I’m having some serious eye problems that I’m being treated for. I can’t see that well on the computer, but I’m going to do my best to post a few stories along with some lovely watercolor cat art.
#5. TODD BLANCHE. Most of the worst abuses in multiple areas by DOJ are orchestrated by Blanche. While Bondi and Patel have gotten most of the public blame and scrutiny, Blanche is the architect of it all. Blanche was Trump’s criminal defense lawyer before he became president, and has acted as his criminal defense lawyer while running DOJ. He met privately with Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, then had her moved to a minimum security Club Fed. He has repeated lies about the contents of the Epstein files and is the point person for covering them up with delays and redactions. He ended investigations and dropped charges against some of America’s worst criminals for political reasons. While Bondi and Patel are bad, Blanche is even worse.
#4. RUSS VOUGHT. The man who orchestrated the comprehensive right-wing policy blueprint for this admin called ‘Project 2025’, this zealot keeps a lower profile than others – preferring tangible results with ruthless efficiency behind the scenes as OMB Director. Vought is the brains behind Stephen Miller’s evil bombast, organizing the policy agenda that controls the administration. During the 4 years Trump was out of office, Vought organized and drafted 350 different executive orders and regulations to implement if Trump got a second term – most of the ones he issued came from Vought – including the plan to invoke emergency powers and national security to justify bypassing Congress in a variety of areas. In fact, most of the agenda Vought devised was specifically intended to find ways an authoritarian-minded president could implements things while ignoring Congress, or reversing legislative acts by executive order.
#3. PETE HEGSETH. Chaos ensuedalmost immediately after the drunken fool former Fox host took over an office that he was unfit and unqualified for. He divulged war plans and classified info in a Signal chat which included a reporter, but then tried to cover himself by claiming he declassified it. He fired his own senior advisors because of his paranoia over press leaks, then ousted the Pentagon press corps with onerous rules that abused their first amendment rights. He gleefully released videos of nearly 100 people on boats he has murdered, without providing any evidence of their guilt or due process. He alienated allies with an insane speech in Europe that resulted in the admin sidelining him from giving any more. He ousted seasoned career officers and made it clear he has no use for women serving in the military in any role other than support positions, or for rules of engagement designed to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties. He summoned hundred of Generals and Admirals from their commands around the world to DC so he could give them a deranged speech they found utterly ridiculous and juvenile. He constantly gives partisan political speeches to active-duty troops in violation of laws and regulations, which he mixes with a healthy dose of christian nationalism. It is hard to imagine how Trump could have found a worse person for one of the most important jobs on the planet.
Cat’s Promenade Yuliya Podlinnova
#2. HOWARD LUTNICK. The architect of so many corrupt, shady and misguided policies of the Trump admin while serving as Commerce Secretary – including tariffs and selling citizenship in the form of ‘Trump Gold Cards’. Lutnick is a shameless habitual liar and flip-flam huckster, constantly hyping his policies with fantastical claims while moving the goalposts weekly on his predictions. In a different century he’d be selling miracle cures out of tent at a carnival. In this century, he’s a billionaire. Lutnick is the prime mover behind the admin’s embrace of data centers, AI, and Stalinist moves like the government ownership of companies. Even Trump has grumbled behind the scenes to aides that Lutnick is a “manipulator”, but despite that he continues to adopt each of his worst ideas. Trump constantly had to reverse himself on catastrophic tariff announcements after disastrous consequences ensued – which resulted in the moniker ‘TACO’ for caving so much. All of those disastrous announcements came directly from Lutnick, with Bessent, Musk and others seeking reversal from Trump.
Note – I fully realize Bessent should probably be in this Top 25 somewhere, but I left him off simply because there is a lot of reporting that he has reversed some of the worst ideas behind the scenes despite his repugnant public persona. Go ahead and yell at me if you want – I personally can’t stand the guy either. But I have read comments from a lot of people I respect who say that without Bessent pushing back on some things behind the scenes we would be far worse off economically than we already are because everyone else is much worse. I guess I will buy that he might be the voice of reason behind the scenes, but time will tell.
#1. STEPHEN MILLER. This was the easiest selection, and there was probably never any doubt from most of you that he would be first. He is the WH policy director who is really running the US govt while Trump plays golf, receives awards, puts gold of everything, trolls social media, and builds his ballroom. Most of the policies aren’t Miller’s original ideas because he really isn’t that smart, but he knows how to implement them with a ruthlessness not seen since 1930s Germany. He has made the 2nd most TV appearances this year after Homan, much to the chagrin of Republicans running for election in swing districts. We know all the things that make Miller the worst person to ever serve in a senior position in US history, so there is no point in cataloguing them or this column would go on forever. The hate, the racism and bigotry, the phobias – he’s the personification of political evil. Trump is the only person who would even consider putting this twisted misfit in a position of authority. But he has, and as dementia takes hold and the old man plays with this trophies, ballrooms and golden baubles, Stephen Miller is running the country. Trump is President In Name Only.
God help us.
Check out the rest at the Meidas+ Substack.
Filipkowski’s next project: “Tomorrow, I will begin my list of the ‘500 Worst Things Trump Did in 2025’, with my first 100 in chronological order beginning with things he did in January 2025 and continuing to present.”
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with missiles and drones early Saturday morning, killing one person and wounding 27, a day before talks between Ukraine and the U.S., authorities said.
Porter and Sully, by Dora Hathazi Mendes
Explosions boomed across Kyiv for hours as ballistic missiles and drones hit the city. The attack began in the early morning hours Saturday and was continuing as day broke.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday for further talks on ending the nearly 4-year-old war. Zelenskyy told reporters he was on a plane en route to Florida on Saturday afternoon, and would stop in Canada on the way to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Zelenskyy said he and Trump plan to discuss issues including security guarantees and territorial issues in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions….
