Nikki Haley finally gets some scrutiny Over the holiday I heard a few people saying that we liberals really should get behind Haley and help her beat Trump because even though she polls better than Biden we should do what we can to defeat him even if it means losing the general election. My response (in my head) was “wtf are you smoking? Haley is horrible!” Sure, maybe she’s not as bad as Trump in some ways but we don’t really know that because she is an empty vessel and nobody knows what she really thinks about anything. Politico took a look at the flap and what it says about her: After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.
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Her name is Marge The Hill interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene who has obviously feeling irrelevant since she bet on the wrong horse in MyKev. She’s loaded for bear: In an extensive interview with The Hill, Greene did not hold back when asked about Johnson’s early Speakership record — “terrible” — or his need to earn her trust. “He went from having a voting record to literally a month later … going against his own voting record and being Speaker of the House,” Greene later added. “Literally all of a sudden talking about doing things that he had literally voted against only a month before that. And, you know, that was unacceptable to me, and it still is.” In the first two months of the Johnson era, Greene moved to force votes on a pair of politically prickly issues that split the Republican conference, hurled sometimes explicit insults at GOP colleagues who opposed those efforts, and frequently criticized the Speaker’s strategy on major issues including government funding, Ukraine aid and the annual defense policy bill.
This isn’t the first time he’s said this, of course. He claims he actually won the popular vote in 2016 because of all the undocumented immigrants who voted for Clinton. He even created a commission to investigate it and, of course, they came up with nothing because it’s utter nonsense. But today this actually refers to the Great Replacement Theory, which is much more pernicious. Sure, he’s laying the groundwork to claim he actually won again. And his people will be convinced of it, of course. But the Republican Party has now adopted this white supremacist theory and it’s inspiring people to take matters into their own hands. Example: The Tree of Life and El Paso mass murders, which were clearly inspired by this grotesque, racist propaganda. Trump may be doing it for his personal purposes, but a whole lot of people are absorbing this idea as a major threat to their way of life. It’s bad.
This is one of the most surprising articles I’ve read in the NY Times in a long while. It’s about the Israeli military’s total lack of preparation for the October 7th attacks. I can’t really believe how bad it was. This was just not something most people ever thought could happen. They’re supposed to be the best military with the best intelligence in the whole region. My God. Here is a gift link for you to read the whole thing which I highly recommend you do. The administration just approved a$147.5 million emergency shipment of military aid. Wherever you come out on this issue, I think everyone can agree that the US should be very concerned about its ongoing military support for the country. And I would hope that it would convince even the hawks in both countries that Netanyahu has got to go. The buck stops with him. A short excerpt: The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry.
Trump barred from 2024 primary ballot First Colorado. Now Maine. Maine on Thursday became the second state to bar Donald Trump from the 2024 primary ballot over his actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Several Maine citizens challenged Trump’s eligibility for the presidency under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) reviewed the Jan. 6 record and found the reasoning of the Colorado Supreme Court to strike Trump from the primary ballot there “compelling.” “The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 336 [Maine statutes] requires me to act in response,” Bellows writes. “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.” Trump will appeal both the Maine and Colorado decisions. So many court cases, so little time California gets in on the action, says nope (New York Times): Hours later, her counterpart in California announced that Mr.
Extremists insist you fund religious schools They are relentless. Give them that. The investor class backed by useful idiots among Christian nationalists are determined to tear public education down to the foundations. Just as the fringe right finally ended women’s right to bodily autonomy with Dobbs, education remains in the crosshairs. They’re teeing up another Supreme Court test case (Politico): Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June.
Nikki Haley’s gaffe illustrates her emptiness If there’s a worse time to drop a nuclear powered campaign gaffe than the week between Christmas and New Years less than a month before the primaries begin, I don’t know what it is. Many people are off work, sitting around watching TV, talking about world events with relatives and otherwise tuning into the news with a focus and attention they usually don’t have time for. Meanwhile, the news is usually pretty slow that time of year so any gaffe is going to get outsized attention on a loop because the media is desperate for campaign stories that aren’t dull as dishwater. Something that might be one little item in a crowded new cycle becomes The Major Story and a campaign is pushed back on its heels. If you’re one of those who tuned in over the past 36 hours you’ve heard about former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s massive gaffe in New Hampshire on Wednesday when she was asked a very simple question at a town hall meeting: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” That’s not a trick question or a gotcha.
Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important: Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected. The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?” Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.
I think the most viral animal videos this year came from Mo Mountain Mutts which is a dog sitting and training outfit in Alaska that picks up the “students” in its puppy bus every day. It’s just the cutest series ever: You’ve just gotta love it.
Has there ever been a bigger narcissist in the history of the world? Ever? And this lunacy is feeding it.Imagine how much that cost? Donald Trump has denied claims made by the director Chris Columbus that he “bullied his way into” appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The former US president said on his social media platform Truth Social, that the film’s production team were “begging me to make a cameo appearance”. Trump said of the 1992 film: “They rented the Plaza hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent. “I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time. People call me whenever it is aired.” The sequel to the 1990 comedy Home Alone, Home Alone 2 made $359m (£280m) and was the third-highest grossing film of 1992. In 2020, Columbus, who directed both movies, told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo was a condition of being able to film inside the Plaza hotel, on top of the usual fee.