Last Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning, sleepless souls around the nation suffered through the spectacle of sad-sack Kevin McCarthy finally capturing his Holy Grail, the speakership of the House of Representatives. It was a uniquely unedifying spectacle. By the end it became downright uncomfortable watching McCarthy ritually humiliated hour after hour by members of his own party before they finally deigned to give him the gavel he has so desperately coveted for so long. But then, this is a common practice among Republicans these days. Just look at the way former President Trump treated his own vice president, Mike Pence, a man who ostentatiously abased himself for four long years only to be thrown to a slavering mob (at least metaphorically) when he refused to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. Like McCarthy, Pence also keeps coming back for more, and apparently plans to launch an extremely quest for the presidential nomination in a party that holds him in total contempt. As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte writes on Monday morning, the Republican display over the past week was only a preview of what’s likely to come.
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Judd Legum’s newsletter today reports on an English teacher in Florida who is leading a charge to ban books. She’s doing all the usual banning of LGBTQ material but also wants to make sure her white high school students aren’t made “uncomfortable” by having to read books about race: Vicki Baggett, an English teacher at Northview High School in Florida, is pushing for the Escambia County School District to remove nearly 150 books from school libraries.
Media Matters reports today on many of the American extremists who expressed support for the Brazilian insurrectionists yesterday which is not surprising. It’s clear that the US right has become quite the inspiration. Here’s an example: Of course. But then he was probably involved in the planning. This piece by Anne Applebaum recalls how the American revolution inspired the French Revolution and Haitian slave revolts in the years after independence. And she writes: The American Revolution also inspired scores of democratic and anti-colonial revolutionaries. Simón Bolívar, remembered as the Liberator in half a dozen South American countries, visited Washington, New York, Boston, and Charleston in 1807 and later recalled that “during my short visit to the United States, for the first time in my life, I saw rational liberty at first hand.” Visits to the U.S. inspired independence leaders from across Africa and Asia, and they still do. Would-be democrats from Myanmar and Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cambodia reside in the United States, and study the institutions of the United States, even today.
Two years ago we were reeling from a violent insurrection that he instigated, a global pandemic killing 3,000 people a day in the US and the economy had pretty much come to a standstill and of which he exacerbated with his ignorance and incompetence. But sure, those were the good old days. He will be whipping his followers to crash the economy this summer as the debt ceiling comes up and with McCarthy giving him huge props for his role in the Speaker vote debacle, no doubt they’ll listen to him. The only hope will be a handful of Republicans in swing districts working with Democrats to force discharge petitions. Oy vey. Gird yourself.
I wrote this morning about the Democratic Senate picking up their own gavels to do some investigating and it looks like Senator Warren is already on the case: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is launching a new investigation today into the potential ramifications of the 15-week abortion ban Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced earlier this month — sending letters to five major health care organizations asking how such a law would impact both patients and providers. The letters to the American Medical Association, American Pharmacists Association, American Hospital Association, Physicians for Reproductive Health and National Nurses United — first shared with POLITICO — ask whether the proposed restriction would hamper access to “pregnancy care (such as care for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies), reproductive care (such as emergency contraception and fertility services), and any other form of health care.” Warren is asking the groups to respond by Sept. 30.
They’ve been freaking out about this issue all day: M&M’s is launching woke ‘all-female’ packs to celebrate female empowerment and attempt to shake things up in a continued shift toward progressive branding. Mars, M&M’s parent company, debuted the feminist candy wrappers earlier this week, exclusively featuring the company’s three female mascots: green, brown and the newly-introduced purple. The all-female package – upside down, to show how powerful women have ‘flipped the status quo’ – will be the first time the brown and green M&Ms have been featured together since a viral tweet from 2015 sparked rumors they were a lesbian couple. It isn’t the first time they’ve gotten hysterical over M&Ms. Recall this: Carlson has tackled important issues such as Elmo’s opinions on BLM, and the supposed cancellation of Dr. Seuss, whose books continue to be massively popular. Recently, Carlson was triggered by a redesign of the M&M cartoon characters used to market the candy.
Many members of the Conservative Party's lords bench seem to be taking indefinite strike action, Byline Times analysis suggests
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.