Turn in your hymnals to….. Inflation is down. In fact, it is down to four percent from its four-decade high of 9.1 percent last June, writes John Cassidy in The New Yorker. But that seems not to have penetrated public consciousness. President Biden is getting little credit for the improvement, pushed out of the headlines by the Trump indictment. Perhaps also, Cassidy suggests, because there are lags between numerical improvements and people’s perceptions. Biden’s approval ratings have not recovered like the economic indicators. Egg prices have plummeted since avian flu sent them skyrocketing in 2022. But prices are still more than 80 percent higher than in January 2021. “The price of gasoline is another example. At about $3.70 a gallon, the average price across the country has fallen considerably since last year’s peak of $5.10 a gallon,” Cassidy reports. “But the price is still well above its January, 2021, level, which was about $2.50 a gallon.” Other consumer prices remain higher. Consumers still feel pinched: Figures like these leave the White House in a bind. Even though inflation, job growth, and G.D.P.
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He’s now calling himself the king. He does act like he’s some kind of dethroned king in exile preparing to take back his throne. Or maybe he’s the golden goose that’s being slaughtered? Or is Fox the golden goose that lived on the prairie? What the hell is he talking about?
I’m so old I remember when that book caused the religious right to have a hysterical meltdown. Good times. Salon’s Kathryn Joyce takes a look at this emerging coalition of conservative American Muslims and far right Christians protesting gay rights. She notes that one of the hotspots of this activism is oddly in Southern California where there has been a number of large protests. “In covering the far-right in LA and Southern California,” tweeted local photographer and journalist Joey Scott, “[i]t is always the same people who have been fixtures since even before 2020.” Others noted that many of the concerned “conservative parents” cited in media reports didn’t seem to “even know which school district they are protesting.” “From Los Angeles to Glendale, it is clear that organized white-supremacist, fascist forces such as the Proud Boys, the Patriot Front and potentially others are specifically targeting LGBTQ+ students, families and educators,” wrote the labor union United Teachers Los Angeles in a statement.
He did post a few other things about how the Justice Department needs to apologize and Fox news getting bad ratings. But that’s it.
“A Tulsi Gabbard drag king act” For those of you who wisely don’t follow twitter, the ere was a brouhaha over the weekend over RFK Jr’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast in which he blathered about his anti-vax nonsense with Rogan the idiot dupe believing every word. Elon Musk joined in on twitter affirming RFK and somehow Rogan called out Dr Peter Hotez (a world renowned virologist and expert on vaccines) for refusing to “debate” him on his show on the subject. Let’s just say,m the stupid was very, very strong. Here’s one thread that explains RFK’s idiocy from someone who actually understands the science. You may not want to go that deep into the weeds but if you do, it’s interesting. Mehdi Hasan says it best: It would be easy to ignore all this but the anti-vax faction in America got a lot of people killed and they want to keep doing it. Meanwhile, RFK Jr is being promoted all over the right for equally nefarious reasons. As Tim Miller says here, it’s basically become a ratfucking operation:
Trump did it so it’s ok now Reuters reports that even if Trump was allowed to declassify documents in his mind, which is, of course, ridiculous, he couldn’t have declassifed the nuclear document they found among his hoard: Even when he was president, Donald Trump lacked the legal authority to declassify a U.S. nuclear weapons-related document that he is charged with illegally possessing, security experts said, contrary to the former U.S. president’s claim. The secret document, listed as No. 19 in the indictment charging Trump with endangering national security, can under the Atomic Energy Act only be declassified through a process that by the statute involves the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. For that reason, the experts said, the nuclear document is unique among the 31 in the indictment because the declassification of the others is governed by executive order. “The claim that he (Trump) could have declassified it is not relevant in the case of the nuclear weapons information because it was not classified by executive order but by law,” said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.
Imagine reading this 10 years ago in the Washington Post: “A conviction and a decisive defeat at the ballot box might force Trump from the political scene and cause the Republican Party to move in a different direction, although in an era of close elections, the prospect of 2024 producing a blowout in either direction remains doubtful — and even that would not necessarily cleanse the system.” “A conviction and a decisive defeat at the ballot box might” force Trump out of politics? And maybe it would cause the Republican party to sober up? If that doesn’t do it, what would? Violence, I guess. Great.
Like the world needs reminding? American Bridge on Friday announced its new campaign: “This F*cking Guy”. The super PAC means to remind voters of the “chaotic moments from former President Trump’s first term in the White House,” The Hill reports. Well, if you must, so long as rubbing our noses in Donald Trump gets under Dear Leader’s skin (The Hill): “The American people already paid the price for Trump’s daily incompetence, inaction, and irresponsibility. He was just as much of a disaster in the White House as he is out of it, and American Bridge is here to remind voters just how much of a nightmare another four years of Trump would be,” Tom Perez, an American Bridge co-chairman who is joining the White House as the head of intergovernmental affairs, said in a statement to The Hill.
Not that they will thank him for it but … Last week Mayor Secretary Pete announced something the Biden administration is doing in Alabama to push their radical, woke, socialist agenda: Here’s the Shelby County Reporter: Man, when will these guys stop pushing their liberal elite values on Real America? This road project is in Shelby County, Alabama, which went for Trump in 2020 by +41. (Not a typo.) I mention this because what we have here is a clear case of the Biden administration centering the real-world concerns of rural voters who did not support him and taking action to make their daily lives better. I do not expect the voters of Shelby County to give Biden credit for this work. But the rest of us should give him credit for trying. Credit for reaching out to the 46.8 percent of the country that didn’t vote for him. Credit for treating them as citizens and neighbors who deserve the government’s help—not as enemies to be punished. For instance, the Biden administration is doling out $11 billion in grants to help rural electric co-ops modernize and compete with for-profit companies in places like Tennessee.