Dan Pfeiffer (subscription) explains why MAGA’s usual childishness is actually quite savvy in this case: One of the Super Pacs allied with Donald Trump released a video on Friday morning that took the Internet by storm. The ad uses the potentially apocryphal story of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis eating chocolate pudding with his fingers to attack his past support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. Most Trump World shenanigans are stupid, bordering on self-destructive. That is not the case with this ad, which ran on CNN and Fox News on Friday morning. On the day after DeSantis signed a dangerous six-week abortion ban, it seems trite to care about the manner in which he consumes packaged desserts. While impulse control is a valuable attribute in a Commander-in-Chief who can unilaterally launch nuclear warheads, no one should really care that DeSantis was unwilling to wait for a spoon. Frankly, his pudding impatience may be the most relatable thing about the otherwise painfully awkward, malfunctioning Westworld robot authoritarian.
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“Twenty years ago I thought now would be better. And it’s not.” That’s how Tiffany...
With a $787.5 million settlement for its election lies, Fox News has avoided the legal and moral punishment of a court verdict.
The post Dominion Was Never Going to Save Our Democracy From Fox News appeared first on The Intercept.
There are few certainties in life. Benjamin Franklin famously identified just two: death and taxes. Through the experience of the decades-long war on the working class in Britain, it has come to seem like there is a third: workers who have their pensions degraded don’t see them restored. Defeats faced by the trade union movement […]
It’s just a legal license to kill The NY Times had this on the shooting of Ralph Yarl in Kansas City: Chief Graves said that the teenager was expected to give a formal statement to investigators when his injuries allow. She also said that there was a “potential” self-defense or “stand your ground” element that investigators were examining. But the following day, Mayor Lucas said that Missouri’s Stand Your Ground law, which was adopted in 2016, should not apply in this case. “If Stand Your Ground really lets somebody just shoot somebody that rings a doorbell,” he said, “that put the life of every postal worker, every campaigner, every Amazon delivery person at risk in this country.” I’m sure the man believes he was standing his ground because he “felt threatened” when a Black teenager rang his doorbell. Then there’s the man in New York who shot at a car that accidentally turned into the wrong driveway and killed a young woman as the car was turning around. I’m sure he believes he was “standing his ground” too.
Like so many Australians, I am very worried by our commitment to AUKUS. I agree strongly with many other critics that we have been placed in peril by our government’s submarine agreement with the US and the UK. As John Menadue wrote on 1st April “The AUKUS alliance has forever changed Australia’s sovereignty. Foreign policy Continue reading »
US and British arms industry companies and their little mentioned but crucial support cast of Taiwanese military, lawmakers and government official counterparts are opposed to China-Taiwan reunification, because the current situation acts as their ATM, generating billions of dollars in profit. The recent visit to China by former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou – the first Continue reading »
One of the most hated aspects of the Morrison government was the secrecy. Over and again, we continue to shock to revelations of hidden wrongdoing long after their defeat last May. It was a crucial aspect of the Coalition government’s efforts over a decade to diminish our democratic structures, shifting us towards competitive authoritarianism, and Continue reading »
In Australia, public universities face a crisis that threatens the future of this country. It is not a crisis of funding. Nor is it yet a quality crisis, although members of the Association of Australian University Professors (AAUP) are attuned to seeing standards slip and young colleagues brutalised by the Australian Higher Education System (AHES). Continue reading »
The countries where it’s not safe for Australians to travel have multiplied, but not because of COVID. They include the places where we fought the war on terror. Twenty years ago Australia joined the US ‘coalition of the willing’ to invade Iraq. One reason for doing that, our leaders said, was to remove Saddam Hussein’s Continue reading »
A speech by former Treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry last month was reported as a great call for comprehensive tax reform. But it was also something much more disturbing: an entirely different perspective on why our economy has been weak for most of this century and – once the present pandemic-related surge has passed – Continue reading »
Trump’s suit against Michael Cohen is characteristically stupid From David Corn: Last week, when Donald Trump filed a $500 million civil lawsuit in federal court against his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, legal experts scoffed and guffawed. Trump’s suit accused Cohen of breaching confidentiality and “spreading falsehoods” about the former president—that is, ratting out Trump. The timing of the filing was suspicious, given that it came shortly after Trump was indicted in the porn-star-hush-money case for which Cohen is a key witness. It seemed an act of revenge on Trump’s part. The Florida attorney Trump retained for this effort, Alejandro Brito, is a specialist in franchise disputes (not half-billion-dollar high-stakes cases), and the complaint was written in a bombastic and amateurish manner often associated with many of Trump’s legal efforts. The lawsuit raised the boomerang-ish prospect of Cohen winning the opportunity to submit Trump to the discovery process and obtaining documents and testimony from the former failed casino operator.
~ Today's Water Cooler ~
In honor of David Tennant's special day, Georgia Tennant posted birthday wishes, and Doctor Who shared a new 60th-anniversary look.
Offered as a public service. This man is the likely GOP nominee for president and it will be close. Dear God. He wants to build concentration camps. Maybe they can build munitions for the war effort against Mexico.
Shameless hypocrisy Keir Starmer has told Sky News that Tory PM Rishi Sunak shouldn’t ‘hide behind the process’ to obscure or delay details of Sunak’s failure to properly declare his interests: But Starmer infamously and excruciatingly squirmed, dodged and yes, hid behind the process during the Labour leadership contest to hide his right-wing millionaire donors […]
Two thirds of police stations in England have closed since 2010. A new study digs into the dire consequences, Josiah Mortimer reports
Fox’s lead attorney argued that, without makeup, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity would be “totally unrecognizable to the jury.”
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But you knew that Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-NC) will be lucky to survive the coming next round of gerrymandered congressional maps from the NC GOP. But he has shown himself adept at using social media since long before he got to Congress. Watch. He’s slick. @jeffjacksonnc Rep. Jeff Jackson (NC): Fake anger #fyp #politics #nc #charlotte #raleigh #asheville #durham #greensboro ♬ original sound – Jeff Jackson Maybe too slick. Perhaps another of those pretty boys we’ve seen use his military service to position himself for public office. But watch that space.