Poland scrambled fighter jets and closed airports in Lublin and Rzeszow near the border with Ukraine for several hours during the Russian attacks, the country’s armed forces command said on X. There was no violation of Polish airspace, it said. Civil aviation authority Pansa said the two airports had since resumed operations. It was unclear what caused the alert in Poland when the Russian attacks were focused on Kyiv, which is far from the border.
As President Trump prepares for an expected meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Sunday, he is facing some pressure from within his party to take a tough approach to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Three Republican senators joined five of their Democratic colleagues in issuing a statement on Thursday that described Mr. Putin as a “ruthless murderer who has no interest in peace” and who “cannot be trusted.” It decried Russian attacks on Ukraine that continued over the Christmas holiday.
The statement was signed by the Republican senators John Barrasso of Wyoming, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. It did not criticize Mr. Trump’s handling of the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and it was not joined by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho and a close Trump ally, nor by most of the G.O.P. members on that committee. (Mr. Risch’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.) Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the committee, led the statement.
Still, the statement took a harsher tone toward Mr. Putin than Mr. Trump has often used. Although Mr. Trump has at times berated Mr. Putin on social media, urging him to stop his military assault on Ukraine, he has also boasted about their positive relationship, saying he gets along well with the Russian leader. He has repeatedly threatened severe sanctions on the Russians to urge them to make peace, but he has followed through only occasionally.
“It bears repeating that President Zelensky agreed to a Christmas truce, but Putin declined, yet he directs soldiers to continue to commit brutal crimes of aggression on one of Christianity’s holiest days,” said the statement, which was also signed by Senator Angus King, a Maine independent, and by Senators Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Chris Coons of Delaware, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, all Democrats.
Abuja, Nigeria — A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.
Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, told CNN he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10 p.m. on Thursday.
Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear.
“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
White Liza, by Roman Franta
Kagara did not realize it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists.
Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared on Thursday that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against ISIS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!”
According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralized multiple ISIS militants.
But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads.
While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa – which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organization due to suspected affiliations with Islamic State – villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority.
But Trump is supposedly the “peace president.”
Trump’s plan to build giant battleships is being panned by folks who actually know what they are talking about.
President Donald Trump announced Monday the Navy will build a new class of battleships called the Trump class, with the first ship to be named USS Defiant (BBG-1).
The ship will displace more than 35,000 tons and be capable of speeds exceeding 30 knots, according to the Navy. The battleship will carry nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, electromagnetic railguns and directed energy weapons. Navy Secretary John Phelan said Trump plans to begin with two ships and eventually build 20 to 25 battleships.
The announcement marks the first battleship construction plan since 1944, when the USS Missouri was delivered to the Navy. The Missouri was the last active battleship in U.S. service before it was decommissioned in 1992.
Trump claimed the new battleships will be “the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” The claim is factually incorrect. In fact, the American Iowa-class battleships of World War II were larger by 15,000 to 20,000 tons.
Japan’s battleship Yamato, launched in 1940, displaced 72,000 tons and remains the largest warship ever constructed and put to sea. Trump’s proposed battleship is less than half Yamato’s size. American carrier aircraft sank Yamato in 1945, proving bigger is not better.
Historically speaking, battleships have been obsolete since at least 1921, when a simple bombing demonstration off Virginia’s coast proved the large warships are vulnerable to air attack. That vulnerability has been validated repeatedly through World War II and ever since as aircraft, submarines and cruise missiles systematically demonstrated that bigger and more expensive warships are easier to sink.
Once symbols of naval might with their massive guns, battleships have long since been eclipsed by aircraft carriers and modern destroyers armed with long-range missiles.
While labeling the new surface combatants as “battleships” could be a misnomer, defense experts say that there remain several gaps between Trump’s vision and modern naval warfare.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, dismissed the idea, writing in a Dec. 23 commentary that “there is little need for said discussion because this ship will never sail.”
Cats and Fruit by Mary Fedden, 1990
He contended the program would take too long to design, cost far too much and run counter to the Navy’s current strategy of distributed firepower.
“A future administration will cancel the program before the first ship hits the water,” Cancian said.
Bernard Loo, senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, described the proposal as “a prestige project more than anything else.”
He compared it to Japan’s World War II super-battleships Yamato and Musashi — the largest ever built — which were sunk by carrier-borne aircraft before playing a significant role in combat….
He added that the size of the proposed battleship — displacing more than 35,000 tons and measuring more than 840 feet, or a little over two football fields long — would make it a “bomb magnet.”
“The size and the prestige value of it all make it an even more tempting target, potentially for your adversary,” Loo said.
The “president” is a moron. But we already knew that.
Trump apparently thinks his economy will win the 2026 midterms for Republicans.
President Donald Trump says he believes the 2026 midterm elections will center on “pricing” as Republicans head into a critical period with control of Congress on the line.
And he told POLITICO Friday night that he is confident Americans will be receptive to his economic message: that his administration is cleaning up the mess he inherited from former President Joe Biden.
“I think it’s going to be about the success of our country. It’ll be about pricing,” Trump said in an exclusive interview. “Because, you know, they gave us high pricing, and we’re bringing it down. Energy’s way down. Gasoline is way down.”
Trump’s comments follow a string of favorable economic reports over the last two weeks showing inflation is cooling and the economy is hotter than expected. The White House is keen to tout the latest data as it confronts cost-of-living concerns that have underpinned a string of Democratic overperformances across the country.
Still, polls show Americans are struggling. Nearly half of respondents said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month by Public First.
