VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump descends into weekend meltdown with unhinged statement
Brian Tyler Cohen breaks down Trump's weekend freak-out at "stupid and nasty" Kaitlan Collins for asking him questions about his stupid ballroom that he clearly does not want to answer.
Take Action: Denounce FIFA's made-up Peace Prize for Trump!
The Trump administration sinks to a new low – opening fire on drowning men
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian: "The Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise – and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description. On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats – vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific. This has been happening for months, but the issue has only just drawn political heat thanks to a Washington Post investigation of the first such attack on 2 September. The paper reported that US forces hit the targeted boat once, then hit it again – the second strike killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage. According to the Post, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had issued a verbal command to 'kill them all.' That would constitute a war crime, but for one thing: there is no war. The Trump administration says that the boats in its sights are ferrying drugs – fentanyl and the like, which kill Americans – from Venezuela to the US and that the traffickers are part of a 'designated terrorist organisation.' In effect, it argues that the 'war on drugs' is an actual war, in which the US military has the right to act as it would against any other armed enemy. There could hardly be a graver charge, yet how has Hegseth himself responded? By posting a mocked-up cover of a children’s book, depicting the much-loved character Franklin the Turtle apparently aiming a rocket launcher at a group of boats, under the imagined title, Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists. As Logan Roy might put it, this is not a serious person. There is no need to pretend that Hegseth’s actions amount to the sullying of a previously clean reputation; no one is under any illusions as to the long and appalling record of the US in Latin America. Even so, the Trump administration is somehow managing to plumb new depths.
Freshman Democrat under ATTACK for standing up to the GOP
Nellie Pou for Congress: Nellie Pou has only been in Congress a few months, but she’s already facing a barrage of GOP attacks for voting against their destructive budget bill that would hand out huge tax breaks to the wealthy while RAISING taxes on working families. Just a few days ago, the NRCC issued an error-filled press release written by Big Business lobbyists that falsely smeared her with lies. She’s one of the few Democrats to win her seat in a county that voted for Trump; she’s going to need all the help she can get if we want to protect the MUST-HOLD seat and retake Congress. Will you chip in to thank her for doing the right thing and helping her weather the storm against GOP attacks?
No, Progressives don’t want “purity.” They just want some courage
Virginia Heffernan, The New Republic: "Mainstream Democrats use dozens of old catchphrases that suggest they’re out of step. “When they go low, we go high,” for example, sounded fine when Michelle Obama first said it in 2016, but it passed its sell-by date almost the next day. For quite some time, the Democratic Party, which is still closely aligned with banks and billionaires, has needed to go anywhere but high. But it’s the meme of the “purity test” that should spike real worry that the Democratic Party is missing the moment right now. Party standard-bearers still use the phrase as a slur to trivialize legitimate questions from the left. It’s a petty and defensive move, and it comes across as a refusal to engage with the most obvious and urgent questions facing the party and the country. “Purity test” is bullshit, and it’s a deflection Democrats must stop using. Challenges to politicians on major issues, including foreign policy, acceptance of corporate money, and failure to keep ICE out of cities—these are not puritanical attacks on their lifestyles. They are credible allegations that the party must acknowledge and address: that Democrats are allies of Republican hawks like Liz Cheney, valets for private equity, and hopeless incrementalists on social justice. To dismiss the concerns of progressives is to deepen the demoralization that many of them have felt since 2015, when, as they see it, Democrats put Trump in office by keeping Senator Bernie Sanders and his then-insurgent socialism off the ticket. Right or wrong, the Democrats’ failure to nominate Sanders in 2016 is the origin story of the modern left, and they’re sticking to it. That cursed election is not available for relitigation. So now it’s up to older Democrats, who came up believing that unfettered capitalism was the country’s one true path, to stop trying to censor this generation of liberals, and start learning from them. If Democrats, when asked, can’t commit to opposing oligarchy, they’re not failing purity tests. They’re hiding a dangerous and right-wing worldview, and Americans deserve to know about it. Socialism may have been sidelined in 2015, and again in 2019, but it’s on all the tickets now."
