Once again, thank you so, so much for your support this year. I am genuinely overwhelmed. The readers of this blog are the nicest people in the world and I could not be more grateful. Here’s hoping that this next year brings us some peace and stability. I always wish that every year. But even if it doesn’t, we’ll be here documenting, analyzing and synthesizing the news as we see it. Tom, Dennis, tristero, spocko, Batocchio and I look forward to delivering it to you every day of the week as we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. To all that we lost and all that we gained in the past year, and to all that’s to come in the days ahead…cheers! — digby
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Apparently, he’s staying at Mar-a-Lago. How perfect. What’s a MAGA man to do after losing an election? Emulating President Trump, Brazil’s outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, plans to skip his successor’s inauguration ceremony and travel instead to — where else — Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Bolsonaro will avoid handing over the official presidential sash to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at an inauguration ceremony at Brasilia on Sunday. Instead, the October election loser will fly this weekend to Florida for a visit with Mr. Trump at the famed Palm Beach resort, several Brazilian press outlets report. On Tuesday, the official Brazilian government website published a statement saying that the Office of Institutional Security has confirmed that the security team for Mr. Bolsonaro’s family will be “on a trip to Miami, Florida,” next week. “Bolsonaro will not be in Brazil for the inauguration ceremony,” a professor of international relations at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Regiane Nitsch Bressan, told the Sun.
He seems preoccupied with Ukraine and Russia What are your hopes for the American people in 2023, Mr President? “Peace. We never should have been involved with a certain war that’s taking place that’s hurting a lot of people, killing a lot of people, hurting a lot of countries and hopefully that will be straightened out very quickly with Ukraine and Russia …” Interesting that he leads with that. And after dodging questions about DeSantis and abortion he blathers about the border and inflation and then makes this very adamant statement at the end “We have to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine…” I think we can see the outlines of his campaign coming into focus. It shouldn’t be a surprise considering his base’s views on these issues. Of course he’s going to rant and rave about the border and demagogue inflation to death, But it’s clear that he’s going to come out solidly against NATO and demand withdrawal of support for Ukraine in support of Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression.
There was good reason to think the Republicans would do well in the 2022 midterms based on the historical precedents. The out party gains, the economy was shit, the president was unpopular yadd, yadda, yadda. But something else went on in 2022 that should make the media take a long hard look at how they cover campaigns and polling. The NY Times did a deep dive into what happened and it is clear that the Republican polling outfits played a media that was far to eager to buy what they were selling. They love to see the Democrats give a good spanking by Republicans. In fact, it’s their favorite thing, even if some of them are Democrats themselves. An excerpt: In the election’s immediate aftermath, the polling failures appeared to be in keeping with misfires in 2016 and 2020, when the strength of Donald J. Trump’s support was widely underestimated, and with the continuing struggles of an industry that arose with the corded home telephone to adapt to the mass migration to cellphones and text messaging.
Politico has some highlights of the January 6th transcripts that we didn’t hear about in the hearings. Good lord: Yeah … It’s almost too much disgusting, immoral, illegal behavior in one place. What are they going to do with all this stuff?
If you are an American and you haven’t already voted in the 2022 mid-term elections, please get out and vote tomorrow. Now, more than ever, we need to vote for politicians and parties who will bring down emissions, set aside land for reforestation, and adapt to existing temperature rise. We can do this, but we … Continue reading Vote to Fight Climate Change
Amita got home late from her job at school, so I put on the next episode of Atlanta for her and I to watch while she ate. It was a great 40 minutes of television.
I have not been this excited about federated social networks since we published ActivityPub. The shift has started. Get a Mastodon account as soon as you can. Set up servers for your companies, your clubs, your families, your friends. We’re doing this. Don’t be on the wrong side of history.
I set up a family server on Mastodon today. It wasn’t too hard; Digital Ocean has a one-click Mastodon install. I tried messing around with Docker Compose but it wasn’t happening for me. If you’re using the network, please say hello!