Trump’s acknowledgment that 2026 will focus on “pricing” underscores the administration’s concern that the Democrats have, for the moment, a popular message. After insisting that affordability was a Democratic “con job”, Trump over the last few weeks has repeatedly sought to reframe the issue, arguing that it was the Democrats under Biden who caused prices to increase and that he is bringing them down.
Corporate bankruptcies surged in 2025, rivaling levels not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession, as import-dependent businesses absorbed the highest tariffs in decades.
At least 717 companies filed for bankruptcy through November, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That’s roughly 14 percent more than the same 11 months of 2024, and the highest tally since 2010.
Companies cited inflation and interest rates among the factors contributing to their financial challenges, as well as Trump administration trade policies that have disrupted supply chains and pushed up costs.
But in a shift from previous years, the rise in filings is most apparent among industrials — companies tied to manufacturing, construction and transportation. The sector has been hit hard by President Donald Trump’s ever-fluid tariff policies — which he’s long insisted would revive American manufacturing. The manufacturing sector lost more than 70,000 jobs in the one-year period ending in November, federal data shows.
By Hiroki Takeda
Consumer-oriented businesses with “discretionary” products or services, such as fashion or home furnishings, represented the second-largest group. This contingent usually tops the list and includes many retailers, and its retrenchment is a signal that inflation-weary consumers are prioritizing essentials….
Economists and business experts say the trade wars have pressured import-heavy businesses, which are reluctant to raise prices by too much for fear of alienating consumers. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Though inflation is currently lower than many economists expected — prices climbed at an annual pace of 2.7 percent in November — many businesses still are eating new costs themselves to hold the line on prices for buyers, experts say. That’s leading to a certain culling of the herd as already-fragile companies struggle to keep up.
“These companies are acutely aware of the affordability crisis confronting the average American,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at Yale University’s school of management. “They are doing their best to offset the cost of tariffs and higher interest rates but can only do so much. Those with pricing power will pass on the costs over time … others will fold.”
Not content with completing his takeover of the Kennedy Center by slapping his own name on the building, President Donald Trump has revealed the next phase of his current redesign obsession.
The 79-year-old president hinted on Truth Social that the ’60s modernist building in Washington, D.C., would be getting the Mar-a-Lago special with a gold and marble interior refit, starting, of course, with the theater’s armrests.
“Potential Marble armrests for the seating at The Trump Kennedy Center. Unlike anything ever done or seen before!” Trump announced on Friday evening.
Accompanying images show the hard-stone armrest examples that Trump apparently wants to install in the chairs of the center’s three main theaters.
It’s just the latest round in the president’s ongoing commandeering of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a “living memorial” to the 35th president, who was assassinated in 1963.
See photos of the ugly proposed armrests at the link.
That’s it for me today. I hope you found something worthwhile to read here.
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I haven’t been feeling well for the past several days, and I’ve only been following the news superficially. There is so much going on, but I’ll do my best. Here’s the latest.
Trump is scheduled to give a speech from the White House tonight at 9PM.
President Donald Trump intends to preview his agenda for next year and beyond in a live speech from the White House on Wednesday night. His remarks are coming at a crucial time as he tries to rebuild his steadily eroding popularity.
The White House offered few details about what the Republican president intends to emphasize in the 9 p.m. EST speech. Public polling shows most U.S. adults are frustrated with his handling of the economy as inflation picked up after his tariffs raised prices and hiring slowed.
In 2026, Trump and his party face a referendum on their leadership as the nation heads into the midterm elections that will decide control of the House and the Senate.
Trump has said that he thinks more Americans would back him if they simply heard him describe his track record. Administration officials say investment commitments for new factories will reverse the recent decline in manufacturing jobs and that consumer activity will improve dramatically as people receive increased tax refunds next year.
“It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” Trump said in a Tuesday social media post announcing the speech.
Sorry, Grandpa. Your economy sucks because of your idiotic tariffs, your cruel mass deportations, and your general incompetence.
Tariffs are unpopular, prices remain stubbornly high and Americans are souring on President Trump’s handling of the economy.
So Mr. Trump has reprised a familiar political strategy: promise people cash.
The president has repeatedly floated the idea of sending one-time $2,000 rebate checks to many families.Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times
The White House is trying to tamp down Americans’ economic anxieties by dangling the prospect of checks and other paydays next year, hoping that the money might assuage voters who blame the president for their rising cost of living.
Mr. Trump, who is set to address the nation on Wednesday night, has repeatedly teased the idea of sending one-time $2,000 rebate checks to many families, funded using money collected from his sweeping global tariffs. But he has not devised a detailed plan for providing the rebates, an expensive policy that Republicans in Congress must approve and one that they have not yet considered.
The president has also begun hyping up the tax refunds that Americans are slated to receive in 2026. For many people, these cash payments are expected to be larger than they were last year, after Republicans adopted a sprawling set of tax cuts in July.
Both Mr. Trump and members of his administration have periodically drawn an equivalence between the supposed tariff rebates and the enacted tax law. They have claimed the money could bolster the economy and alleviate some of the financial strains on families, even at a time when Mr. Trump maintains that much of the talk about affordability is a “hoax.”
“Next year is projected to be the largest tax refund season ever, and we’re going to be giving back refunds out of the tariffs, because we’ve taken in literally trillions of dollars,” Mr. Trump said at a cabinet meeting last week. “And we’re going to be giving a nice dividend to the people, in addition to reducing debt.”
But economists take a dimmer view. Even if Americans were to delight in a series of new government-issued checks, the payments would hardly address the reasons that prices remain so high — including a shortage in housing that has driven up rents and mortgages and the global tariffs that have made imports more expensive. And the money that may soon be sloshing around the economy could end up worsening inflation, undermining Mr. Trump’s own economic goals.
Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, said that simply “pumping money” into the economy — without any other underlying changes — threatened to “just generate a cycle where you continue to get higher prices.”
When Politico recently asked Donald Trump to grade the current U.S. economy, he replied “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” He made this boast at a time when actual economic data were still scarce, a consequence of the government shutdown that stopped or delayed key information about the state of the job market.
Yesterday the report on employment during the month of November finally arrived. And the message of the report on the state of the US economy was clear: A+++++ my A++. While it’s too soon to declare that we’re in a recession, the data are at least pre-recessionary: that is, the numbers are weak enough that we should be seriously worried that a recession is coming. And that’s a state of affairs completely at odds with Trump’s rose-colored — spray-tanned? — picture.
I’ll talk about the reasons the gap between Trump’s big boasts and the glum reality matters in a minute. First, however, let’s talk about what we learned from yesterday’s report.
Most importantly, the data show a weak labor market. Employment isn’t falling off a cliff, but job growth has been weak and hasn’t kept pace with the number of people seeking work. The headline unemployment rate in November was 4.6 percent, up from an average of 4 percent in 2024. That number is close to triggering the Sahm Rule, an economic rule of thumb devised by Claudia Sahm, a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, that has historically been highly successful at identifying the early stages of a recession.
We can’t do a strict application of the Sahm Rule yet because Sahm’s method is based on the average unemployment rate over the past three months. Unfortunately, the shutdown prevented the Bureau of Labor Statistics from collecting key data in October. But if we do an interpolation of October’s unemployment rate by averaging over September’s rate of 4.4% and November’s rate of 4.6%, we can estimate that October’s unemployment rate was 4.5%. And those 3 months of unemployment numbers bring us within a whisker of the unemployment rise that, according to the Sahm Rule, signals that a recession is on the horizon.
The state of the economy looks even worse if we take a wider view of the labor market. The BLS calculates 6 different measures of unemployment. The most commonly cited number is U-3 — the number of workers who are actively seeking jobs but haven’t found them. But the broadest measure is U-6, which includes underemployed workers stuck in part-time employment and discouraged workers who have temporarily given up job search. And U-6 has risen sharply since January, when Trump took office:
Source: BLS
Further evidence consistent with a poor and deteriorating job market is data showing that the number of job-seekers who are long-term unemployed – that is, have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more – has risen by almost a third (from 1.45 million to 1.91 million) since 2024. This means that the unemployed are finding it harder to find jobs.
Read more details at the Substack link.
Most Americans aren’t stupid. They can see how much prices have gone up on necessities like food and electricity. Trump is losing popularity even with his MAGA base.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: "I think the midterms are gonna be very hard for Republicans. I'm one of the people that's willing to admit the truth and say I don't see Republicans winning the midterms right now, so that doesn't bode well for Mike Johnson."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) on Tuesday said President Donald Trump has “real problems” within the Republican Party, adding in an interview with CNN that the president is out of touch with voters on key issues such as affordability.
Greene told Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” that the “dam is breaking” in terms of Trump’s hold onsupport within the party and that she expects Republicans to struggle in next year’s midterm elections.
“I think the midterms are going to be very hard for Republicans,” Greene said. “I’m one of the people that’s willing to admit the truth and say I don’t see Republicans winning the midterms right now.” [….]
Greene had carved out a high-profile role as one of Trump’s most vocal allies, first in the “Make America Great Again” movement and then with her support for the “America First” agenda. But after weeks of speaking out against the president on several issues, Greene and Trump had an acrimonious public split last month after she joined with Democrats on a discharge position to compel a House vote calling on the Justice Department to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein….
Speaking to The Washington Post this week, Greene described herself as a “bellwether” who is closely attuned to Trump’s base. “I say it, and then within four to six months, everybody’s saying the same thing,” she said….
“He’s got real problems with Republicans within the House and the Senate that will be breaking with him on more things to come,” she added.
Greene also said Trump’s supporters “didn’t appreciate” the president’s reaction to the death of Rob Reiner, who was found stabbed to death alongside his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, in their Los Angeles home Sunday. The couple’s son Nick Reiner faces two counts of first-degree murder, among other charges, in their deaths.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: "What I'd like to see from the president is empathy for Americans. Donald Trump is a billionaire and he's the president. When he looks into a camera and says 'affordability is a hoax,' he's talking to Americans that are suffering and have been for many years now."
Four House Republicans joined Democrats Wednesday to force a House vote on a straight three-year extension of the enhanced Obamacare tax credits that will expire Dec. 31, delivering a sharp rebuke to Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Lawler of New York, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania signed the discharge petition filed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — hours after House GOP leaders rejected attempts by Fitzpatrick and other Republican moderates to seek a floor vote on extending the subsidies used by more than 20 million Americans.
Fitzpatrick said in a late-night House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday that “the only thing worse than a clean extension … would be expiration, and I would make that decision.” Lawler added that “the only feasible path forward is a discharge petition” if GOP leader reject a floor vote.
Under House rules, a completed discharge petition is subject to a waiting period, meaning no vote could happen until next month — though Johnson could choose to move sooner.
“We have worked for months to craft a two-party solution to address these expiring healthcare credits,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement Wednesday. “Our only request was a Floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. … Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”
Jeffries told reporters Wednesday his discharge petition is “the most straightforward path to ensuring that tens of millions of Americans don’t have their health care ripped away from them because of the expiration of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”
"It's idiotic, it's political malpractice," Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday of Johnson refusing to give them an ACA extension vote.Lawler, and other moderate Republicans didn't rule out joining Democrats to force a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies, Axios reported.
