Ron DeSnowflake didn’t make much of an impression overseas I’m afraid. But why would he? He’s just the latest great whitebread hope of the GOP with a personality that’s as flat as a pancake: He hopes to win the hearts and minds of devoted Donald Trump supporters ahead of next year’s U.S. election. But Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis failed to impress British business chiefs at a high-profile London event Friday, in a tired performance described variously as “horrendous,” “low-wattage” and “like the end of an overseas trip.” The Florida governor, expected to launch his bid next month to challenge Trump as the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race, met with more than 50 representatives of major U.K. firms and business lobbying groups as a part of a four-country “trade mission” ending in London Friday. His trip was officially billed as an attempt to build Florida’s economic relationships with the U.K., Israel, South Korea and Japan, but it has been widely seen in Washington as a chance for DeSantis to present himself as a statesman on the world stage.
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I laughed the first time and I laughed again today. It is both weird and funny. Will Farrell is comedy gold.
If “politicians in robes” fits “The attempt of a radical minority to enforce their will on the rest of us, who constitute a majority, by stealing control of the states and then, through them, control of the federal government is precisely what the Confederates tried to do before the Civil War: it is no accident that one of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried a replica of a Confederate battle flag,” writes Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters from an American” this morning. She cites events Friday in North Carolina. There’s a word for this sort of thing: Bad (CBS News): In massive victories for Republicans, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday threw out a previous ruling against gerrymandered voting maps and upheld a photo voter identification law that colleagues had struck down as racially biased. The rulings likely give the GOP-controlled legislature the ability to rework the state’s congressional map for next year’s election to help Republicans gain seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House.
Watch your backs Just Google shooting. Really. Just shooting. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition: Oh, look here. Wonder who it could be? What’s the world coming to when you can’t go to a CONVENIENCE STORE without getting shot? You know, we’re getting really good at this. Anyone have a friend at the IOC? If shooting people was an official event, American competitors would sweep all the medals. Those who survive. Obviously, this kid isn’t ready for the U.S. trials: This one is a gem from The Guardian: An Illinois man using a leaf blower in his yard was killed by his neighbor, local television reported. William Martys, 59, was reportedly using his leaf blower in his yard in Antioch when his neighbor, 79-year-old Ettore Lacchei, got into an argument with him then shot him in the head. Lacchei was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. A neighbor told WLS, Chicago’s ABC affiliate, the two men had a history, and Lacchei had pulled a gun on Martys before.
Jamelle Bouie’s newsletter makes an important observation about the state of our democracy. As I watched what they did to that brave transwoman in Montana fighting for her right to …well, exist it just shocks me how cruel these people are. It’s the same look on those people’s faces as those above. It’s an ugly, ugly display. And as Bouie explains, it’s a threat to all of us, our democracy in general, as they use whatever power they have to silence dissent: On Tuesday, I wrote about the Republican effort to limit the reach and scope of initiatives and referendums as another instance of the party’s war on majority rule. One thing I wanted to include, but couldn’t quite integrate into the structure of the column, was a point about the recent use of legislative expulsion to punish Democratic lawmakers who dissent from or challenge Republican majorities. We saw this in Tennessee, obviously, where Republicans expelled two Democratic members — Representatives Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin J. Pearson of Memphis — for loudly supporting a youth protest for gun control from the statehouse floor using a bullhorn.
The prominent Australian mainstream economist Chris Richardson recently celebrated the fact that the Australian government is now in surplus: x His “temporary” and “permanent” comment was in relation to this earlier tweet: tax revenues are up but that’s temporary; there’s too much spending, and that’s permanent. Yes, this is “stunningly strong” news for the government’s … Continue reading "It’s not a deficit, it’s a fiat"
Two red-state abortion bans fail The conservative rush to turn post-Roe v. Wade United States into Gilead hit a couple of speed bumps on Thursday. The civil war against women halted first in South Carolina (of all places) and again in Nebraska hours later. Washington Post: In lengthy and often impassioned speeches on the South Carolina Senate floor, the state’s five female senators — three Republicans and two Democrats — decried what would have been a near-total ban on abortion. One, Sen. Sandy Senn (R), likened the implications to the dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are treated as property of the state. Senn seems almost peeved about that. She said abortion laws “have always been, each and every one of them, about control — plain and simple. And in the Senate, the males have all the control.” South Carolina and Nebraska currently allow abortions for up to about 22 weeks.
Day after day Shake that man’s hand. I continue to be amazed that, Pulitzers or not, Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Mike Luckovich hasn’t been run out of his swing state. Georgia is not that purple. From Wednesday: From Thursday (O-U-C-H!): Damn. Has Luckovich got a security detail? Here’s another classic:
Former president Donald Trump hugged and consoled a woman who breached the Capitol during the January 6th insurrection at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, the Washington Post first reported. In a clear attempt to appeal to the further-right members of his base, Trump embraced 54-year-old Micki Larson-Olson, a Trump über-fan who’d driven 30 hours to see him speak in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday. “President Trump, will you please sign my Trump backpack that I carried up to Jan. 6?” she shouted, donning a red-white-and-blue ensemble with a matching wig. “I went to jail for 161 days for Jan. 6. I’m an Iraq War veteran.” Larson-Olson was found guilty last September of a misdemeanor for resisting police efforts to clear the Capitol complex after the breach. According to the Justice Department, U.S. Capitol Police approached the Texas woman, “who was dressed in a Captain America costume and holding two flags in the air,” and repeatedly asked her to leave.
If he testifies truthfully it could be helpful but it can’t erase his pushing of the Big Lie On Wednesday night the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that Donald Trump could not claim executive privilege to prevent his former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying before the Grand Jury that’s hearing evidence for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the former president’s activities leading up to January 6th. Immediately on Thursday morning Pence testified for more than five hours. I guess they didn’t want to waste any more time. Pence and his team had negotiated with the Special Counsel for months to avoid having to do a voluntary interview and ended up filing a lawsuit to prevent testifying under subpoena. He claimed that as President of the Senate he could not be compelled to testify under the Speech and Debate clause of the constitution which protects members of congress and a judge partially bought the argument. Pence was told he must testify but he can avoid answering questions about his legislative role on Jan. 6.