While Pelosi and House Democrats are trying to do the work of the people and keep the nation moving forward into the 21st century, Trump and McConnell’s Republicans are trying to rocket us back to the 19th.
Category: Uncategorized
The GOP & far-right leaders regularly weaponize antisemitism against progressive leaders of color & use Jews as a shield,” the group said in a Twitter thread. “Where is their outrage when Trump is blatantly antisemitic? When he insinuates Jews control money & power? When he calls us disloyal?”
via ‘Pushing Blatant Antisemitism’: Trump Rebuked for ‘Disturbing’ Comments | Common Dreams News
The nation thrills this week to the riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma of the Morrison government, a puzzle, that includes Lambie’s Faustian bargain, Angus Taylor’s war on both Naomi Wolf and Clover Moore with Gladys Liu’s to-do tipping the government’s weekly balance from hyper-partisan warfare and union thuggery into utter skulduggery.
The one-time trombone-playing former teacher’s aide and ex-chemist-shop proprietor cannot keep mum forever about her Brighsun or Liberal associates, nor they about her, especially as she now has cause to ask for her money back.
Any sensible, practical government would demand the resignation of both Gladys Liu and Angus Taylor. Given his form so far, Scott Morrison is likely to find fifty shades of grey evasion including blaming Labor and Wolf to avoid taking any decision.
There is no individual, no institution nor any emerging crisis so big that this government cannot find a way to look past it.
When Javed Badyari was 19 years old, the prime minister at the time, Kevin Rudd, announced that no asylum-seeker who tried to reach Australia by boat would ever be allowed to settle in the country.
In the years since then, Badyari, now 26, has studied medicine, moved from Sydney down to the seaside city of Wollongong, started work as a doctor, and become engaged to medical student Hannah Clements.
While Badyari was finding his feet as a young adult, hundreds of people spent the same six years in a state of permanent uncertainty, held in detention camps on small Pacific islands.
The conservative government that unseated Rudd in 2013 built on his hardline policy, leaving hundreds of asylum-seekers in indefinite detention on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and the tiny nation of Nauru. Hundreds remain there today, unsure what their future holds and increasingly suffering ill health.
The LNP promised to Rupert Murdoch and the IPA continues with cuts to the ABC ongoing since their 2013 election when they promised NO CUTS to the ABC (ODT)
via ABC to grapple with budget freeze, 200 redundancies expected
Deadspin (where, interest declared, my amazing colleague Tommy Craggs was once editor-in-chief), was a lot of what journalism should be: a thorn in the side of the smug, self-righteous, and overly comfortable. The story of its demise is the story of a news industry bleeding from a thousand cuts—litigation, the collapse of advertising revenue, platform changes, political point-scoring, and rapacious and/or incompetent owners.
At Mother Jones, we’ve encountered a lot of the same challenges Deadspin and so many other organizations have. We fought a massive lawsuit from a conservative billionaire. We’re regularly attacked by everyone from members of Congress to Twitter trolls. We lost advertising revenue with the flick of a switch at Facebook.
But here’s the difference: Our owners have a deep commitment to journalistic independence and fearlessness. They are smart, funny, and exceptionally good-looking. They are…you.
As catastrophe engulfs us, what is our government doing?
Union-bashing.
Refugee-bashing.
Labor-bashing.
Decimating the public service.
“Refusing to apologise” for blatant misdeeds by Angus Taylor.
It’s business as usual for the do-nothing Coalition sticking to their age-old ideological vendettas.
via Ensuring there will be no integrity – » The Australian Independent Media Network
WTF? Yep, I mean it. Morrison is that bad. Dutton will ensure a massacre of Tories come the next election. Morrison will be suitably discarded and humiliated – it will be a huge blow to his unshakable belief that his reign was god ordained. He can slink away crestfallen and fall off the edge of his flat earth leaving a skidmark and a legacy of worst PM ever.
Merry Christmas!
via What fate awaits PM Morrison? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The document marked “not for public disclosure” notes the banks recognises “the time has come” to make the transition
ANZ is the biggest lender to coal mining in Australia
The bank loans money to Whitehaven Coal, the operator of the controversial Maules Creek mine
The construction of a private border wall partially funded by rightwing allies of Donald Trump continued with vigor in south Texas this week, seemingly in blatant violation of a court injunction ordering work to be suspended.
