led, according to new data from the Biden administration. And the 10 states refusing the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults have disenrolled more kids than all of the expansion states combined, the administration also reported… Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas Some of those states (I’m looking at you Texas and Florida) among those states with the most draconian abortion bans in the nation. This should be embarrassingly hypocritical to these people but they are shameless. After all, these are the same clinic harassers who whine that the man “harassing” them about adoption is being rude. I highly recommend reading this piece in In These Times about what happens to people who are forced to have more children than they can afford.
Tipping points—elements of the Earth’s climatic system that can be flipped from one state to another with a relatively minor change in temperature, and which could then cause major and abrupt changes in the climatic system itself—are a key concern for climate scientists (Lenton et al. 2023, p. 36). One of leading scientists in this … Continue reading "Neoclassical economics and the demise of capitalism"
No, not a Tom Hanks sequel The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 4-3 that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a dead letter. The court found Donald J. Trump ineligible to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot. The Jan. 6 violence was consciously encouraged by Trump, that the violence constituted an insurrection, that his actions are disqualifying, and that no legislative action is required to make it so. The provision is self-executing. The case brought by several Republicans and one independent voter charged that it would violate state election law if Secretary of State Jena Griswold placed an ineligible candidate on the Colorado primary ballot. Specifically, that Trump is ineligible (Washington Post): “A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads.
Your right to vote: Use it or lose it Antidemocratic actions in Republican-led legislatures. Militias gearing up for a second civil war (and staging to go weapons-hot on Jan. 6). Donald Trump echoing the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini. An economy and an ecology that’s left younger Americans with grimmer prospects than their parents’. Is it any wonder many younger Americans lack enthusiasm for a gridlocked politics that has not served them well? Winston Churchill said (but did not originate the phrasing): Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.