VIDEO OF THE DAY: Elon Musk caught meddling in massive race
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the upcoming must-win Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, to discuss Elon Musk's corrupt efforts to buy yet another election with obscene wealth.
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Fighting “waste” is an age-old alibi for austerity
Jack Schneider, Jacobin: "'Waste, fraud, and abuse' is a phrase we’re going to hear frequently as the Trump administration slashes the administrative state. In light of that, we should be clear what the president and his allies really mean when they use those words. We all know that there are ways our government could become more efficient or more effective. But this project isn’t really about trimming the fat — it’s about cutting you loose. Most MAGA supporters are not ideologically motivated elites, nor are they members of the affluent class. Whatever their fealty to the president, many of them rely on federal subsidies and public programs. They may not always know that, since much of that support is channeled through the apparatus of government rather than in the form of welfare checks. The US Department of Education, for instance, provides $18 billion annually to public schools serving students from low-income backgrounds, many of whom live in rural areas. But other forms of support, like Medicaid, which the Republican Party appears poised to slash, go directly to individuals. As Steve Bannon recently argued, 'A lot of MAGA’s on Medicaid. . . . You can’t just take a meat axe to it.' This is where waste, fraud, and abuse come in. It worked to turn people against Reconstruction after the Civil War, and it appears to be working once more, at least among those who view Trump as a straight-talking outsider come to drain the swamp. The president will put that image to use for as long as he can. Meanwhile, however, he’ll be doing what Mitt Romney only wished he had the chance to do — taking a chain saw to every element of the modern welfare state that advances the interests of “takers” at the expense of “makers.” Democracy has always posed a problem for the wealthy and the powerful. If people have a say in how they are governed, they’ll use that say to improve their lives. They’ll do things like lay taxes on the fortunes of the few to provide opportunity for the many. The trick, then, is to convince them otherwise. The rhetoric of “personal responsibility” worked for decades. But imagine telling someone whose job has been outsourced to another country to take a little accountability; you might get punched in the face. Warning them of waste, fraud, and abuse, on the other hand? That just might work."
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BTC leads collective of progressive creators with plan to take back the internet from Joe Rogan and the right-wing machine
Chorus: This election has made it painfully clear that Democrats' messages are just not getting through the tsunami of right-wing propaganda and lies flooding through social media, and we have no real answer to a Joe Rogan or a Ben Shapiro...until now! Chorus Collective is a new collaborative founded by creators like Brian Tyler Cohen, Leigh McGowan (Politics Girl), Roland Martin, David Pakman, Elizabeth Booker Houston, and Adam Mockler, who are bringing their audience of 40 million people together to create a new infrastructure to scale their voices and build support for more creators like them. Chorus aims to not only amplify progressive voices but also uplift new creators and build a left-wing social media ecosystem that supports its voices ALL the time, not just in the months leading up to an election. Will you chip in to help Chorus get off the ground and help break the right-wing stranglehold on social media?
The "Epstein files" and Melania's "deepfake" testimony are attempts to hide Trump's violent misogyny
Amanda Marcotte, Salon: "Pam Bondi is still pretending she's on the verge of a big reveal about the crimes of deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Last week, Donald Trump's new attorney general and a clutch of grifty MAGA 'influencers' pretended they had unearthed a trove of information about Epstein that they falsely claimed had been concealed by the previous administration. Within hours after the influencers stood outside the White House and waved binders specially made for the occasion labeled 'Epstein Files,' it was revealed that the stunt was as empty as the reality TV deitrius that inspired it. Bondi, however, has not given up stringing these people along with false hopes that all their QAnon fantasies are about to be proved true. Most of the mainstream media ignored this, having recognized that Bondi is putting on a dog and pony show for the QAnon crowd, which believes in an international conspiracy of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities to molest and kill children, before consuming them in Satanic cannibalism rituals. But the right-wing press is still hyping Bondi's breathless promises. The timing of Bondi's transparent stunt is especially telling. All this is happening while misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, accused of sex trafficking and rape, has suddenly been released by the Romanian government to the United States, where he can hide from charges in both Romania and Great Britain for his alleged sex crimes. It's not a surprise that Trump embraces a man who says 'I love raping' and who bragged about how he controls women with 'bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck.' But it's also true that it's still politically dangerous to be openly pro-rape. That's why QAnon exists. Trump voters don't like it when people correctly point out that they backed a man who bragged about committing sexual assault and who was found by a civil jury to have acted on that boast. It's not fun, being the bad guy! So a lot of them construct this elaborate fantasy where Trump isn't a sexual predator, but a hero secretly fighting the 'real' sexual predators. And the crimes they make up in their heads are so grotesque — child sexual abuse, cannibalism, murder — that it makes real accusations against Trump seem minor in comparison. Trump is redeemed through this myth that he's taking on imaginary villains far worse than he is, and therefore, supporters can believe they are redeemed for backing him. That explains why Bondi is wasting more breath pretending she's about to release some shocking revelations about Epstein, who is helpfully dead, making it easier to manipulate his image for whatever ends the Trump administration needs. It's likely also why Melania Trump was deployed Monday to speak at a roundtable about a Senate bill meant to curb the spread of non-consensual nudes and AI 'deepfake' sexual imagery online. Melania Trump and Pam Bondi are working overtime to muddy the waters over where the Trump administration stands on the issue of sexual violence. Going after dead rapists and deepfakes creates the illusion of "doing something" about sexual abuse, while shielding real-life abusers from consequences."
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Sycophancy and toadying are de rigueur in Trump’s court of self-aggrandizement
Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian: "Sycophancy is the coin of the realm. In Donald Trump’s court, flattery is the only spoken language. He does not need an executive order to enforce it. Fear is the other side of the coin. Loyalty must be blind. Obedience is safety. Cronyism secures status. His whim is dogma. Criticism is heresy. Debate is apostasy. Expertise is bias. Objectivity is a hoax. Truth is just your opinion. Lies are defended to the death as articles of faith. New ones are manufactured on an industrial scale by his press office for social influencers to spread. Denying facts proves fealty. The rule of law is partisan. Russia is our trusted ally. Britain and France are 'random counties.' Retribution is policy. The deeper the submission to madness, the greater his supremacy. The subjugation is more thorough if the things people are forced to accept are irrational or, better, the reverse of what they had believed. When previously held beliefs are abandoned to conform to their opposite, like the secretary of state Marco Rubio’s formerly adamant support of Ukraine, which went to his core as the son of refugees from Castro’s Cuba, the more Trump’s dominance is demonstrated. Rubio has gone full circle, from his family fleeing one kind of tyranny to Trump sneering at him as “Little Marco” to ambitious embrace of his tormentor. He finds himself as a supplicant to Trump complaining about Elon Musk’s mindless wreckage of the state department. Formally the ranking constitutional officer of the cabinet, Rubio is below Musk in Trump’s hierarchy. Each of the concentric rings of Trump’s court require different nuances of servility. At mid-level, the ethos is to mimic the irrational impulses of the ruler in order to be seen as his willing helper. In 1934, a middle-rank German minister explained that 'it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Führer along the lines he would wish.' 'Working toward the Fuhrer' – auf den Führer hinarbeiten – became the governing style, or else."
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