Donald Trump is worried that Republicans aren’t as afraid of him as they used to be. Despite his self-billing as a dealmaker, the president has only ever had one tool to control his party: fear. GOP politicians have been afraid of career damage and literal physical harm if they crossed him. Trump is not above reminding elected officials that he has unhinged followers who are known to be violent. But as his approval ratings fall and the 2026 midterm elections inch closer, it seems Republicans are slightly less worried about the president’s wrath.
The first indicator was the House vote on Nov. 18 to release the Epstein files against Trump’s expressed wishes. But the biggest sign that the president’s grip on power is weakening came last week, when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana statehouse struck down a gerrymandering bill Trump had demanded.
As I argued in the latest Standing Room Only newsletter, this context helps explain why Trump responded to the death of beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele with an ugliness that’s shocking — even for this president. Although the Los Angeles Police Department had arrested the couple’s son for the apparent homicide, Trump insinuated on Truth Social that it was one of his own followers who killed the Reiners out of revenge for their anti-Trump activism. He doubled down when asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The message was hard to miss: If you oppose Trump, he wishes you dead.
These are promising signs, but it’s not worth holding your breath waiting for GOP politicians to openly turn on a president who demands absolute loyalty. Instead of public rebellion, most Republicans seem to be engaged in a form of quiet quitting. They won’t go out of their way to resist Trump, but they are losing enthusiasm for defending him. They’re struggling to hide their frustration or their scheming for a post-Trump world. Overall, the posture is one of lying low, waiting for the old man to be gone so they can begin the project of rebuilding the GOP and their own careers in a post-Trump era.
Read the rest at Salon.
Trump is also becoming noticeably less involved in actually running the government (gift link): The White House Is a Lost Cause.
There is a presidency at work in Washington, but it is not clear that there is a president at work in the Oval Office.
Ask Donald Trump about the goings on of his administration, and there is a good chance he’ll defer to a deputy rather than answer the question. “I don’t know her,” he said when asked about his nominee for surgeon general, Casey Means, earlier this year. “I listened to the recommendation of Bobby,” he said, pointing to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services.
Ask Trump for insight into why his administration made a choice or to explain a particular decision, and he’ll be at a loss for words. Ask him to comment on a scandal? He’ll plead ignorance. “I know nothing about it,” Trump said last week, when asked about the latest tranche of photographs released from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein.
None of this on its own means the president isn’t working or paying attention to the duties of his office. But consider the rest of the evidence. He is by most accounts isolated from the outside world. He does not travel the country and rarely meets with ordinary Americans outside the White House. He is shuttled from one Trump resort to another to play golf and hold court with donors, supporters and hangers-on.
Ronald Reagan took regular meetings with congressional leaders to discuss his legislative agenda; George H.W. Bush spearheaded negotiations with the nation’s allies and led the United States to war in Iraq; and George W. Bush was, for better or worse, “the decider” who performed leadership for the cameras as much as he tried to exercise it from the Oval Office. Trump is a ubiquitous cultural presence, but there is no outward sign that he is an active participant in running the national government. He was mostly absent during discussions of his signature legislation — the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — and practically AWOL during the monthlong government shutdown.
It is difficult for any president to get a clear read on the state of the nation; it takes work and discipline to clear the distance between the office and the people. But Trump, in his second term, does not seem to care about the disconnect. Abraham Lincoln once remarked that it would “never do for a president to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.” A president has to be engaged — attentive to both the government and the public he was elected to serve.
Trump is neither. He is uninterested in anyone except his most devoted fans, and would rather collect gifts from foreign businessmen than take the reins of his administration. “The president doesn’t know and never will,” Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview with Vanity Fair, commenting on the work of Elon Musk in the first months of the year. “He doesn’t know the details of these smallish agencies.”
A bit more:
Russell Vought
Instead, the work of the White House has been delegated to a handful of high-level advisers. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the de facto shadow president for domestic affairs. As one senior government official told ProPublica, “It feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.” It was Vought who orchestrated the administration’s assault on the federal bureaucracy, including the wholesale destruction of U.S.A.I.D. It was Vought who either froze or canceled hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for anti-poverty programs, H.I.V. reduction initiatives and research into science, medicine and technology. And it is Vought who has been pushing the boundaries of executive power as he attempts to turn the federal government into little more than an extension of the personal will of the president — as channeled through himself, of course.
If Vought is the nation’s shadow president for domestic policy, then Stephen Miller is its shadow president for internal security. Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy adviser, is using the president’s authority to try to transform the ethnic mix of the country — to make America white again, or at least whiter than it is now. He is the primary force behind the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection into a roving deportation force. He has pushed both agencies to step up their enforcement operations, targeting schools, restaurants, farms and other work sites and detaining anyone agents can get their hands on, regardless of citizenship or legal status. It is Miller who is behind the militarization of ICE, the use of the National Guard to occupy Democrat-led cities and assist deportation efforts, and the plan to blanket the United States with a network of detention camps for unauthorized immigrants and anyone else caught in his dragnet.
In other words, the Nazis are running White House policy. Use the gift link to read more.
The latest White House mess is the Vanity Fair profile of Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Susie Wiles generally helps quietly shape headlines. She is rarely the focus of them.
That changed in dramatic fashion Tuesday after Vanity Fair published a deeply reported profile of the 68-year-old White House chief of staff, whose decades-long career in politics has been defined by a measured, steady-the-ship tone, never one that could be construed as undermining her boss.
