A scourge on democracy Seems as if our northern neighbors are better prepared. We’re still hoping for the best in November 2024. Global News: Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections. “We are certainly working on scenarios,” Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday. Joly added that Ottawa’s close political and economic ties to the U.S. means that “we must certainly prepare several scenarios.” She suggested Canada has a game plan in mind but wouldn’t get into details. I wouldn’t. But it’s nice to know someone in charge is thinking ahead. Too bad it’s not happening south of the 49th parallel. Just warning speeches from scholars but no preparations. The U.S. embassy in Ottawa declined comment.
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How would you know what’s in the backpack? Does this mean anyone with a backpack is shot on sight? Or is it that if the border patrol seizes someone with a backpack and finds fentanyl that they summarily execute them? This is psycho talk and its common in this Republican primary campaign. The people cheer and shout with unbridled glee at the notion of killing immigrants and invading Mexico. Former President Donald Trump, who has previously called for building a wall along the southern border and giving drug dealers the death penalty, has also proposed creating a naval blockade of Mexico to prevent drugs like illicit fentanyl from entering the U.S. His leading opponent in the 2024 GOP nomination race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, promised last week to use “deadly force” against anyone caught smuggling drugs across the border. On Capitol Hill, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and John Kennedy (R., La.) have both voiced support for military operations in Mexico. Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) said in a recent interview on NBC that cartels should be considered terrorist organizations, meriting a military response.
And you are not Neighbors shared champaign* out in the street when after several day news outlets finally called the 2020 election for Joe Biden. They weren’t celebrating Biden’s victory. It was a “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” moment. America was done with Donald Trump. The problem was Donald Trump was not done with America. Nearly three years later, the country is still attempting to clean up behind Trump even as he continues to trash the place. And getting special treatment while doing it. Fred and Mary Anne never gave little Donny a time out. They farmed out disciplining Little Lord Flauntleroy at 13 to a military academy. Too late, of course. Never in the field of bad parenting was such political carnage foisted on so many by so few. The 77-year-old brat continues to receive special treatment to this day, explains Dahlia Lithwick: The irony is lost on nobody that most of the conspiracies of which Trump now stands accused involve variations on speech acts that included threats and intimidation, lies, and bullying—the same actions he takes up with increasingly reckless zeal on social media against the machinery of the justice system itself.
No public comment from Kenneth Chesebro at this time “The underrated player” in the January 6 conspiracy. “He’s the driving force.” The heat is on. Update: This thread has more.
Ron DeSantis comes from a long line of failed Great Whitebread Hopes I should probably be ashamed to admit this but my favorite part of any presidential election season is the Republican primaries, especially the debates. Since they rarely have an incumbent president running (because they have only had three Republican presidents in the last 35 years) it’s usually a free for all that features some very eccentric fringe characters as well as the precipitous fall of at least one highly touted conservative hero that everyone in the political establishment assumed was a shoo-in just months before. I think back to 1992 which featured what we all thought was a completely beyond-the-pale Pat Buchanan speech at the RNC that the late great Molly Ivins famously quipped “sounded better in the original German.”(That speech now sounds like virtually every GOP candidate running for any office.) In 2008 the open primary swoon offered up the excitement of yet another Hollywood actor/Republican politician in Senator Fred Thompson who had the entire political press corps in a swoon, convinced that he was the next Ronald Reagan.
Matt Gaetz puts it right out there Impeachment is on the way because it’s an election year and Republicans want to harm Joe Biden with a massive smear. They aren’t trying to hide it. Representative Matt Gaetz has finally said the quiet part out loud: Republicans don’t have enough evidence to impeach and convict Joe Biden. They just want to make him look bad enough that he loses the 2024 election. Republicans have insisted for months that Biden is guilty of corruption and influence peddling overseas, despite producing no actual evidence. Many in the GOP, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are starting to suggest opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden so that they can access more information and witnesses that will supposedly lead them to the truth. But Gaetz said that Republicans should go straight to impeachment proceedings, not just an inquiry. “The purpose of that impeachment, from my standpoint, is not to force a vote that loses,” he said during a Twitter Space on Monday night.
The dystopian future of modern America Does Elon Musk know that his precious Republicans are waging a war against electric cars? They are… Electric vehicle drivers in Texas have started to get some bad news in the mail. Starting in September, they’ll have to pay the state an extra $200 each year to register their climate-friendly cars and trucks. And if they want to buy a new EV, that will cost $400 upfront. State lawmakers imposed the new fee on EVs this spring to replace gasoline taxes lost to the switch to battery-powered vehicles. Supporters say it ensures every driver pays their fair share. But the fee is nearly double what an average driver would pay in taxes at the pump, according to consumer advocates. Those moves have some EV advocates fuming — and will create new barriers to one of President Joe Biden’s signature climate policies. Unchanged since 1991, Texas’ gas tax is one of the cheapest in the country. Now, its new EV fees are among the most expensive. That’s no accident, experts and advocates say.
Biden has always had a stutter and sometimes sounded garbled even when he was young. But this is something else. It isn’t just slurred and garbled, it’s completely incoherent. (Not to mention that he’s going full-on Flock of Seagulls with the hair.)
Buckle up “You could see this one coming a mile off,” snarked Charlie Pierce (Washington Post): A federal appeals court said Wednesday that it would restrict access to a widely used abortion medication after finding that the federal government did not follow the proper process when it loosened regulations in 2016 to make the pill more easily available. Food and Drug Administration decisions to allow the drug mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, be mailed directly to patients and be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor were not lawful, a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled. Mifepristone will remain available while the Department of Justice appeals the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. “You damn bet it will,” Pierce continued. “Right into the lap of Justice Sam Alito, who will undoubtedly find some obscure codicil in the Code of Hammurabi to justify upholding the ruling of the 5th Circuit, which is the Uruk-Hai to Alito’s Saruman anyway.
You know he would J.V. Last considers how Donald Trump might stage his booking in Atlanta: From the time of his (latest) indictment, Donald Trump has 10 days to surrender himself to the authorities in Fulton County. The clock started running on August 14. Ten days takes us to August 24. You know what’s happening on August 23? It would not surprise me—at all—if Trump chooses to surrender himself on August 23. He’d then take over the entire news cycle that day with its wall-to-wall coverage of the fingerprinting and mugshot. And then Trump goes straight from the jail to a giant Trump rally that runs—and here I’m just spitballing—from 8-11pm ET. He would absolutely do that. It’s his style up one side and down the other. The entire Republican debate would be swamped. The candidates on the stage would have extra pressure to light themselves on fire in order to break through. And the second-day stories would be about how Trump schlonged Fox and the rest of the field. Trump isn’t smart, but he is cunning and he understands both power and weakness. And he sees the same things we’re all seeing.