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The January 6th invasion of Congress included people with zip ties and paramilitary equipment. While there were a lot of idiots there, there was a core which had a plan of capturing important people like Pelosi, and they came fairly close. There’s no question that Trump abetted it, but the Secret Service refused to drive him to the capital and the effort failed.

As it happens, I know and like someone who was there, though obviously they have different politics than I do. I talked to them briefly about it and one thing was clear.

Crazy state parties are on their own Reuters reports that GOP donors are getting sick of throwing good money after bad to the Trump kooks who have taken over various state parties: Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more. Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state. “I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well,” he said. The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full-throated support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

OK, I’m a crazy person. AN ABSOLUTE CRAZY PERSON! It is just now, JUST NOW! As I am writing this goddamned post that I realize that in 2021 I ALREADY MADE THIS DINNER!!! And I do not have another hot dog dish to offer for the first Wiener Wednesday of 2023. So this is anContinue reading Wiener Wednesday: 207. Deviled Hot Dogs →

Over the next two months, two crucial meetings, indicating the massive changes the geo-political order is undergoing, are taking place. The first of these saw India host a summit of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in a virtual format on July 4. A month later the 15th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, Continue reading »

The aftermath of Ukraine’s ailing counter-offensive may be the country’s last chance to avert the utter destruction of a senseless forever war. So far, Ukraine’s month-long ‘counter-offensive’ has been a very costly failure. Attacks on Russian forces in the southern province of Zaporozhe have yet to achieve any significant strategic success, and the same is Continue reading »

In spite of undergoing several name changes and employing shrewd repackaging strategies under the pretext of human rights advocacy, the notorious School of the Americas remains actively committed to training foreign fighters, steadfastly advancing the cause of the American empire.

The post How a Notorious Georgia Army School Became America’s Training Ground for Global Torture appeared first on MintPress News.

Although Gladys Berejiklian’s intervention to fund projects in her boyfriend’s electorate may not have been illegal, it should have been. The legislation and rules governing the financial management of public programs should be tightened to prevent such pork barrelling. Last week the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found that the former NSW Premier, Gladys Continue reading »

Treasuring old stuff and old stories is something the Australian War Memorial does a lot of. Recently, the Memorial made much of an artefact from the Dam Busters Raid of May 1943. The artefact was a model of a dam with surrounding countryside. The suggestion was that RAF Bomber Command had studied it or something Continue reading »

The overall capture of the meaning of “health” by the medical industrial complex and its hospital systems and departments has helped to hide the absence of policy and structures to specifically address the health of the public. It’s time we named our health departments to describe what they actually do – provide illness care -and Continue reading »

Why oh why is anyone surprised by English reaction to the Bairstow stumping? After all it is no secret that the entire history of England has been marked by deep-seated hypocrisy. That Bairstow had tried the same thing unsuccessfully in the same Test. That coach McCullum had done the same – claiming the wicket in Continue reading »

The manufactured ‘China threat’ is really about Taiwan’s hidden drive for independence and America’s need to preserve regional dominance. Magic and politics, if you think about it, are very similar. Both involve making ostentatious moves to distract their audiences from seeing what really happens on stage to produce the desired trick. That’s why “sleight of Continue reading »

TPM reports: As Trump-appointed judges vie to see who can produce the most nakedly partisan rulings completely divorced from precedent and case law, a new contender has thrown his hat in the ring.  U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty on Tuesday barred Biden administration officials — everyone from Heath and Human Services to the Centers for Disease Control to the FBI — from flagging posts that spread misinformation to social media companies. Doughty ruled that such contact is a violation of the First Amendment. The companies include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, Instagram and many more.  The judgment bans the named officials from meeting with the companies, flagging worrying content, emailing or calling the companies about content, following up with the companies or even collaborating with groups like the Election Integrity Partnership to identify troublesome posts.  “Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” Doughty writes.

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From Australia to United States, some conservatives are blocking the inclusion of gay penguin stories in schools and libraries.

Kids, come quick! While this little cabin may not have Wi-Fi, TV, or even bathrooms, you know what it does have? A well-worn copy of Trivial Pursuit. Can you believe it? How lucky are we?

I mean, what are the chances that this weekend getaway has such an absolute masterpiece? They could have had other cabin classics like a chess board with no chess pieces, three decks of cards that are all missing the ace of spades, or five Jenga blocks. But we lucked out by having a copy of Trivial Pursuit. Go ask your mother who “must have waited until the last minute to find probably the worst cabin they’ve ever seen” now.

So what if the lake has swimmer’s itch? Did Mom’s “brilliant” idea to go to Hawaii include a pop quiz you didn’t study for in game form? Because this cabin vacation does. That’s why this beautiful box of loose cards was hidden in an unassuming drawer behind a chair. Because everybody can’t wait to play it, and it’s not a last-ditch effort to salvage a family vacation.

Last week in Philadelphia Moms for Liberty held a cattle call for presidential candidates at their “Joyful Warriors” conference and they got all the big names to show up. This was quite a get for a group that only started in 2021 by Sarasota Florida school board members Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler to protest masking and vaccine mandates in public schools during COVID-19. They are big players now in Republican politics with big donors and major politicians competing for their favor. And like so many others in the GOP they also have ties with the Proud Boys, a far-right hate group and have been designated antigovernment extremists by the Southern Poverty Law Center which they are wearing it with pride, as right wing groups tend to do: Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler, quoted above, also happens to be married to Bridget Ziegler, one of the founders of Mom’s for Liberty so for all its claims to being a grassroots organization, let’s just say they had friends in high places from the very beginning.

Concerns are increasing that Labour Leader Keir Starmer risks creating a stifling monoculture in the party

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play Howie Klein this morning addresses why it’s important that Democrats recruit candidates (even “feckless” ones) and run everywhere. Run For Something is working on that. So is North Carolina Democrats’ new state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25. She’ll appear on a featured panel next week at Netroots Nation-Chicago with three other women state chairs: Lavora Barnes of Michigan, Shasti Conrad of Washington, and Jane Kleeb of Nebraska. “In 2022, we left 44 seats uncontested last cycle,” Clayton told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi in May. That cannot happen again. “Democracy is not democracy without choices.” Plus, you can’t win if you don’t show up to play. Democrats need to give voters a reason to show up, Klein writes. What matters to them is results. In Minnesota, for example, where Democrats in 2022 won a narrow trifecta. Democrats chose to show voters what they could do with their narrow governing majorities.

The recurring pattern in financial crises is more or less the same. For some reason, a shift occurs in the economic cycle (such as war, innovations, new regulations, etc.) that leads to changes in the profit opportunities for banks and companies. Demand and prices rise, pulling more and more parts of the economy into a […]

A growing wave of anti-Christian violence in Palestine reveals disturbing links to Israeli government and zionist ideology, leaving Christians living in fear and oppression.

The post Complicity in Hate: Israeli Government Boycotts Conference on Attacks Against Christians appeared first on MintPress News.

Alan MacLeod speaks with YouTube and podcast star JT Chapman (First Thought, Second Thought, The Deprogram) about what everyone should know about environmentalism, about why a recession is definitely coming (and how we could stop it) and about what progressives and radicals could learn about the economy from WalMart.

The post The Problem with Environmentalism, and Why a Recession is Definitely Coming, with Second Thought’s JT Chapman appeared first on MintPress News.