In the two-part Vanity Fair piece — which included 11 interviews over nearly a year, with the White House’s cooperation — Wiles comes off as far more candid than her public persona. She not only speaks openly about both President Donald Trump and those who make up the core of his administration, but appears to acknowledge that at times she has been at odds with some of the policies that have been central to Trump’s second term. While not unusual for a chief of staff to disagree with the president they serve, those concerns generally remain part of private conversations.
Susie Wiles
Wiles revealed there had been “huge disagreements” over implementing tariffs, acknowledged that the administration must “look harder” at its process for mass deportation and said she had to “get on board” with Trump’s decision to give blanket pardons to Jan. 6 defendants. She said she initially believed only those who did not commit violent acts should be pardoned.
The profile prompted an all-hands-on-deck pushback from the White House and Trump’s political orbit. The central talking point became that the profile lacked context, and supporters blasted the outlet for being unfair rather than offering any direct refutation of the authenticity of quotes or what was reported.
Wiles herself also offered rare public condemnation.
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she posted on social media. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”
In an interview with the New York Post, Trump defended his top staffer.
“I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided,”he said.
Trump added “she’s fantastic” when asked if he continues to have full confidence in Wiles.
I’m going to try to be upbeat today, although I will still have to include Trump-related stories. I can’t handle the war news today, though.
I’ll begin with a post by Simon Rosenberg, who is a very optimistic political commentator. He was one of the few poll-watchers who predicted the Democratic sweep in the 2022 midterms.
According to Wikipedia, Rosenberg is “founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.” He publishes at his website, Hopium Chronicles. You may have seen him on MSNBC last night.
Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.
And the Democratic party is historically strong.
Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.
In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.
What was visible of fog-bound Boston from the air yesterday, 12-26-2023
While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden’s supporters with confidence.
Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump’s historic baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.
I hope you’ll read the rest at the MSNBC link. It’s well worth your time.
The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC is putting down $5.2 million in initial reservations for TV and digital ads to try to win the House special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., the group told NBC News.
The group said it will spend $3.7 million on TV and $1.5 million on digital platforms, along with $700,000 on mail ads, in the weeks ahead of the Feb. 13 contest in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The election pits Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former congressman eying a comeback, against Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.
The competitive district, which includes parts of Long Island and Queens, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before it elected Santos in 2022. But his subsequently unearthed biographical fabrications and sweeping federal indictment prompted the House to expel him on Dec. 1. It is the type of district that will be heavily contested next November, and it could determine which party wins the chamber, which Republicans now narrowly control.
The contest “represents the first step to Democrats taking back the House in 2024,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said in response to written questions. “A resurgence in New York represents House Democrats’ best path to the majority.”
The Make Way for Ducklings statues in Christmas attire.
Lauren Boebert is facing a brutal and very expensive reelection fight in 2024.
Adam Frisch, the main Democratic challenger to the lightning-rod Republican congresswoman from Colorado’s 3rd District, has been raking in jaw-dropping amounts of campaign cash.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Frisch’s campaign has raised over $7.7 million so far, making him one of the top fundraisers in the 2024 House races. As spotted by the Time reporter Mini Racker, that’s enough to put him behind Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in total funds raised.
Frisch came close to unseating Boebert in 2022, falling short by just 546 votes in what was considered a safe Republican district. That electoral performance was before the litany of controversies that have made Boebert a tabloid favorite, including a scandal this summer when she was booted from a Denver theater after vaping and groping her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”
Boebert has raised $2.4 million for her campaign this cycle. The money gap becomes even starker when you compare totals for just the third quarter, July 1 to September 30, the latest reporting period available from the FEC: Frisch pulled in $3.4 million, while Boebert managed just $854,000.
There’s a chance Frisch’s fundraising may not even be used against Boebert. She’s facing a substantial primary challenge from the Republican attorney Jeff Hurd, who raised over $412,000 in the third quarter, though his campaign launched only in August.
One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times.
The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against all 16 of the state’s fake Trump electors. In October, Ms. Nessel’s office dropped all charges against Mr. Renner after he agreed to cooperate.
Newbury Street (a downtown shopping district) on Christmas
Mr. Renner, 77, was a late substitution to the roster of electors in December 2020 after two others dropped out. He told the attorney general’s office that he later realized, after reviewing testimony from the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that he and other electors had acted improperly.
“I can’t overemphasize how once I read the information in the J6 transcripts how upset I was that the legitimate process had not been followed,” he said in the interview. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”
Charges have now been brought against fake electors in three states — Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — and investigations are underway in other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have looked far beyond the electors themselves and charged Mr. Trump, the former president, and many of his key allies over their efforts to keep him in power despite his loss in 2020. Mr. Trump also faces charges over election interference from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In Michigan, Ms. Nessel, a Democrat, has only charged the electors, but has said her investigation is still open. During their interview of Mr. Renner, her investigators asked about a number of other people involved, including Shawn Flynn, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on the ground in Michigan, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. (Mr. Giuliani is among those charged in Georgia; both he and Mr. Trump have pleaded not guilty.)
In criminal and civil cases across the country this month, judges have issued critical opinions chipping away at Trump’s attempt to shield himself. Their rulings are leaving him exposed to potential prison time and massive financial penalties, potentially ruining his 2024 re-election campaign and destroying the billionaire’s famed wealth.
And the most definitive answer could be just weeks away.
The question is seemingly simple: Can an American president commit crimes while in office without ever facing criminal charges?
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” said Paul Saputo, a Texas defense lawyer. “We’re not even going to have a 5-4 decision. I don’t think it’s going to be a close call. They realize that in order for them to really keep the country together, it’s got to be pretty unanimous.”
The growing consensus by legal scholars is that the Supreme Court will lean conservative—in the traditional American sense, not a political one—starkly setting limits on executive power that will leave Trump in the cold. And that’s despite the liberal public’s concerns that Trump will benefit from the current roster at the nation’s highest court, where a third of the nine justices were appointed by the man himself.
Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.
It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.
A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.
Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 election. That trial had been set to start on March 4, 2024, but that date has been put on hold, pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and will probably issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.
“Jingle Bells Composed Here”
The authors look at the polls:
The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.
To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.
Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.
In another new poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times/Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.
The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.
Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with Mr. Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.
There’s more interesting number crunching at the NYT link.
An Indiana man who crashed his truck and had been trapped inside it for nearly a week was found alive on Tuesday by two fishermen who happened to spot the wrecked vehicle.
The fishermen – Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia – noticed the crashed truck under an overpass on Interstate 94 as they were walking along Salt Creek in Portage, Indiana, looking for fishing holes. They initially believed they had seen a dead person inside the vehicle until one of them touched the body and the man turned his head and spoke to them.
Christmas in Boston
“I went to touch it, and he turned around,” Garcia said at a press conference. “And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”
“He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that,” he added. “He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.”
The two good Samaritans called 911 and first responders rushed to the scene at about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday. The driver told the fisherman he had been stranded and paralyzed in place since Dec. 20.
The driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was heading westbound on Interstate 94 when his truck left the roadway for unknown reasons, Indiana State Police said in a news release.
The vehicle was driven into a ditch before making it into a creek and stopping under the bridge. Reum was pinned inside the vehicle and was unable to reach his cellphone to call for help.
The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department were able to cut Reum from the vehicle using heavy machinery. He was then flown to a hospital in critical condition for treatment of severe, life-threatening injuries.
I hope he recovers.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
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I’ve been reading William Black’s essays and posts, watching his video interviews and You Tube presentations, ever since I saw him on Bill Moyers Journal speaking frankly, no holds barred, about how the financial industry had brought the country to its knees and gotten away with it. He spoke frankly again during his Congressional testimony last year when he came right out and called the mortgage debacle that nearly finished the US economy . . . fraud. Yes he used the ‘f’ word! This was unlike other ‘experts’ who insisted there was no inkling of trouble on the horizon, that the financial meltdown was ‘an act of the economic gods,’ a huge surprise, the product of overly optimistic financial predictions.
No, Black said. It was fraud. It was criminal. In case you missed that testimony, you can watch below. It’s worth a second go-around.
Too bad Black’s comments were basically ignored, caught up in the razzle-dazzle of excuses, half-truths and political posturing that’s become all too familiar to anyone paying attention. Business as usual is still the acceptable mantra. In case, you’ve forgotten [time flies when we’re having so much fun], William Black headed Poppy Bush’s forensic audit team during the S&L scandal, which ultimately led to 1000 elite felony convictions.
Black’s investigative team wasn’t kidding around.
William Black came out yesterday morning with his own take on President Obama’s SOTU announcement of a Task Force [The Let’s Try It Again Task Force], quoting POTUS:
And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.
Black suggests we look at the wording, the avoidance of using the ‘f’ or ‘c’ word. That would be fraud and criminal. His response to this and Eric Holder’s follow up memorandum:
The working group will not “investigate … abusive lending” and it will not “hold accountable those who broke the law … [by defrauding] homeowners.” It will not “speed assistance to homeowners.” It will not “turn the page on an era of recklessness” – and fraud, not “recklessness” is what prosecutors should prosecute. The name of the working group makes its crippling limitations clear: the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. Attorney General Holder’s memorandum about the working group makes clear that the name is not misleading. The working group will deal only with mortgage-backed securities (MBS) – not the fraudulent mortgage origination that drove the crisis (the only exception is federally insured mortgages).
Clearly, he’s not impressed. No, instead he’s disgusted and enraged. In fact, the essay nearly jumps off the page with genuine anger. He goes on to say:
The working group is a symbolic political gesture designed to neutralize criticism of the administration’s continuing failure to hold accountable the elite frauds that drove the crisis. Neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has convicted a single elite fraud that drove the crisis. This is a national disgrace and represents the triumph of crony capitalism. Remember that the FBI warned in September 2004 that there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a financial “crisis.” There are no valid excuses for the Bush and Obama administrations’ failures. The media have begun to pummel the Obama administration for its failure to prosecute. The administration could not answer this criticism with substance because it has nothing substantive to offer in prosecuting elite mortgage origination frauds. The ugly truth is that we are three full years into his presidency and Holder could not find a single indictment to bring that Obama could brag about in his SOTU address. Who doubts that Holder and Obama would have done so if they had anything in the prosecutorial pipeline? Why do Holder and Obama have nothing in the pipeline?
One of the other things that deeply disturbs Black is President Obama’s willingness to play politics in this matter, float the gambit of the Task Force /Working Group and the reputation of Eric Schneiderman to create the appearance of a genuine hands-on effort. But this move is not genuine as far as Black is concerned and contradicts the very essence of President Obama’s SOTU address, conjuring up the Seal Team that took out Osama Bin Laden—a team effort, concentrating on the mission.
This is no more than vulgar propaganda, Black claims.
He also refers to a disclosure made by Scot Paltrow for Rueters 10 days ago, revealing that US Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, heading the DOJs criminal division [also a co-chair of the ‘Let’s Try It Again Task Force], had been partners at Covington and Burling, a well-established and well-heeled law firm that represented many of the largest banks, providing cover for their clients through key arguments on the MERS debacle.
Conflict of interest anyone?
The state Attorney Generals? They were lobbyied, leaned on, even offered [as was the case of AG Kamala Harris, CA] $8 billion to assist damaged California homeowners in a bid to agree to the original deal, which would have offered the big banks immunity from liability. All so the President could announce ‘a deal’ in his State of the Union address, even though homeowners would be left out to dry and bank executives, who led deliberate “accounting control frauds,” could continue their conduct with absolute impunity.
