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I follow current events pretty closely but I was surprised to see that there’s a huge controversy over Bud Light beer and I had no idea what it was about. The right wingers are all up in arms and boycotting the beer and naturally, it turns out, it’s because of … hate. Philip Bump explains: The marketing plan was obviously courting controversy from the outset. Bud Light, the most popular beer in the country, was going to put together a campaign centered on a group that makes up less than 9 percent of the population of the United States? The beer brand planned ads targeting this small subgroup, despite the political overtones of doing so — despite the risk of associating the brand so closely with a lifestyle that was foreign to most Americans. But Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, celebrated the move in a statement. The beer brand had “deepened our commitment to the state of Texas with our ‘Brewed in Texas’ campaign,” she said in 2022, pointing to ads featuring a bull rider and a star player on Mexico’s national soccer team.

They’re gearing up: A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has discussed sending “special forces” and using “cyber warfare” to target cartel leaders if he’s reelected president and, per Rolling Stone, asked for “battle plans” to strike Mexico. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at war with the cartels.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords even without that nation’s permission. And lawmakers in both chambers have filed legislation to label some cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move supported by GOP presidential aspirants. “We need to start thinking about these groups more like ISIS than we do the mafia,” Waltz, a former Green Beret, said in a short interview. Not all Republican leaders are behind this approach.

I’ve got a new piece up at UnHerd about the way in which small/medium farmers across the world are being forced to shut down in the name of “sustainability”, to the benefit of Big Agro and the world’s food oligarchs — and the catastrophic consequences this could have at a time when the world is already facing a food …

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In my latest column for UnHerd I chart the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) — the modern version of mercenarism. There’s much talk these days about the infamous Wagner Group, Putin’s “private army” that is playing a leading role in Ukraine. But Wagner is just the tip of the iceberg. The corporate security and military industry …

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During his recent visit to Moscow, Xi Jinping reaffirmed the two countries’ strong ties and emphasised that Russia has not been isolated by the global community. Indeed, China isn’t the only country Russia has strengthened ties with since the start of the conflict. Despite the West’s attempts to “globalise” the conflict, only 33 nations — …

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It’s been 75 years since the signing into law of the Marshall Plan, which laid the groundwork for a mutually beneficial North Atlantic alliance that offered Europe several decades of economic prosperity and military security. Today, that world no longer exists. Indeed, the contrast between the Marshall Plan and America’s approach to Europe today couldn’t …

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John Amato at Crooks and Liars: Bill Barr, Trump’s former Attorney General, told ABC’s This Week that Trump’s legal trouble may help him in the Republican primary; however, it all but assures he would lose in the 2024 general election. “What do you think the likelihood is at the end of the day that we are actually going to see Donald Trump convicted and sentenced to prison?” Host Jonathan Karl asked. Barr at first made the case that the indictments are part of a conspiracy to help Trump by those in power wanting the cockwombler to be the nominee in 2024. “I also think though, as far as the general election is concerned, it will gravely weaken Trump. He is already, I think, a weak candidate that would lose,” Barr said. ” But I think this sort of assures it.” Barr seems perturbed by this. Why should that be? He knew what he was dealing with when he covered for Trump’s massive obstruction of justice while he was president. (Also, everything else.) . But then Trump lost and was no longer of use to him.

She and her accomplices built a political party based upon bigotry and hate. They approve of torture and celebrate death. They addicted their followers to conspiracy theories and rank tribalism. Old people like me watched it happen over time and it was just slow enough that we didn’t see the full scope of how ignorant and nihilistic their movement had become until Trump came along. Young people see them for what they are — and they are appalled. They and their friends don’t want to live in a country where people like this are in charge. They have large numbers and they are engaged and active. As for the issues of abortion, guns and climate change, young people know hypocrites when they see them and they won’t be fooled by insincere outreach efforts. And they will be insincere because Republicans have trained their own voters over many years to believe that abortion is murder, unfettered gun rights are inalienable and climate change is a hoax. Nobody will be able to thread that needle. All that’s on top of the fact that they are racist, homophobic and transphobic, misogynist monsters. And then there’s this: Good luck Kellyanne…

And they love him Ron Brownstein on Trump’s trump card: Even amid all his legal challenges, Donald Trump has a secret weapon in his drive to win the Republican presidential nomination next year: polling strongly suggests he has transformed the GOP primary electorate in a way that will make him harder to beat. Since Trump’s emergence as the GOP’s dominant figure in 2016, the college-educated voters generally most skeptical of him have declined as a share of all GOP primary voters, while the voters without a college degree generally most sympathetic to him have increased, an array of public and private polls indicate. Those changes suggest Trump has set in motion what could prove a self-fulfilling prophecy: compared to when he first captured the nomination in 2016, he’s encouraged more participation in the Republican primaries by the blue-collar voters most inclined to support him and less by the white-collar voters likely to become the centerpiece of any coalition against him. “There’s no question about it,” says long-time GOP pollster Whit Ayres.

I loved MAD Magazine so much as a kid that I think it may have been my greatest influence (for better or worse.) And I loved the Fold-in. Al Jaffee was a hero and I’m not surprised to learn that he had an incredibly interesting life: Al Jaffee, a cartoonist who folded in when the trend in magazine publishing was to fold out, thereby creating one of Mad magazine’s most recognizable and enduring features, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 102. His death, at a hospital, was caused by multi-system organ failure, his granddaughter Fani Thomson said. It was in 1964 that Mr. Jaffee created the Mad Fold-In, an illustration-with-text feature on the inside of the magazine’s back cover that seemed at first glance to deliver a straightforward message. When the page was folded in thirds, however, both illustration and text were transformed into something entirely different and unexpected, often with a liberal-leaning or authority-defying message.