On Thursday and Friday, within three days of a temporary restraining order being issued, the Guardian found construction crews with at least 10 heavy machinery vehicles moving soil, digging trenches and positioning tall metal posts along the US bank of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo county, which forms the border with Mexico. A 3.5-mile, privately-funded concrete barrier is planned on the site, near Mission, Texas.
via Private border wall construction continues despite court order | US news | The Guardian
today’s Republican politicians are wholly owned agents of corporations and the billionaire class, stoking extreme anger over a few social issues (immigration, guns, God, gays, race) and using it to bring in the Fox rubes that the billionaire Murdochs kindly hand them.
Prior to this betrayal of America by the Supreme Court, politicians generally felt a need to respond to the wants and needs of their constituents. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s people-powered election in 1932 to Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, politicians’ proposed legislation and votes tended to reflect what the people in their districts or states wanted.
Canada, one of its two closest neighbours and largest trading partner. Britain, with which it enjoyed the heralded special relationship.
And France, whose Marquis de Lafayette was instrumental in the American Revolution of the late 1700s.
Who could have anticipated that an American president would have been the subject of mocking among their leaders?
And worse, that one of those allies would tangle with him publicly under a global spotlight?
That’s what happened this week at the summit of NATO countries in London.
Whether Donald Trump was embarrassed, upset or simply tired from recent travels, he packed up early and went home to Washington — an even more hostile place, given that impeachment proceedings are swirling.
What sort of democracy are we? We are not allowed to know about the Lambie secret deal or the content of the Taylor emails; nor the circumstances of the secret trial jailing or witness J or the contents of an AFP report about George Christensen; and we are not allowed to know why Pastor Houston isn’t allowed into the White House. Why?
This government takes our right to know what they are doing very lightly.
via 
Trump has made the Supreme Court the busiest court in the USA due all the cases against him being heard there. He owns that court. (ODT)
via Trump asks Supreme Court to fight House subpoena for his tax returns
Turkey the weapons salesman and the NATO representative. Who is working for NATO? (ODT)
via At NATO, Trump irrelevant as France’s Macron Confronts Turkey on Invasion of Syrian Kurds
While China is freeing up its peoples Australia is tightening surveillance and Authoritarianism (ODT)
And, yes, President Donald Trump is unpopular. In fact, through 1,048 days, his average approval rating is back to being the very worst of the polling-era presidents. According to FiveThirtyEight, he’s at 41.6%; the next worst at this point was Barack Obama at 44%. Disapproval ratings tell an even worse story: At 53.5%, Trump is the only president through 1,048 days topping 50% (with Obama again the next-worst at 49.7% and no one else above 42%).
via Trump’s Approval Rating Should Worry Republicans – BNN Bloomberg
We all know why that’s not what Trump said, though. And we all know why Fox News is telling its viewers to tune out of the Impeachment hearings. They are all very, very afraid of witnesses like Prof. Pamela S. Karlan.
via Impeachment Witness Rips GOP & Trump — Framers Would Be ‘Horrified’ | Crooks and Liars
Revelations about a man being tried and imprisoned in secrecy, and the fluke discovery of the case, have revived calls for Australia’s secrecy laws to be reviewed.
Exactly how the case of “Witness J” came about remains a mystery.
Mr Moses also argues there should be no secret trials, and the nature of the offence and the provision under which the defendant was charged should be released.
“At the end of the day, justice is administrated in the name of the people, so basic information should be provided in order to enable the public to know why this has occurred,” he says.
“The quiet person you pass in the street. Tonight, I want to do my best to answer your questions, but as a secret prisoner from a secret trial who worked for a secret organisation, I am limited.”
US President Donald Trump subverted official foreign policy for his personal gain, undermined American national security and engaged in an unprecedented attempt to obstruct an impeachment investigation, according to a pivotal report released by Democrats.
The report by the Democrat-controlled House Intelligence Committee, released on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time), provides a likely blueprint for forthcoming articles of impeachment against Trump over his dealings with Ukraine.
via ‘Worse than Nixon’: Democrats lay out impeachment case in landmark report
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