2024 Archives

A middle class is not a normal thing, and if a country wants one it must be created by direct government intervention in the marketplace… As we head toward the presidential debate this week, the Republicans' vision for America is becoming clearer by the day. From Trump to Project 2025 to the speeches of multiple Republican senators and members of Congress, you'll frequently hear the phrase "post-constitutional" applied. They refer to a "post-constitutional moment" and a Republican "post-constitutional presidency." But what do they mean by this?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — With Religious fascism on the rise… — Is it a “break glass” moment with Judge Cannon? — The Supreme Court has already helped Trump beat his federal rap for trying to overthrow our country and steal the 2020 election. — In Red states, TV weather is getting way too political. — The climate crisis is also an insurance crisis. — Fascist Alert! RFK Jr.’s campaign wants “serious jail time” for CNN’s Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and others. — Crazy Alert! Republican legislator arrested chasing an adult dancer down a public street waving a gun at her at 2:45am - but it gets even weirder than that. — Hunter In a Farmer’s World Alert! ADHD: Practice Keeping On Task — Wisdom School Alert! robert wolff's Ancient Way of Knowing

In less than a month, Republicans will meet in Milwaukee to crown Donald Trump as their Emperor King and Sun God. But the real powers behind the GOP — the billionaires and their institutions that created Project 2025 as a how-to manual to convert American democracy into something like the old Confederacy — don’t much care about poor old Donald. Sure, they want him to be the nominee because NBC trained him well in the dark art of playing a successful businessman on television. He brings in the rubes like nobody since Huey Long; he’s a singularly brilliant politician, much as Putin, Hitler, Orbán, and Mussolini are and were. But he can also be irrational, impulsive, disloyal, dishonest, and unpredictable, qualities that make the men who want to revive the Confederacy to replace our republican form of government wary. They have big plans — far bigger than Trump’s tiny dream of vengeance — and don’t want him screwing things up. Thus, the real action in Milwaukee won’t be the show — though it’ll be a hell of a show — around Trump’s coronation; it’ll be in the back rooms where Trump is told who’s going to be his vice president. That’ll be the guy (it will be a guy) who does the actual heavy lifting in “deconstructing the administrative state,” seizing control of our media, and stripping average Americans of what’s left of their wealth and rights.

In our post-Citizens United world, when industry or a "generous" billionaire opposes a policy, what they want beats democracy almost every time... Exactly 178 years ago this month, French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier calculated the existence of the then-unknown planet Neptune based on irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, which he postulated were caused by the unknown planet's gravitational pull. Some invisible force was clearly distorting Uranus' orbit, and, when he did the math, he'd not only discovered but accurately predicted the location of the planet Neptune. Many Americans watch our generation's political dysfunction and Congress' inability to get simple things done that would help our country and world and wonder, "Is there a dark planet, some dark force, that is pulling at and distorting our politics?" Turns out, there is. Read on.