Remember when Republicans thought they were finally rid of Trump and said things like this? It didn’t last: There has never before in history been a bigger group of craven opportunists or gutless cowards. Rubio’s not the only one, of course. The whole party has fallen into line behind the man most of them (aside from the truly dumb ones like Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin or Rep. Virginia Fox) know very well is a liar a cheat and a criminal. This is what it’s going to take a long time to fix not the righteous application of the rule of law.
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Walking the crooked and narrow path “We’ve reached the part of the campaign where Trump destroys Nikki Haley’s career and she then thanks him for it,” LOLGOP (Jason Sattler) posted this morning at Blue Sky. The former South Carolina governor has gained ground on Donald Trump in recent polling but has checked herself from launching direct attacks against TFG. Politico’s Burgess Everett is also pondering the how swiftly 2024 Republican presidential also-rans and other Republican Trump critics will have their come-to-Donald moments. With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary held within the month, it will happen faster than the demon made Linda Blair’s head spin. Trump has already contacted Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) about an endorsement. Hoeven had endorsed fellow North Dakotan Gov. Doug Burgum before Burgham dropped out: The Hoeven call shows how Trump’s campaign for Capitol endorsements is accelerating as he nears the first GOP nominating contest in Iowa. He won five endorsements from Republican senators during December alone, after snagging just three of them over the preceding four months.
Some sanity in Israel today: Israel’s high court on Monday struck down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s polarizing law that sought to limit the court’s power over government decisions and sparked mass anti-government protests and international condemnation. Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judiciary upended Israel in the months leading to the Israel-Gaza war — and now threaten to cause a constitutional and leadership crisis just three months after the hotly divided country united behind the war effort. Netanyahu’s Likud party slammed the decision as “in opposition to the nation’s desire for unity, especially in a time of war.” “Today the Supreme Court faithfully fulfilled its role in protecting the citizens of Israel,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X, formerly Twitter. Monday’s ruling concerned an amendment to Israel’s “Basic Law,” which serves in place of a constitution, that was pushed through and passed by Netanyahu’s far-right government in July.
That used to be the mantra. Now nobody mentions it. Trump should not be allowed to claim that he had the best economy the world has ever seen. It wasn’t bad, at least until the pandemic, which he made worse.His trade policies were destructive and he was basically riding on the belated recovery of the Obama years. But this one is better. Way better. Trump is testing his ability to persuade people to once again believe him or their lying eyes. It certainly works very well on the cult and no doubt will be successful. The question is whether or not he has the power to make people who don’t support him believe the same. A lot of that depends on the media. If they step up we might be ok.
I don’t know that we can afford to be ecstatically optimistic but it is important to hear the positive case for the Democrats. It’s demoralizing to watch the news and constantly be told that Biden is toast. So here’s Simon Rosenberg’s final 2023 Hopium Chronicle. It’s New Year’s Eve. Enjoy it. The hard work starts day after tomorrow: A Positive, Upbeat End to 2023 – Dow in record territory. Inflation running below the Fed target rate. Interest rates coming down next year. GDP growth 4.9% last quarter, looking close to 3% for this one. Best job market since the 1960s. The lowest uninsured rate in history. Crime has fallen across the US this year, rents are coming down too. Consumer sentiment is spiking. Wage growth, prime age worker participation rate and new business formation are all in historically elevated territory. Best recovery in the G7. US setting records for domestic oil and renewable production. $130b in student debt forgiven. The good news just keeps coming. Democrats are also seeing improvement in national polling. A majority of the independent polls taken in recent weeks have Biden tied or ahead.
Sometimes animals save us as we save them They need us and we need them: Some say they were first brought in to take out the rats. Others contend they wandered in on their own. What everyone can agree on — including those who have lived or worked at Chile’s largest prison the longest — is that the cats were here first. For decades, they have walked along the prison’s high walls, sunbathed on the metal roof and skittered between cells crowded with 10 men each. To prison officials, they were a peculiarity of sorts, and mostly ignored. The cats kept multiplying into the hundreds. Then prison officials realized something else: The feline residents were not only good for the rat problem. They were also good for the inmates. “They’re our companions,” said Carlos Nuñez, a balding prisoner showing off a 2-year-old tabby he named Feita, or Ugly, from behind prison bars. While caring for multiple cats during his 14-year sentence for home burglary, he said he discovered their special essence, compared with, say, a cellmate or even a dog. “A cat makes you worry about it, feed it, take care of it, give it special attention,” he said.
Yes, they’ll howl. The Truth hurts. A couple of items this morning remind us what lies ahead. There’s dread and there’s hopium, depending on how one reads the tea leaves. Roy Edroso considers the rise of Unpopularism. Republicans have decided that their path to power is to give people what they don’t want: I talk a lot about abortion rights here for a bunch of reasons, but the relevant one here is the lengthening string of goose-eggs Republicans have suffered in the repro rights referenda that came after they destroyed Roe v Wade. Even in Kansas and Ohio they couldn’t win. Yes, a few right-wing pundits who survived Covid with their olfactories intact can smell the stink that isn’t issuing from Trump’s Depends, but they are the exceptions. Their pro-life palaver started as a sop to one specific religious constituency, but over time it has become the symbol of the Republican Party’s whole anti-choice, anti-consent, anti-democratic ethos.
Couldn’t say it better Happy New Year’s! Preview of November 6, 2024: (h/t @JuliusGoat@mastodon.social)
The historian Arno Mayer, who had such an influence on my work and eventually became a friend, has died at 97. He wrote books on everything from the French Revolution to the First World War to the Holocaust to the creation of the State of Israel. He was one of a cohort of brilliant scholars at Princeton University who made the study of history, in which I majored as an undergraduate in the 1980s, the most exciting discipline and department in the world. I have a tribute to him at the New Left Review. Some excerpts: Mayer liked to attribute his in-betweenness to being born Jewish in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The child of a marginal people in a […]