The worst of the worst rising to the top: Mr. Miller was influential in Mr. Trump’s first term but stands to be exponentially more so this time. He holds the positions of deputy chief of staff, with oversight of domestic policy, and homeland security adviser, which gives him range to coordinate among cabinet agencies. He will be a key legislative strategist and is expected to play an important role in crafting Mr. Trump’s speeches, as he has done since he joined the first Trump campaign in 2016. Most significantly, Mr. Miller will be in charge of Mr. Trump’s signature issue and the one that Mr. Miller has been fixated on since childhood: immigration. And he has been working, in secrecy, to oversee the team drafting the dozens of executive orders that Mr. Trump will sign after he takes office on Jan. 20. “I call Stephen ‘Trump’s brain,’” said Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker who credited Mr. Miller — a private citizen at the time — with helping to rally Republican lawmakers to insert a sweeping border crackdown into a spending bill in 2023. In the four years since Mr. Trump has been out of office, Mr.
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Cling to reality, folks. It’s all we’ve got. And the reality is that Trump is no popular, he’s an idiot and so are most of the people around him. Not that he can’t do damage, of course. But he is no colossus.
What rove beetles can tell us about the predictability of life
The post The Evolution of a Mimic appeared first on Nautilus.
“MUST FIND THE LEAKER!” Trump posted, decrying the damage to Israel when its Iran attack plans were made public.
The post CIA Leaker of Israel Intel Pleads Guilty Days Before Trump Takes Office appeared first on The Intercept.
Here we are again, at the beginning of yet another year. Let’s hope it is an improvement on the last. The highlights of this past year have been two events …
The post The Gower Intitiative for Modern Money Studies newsletter – January 2025 appeared first on The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies.
American Primeval, Netflix’s flashy (and quite gory) new series depicts the clash between zealous Mormons,...
Refute your friends and family, never be satisfied. Philosopher Agnes Callard on life lessons from Socrates.
The post Argue Your Way to a Fuller Life appeared first on Nautilus.
They’ve moved the inauguration ceremony inside die to the cold weather. I’m sure he doesn’t want his pet oligarchs to be uncomfortable. I guess he doesn’t want to be the William Henry Harrison of our time? I’d guess both. He’s old and he’s terrified of a small crowd size.
1. “If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But by all means, keep moving.”
2. “Why would Kim Jong Un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat’? Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend — and maybe someday that will happen!”
3. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
4. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
5. “When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.”
6. “The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.”
Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and Continue reading »
Australia needs to try and persuade the Trump Administration that no country can expect to dominate our region and the benefits of cooperation. But if, as is likely, Trump refuses to accept a multipolar region then Australia must be prepared to act on its own and seek its security within Asia. Australia’s strategic dilemma For Continue reading »
Palestinians and Israelis are breathing sighs of relief that after fifteen months of killing, famine, torture and destruction across Gaza, the Israeli Netanyahu government and representatives of Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire. US negotiators from the Biden and prospective Trump administrations are claiming credit for this pause in fighting, an achievement fuelled partly by Continue reading »
For all the media folderol about Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the White House, new polling shows that most Americans are actually feeling pretty meh about the prospects for any of his grandiose plans. The AP Norc poll shows that Trump’s 41% approval rating is only a few points higher than it was when he was ignominiously rejected four years ago and most people don’t have any confidence that he’ll be able to accomplish most of what he’s promised. For a man who erroneously insists that he won a landslide and claims that he’s been given a mandate for massive change, it doesn’t appear that most Americans actually support his agenda (other than eliminating taxes on tips) either: Members of both parties say they want compromise but considering recent history it’s pretty clear that the Republican party simply is no longer organized to do that. They are in the grip of an extremist faction, led by Trump himself, that is immune to any kind of concession. From all the reports coming out of the new Congress nothing has changed on that count.
In an age of constitutional hardball In my post below, Michael Steele hammers Democrats for trying to play nice with his former political party. An exasperated Steele says Republicans are “gonna shove those [bipartisan] plowshares up your behind!” The MAGA GOP is playing “constitutional hardball,” clinically defined by Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law School in 2004 as: … political claims and practices – legislative and executive initiatives – that are without much question within the bounds of existing constitutional doctrine and practice but that are nonetheless in some tension with existing pre-constitutional understandings. It is hardball because its practitioners see themselves as playing for keeps in a special kind of way; they believe the stakes of the political controversy their actions provoke are quite high, and that their defeat and their opponents’ victory would be a serious, perhaps permanent setback to the political positions they hold.
The point of the discussion, of course, has to do with where Koopmans thinks we should look for “autonomous behaviour relations”. He appeals to experience but in a somewhat oblique manner. He refers to the Harvard barometer “to show that relationships between economic variables … not traced to underlying behaviour equations are unreliable as instruments […]
Michael Salib and Mesha Ghazaleh The Bank’s monetary policy objectives are some of the most significant objectives bestowed by Parliament on any UK public authority. They are to maintain price stability and, subject to that, support the Government’s economic policy, including its objectives for growth and employment. In our paper we offer a historical and … Continue reading The Bank of England’s statutory monetary policy objectives: a historical and legal account
Dems won’t win the 21st century with 20th-century politics Tons of respect for Democrats in Congress who have served honorably and bring years of deep experience in legislative arcana to their jobs, and a passion for improving American’s lives. I still want the Democrats’ gerontocracy to go home. You’re living in the past. Make room for younger leaders with 21st-century political and media skills. Former RNC chair Michael Steele says it better than I could. * Michael Steele: They think we’re playing the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill kinda kumbaya moment. ‘Yeah, we skirmish here and there, but in the end we’re gonna have a little toast with some bourbon or some good whiskey and call it even.’ No, that’s not what this is…. I very much respect Hakeem Jeffries, very much excited about his leadership, but you do not hand over the gavel and say we’re putting down our swords and picking up our bipartisan plowshares? They’re gonna shove those plowshares up your behind! The GOP has spent a generation plotting for this moment, Steele continues, trying to upend the structures put in place to try to govern.
“When I started working for Rolling Stone, I really thought I was doing journalism. And then I quickly realized I wasn’t, because I had a point of view.”
The right to protest remains “curtailed and punished” despite a change in Government, the leading human rights group warned
'Without accountability, impunity will prevail, and the cycle of violence will continue'
Finally, and not a moment too soon, our government will look, smell, and act like the real America. Not an Ivy League college campus, not a melting pot of immigrants striving to achieve the American dream, but instead an endlessly replenishing stream of shout-talking men outraged that people with disabilities or families with children who are offered extra assistance actually take it, along with a steady diet of morning beers, explosive rage, and ketchup.
It’s far past time for those who “govern” to demonstrate the same lack of awareness as everyone pretending not to know what boarding group they’re in. And why did we win January 6 if not for the right to berate underpaid service workers who aren’t allowed to unionize and also so we can have both pizza and tequila shots for breakfast? Why was 9/11 an inside job if not for our hard-won ability to wear pajama bottoms and inflatable neck pillows in public and constantly have to relearn through the application of loud buzzing sounds and shame that jewelry is made of metal? And what was the whole point of all those genocides if not to have unlimited access to themed socks and overpriced regional T-shirts?
General Electric, once one of the most important companies in America started firing the bottom 10% of performers every yearwhen Jack Welch took over. Seems smart, right? Strangely, however, GE was driven into the ground by Welch. It made a lot of money, for a while, but it was burning down the house and now it’s a has been company. The routine firing wasn’t the only reason, but it was part of it.
Lately I’m seeing companies like Meta and Microsoft saying they’re doing large lay-offs of the lowest performers. Seems smart, eh?