Tracker

House Adopts Rules Weakening Speaker Kevin McCarthy WASHINGTON — Republicans on Monday approved a set of rules governing the House of Representatives that will weaken the speakership of Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Going forward, any single lawmaker will have the power to trigger a no-confidence vote in the speaker, meaning attention-seekers like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) can threaten McCarthy with a referendum if they don’t like how he’s doing his job. The “motion to vacate” represents an enforcement mechanism for a package of other rules changes McCarthy negotiated with a group of right-wing lawmakers who argued the California Republican would be too nice to Democrats and President Joe Biden. As Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) put it Sunday on CNN, “We will use the tools of the House to enforce the terms of the agreement.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-rules-kevin-mccarthy_n_63bc8b82e4b0fe267cb2c402

First bill under Speaker McCarthy will cost taxpayers more than $100 billion Kevin McCarthy promised on his first day as Speaker of the House that Members would “read every single word of the Constitution aloud from the floor of the House.” He also promised to “fight for a strong, fiscally responsible, and free America.” Neither of those have happened yet. Instead, during his acceptance speech when he was elected Speaker on the fifteenth try, McCarthy promised, “Our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.” There is no funding for 87,000 IRS agents, as The New York Times and others have fact-checked. There is funding to replace retiring IRS agents, upgrade the agency’s technology, and cut wait times in half by hiring more agents to answer consumer phone calls. In fact, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last August, in writing, ordered the IRS to not use any of the new funding allocated to the agency to increase investigations of any American making $400,000 or less. “I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Yellen wrote, CNN reported. “This means that, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.” Regardless, Speaker McCarthy on Monday night will preside over legislation that cuts IRS funding back to levels before Democrats increased it last year. And it will cost Americans billions. The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin, who covers tax policy, writes that the Congressional Budget Office has scored McCarthy’s bill and says it will increase the deficit by $114 billion. “Says that the GOP IRS funding bill would reduce spending by $71.5B and reduce revenue by $185.8B,” he tweets, with “B” standing for “billion.”

Its a romp and not to be taken seriously. The actors doubtless has a hoot with their over the top performances.

Yes. Brazil has not requested Bolsonaro's extradition, but the US government is considering deporting him.

Now Bolsonaro can say that he is too ill to be deported. I'm sure its just a coincidence. Really, really sure.

🅰️

Green Bay Packers' Quay Walker Ejected Again For Bizarre On-Field Act Green Bay Packers linebacker Quay Walker needs to stop shoving guys who aren’t even wearing shoulder pads. The rookie on Sunday pushed a Detroit Lions medical staffer coming to the aid of an injured player, and was ejected. The Lions’ D’Andre Swift had caught a short pass and appeared to be struck in the head. Detroit staffers came onto the field to treat Swift, and Walker inexplicably pushed one of them from behind. He was thrown out of the game and assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The Lions continued their drive and eventually scored a touchdown for a 20-16 comeback victory to eliminate host Green Bay from the upcoming playoffs.

I sure hope the manufacturer resolved the issues that made the plane dangerous to fly in rain. Deathbed repentance.

