The new UK government is signaling some reasonably ambitious reforms on the labour policy front (certainly more ambitious than most were expecting, given the Labour Party’s austere pre-election rhetoric and platform). They call the vision a New Deal for Working People . The policy framework is called A Plan to Make Work Pay. Broad features of the plan were mapped [...]
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This is frighteningly close to reality.
Trump is getting so cocky. He picks Vance which was a mistake. And then this: Uh huh. Honestly, this surprises me. I thought he’d have her at the convention sitting in the audience for his speech. And maybe he will. But not to have called her immediately was a huge error.
Trump, Vance, Project 2025 Zack Beauchamp over at Vox reflects on his encounter with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in 2022. In 20 words or less: “He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed.” Also, Vance’s “worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.” Donald Trump selected Vance as his election-denying 2024 running mate on Monday. A mere 18 months into his first-ever elected office, Vance is another in the line of “best people” Trump has selected, and ready to step into the Oval Office when Trump is gone. A second Trump administration, Vance suggests, should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” And if a court objects, Trump should ignore the law. It’s a king’s divine right. Vance is an admirer of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Democrats have the better turnout operation Minutes before the Pennsylvania shooting on Saturday, Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, argued before a Netroots nation audience in Baltimore that the fundamentals of this presidential election still favor Democrats. Don’t panic. Whatever the progressive left thought in 2020, Black voters in South Carolina “picked the least inspiring, most boring candidate” in the Democratic field. What we got for that choice was a win that November and, unexpectedly, “a great president.” Many Democrats who should have second-guessed themselves in 2020 are failing to do it again in 2024. Every day we focus on Biden’s age is a day Donald Trump wins the news cycle. Meantime, Democrats have overperformed the polls in special elections. They’ve won abortion-related ballot initiatives everywhere while Trump underperformed in his primaries. Republicans tell pollsters they support Trump, Markos reminded, but then don’t show up for him. Voters proved polling favoring the right wing wrong in India, in Poland, and in France. You don’t have to be Simon Rosenberg to have Hopium.
I know most of you probably spared yourselves the pain of watching the right wing Trumpfest last night. Here are a few of the more indicative moments of the “unity” convention: It was awful. Of course it was.
Jacob Soboroff wrote a book on the subject so he knows what he’s talking about. And Junior is lying but I suppose he may not even know it. He’s very dumb. After acting like a cheap thug, he went on Newsmax and whined about it: Apparently, reporters were supposed to speak in hushed tones and not ask any real questions because of Trump’s close call on Saturday. That might make sense except for the fact that they are at a massive political event that’s being covered on all the news networks and policy is on the menu, Evidently, they assumed this was just a coronation like the one England just produced for King Charles. Sorry guys, this is America. Besides, that’s pretty much what they have. The networks were unbearable yesterday with the endless solemn admonitions that “political violence is NEVER acceptable” and “turn down the temperature” over and over again even as the GOP speakers were indulging in their usual trash talk. and the crowd was rhythmically fist pumping while chanting “fight, fight, fight.” Their ritualized “concern” was bizarre in that context and made for very disjointed coverage.
In 1941, Harper’s Magazine published a piece by Dorothy Thompson called “Who Goes Nazi?” It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis… Let us look round the room. It’s a fascinating piece, highly recommended, even if it shows its age in certain respects. I had not read it until someone on twitter pointed out that one character in particular describes J.D. Vance. “Mr A” is a pillar of the community, a WASPy type who doesn’t have money but is well educated and cultured. He would never in a million years become a Nazi. “Mr. B” is similar but would probably go along to get along if it meant power and money but he wouldn’t be a true believer. “Mr.
“What do they call that, an AR-15 or something. A pretty big gun…” Just listen to his ignorant rant on vaccines. I think he believes this, by the way. He was anti-vax for years blaming them for autism: From 2018: f there is one thing pro-vaccine campaigners and their opponents probably agree on, it is that Donald Trump has provided a major boost to the anti-vaccine cause. On more than 20 occasions, Mr Trump has tweeted about there being a link between vaccines and autism, something experts at the government’s leading public health institute say is not true. He also repeated the claim during a Republican primary debate, a remark that was immediately dismissed as false by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Prior the election, Mr Trump met with four prominent anti-vaccine campaigners at a fundraiser in Florida – disbarred British doctor Andrew Wakefield, Mark Blaxill, editor-at-large of the Age of Autism website, Gary Kompothecras, a chiropractor and Trump donor from Sarasota, and Jennifer Larson, an entrepreneur who has campaigned against the use of vaccines in her home state of Minnesota.
You have to watch this to understand how funny that is: That’s worth sharing.