This is ugly, made all the uglier in that it was sanctioned through and by the White House. Black suggests that Eric Schneiderman recognized the leverage he had, agreed to join the Task Force as a co-chair with the stipulation that the original deal be modified, specifically concerning civil liability in mortgage origination fraud.
This might explain Jamie Dimon’s whine last Friday, pouting and claiming bankers are the objects of unfair discrimination. Really? Here’s the average American’s response:
Of course, you would think that this mess would be a window of opportunity for Republicans in an election year. What an incredible club to use on President Obama to win the WH, maybe the House and the Senate by gargantuan majorities.
No fear there because for every compromised Democrat there is an equally compromised Republican. Both the Democrats and Republicans rely heavily on campaign contributions from the financial sector. Neither side is willing to cut their bankers [crooked or not] off at the knees.
What to do? What better reason to support any and all actions to get money out of the political arena. Until we do? The world belongs to the highest bidder.
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Hard to say what’s been worse this past week—putting up with a stomach virus or watching the ongoing GOP train wreck. In years past, the Gingrich factor would have been an instant tonic because the possibility that Newt Gingrich would pitch himself and his tainted legacy against a sitting Democratic President would be too, too delicious.
But that was then. This is now.
Though I’m no Mitt Romney fan, the very idea of Uncle Newt in the oval office makes me shudder. Though I’m no Barack Obama fan, Uncle Newt makes POTUS look immensely attractive. No small feat.
So where I might have jumped with joy in the past [oh please, let the Republicans nominate the ugliest, least electable candidate of the bunch], instead I’ve been thrown into a miserable funk.
The choices suck, the conversations continue to move to the extreme right and the American electorate flails in desperation.
If there’s any bright spot it is this: the longer Uncle Newt basks in glory, the more ugly he will reveal, namely the Republican penchant for the politics of petty grievances—the howl of the entitled patriarchy, still wounded by Paradise Lost; the claim of religious bigotry—the war on Christianity—while dismissing or denigrating any religion but their own; and the aggressive promise that if they can’t win, they’ll make damn sure no one else does. In addition, Newt’s recent success exposes the Tea Party for what it has truly become—a group of mindless obstructionists.
Sorry, you cannot make lemonade out of this one. Not when a voting group is willing to endorse and support a serial liar, a hypocrite without shame, a man willing to blow the dog whistle on all the old prejudices and wounds of race and gender, or conjure up the ghost of Andrew Jackson, a man Gingrich says knew how to deal with his enemies: he killed ‘em.
Native Americans, I suspect, have a different take.
Uncle Newt’s declarations might sound good in a John Wayne movie but not for the White House, not in the year 2012 when the country and the world is precariously perched on a knife edge.
But there’s more. The Newtster has taken on capitalism itself, exposing the underbelly of Republican economics—the mythical ‘free’ market, the unchained melody that without restraint will bring a Renaissance of prosperity and goodwill to hardworking Americans. Or so the tune goes.
Sing that to the unemployed, the homeless. Better yet, belt the lyrics out loud and clear to the nearly 50 million Americans now collecting food stamps, Uncle Newt’s favorite whipping boy. Or sing that discordant lullaby to the children [over 20%] now designated food insecure. Because unfettered capitalism has been the GOP’s clarion call for the last 40 years. Think about ‘trickle down’ economics, stagnating wages, the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the call for ever-lower taxes because the ‘job creators’ need that extra revenue to make things right. Now recall the financial meltdown of 2008, where Wall St. took the unregulated ball and ran right off the cliff. Screaming ‘liberty’ on the way down doesn’t quite cut it for most of us.
This is the plus side of a Newt Gingrich, who with a magician’s flourish has pulled back the curtain on the Big Ugly. The lie is massive and cruel. The lie has inflicted pain and suffering on millions, both here and abroad.
The Hopemeister
The counter to all this is convincing the public that Barack Obama is a socialist/Marxist in hiding. President Obama is many things but a socialist and/or Marxist he is not. Barack Obama is a brand, a man marketed to the American public as a national savior. He was and is not. He’s simply a marker for the status quo.
And that’s where my ongoing funk comes in. On one side, we have Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul all extolling the Big Lie as the disease that will cure us. And on the other side we have President Obama pretending he’s Teddy Roosevelt reborn, ready to slay the Dragons of Monopoly. Only his words do not match his actions. They never did.
And then there’s us, the American electorate, the Consumer Nation brought low by dwindling expectations, the super-power made suddenly and irrefutably mortal. Will the election of 2012 rouse us from the trance that brought us to this moment? Will we see the Big Ugly for what it is rather than what we dreamt it to be?
Or will we tumble back into a dark and endless sleep?
Not to be overly depressing, there are glimmers of light on the horizon. Citizens are standing up, questioning the lack of justice in the system, the ongoing extraction of wealth by the top 1%. Despite the lack of coverage, the Occupy Wall St. movement still survives in small towns and cities across the country. Grassroot efforts are pushing ahead to remove the influence of money in government—Superpacs writ large. Several Constitutional amendments are gaining signatures and support to upend the Supreme Court’s ‘corporations are people’ decision and more and more voices are rising up in books and magazines, on the blogs and in tweets to push back the Robber Baron mentality of our corporate, government and financial institutions.
Will it be enough? I don’t know. The Big Ugly has a hell of a head start. But if Aesop is any guide, the Hare who dismisses the Tortoise should be well advised: We’re coming. Slow and steady, We the People, are coming nonetheless.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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