If you thought US politics was a den of intrigue …

… check out what is happening in Australia which now has its fifth prime minister in five years, most of the changes coming not from general elections but from intra-party leadership struggles within both major parties. The most recent one yesterday resulted in prime minister Malcolm Turnbull being replaced by Scott Morrison as leader of the governing Liberal party. The Liberals have a slim one-seat majority in parliament and is thus already in a precarious position.
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When thieves fall out

[UPDATE: Today it is reported that Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, has also been given immunity by the Mueller investigation in return for testimony.

Mr Weisselberg reportedly oversaw the reimbursements Mr Cohen received from the Trump Organization for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels. Depending on how the financial transfer was accounted for, it could run afoul of a number of campaign finance and accounting laws.

What’s more, Mr Weisselberg has been at the beating heart of the Trump Organization since the 1970s. He handles the president’s private trust, is the treasurer of the family’s charitable foundation – currently under investigation by the state of New York – and has, at times, reviewed the Trump presidential campaign’s accounting books.

He’s the man who knows things – and now he’s talking.

Is there going to be anyone close to Trump who is not convicted of a crime or given plea deals and immunity in return for testimony?]

Many people have been involved in the Byzantine world of corruption and sleaze that surrounds this administration like a thick fog. Donald Trump is finding out that he has very few true and loyal friends. This should not surprise him since he himself seems to have no sense of loyalty to anyone but realizing that requires a sense of self-awareness that he clearly does not possess. We are now seeing the classic situation of thieves falling out, when they turn on each other to save their own skins. The latest people to do this are of course Omarosa Manigault Newman and Michael Cohen.
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This revelation was no surprise

I started hearing about political commentator Paris Dennard at the time Donald Trump became a candidate for the presidency. Dennard was a vociferous supporter of Trump and appeared frequently on NPR as his spokesperson. He was quite obnoxious, one of those people who aggressively counter-attacks when anything negative is said about his hero rather than use thoughtful arguments. Hence he is ideal for the conflict-based talk shows that cable news thrives on, though I was annoyed with NPR for giving him so much airtime.
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Trump’s obsession with Canadian milk

We know by now that Donald Trump’s bonnet has a very large number of bees. Several of his unshakeable beliefs relate to economics and all of them are highly dubious. One is that budget deficits are bad (unless they are caused by tax cuts for the wealthy) and another is that any trade deficit with any country is bad. He also seems to think that there is close relationship between the two. He also seems to believe that if any country has a trade surplus with the US, it must be because they are indulging in unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation, or providing subsidies for their domestic manufacturers and producers so that they can undercut the prices of US producers, or they are imposing tariffs to make US goods more expensive.
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Saudi Arabia seeks death penalty for female activist

Mohammed Bin Salman, the person who has emerged as a powerful figure in Saudi Arabia and even as the de facto ruler, has managed to get a lot of favorable press in the west by allowing women to drive, and the media have fawned over him as a reformer, suggesting that his friendship with Jared Kushner is a sign that he has modern values and that he is leading the country away from its ghastly and barbaric practices. But today comes word that the government is seeking the death penalty for a woman activist merely for participating in protests.
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Brace yourselves for a Trump Twitter blizzard

This afternoon saw two major developments in cases brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, though the two cases are separate. In the case in Alexandria, Virginia against Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s one-time campaign manager, the jury brought in guilty verdicts on eight counts but could not agree on the other ten. Manafort is due to face another trial in Washington DC next month.
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No wonder the British oligarchs hate Jeremy Corbyn and want him ousted

Take a look at this short video sent out by him on his Twitter account.

I don’t know if Corbyn was also behind the creation of the video or just tweeted it out.

The only quibble I have with it is that it seems to depict the austerity advocates as well-intentioned but misguided. In reality I think they know exactly what they are doing and that is to shift wealth away from the lower income groups to the rich. All the ‘concern’ about the deficit and growth is just window dressing.

The video, with a few tweaks, would apply well to the US too.

The Catholic church is wrong about almost everything

The senate in Argentina recently voted to not allow abortions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy and the Catholic church was instrumental in achieving that outcome.

The Catholic Church lobbied aggressively against the legalized abortion bill. Every year, about 500,000 illegal and unsafe abortions take place in the country, and since the abortion rights vote, at least one woman has died from an attempt to perform an abortion on herself.

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Whatever happened to Rush Limbaugh?

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh used to be constantly in the news because of the extreme views he expressed. His radio show is still on the air daily, as far as I know, but we rarely hear about him. The same goes for other conservatives like Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin who used their ability to take extreme stands and shock people to gain publicity for themselves.

I do not miss them at all but am curious as to why they have become largely marginal figures. It could be due to the operation of a media version of Gresham’s law that “bad money drives out good”. Alex Jones and Donald Trump have cranked up the outrageousness to 11 and thus hogged all the media attention and effectively muffled the voices of others in the marketplace of conservative extremism.

I am sure that there are still ‘dittoheads’ (what Limbaugh fans are called) out there who listen faithfully to his show. But he himself does not seem to be able to gain much attention from outside that world.

An interesting strategy that is likely to fail

Most of us believe that money plays a huge negative role in American politics. Wealthy individuals, organizations, and lobbying groups give huge sums to politicians and those politicians then act in ways that benefit their donors either directly or indirectly. Of course, both parties vehemently deny that there is a quid pro quo, arguing that donors merely contribute to those elected officials and candidates who already agree with them. Some studies have seemed to provide support for this position.
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