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Logic often appears in short supply in politics. This is because great decisions of state are not taken on the merits of the ostensible subject matter, but according to what best advances the career interest of the politicians with the power to decide. Scotland has left the European Union against the will of a large […]

The post Scottish Independence and Political Logic appeared first on Craig Murray.

The right wing is obsessed with children’s nether regions This is so sick. More red state proposals for children’s genital inspections. Here’s North Dakota this week: The North Dakota House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would strictly prohibit expanded use of pronouns outside of the gender that the person was born. House Bill 2199 restricts the definition of gender to the person’s natural gender at birth and then requires that all pronoun use be reflective of that same gender. Any violation by anyone who works at an institution that receives state funding, including public schools would be subject to a $1,500 fine. If gender is challenged, the bill puts the responsibility on the individual to prove their gender. “Say, they’re a boy, but they come to school and say they’re a girl. As far as that school is concerned in this bill, that person is still a boy. If it becomes contested, the burden will be on the girl, the so-called girl, or the boy, to prove that he is a girl,” said North Dakota State Senator David Clemens while speaking in favor of the bill.

We’re going to be hearing a lot more about Mike Pompeo’s new book and it’s actually promising to be an interesting sideshow. Trump isn’t going to be happy about it, so it’s not all bad. From the Triad: Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, is coming out with a memoir to promote his 2024 presidential candidacy. In it, he writes that in early 2020, President Trump tried to quash Pompeo’s criticism of China. Here’s Pompeo’s account, according to an early peek at the book, as reported by Shelby Talcott and David Weigel in Semafor: This isn’t the first time the trade deal has come up in reporting about Trump, Xi, and COVID. Here’s the rest of the early 2020 sequence, as I previously outlined it in Slate: In the Slate article, I traced Trump’s behavior during those weeks: He adopted Xi’s talking points on COVID, defended Xi’s efforts to suppress bad news about the virus, and tried to copy some of Xi’s suppression tactics in the United States. Pompeo’s story backs up that analysis. Xi threatened the trade deal, and Trump responded by telling Pompeo to shut up.

Thank you, Trumpublicans When Black men in droves begin arming themselves with tricked-out AR-15s and roaming the streets in body armor, the Second Amendment crowd will suddenly have second thoughts about their guns-everywhere philosophy. It’s somewhat less costly to challenge efforts to privatize public education that divert tax dollars to religious schools and profit-adjacent charters. But the approach is not dissimilar. “Little Devils Academy,” anyone? The setting is the Iowa General Assembly. Iowa Starting Line: Iowans got a chance to comment on Gov. Kim Reynolds’ latest bill to fund private school tuition with public tax dollars during a Tuesday public hearing held by the Iowa House Education Reform Committee.  House Republicans have fast-tracked the proposal so it skips several steps that bills normally go to before they reach the House floor for debate, including financial vetting through the Appropriations and Ways and Means committees. According to estimates Reynolds’ staff provided to other media outlets, the plan would cost $341 million annually once it is fully phased in.

The low expectations of soft majorities The GOP’s psych profile fits a certain… “moral flexibility,” as Martin Q. Blank once put it. Republicans once had rules they enforced about behaviors by their members that brought disrepute to the caucus. Actually, they were more like guidelines, as Dr. Peter Venkman once put it. Steve Benen highlights the history of Republicans’ flexibility in light of the cascade of lies told by freshman Rep. George Santos (if that is his name) of New York. Seriously, the man allegedly scammed $3,000 he’d raised on Go Fund Me page for cancer treatment for the service dog of a disabled, homeless veteran. (The dog died.) He lied about his mother working in the World Trade Towers on 9/11. (She was in Brazil.) The rest of his resume is fabricated. Is he even a U.S. citizen? If so, under what name? Kevin the Spineless just awarded George Santos/Devolder/Zabrovsky committee assignments, arguing that 1) Santos (if that is his name) was duly elected, 2) he may be under investigation but hasn’t been formally charged, and 3) disciplining Santos (if that is his name) is up to the Ethics Committee. How low can the GOP go?

Oh really? CNN: Newly unsealed transcripts from Donald Trump’s deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case show that the former president mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo. The transcripts show that during his October 2022 deposition, Trump was shown a black and white photo where he is interacting with several people, including with his then-wife Ivana, Carroll and her then-husband. “I don’t know who – it’s Marla,” Trump said when shown the photo. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he says when asked to clarify. Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, then interjected and said “no, that’s Carroll,” according to the transcript. I’ll just leave this here:

If anyone was thinking (as I was) that the so-called GOP moderates who won in swing districts carried by Biden would sign on to a discharge petition early enough to have it work (it’s a long arduous process) we all need to wake up. They are going to drag out “negotiations” to cut the shit out of government programs that benefit actual humans (that’s what they all live for) and then it will be too late: House Republicans from swing districts are flatly rejecting the White House’s position that there be no negotiations with Congress over raising the national debt ceiling, insisting that they won’t bend to the Democrats’ take-it-or-leave-it approach to avoid the first-ever debt default with no conditions attached. The Republicans, many of whom hail from districts that President Joe Biden won or narrowly lost and are seen as the most likely to break ranks with their party’s leadership, said they are not willing to back a “clean” debt ceiling increase, insisting there must be some fiscal agreement first.

Presos disseram à Polícia Civil que buscaram proteção com os militares quando a polícia chegou – e houve embate entre as forças de segurança.

The post Exército fez ‘casinha’ para terroristas se protegerem, mostram depoimentos de presos em flagrante appeared first on The Intercept.

A new report has identified how high-powered Russian individuals in Government and business are responsible for human rights violations, Byline Times reports

We barely had time to catch our breath from the wild spectacle of the Republicans finally electing a speaker when their next spectacle started with a bang. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen abruptly announced that the U.S. will hit the so-called debt ceiling on Jan 19, putting the issue immediately on the front burner. The government can move money around to keep paying its bills until some time next summer, but this is  already shaping up to be an exhausting, months-long battle royale. It’s probably a good thing that they’re getting an early start since the MAGA House majority seems to need some serious remedial instruction on how the world works. That’s not to say that debt-ceiling standoffs are some core tactic of the MAGA movement. In fact, Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times during the Trump administration with no fuss at all. They never felt it necessary to try to persuade Trump to cut spending, and the Freedom Caucus didn’t utter a peep as he massively increased the deficit. These hostage situations are reserved for times when the GOP holds the House and a Democrat is in the White House. Shocking, I know.