It is hard to keep track of the major shifts in world politics that are going on at the moment. I am in the camp that saw the extraordinary confrontation between Trump/Vance and Zelensky as demonstrating how embarrassing the US leadership has become. I am not a Zelensky supporter by any means but the behaviour…
Reading
Trump felt a tingle up the leg after that one. Oooh baby.
Huge student-led protests have rocked Serbia, with the potential to unseat the current regime.
The post Serbian students and workers rock corrupt government first appeared on Solidarity Online.
The Australian media continues its hysteria over the China warships. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledges all support for Ukraine, while Israel’s Netanyahu thanks Donald Trump for his support. Meanwhile, our US alliance has been in crisis for longer than we think. Everything the Australian media says about the Chinese warships is hysterical and twisted. Continue reading »
Mike Johnson has long been a Ukraine supporter. But he loves Trumpy more. Here he is spinning like a top: In a stunning exchange on Sunday’s Meet the Press, Johnson took umbrage with the notion that President Donald Trump and others on the Right are “on Putin’s side” in the wake of the chaotic Oval Office meeting with Zelensky on Friday “It’s pretty absurd for anyone in the media or Democrats to somehow proclaim that President Trump, the White House, or Republicans in Congress are on Putin’s side,” Johnson said. “It’s a joke. We understand that he is a dangerous adversary and he is the one that provoked the war.” Of course, Trump expressed the exact opposite sentiment in a Feb. 18 statement — making clear he believes Ukraine, not Russia, was the aggressor which sparked the war. “You should’ve never started it,” Trump said of Ukraine. Welker promptly referenced Trump’s comment. “But Mr. Speaker, you’re saying that we all know that Putin provoked the war,” Welker said.
“There has almost always been an outright hostility that is shown towards people of the Christian faith,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on a podcast recently. He was talking with Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana lawmaker and president of the Family Research Council, about freedom of religion and the actions of the second Trump administration. I have to admit that such a statement from this country’s third-most-powerful politician and an avowed Christian nationalist almost takes my breath away. Of all the people facing hostility, discrimination, and violence now and throughout history, Christians like Mike Johnson rank low on the list. Still, his comment is consistent with a disturbing religious trend in the country right now. As an early act of... Read more
They are happening all over the country along with town halls full of angry constituents. Yesterday people lined the streets near the Sugarbush ski resort to protest JD Vance on his way to a ski weekend. People reportedly yelled at him on the mountain as well and he ended up leaving early: Of course the MAGA cultists, including Mike Johnson, say these are all George Soros paid protesters but that’s a lie. The Vance protest was completely organic, coordinated on Reddit and Facebook. People don’t need to be paid. They are trying to save the country. And the protests are about everything, Musk and DOGE, veterans, Medicaid, Ukraine, federal workers, Tesla all of it. I don’t know how long it will take people who aren’t tuned in to politics to fully grasp what’s going on but this is the important first step. Here are just a few moments I happened to bookmark over the last couple of days: Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas QUITS and LEAVES town hall early — after being criticized about Elon Musk and Donald Trump firing VETERANS.
Remember this? It was the middle of Donald Trump’s presidency, and he was—yet again—mad at Saturday Night Live. And he wanted the federal government to help him settle the score. In March 2019, the then-president of the United States had just watched an episode of the long-running, liberal-leaning NBC sketch comedy series (it wasn’t even a new episode, it was a rerun), and grew immediately incensed that the show was gently mocking him. “It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side,’” Trump tweeted, long before he was banned from Twitter for inspiring a violent mob. “Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows. Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this?” Don’t be surprised to see Trump’s new stooge at the FCC, Brendan Carr, actually “look into” it. I can’t imagine how anything could be done but with the way things are going I won’t be surprised.
Check out the new Season 2 image gallery released for Showrunner Russell T. Davies's Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu-starring Doctor Who.
Some things never change:
The Australian media’s favourite politician, Peter Dutton, has demanded that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese call an election so that he (Dutton) can use the current welfare budget to invest in a hot stock tip. ”The sooner that Albo calls the... Read More ›
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025
By Tony Wikrent
Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]
It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”
Check out the new official Season 2 trailer for Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson, and Varada Sethu-starring Doctor Who, returning on April 12th.
The last right-wing American president before Trump galvanized a resurgent Latin American left. Where will the region go now?
The post Latin America’s New Right Ushers in Pan-American Trumpism appeared first on The Intercept.
For no apparent reason The pro-war crimes Sec. Def. is apparently preparing for war on the Southern border: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 3,000 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border, including soldiers from a motorized brigade equipped with 20-ton armored Stryker combat vehicles, defense officials familiar with the effort said. The defense secretary approved the orders Friday, said two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Defense Department planning. The soldiers are primarily from the 4th Infantry Division’s 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Carson, Colorado, and will be joined by soldiers specializing in engineering, intelligence and public affairs, the officials said. The Pentagon announced the deployment in a statement Saturday afternoon after the news was first reported by The Washington Post. Hegseth has ordered the deployment of the Stryker unit and a helicopter battalion to “reinforce and expand current border security operations to seal the border and protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” the statement said.
Musk has his eyes on Social Security Trump says that he won’t touch benefits. But he’s all for Elon eliminating waste. fraud and abuse in the program, all of which is defined by Elon. Here’s what he thinks of the program: The billionaire argued Friday on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that the United States government is “one big pyramid scheme” before blasting Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” When asked to clarify, Musk said, “Well, people pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately, but the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career.
Speak up, speak out. Loudly. Kevin Kruse offers perhaps the best summary of the Trump-Vance ambush of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week: It’s nice how they’ve replicated the middle school dynamic of the insecure bully and his sniveling sidekick picking on someone surrounded by a circle of scared little boys who also try to talk shit so the bully doesn’t come after them. Or as the right calls it, “masculinity.” And on Brian Glenn, the Real America’s Voice reporter(?) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) boyfriend, Kruse adds: And I mean that literally — he’s [Zelensky] there pleading for funds to save lives and this sniggling manchild mocks his fucking outfit “It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war,” as the Kyiv Independent opinion page sees it. But, “The American people have not, and they should speak up.” Please do. The Kyiv Independent: Let this sink in. The president of a battered Ukraine, an ally of the U.S., became the first world leader in history to be kicked out of the White House.
Musk taps into his private government piggybank while Trump tries to privatize federal agencies, and more news from The Lever this week.
Musk is a dangerous phony White House tech veteran, Waldo Jaquith, posted a Bluesky thread about what Elon Musk’s DOGE saboteurs did on Friday to a federal technology group where Jaquith once worked. We know by now (and as you read on Saturday) that Musk’s “waste, fraud, and abuse” pitch for the cameras and is as phony as Trump University. Musk possesses “scant interest in constitutional law” and considers oversight of his operations the “dictatorship of the bureaucracy.” His goal is not to improve government or even to shrink it (the Goldilocks question) but to hobble it. So under the pretext of cutting “waste,” he is in fact destroying the government’s ability prevent his becoming … emperor, or something more like Eldon Tyrell or Peter Weyland. Musk would enjoy the comparison. Pay attention: 18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was demolished by Musk’s team shortly after midnight. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 billion.
After 30 years, a long-planned milestone has arrived
I’ve not been out taking pictures, so here’s another cormorant from the sequence I shot a few days ago.