Josh Marshall has been closely following the recent South Korean coup and subsequent fallout and has uncovered something (via this article) that I’ve not heard anyone else report. He notes that while S. Korea may be a more recent democracy by American standards it’s actually very well entrenched. But it also has a social media ecosystem that resembles our own with right wing extremists dominating the scene. The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges. So back to our far-right YouTubers.
Uncategorized
Good Lord. According to the NY Times the Feds have arrested a nut who had what they call the largest cache of finished explosive devices ever found in FBI history: The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said. They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said. No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram.
From H1B to H5N1 We move now from the MAGA civil war over H1B visas to the H5N1 bird flu. (It’s getting hard to keep the abbreviations straight without a bound reference.) CDC: December 18, 2024— A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza A(H5N1) virus (“H5N1 bird flu”) infection in Louisiana. This marks the first instance of severe illness linked to the virus in the United States. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, December 13. Since April 2024, there have been a total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States. […] A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected; avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death. No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected. This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low. No need to panic.
When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada. Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal: But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way? How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America. Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.
I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America. I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B.
That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago. He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat. The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,) Anyway, hold on to your hats: GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill. One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks.
MAGA GOP in disarray So NOW reparations are on the table. When they’re presumed for Americans of a certain hue (Daily Beast): Steve Bannon escalated the MAGA civil war Monday by calling for ‘reparations’ for Americans for losing out to immigrants on H-1B visas–who should themselves, he said, be deported. Bannon repeatedly railed against the program—and billionaire Elon Musk, who backs the visas—on Monday’s War Room, asking guests including conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former-Democrat-turned-MAGA-backer Allison Huynh whether Musk understood the visas were a “scam.” H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers for specialty jobs, were signed into law as part of the Immigration Act of 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he supported the program. See, this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! And Steve Bannon is just the guy to do it.
Trouble in paradise for Trumpy and Kim: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Vladimir Putin as his “dearest friend” in a New Year’s letter to the Russian leader praising close bilateral ties, state media said on Tuesday. The two countries have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Putin and Kim repeatedly professing their personal closeness. Moscow and Pyongyang signed a landmark defense pact during Putin’s visit to the isolated North in June. The pact obligates them to provide immediate military assistance if the other is invaded and came into effect this month.
The legal beagles Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick at Slate fielded a question from a reader asking if Trump could really run for a third term as he often hints at doing? Bannon made some news the other day proclaiming that he was going to. Lithwick points out that the clear meaning of the 22nd Amendment says no. It says: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. It seems pretty clear to me. Of course if everything goes completely sideways, he stages a successful coup and the constitution is no longer relevant, who knows what he could do? Stern addresses one scenario the reader had posed: Tracey does point out one potential loophole in her letter: I think it’s clear that Don Jr. could run for president in 2028, with Donald Trump as his vice presidential candidate. And if they win, at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2029, Don Jr. can resign and Donald Trump will become the president.
So much for the Great Bipartisan Hope: The House committee charged with helping the U.S. confront China risks losing momentum and falling into irrelevance amid partisan infighting on the panel, legislative dysfunction and signs of significant disagreement with Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The House China Select Committee — established two years ago to craft strategies and shape legislation to fend off Beijing — has had a rare reputation for bipartisanship and getting bills passed. That reputation may not last much longer. Already, partisan agendas have started to affect which legislation the group tries to push through. And the incoming Trump administration, while pledging to be tough on China, is expected to bring different priorities — making it difficult for the panel to get Trump-friendly Republicans on board with its proposals. As we saw with the continuing resolution chaos before Christmas, the problem was getting the Freedom Caucus rebels to vote for a bill that had been negotiated with Trump’s blessing (even though he pretended that he didn’t know about it) all because Elon didn’t like it.