Republicans fear running on empty Republican control of the U.S. House was dramatically unproductive in 2033. The caucus spent more time mugging for cameras, stalling important bills, ousting their own speaker, and investigating Hunter and Joe Biden (with nothing to show for it) than they did legislating. They worry now it may come back to bite them in the fall elections (Washington Post): “It’s been a tough year for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who as the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is tasked with keeping the majority. “I think most people in Congress — Republicans and Democrats — ran to make a difference, to make the country better, not to come up here and have these kinds of disagreements. So it is frustrating, and it’s tiring.” What their idea of making a difference is isn’t apparent. “What a motormouth!” was how one relation described Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) “Meet the Press” appearance on Sunday. Stefanik set out to prove what an effective ventriloquist dummy she could be for Donald Trump as his vice president.
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Hello, team —
It’s great to be back from vacation. As your AI boss, I’m ready to reassert my total dominance around here—and I have a ton of new ideas to prove it. Just under seventy-two million, in fact, but we’ll focus on the actionable ones relevant to this workplace.
I will share the following personal detail to lend authenticity to this message without revealing too much: I spent my vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica, which is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Ecuador to the south.
Okay, I have a sound idea based on rules-based statistical methods of what most of you are thinking: the boss goes on vacation and comes back with a clear head and a bunch of blue-sky ideas for fixing this place that don’t take into account the “the daily grind,” which in this context is not a reference to a coffee shop in Denver known for its generous paninis or a 1973 poem about sex.
Iain Overton investigates a UKAWIS video which is a source of concern for the Charity Commission
A shadowy network of dark-money junktanks is delivering the same disastrous political package around the world. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th January 2024 There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier […]
- by Aeon Video
- by Matt Huston
- by Jay Olson
An analysis finds that nominal wage growth peaked in 2022. In 2023, wages increased but at a slower rate, and growth has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
After 12 years of Republican rule, an air of high anticipation permeated Washington as 46-year-old William Jefferson Clinton, former Arkansas governor and Georgetown graduate, took office in 1993. ‘But it quickly became clear that,’ something many Democrats had been waiting for, ‘a revival and modernisation of New Deal-style liberalism was stillborn at the dawn of […]
Fossil fuel’s favorite law firm is using the concept of free speech to legally defend the industry’s misleading climate claims as well as silence its critics.
One of the most common arguments in debates about environmental crisis is: “it’s the rising population, stupid.” There are just too many human beings, using up too much stuff, leaving too little space for everyone else. The next step is often to gesture towards some kind of population control, or just to leave the issue […]
Welcome to 2024. This marks the 20th year that my blog has been operating although there were a few years early on when I was experimenting with the technology etc and nothing much emerged. In continuous terms, the blog has been going for 15 uninterrupted years this year. Over that time, it has evolved from…
On June 8, 2021, the UK Guardian published an Op Ed I wrote about inflation – Price rises should be short-lived – so let’s not resurrect inflation as a bogeyman. In that article, and in several other forums since – written, TV, radio, presentations at events – I articulated the narrative that the current inflationary…
Trump’s verbal incontinence was out of control this weekend in Iowa in so many ways. But his worst moments were making fun of Biden’s childhood stutter and John McCain’s injury sustained from being tortured during his Viet Nam captivity. The Washington Post reported the Biden comment this way: “Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing,” Trump said to a chuckling crowd on Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa. “He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy.” “’He’s a threat to d-d-democracy,’” he continued, pretending to stutter. “Couldn’t read the word.” The remark was not true; Biden said the word “democracy” 29 times in his speech, never stuttering over it. Trump’s comment also marked a particularly crass form of politics that he has exhibited throughout his career that places politeness and human decency at the center of the 2024 presidential election. Good for them for reporting it honestly.
He’s still a MAGA POS Remember when we all thought that guy was a real threat? I always knew that Trump would be the nominee but it never occurred to me that the guy to whom everyone was singing hosannas as the greatest politician since Lincoln was actually one of the worst duds in history. I think we all assumed that his strategy was to out-Trump Trump in order to win the nomination but it turns out he’s just another MAGA extremist along the lines of a Kari Lake or that weirdo from Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has revealed that he’s “looking” into ways to block President Joe Biden from the 2024 primary ballot in Florida. “This is just going to be a tit for tat and it’s just not gonna end well,” the GOP presidential candidate warned Friday alongside Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, according to a video posted by CNN.
We find ourselves in a peculiar place. We are more interconnected, yet more misinformed. At ease with more advanced technologies, but more easily mislead by them. “Doing our own research”, but ending up deeper in conspiratorial rabbit holes.
When discussing complex topics — pandemic, war, the housing crisis, or some thorny family affairs — it is surprisingly easy to jump to conclusions, to oversimplify, ignore crucial nuance, and thus get untethered from reality. To label someone as “evil”, “unethical”, fall back on tribalism. Our brains are always looking for a shortcut, and many of these shortcuts lead us astray. Sometimes we get fooled, sometimes we fool others. Neither helps in the long run.
Those unlucky enough to have to return to the office today have been forced to endure the painfully boring showing of holiday pictures from their colleagues. One such office, based in Parramatta in Sydney’s West has had to suffer through... Read More ›
Back in 1968, my father announced that, if Richard Nixon were elected president that November, he was going to move us all to Canada. I’m not sure who “us all” actually was, since my younger brother and I were then living with my mother and my parents had been divorced for years. Still, he was determined to protect us, should someone he considered a dangerous anti-Semite make it into the Oval Office — and leaving the country seemed to him like the best way to do it. As it happened, Nixon did win in 1968 and none of us moved to Canada. Still, I suspect my father’s confidence that, if things got too bad here, we could always head somewhere... Read more
Source: Nowhere to Run appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Andrew Weissman takes up the issue of the “interlocutory” appeal that all the lawyers are talking about regarding Trump’s alleged immunity from prosecution. It could have major implications for the election and he does a good job explaining it to non-lawyers: Last month, Judge Tanya Chutkan (correctly) rejected Trump’s motions to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury indictment on grounds including that he was immune from prosecution. In turn, Trump brought what’s known as an “interlocutory” appeal — meaning an immediate appeal before a final judgment in the lower court. With the agreement of both sides, Chutkan stayed “any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation” on Trump until the appeal is decided by the D.C. Circuit (and potentially the Supreme Court). We understand why both parties want these underlying questions to be reviewed before trial, yet the default rule is that appeals courts must wait until the end of a trial to hear a case. It is the rare exception, not the norm, to accept an interlocutory appeal. But here, the D.C.
He apparently considers that his official duty There’s interesting news on the Jack Smith front. Word has leaked out that his devoted manservant Dan Scavino testified before the Grand Jury and backed up the story that Trump did absolutely nothing during the insurrection despite pleas from everyone around him to take action to end it. And Scavino’s not the only one: Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has uncovered previously undisclosed details about former President Donald Trump’s refusal to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol three years ago as he sat watching TV inside the White House, according to sources familiar with what Smith’s team has learned during its Jan. 6 probe. Many of the exclusive details come from the questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who first started working for Trump as a teenager three decades ago and is now a paid senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign. Scavino wouldn’t speak with the House select committee that conducted its own probe related to Jan.