Wagner’s Desensitized Prison Fighters Keep Staggering Into Bakhmut Like This Is a Zombie Apocalypse BAKHMUT, Ukraine—In the smoke-filled basement of a nondescript building in the city center of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, the men of the SKALA intelligence battalion are getting ready for a risky reconnaissance mission. One of them is burning a last cigarette in the dimly lit hallway. Clad in a bulletproof vest and helmet, a bearded soldier wraps yellow tape around both his arms—a sign used by Ukrainian soldiers to identify each other on the battlefield. “Be careful out there, there are snipers in this area,” a portly officer warns him, rising from his office chair facing a flatscreen TV that intermittently broadcasts the live feed of a drone flying over carnage in the city. “I can’t die, my mom won’t let me,” quips the soldier with a weary smile, checking his gear one last time before heading out. The previously muffled sound of outgoing artillery becomes sharper and louder as the door to the street swings open. They take off. “The situation is pretty tense, but we’re controlling it,” says 23-year-old Alexander, clutching his American-made M4 assault rifle. “We’re holding.” With his buzzcut and boyish looks, the young man wouldn’t look out of place in a trendy nightclub in downtown Kyiv. Yet, for weeks, Alexander and the grizzled soldiers of the SKALA battalion have been weathering the storm of daily Russian assaults and shelling on Bakhmut, hunkering down in the basement and doing daily sorties in the gray zone—the stretch of land between Ukrainian and Russian positions. Named after its founder and leader Iurii Skala, the SKALA battalion is tasked with conducting air and ground reconnaissance, as well as “cleaning operations”—a euphemism meaning assaulting enemy positions and taking out the Russian soldiers manning them. “The drones are our eyes out there,” says Alexander. Out there is Bakhmut—a salt-mining town of 70,000 inhabitants known for its sparkling white wine—that has been devastated by months of relentless Russian shelling, and gruesome trench warfare that has prompted comparisons with the Battle of the Somme or Passchendaele. The town is a major transport hub and sits on a strategic highway that runs through Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Yet, some—including one of Ukraine’s top generals—have argued that the town’s strategic value is dubious at best. However, it is one of the few frontline areas where the Russians are still on the advance, and the success-starved Russian high command is desperate to claim a victory, at any cost. Some have theorized that the capture of Bakhmut would constitute a personal prize for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the infamous Wagner paramilitary group, whose mercenaries make up most of the Russian forces in the area. The U.S. believes Prigozhin has a financial motive: Wagner has often seized lucrative gold and diamond mines in areas where it operates in Africa, and Prigozhin may have set his sights on the salt and gypsum mines around Bakhmut. According to Rem, a former car dealer from Dnipro now correcting artillery fire with the help of his drone, most of the soldiers sent in suicidal assaults on Ukrainian positions in Bakhmut are “zeks,” or convicts, recruited by Wagner to bolster the number of Russian forces in Ukraine. “Mobiks [conscripts] are usually scared, and they scatter when they get shelled. Those guys are not scared,” he said. Of the Wagnerites, Rem says that they’re a much more effective fighting force than they’re usually given credit for: “They’re making progress, after all.” Desensitized to violence and with nothing left to lose, the prisoners—many of whom are violent criminals including murderers and rapists—are considered by Ukrainian soldiers a tougher enemy than the average army conscript. The Russian tactic of sending prison recruits to attack Ukrainian positions—allowing them to identify defenses for the artillery to pummel afterwards—has proven effective, though slow and deadly. While no major breakthrough has occurred, they have been slowly eroding Ukrainian defenses, and creeping ever closer to the eastern outskirts of the city. This assessment was echoed in late December by Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former national security adviser for Ukraine currently working on military planning, who said of the prison conscripts: “They are—I cannot say fearless—but they have nothing to lose pretty much. So, they are attacking constantly and they’ve been killed in big quantities as well.” Yet those incremental gains on the eastern approach to the city have come at a cost for Russian forces, as evidenced during Prigozhin’s well-publicized visit to the frontline over the New Year. In a series of videos released by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the Wagner boss first visits a basement filled with the bodies of his fighters, many of them convicts, killed during the battle for Bakhmut, before complaining that “every house [in Bakhmut] has become a fortress”—and that it sometimes takes a week of fighting to take a single house. According to a U.S. official quoted by The Guardian on Thursday, out of an initial force of nearly 50,000 Wagner mercenaries, more than 4,100 have been killed in action, and 10,000 have been wounded, including over 1,000 killed between late November and early December near Bakhmut.

Trump Says Biden 'Convinced' Putin To Bomb Ukraine In Mar-a-Lago Campaign Speech He also again insisted violent Capitol rioters were simply "protesting a dishonest election," despite a complete lack of evidence of anything but a legitimate Donald Trump claimed in a speech to a Mar-a-Lago audience over the weekend that President Joe Biden “convinced” Russian President Vladimir Putin to “go into Ukraine.” Trump, without evidence, said Biden told the Russian leader it would be “no problem” if he took “some parts of Ukraine” in the invasion Russia began in February 2022. Biden actually sought a peaceful solution to Russia’s warmongering and condemned the invasion. It was Trump who called Putin’s invasion “genius” at the time. The Mar-a-Lago event, a mini-campaign speech, reportedly was linked to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump also told his audience he invited professors to the White House to explain how horrible a nuclear war would be if it came up in the presidential debates. “The power is so destructive that we won’t talk about it,” he said. Trump claimed the experts urged him: “Sir, do the best you can to not talk about it ... It’s so destructive, it’s so powerful. The world will be gone.” Trump claimed Biden is increasing the risk of a nuclear war because he has “no mind left.” The former president, speaking from a podium, also insisted that a “lunatic” fatally shot Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 violence in 2021. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-nuclear-war-ashli-babbitt-biden-mar-a-lago-campagin-speech_n_63bb6f3ae4b0d6724fc500b4

'Should not be given refuge': Lawmakers demand Jair Bolsonaro be sent back to Brazil Prominent U.S. lawmakers said Sunday that Jair Bolsonaro should not be given safe harbor in Florida after his supporters—animated by the far-right former president's election lies—launched a massive attack on Brazil's main government buildings, an assault that came a week after leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated. "Two years ago our Capitol was attacked by fanatics, now we are watching it happen in Brazil," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said Sunday evening after thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed and ransacked Brazil's presidential palace, Congress, and Supreme Court. "Solidarity with Lula and the Brazilian people," Omar continued. "Democracies around the world must stand united to condemn this attack on democracy. Bolsonaro should not be given refuge in Florida." Just two days before his term ended and he was set to relinquish power to Lula following his failed bid to overturn the October election results, Bolsonaro flew to Orlando, Florida "with plans to stay for at least a month," The New York Times reported. According to the Times, Bolsonaro—an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump—has been "living in a rented house owned by a professional mixed martial arts fighter a few miles from Disney World." The Washington Post reported last month that "days after Bolsonaro's loss, allies met with Trump aides in the United States to discuss next steps. His son Eduardo, a Brazilian congressman, met Trump at Mar-a-Lago [in November] in Palm Beach, Florida." https://www.alternet.org/should-not-be-given-refuge/

Does this mean he literally screwed his brains out?

