From Daily Kos

  • 'Be outraged': The New York Times finally acknowledges the dangers of Trumpian Fascism

    On November 10, 2016, two days after the election that inflicted Donald Trump on all of us, the Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen published their seminal essay, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” in the New York Review of Books. Gessen’s terse, cogent primer set forth six indefatigable rules for the American public about the autocratic nature of Donald Trump, what his ascent to power entailed for American citizens wholly unfamiliar with living under an autocratic personality, and...

  • Cartoon: Make America dumb again

    A cartoon by Clay Jones.

  • Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The impeachment hearing fiasco gets noticed amid factual court findings

    Alex Kingsbury/New York Times: Trump’s Promise of Lawlessness Mr. Trump, as General Milley discovered and many Americans already knew, is a man unencumbered by any moral compass. He goes the way he wants to go, legalities and niceties be damned. Last week in a post on his social network, Mr. Trump argued that General Milley’s actions would have once been punishable by death. Most Americans probably didn’t notice his screed. Of those who did and were not alarmed, far too many nodded along in...

  • McCarthy just guaranteed a government shutdown

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lost again Friday afternoon when he put a stopgap funding bill  on the floor that guarantees a government shutdown. No Democrat voted for the bill and it lost 198-232. Even if it had passed in the House it would have been dead on arrival in the Senate. The White House has already said President Joe Biden would veto it. The bill is unacceptable because of the draconian cuts McCarthy agreed to in order to appease the hard-liners, some of whom didn’t vote for the...

  • Ukraine Update: Every army in the world is obsolete

    There’s a moment in an episode of Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Civil War that focuses on the epic battle between the first ironclad ships. The small but extremely innovative USS Monitor has been slowly towed toward Hampton Roads, and nearly lost in a storm along the way. The larger, but much less nimble CSS Virginia (nee Merrimack) is there to meet it. The battle extends into part of the next two days. That fight, which is generally said to have ended in a stalemate but had...

  • Federal prosecutors press Trump gag order request after Milley comments, gun store visit

    Federal prosecutors pressed their case Friday for a limited gag order on former President Donald Trump, citing what they said was a continuing pattern of incendiary and intimidating statements in the case charging him with scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith's team earlier this month requested an order aimed at reining in Trump's attacks on prosecutors, potential witnesses and other people involved in the case. Trump's lawyers have objected to the...

  • GOP lawmakers in Biden-won districts vote to decimate government

    The 198-232 loss that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suffered on his way to an eventual government shutdown came as a surprise purely by its margin. Most estimates put the opposition among hard-line Republicans at about 10 votes—not 21. What is surprising is that all of those 21 Republicans are either Freedom Caucus members or allied extremists. That means every supposed moderate Republican—including those in the 18 districts that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020—voted for legislation that...

  • ‘We don't take an oath to a wannabe dictator’: Gen. Mark Milley’s powerful retirement speech

    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley retired Friday. President Joe Biden spoke at a ceremony honoring the general held at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall near Washington, D.C. Biden called the “partnership” he had with Milley “invaluable.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin described Milley as “a scholar and a warrior," saying, "We respect him for his wit, but we love him for his heart. And he’s thrown his whole heart into leading this tremendous joint force of soldiers,...

  • New York City floods as climate crisis makes itself clear

    The last few years have sometimes been referred to as the “Pyrocene Age” because of the way the climate crisis has fostered an abundance of wildfires. This year has seen more than its share of those fires, including the vast number of fires in Canada that turned skies dull orange and filled the air with smoke across large areas of the United States. But this has also been a year that could be called the “Hydrocene” because it has been marked with jaw-dropping and devastating floods from Europe...

  • GOP lawmaker says furloughed workers shouldn't expect sympathy

    With the Republican-forced government shutdown approaching on Saturday, at midnight, Republican Rep. Brandon Williamson of New York was interviewed on C-SPAN. Williamson is a former Wall Street banker and tech entrepreneur who eked out a victory in 2022 in a district President Joe Biden won by a sizable margin in 2020. Before C-SPAN had callers ask questions, the New York representative had managed most of the interview offering up standard (and saccharine) tighten-the-belt talking points while...

  • Bail bondsman charged alongside Trump in Georgia becomes the first defendant to take a plea deal

    A bail bondsman charged alongside former President Donald Trump and 17 others in the Georgia election interference case pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges on Friday, becoming the first defendant to accept a plea deal with prosecutors. As part of the deal, Scott Graham Hall will receive five years of probation and agreed to testify in further proceedings. He was also ordered to write a letter of apology to the citizens of Georgia and is forbidden from participating in polling activities. ...

  • Chaos reigns in House as hard-liners plot McCarthy ouster

    There can never be too much chaos for Rep. Matt Gaetz and his malignant cohorts. With this weekend’s government shutdown now seeming inevitable, the Florida Republican and some of his unnamed compatriots are plotting to try to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as early as next week, according to The Washington Post. A shutdown isn’t enough disruption, nor is their trainwreck of an impeachment inquiry inquiry, so these hard-liners want to make the House an even more ridiculously dysfunctional...