Many members of the Conservative Party's lords bench seem to be taking indefinite strike action, Byline Times analysis suggests
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An open thread on the insurrection in Brazil. I’d particularly be interested in comments from a Latin American perspective.
from Dean Baker The New York Times had a major article reporting on how many people in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan are being forced to work well into their seventies because they lack sufficient income to retire. The piece presents this as a problem of aging societies, which will soon hit the United States and […]
America, beacon of anti-democracy It only took two years. A copycat coup was virtually inevitable (Associated Press): Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday, a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings, which were believed to be largely vacant on the weekend. Some of the demonstrators called for a military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust Lula from the presidency. Regional leaders reacted angrily, one calling the insurrection a “cowardly and vile attack on democracy.” Where did Brazilian extremists get such ideas? The events in the Southern Hemisphere left a feeling in the pit of my stomach hauntingly familiar from two years ago on Jan. 6. Strongmen fanboys are a plague. What’s more unsettling is that the plague is spreading. And it’s not as if no one saw this coming in Brazil.
“This would be unprecedented. This is not a “government shutdown” over budgetary disagreements. This is an intentional meltdown of the global financial system” If you are unfamiliar with Republican GOP debt ceiling hostage taking, take a few minutes to watch this video with Norm Ornstein on the subject. AEI Election Watch from Dave Troy on Vimeo. I don’t think we need to wonder whether or not if they will do it. Yes, the Democrats would all vote to raise the debt ceiling and would only need to pick off 5 Republicans to make it happen. However, these new rules changes mean the crazies are in charge of what comes to the floor. It’s going to be a nightmare.
Howie Klein sent this out to Blue America members today: Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was complicit in the sacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He should have been removed then. Next year he’ll have to face Missouri voters and explain himself. Today he got the opponent best equipped to hold him to account and to represent the interests of Missourians in the Senate—Lucas Kunce. In his announcement this morning, Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran, said “When things get tough, Missourians deserve someone who will stand up for them, not run for the nearest exit. Our politicians have betrayed Missouri. They’ve forgotten that their job is not only to defend our democracy, but also to fight for the people in it. Josh Hawley is 0 for 2. The frontline in the fight for democracy is right here in Missouri. Communities across our state have been stripped for parts by power-hungry politicians who have no idea what it’s like to live a single day as an average Missourian. Unlike Hawley, I’m no stranger to real life. When times were tough for my family growing up in Jeff City and we were on the edge, our community came together and supported us.
The rise of the far right has unfolded in plain sight. But many people didn’t want to see it. During the Obama years I took a lot of grief for writing about Newt Gingrich and his leadership in the radicalization of the Republican Party. The criticism came from progressives. They thought I was focusing too much on the GOP when I should have been criticizing the Democrats. (I did criticize the Democrats plenty BTW.) But it greatly irritated quite a few people that I followed the developments on the right so closely because they just didn’t take it that seriously. That I kept going back to Newt was considered to be some kind of dodge. If you go back and read this blog over the past 20 years you will see that I got a whole lot of things wrong. Tons. But I was right about this. Here’s Robert Draper on Newt and the GOP NutHouse: Newt Gingrich was disdainful. After watching days of House Republicans failing to elect a speaker, Mr. Gingrich, the most famous of all recent G.O.P. House speakers, vented about the hard-right holdouts, among them Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. “There’s no deal you can make with Gaetz,” Mr.
Historian Joanne B. Freeman discusses previous battles over the speakership and it’s always fascinating to see how much of our current fights are rooted in our past. She concludes with this: It’s tempting to laugh at the strut and fret that took place in the House, much of it seemingly signifying nothing. But it was not just theatrics, and it was not a joke. It was a symptom of a dysfunctional party that is questionably anchored in a democratic politics, and a glaringly obvious sign of things to come. Given Mike Rogers’s near-lunge at Matt Gaetz on Friday night, it’s also an eerie echo of things past. The House has elected a speaker, but that won’t put an end to the internecine Republican battles. They will continue, entangling Congress and stymieing national politics in the process. Politics is a team sport that requires captains, congressional politics, even more so. Today’s congressional Republicans are not a team; they have no captain and they have displayed their failings for all the world to see.
Bolsonaro followers are ransacking the presidential palace, the congress and the Supreme Court today. He is ensconced at Mar-a-lago with Trump right now: Who says America isn’t still an inspiration to the world? This WaPo article from November is pertinent: Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son, has visited Florida since the Oct. 30 vote, meeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago and strategizing with other political allies by phone. He spoke with former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who was in Arizona assisting the campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, about the power of the pro-Bolsonaro protests and potential challenges to the Brazilian election results, Bannon said. He lunched in South Florida with former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, now CEO of the social media company Gettr, and discussed online censorship and free speech, Miller said. Neither Trump nor Eduardo Bolsonaro responded to requests for comment. Those conversations have mirrored debates unfolding in Brasília, where Bolsonaro’s supporters are discussingnext steps for his populist conservative movement.
Just think about that for a moment. First of all, he’s talking about the thing he says nobody should talk about. Then he says he brought in professors to tell him what we have known since the dawn of the nuclear age, but fails to tell them that he was really looking for permission to launch a first strike if he wanted to. (That’s surely the reason why they all wove a lurid story of Armageddon.) Then this rambling moron says Biden has lost his mind and lies about what he said about Ukraine by putting his own words in Biden’s mouth. This is a reminder you probably don’t really need but I put it here because we just saw the House GOP majority, including the new speaker, ostentatiously lick his boots over the weekend giving him credit for finally securing McCarthy’s win. He’s not done yet.