A .50 caliber mounted on the teachers' desks, that ought to instill the proper amount of order in the classroom.

And I am at the point where I buy underwear one at a time rather than in a three-pack, because one might be enough.

Apparently one of the conditions he had to agree to was that he would resign as speaker if only ONE of the people who voted for him demanded that he do so. So...he gave up his spine and his gonads for this ephemeral position of power.

The family that loads together, explodes together. Americans gotta be Americans.

And I do not think they have plumbed the depths of their stupidity and arrogance.

Expert details 4 ways Netanyahu’s new far-right government threatens Israeli democracy . Democracy is not just about holding elections. It is a set of institutions, ideas and practices that allow citizens a continuous, decisive voice in shaping their government and its policies. The new Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and sworn in on Dec. 29, 2022, is a coalition of the most extreme right-wing and religious parties in the history of the state. This government presents a major threat to Israeli democracy, and it does so on multiple fronts. Here are the four ways that Israel's democratic institutions, customs and practices are endangered by the new government, based on policies and legislation that might be enacted or that are already in process. 1. Hostility to freedom of speech and dissent Prime Minister Netanyahu has been working for years to consolidate his grip on Israeli media. The new government plans to accelerate the privatization of media in the hands of friendly interests and brand as anti-Israeli and treasonous media outlets its leaders deem hostile. The signs of this delegitimization are already here. A dozen and a half people standing in three rows for a photo. Ministers of Israel's 37th government wait to have their group picture taken with the president and prime minister at the president's residence in Jerusalem on Dec. 29, 2022. Photo by Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images Even before the newly appointed minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, took office, the police briefly arrested and interrogated journalist Israel Frey after he posted a controversial tweet hinting that the Israeli military may be a legitimate target of Palestinian attacks. The police claimed the tweet incited terrorism, and the arrest showed journalists who favor an open and free press that they might face retaliation. Ben-Gvir, the head of the Jewish Power party and now overseer of the police, was convicted in the past for supporting Jewish terrorism and for racist incitement against Israel's Arab minority. In his inauguration speech on Jan. 1, the new minister branded "Jewish anarchists" – a code he often uses for leftists and human rights organizations – as threats that "needed to be dealt with." 2. Diminishing equal rights The Netanyahu government appears poised to allow discrimination against the LGBTQ community and women, thus undermining equality before the law, an important democratic principle. Incoming National Missions Minister Orit Strock said in an interview in late December, "If a doctor is asked to give any type of treatment to someone that violates his religious faith, if there is another doctor who can do it, then you can't force them to provide treatment." Netanyahu condemned Strock and other coalition members who stated that gay people could be denied service by businesses if serving them contradicts the business owner's religious beliefs. Yet, journalists report that Likud and other coalition partners agreed in writing to amend the law against discrimination to allow exactly such a policy. During early coalition negotiations, ultra-Orthodox parties demanded new legislation that would allow gender-based segregation in public spaces and events. Netanyahu has reportedly agreed, which means these laws are expected to pass the Knesset. Segregation in educational spheres, public transportation and public events is often translated into exclusion of women and weakening of women's voices, and hence contradicts basic democratic principles such as freedom and equality. 3. West Bank annexation and apartheid The new government's intention to de facto annex the West Bank will turn hollow Israel's claims of being the only democracy in the Middle East. In a Dec. 28 tweet, Netanyahu announced that his government's guidelines will include the principle that "the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel," including the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967 and populated by a Palestinian majority. These guidelines, combined with new nominations of far right politician Bezalel Smotrich as the minister responsible for Jewish settlements and Ben-Gvir as the minister in charge of the border police, could provide justification for annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories. Based on much of the rhetoric of right-wing leaders such as Smotrich, Palestinian residents of these lands will have neither equal rights nor voting rights. This means apartheid, not democracy. 4. Erasing the separation of powers In the Israeli system, the executive and legislative branches are always controlled by the same coalition. The courts are the only institution that can check the power of the ruling parties and uphold the country's Basic Laws, which provide rights in the absence of a formal constitution. But the new government wants to erase this separation of power and explicitly aims at weakening the courts. On Jan. 4, after less than a week in his role, new Minister of Justice Yariv Levin announced the government's plan for a radical judicial reform, which will include the "override clause." That clause will allow a simple majority in the Knesset to re-enact any law struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.