The revolt of the Republican women
Jeet Heer, The Nation: "House Speaker Mike Johnson has strong opinions on the differences between men and women. On a recent podcast, Johnson’s wife, Kelly, noted that her husband likes to say, 'Men and women are different in…that men can compartmentalize things.' Giving metaphorical expression to this idea, Kelly Johnson compared men’s brains to waffles and women’s to spaghetti. This strange foray into gender essentialism perhaps explains why Mike Johnson is so reluctant to share power with his female colleagues. There are currently 33 Republican women in the House, yet there is not one elected female committee chair (one woman has the more ceremonial post of committee gavel). These numbers lend credence to the complaint of soon-retiring Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that 'there’s a lot of weak Republican men' who are 'afraid' and 'always try to marginalize the strong Republican women.' Nor is Greene alone in her anger. An unexpected revolt is brewing in the GOP among women who are hardly adherents of feminism but are still angry about continually bumping against the glass ceiling—and at Johnson for shutting them out. Johnson’s alienation of these women is all the odder since he needs their votes. His majority is historically narrow; Republicans hold 220 seats, just two more than the 218 required. And as Johnson’s predecessor Kevin McCarthy found out, losing even a tiny handful of supporters is enough for a GOP speaker to lose their job these days. Even when women rise in the ranks of Johnson’s GOP, they are treated with condescension. Representative Lisa McCain is a Johnson ally and GOP conference chair. Johnson has praised her by saying she’s the person he’d trust most to make Thanksgiving dinner. Johnson clearly prefers women as cooks rather than as colleagues. In trying to counter the accusation of sexism, a Johnson ally has retorted with the remarkably sneering comment that female critics should be grateful for what he has done. Johnson’s behavior isn’t just a quirk of his personal misogyny but reflects the larger backlash against professional women inside the GOP. Donald Trump’s culture-war politics have emboldened reactionaries eager to roll back the gains women have made in the workplace. The civil war among congressional Republicans shows the hurdles these gender reactionaries will face. True, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her allies are hardly feminist firebrands. They mostly oppose reproductive freedom and other measures to secure gender equality. But as conservative as they are, these women also have the normal ambition of politicians, indeed of most professional people. They expect to be given a chance to rise in their field and to have a place at the table. The thin and anemic feminism of a Marjorie Taylor Greene is still preferable to the vicious return to patriarchy upheld by Johnson and Andrews. With Greene at least there is a possibility of finding enough common ground to establish minimum rules for a just society. With Johnson and Andrews, not to say the piggish chauvinism of Donald Trump, all that is on offer is for women to become permanently second-class. Despite all their flaws, Republican women deserve commendation and support when they fight their party’s deep misogyny."
The World Cup shouldn't be Trump's plaything
Dave Braneck, Jacobin: "There’s a lot to dislike about the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A bloated forty-eight-team tournament spanning all of North America would be tough to pull off in the best of conditions. FIFA openly ripping off fans and charging thousands for tickets ensures that it’ll be, at base, an ugly cash grab. But there are also ills facing fans such as the United States’ immigration regime, roaming National Guard deployments throughout the country’s urban landscapes, and disconcertingly persistent threats to move match venues at President Donald Trump’s whim. The world’s biggest sporting event will have one of its most authoritarian backdrops yet. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has responded to concerning developments in the cohost country the same way he responds to despots the world over — shameless groveling. Trump’s designated 'king of soccer' has cozied up so closely to the US president that he might as well try to squeeze into Trump’s ill-fitting jacket with him. Infantino has capped off their budding bromance by awarding Trump the 'FIFA Peace Prize' — a totally legitimate marker of statesmanship and definitely not an award made up to appease Trump for missing out on a Nobel Peace Prize. What could be unserious about an award presented 'on behalf of the billions of people who love this game and want peace' and honoring a “dynamic leader creating opportunities for dialogue, deescalation, and stability” that goes to Donald Trump? The president was so jazzed about 'one of the great honors of his life' that he even stayed awake long enough to graciously accept it. The bizarre ceremony, crowbarred into the World Cup draw, provided a bit of levity to an otherwise depressing run-up to the tournament. Despite widespread rumination on both Trump’s authoritarian lurches and FIFA’s sycophancy, there’s been little pushback to the rapidly approaching tournament. There’s certainly been nothing approaching the protests that accompanied the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Faced with all this, fans need to exert their power before a terrible World Cup renders the game fully unrecognizable."
Food for thought
The Sunday wrap-up
Hope...
Share 
Tweet
PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition to demand ICE free the decorated veteran they've kept in their gulag for three months, and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Good Influence on Instagram.