Will no one speak up for white billionaire men?

Jim Irsay, the billionaire owner of an NFL football team, was arrested in 2014 for driving while impaired. In a recent news conference, he claimed that he was discriminated against because he is a white billionaire.

The longtime NFL owner spoke about the circumstances of his arrest in an interview with the HBO show Real Sports that aired on Tuesday. Irsay later pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while impaired after initially facing four additional counts of possession of a controlled substance.

“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire,” Irsay told HBO’s Andrea Kremer. “If I’m just the average guy down the block, they’re not pulling me in, of course not.”
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Police in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel pulled Irsay over after observing a man in a Toyota Highlander driving slowly, stopping in the roadway and failing to use a turn signal. Authorities discovered various prescription drugs in Irsay’s vehicle along with more than $29,000 in cash.

A toxicology report showed Irsay had the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone as well as alprazolam, which is used to treat anxiety, in his system at the time of his arrest. Officers on the scene said he had trouble reciting the alphabet and failed other field sobriety tests.

Of course he’s right. The US is highly biased in favor of poor and people of color who get all manner of preferential treatment, especially from the criminal justice system. Kudos to Irsay for having the guts to point this out, even though he will suffer all manner of consequences for doing so, such as (oh, the horror!) being criticized by the media.

Meanwhile a group associated with Stephen Miller , serial sex abuser Donald Trump’s close advisor, has filed a lawsuit against the department store chain Macy’s charging that it “perpetuate[s] illegal racial discrimination — denying career advancement to white straight men.”

It is about time that we stood in solidarity with straight white men who have suffered for so long in silence as gays and people of color and women have been given preference over them.

The problem with Dollar stores

In the US, so-called ‘Dollar stores’ are ubiquitous. There are two very close to where I live. These stores offer all manner of items, food and household goods, priced at around a dollar, so that makes it cheap to shop. As far as I can tell, their model is to buy large stocks of items that manufacturers want to offload at hugely discounted prices for whatever reason and then resell them. This means that what you find in the stores is highly variable from day to day, depending on what items manufacturers were clearing out. You just have to try your luck.

In the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver says that the business model of these companies is to make profits by understaffing its stores and underpaying its employees. While these stores are sometimes the only retail outlets in poorer neighborhoods and thus seem to serve a need, another problem (that Oliver did not address) is that by using their size to get huge quantities of stuff at low prices, they often drive existing mom-and-pop stores in those neighborhoods out of business. Thus the need they are serving is one that they helped create.

Joe Biden’s age and popularity

Yesterday, Joe Biden turned 81 and it was yet another occasion for the media to fixate on his age. Ir has become a staple of the news to say that voters are concerned about his age. Why is that news? If any pollster asked me if I was concerned about his age, of course I would say yes. But that does not mean I think he is unable to be president. It becomes news only if there are signs that his age is affecting his ability to serve as president. And as far as I can see, he seems to be able to do so. I may not agree with some of the things he does – I am furious about his support of Israeli atrocities in Gaza – but there is no sign that he does not know what he is doing.

And yet, serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is 78, just three years younger than Biden, who says the most outlandish things and showing signs of cognitive decline and yet there is hardly any focus on that.
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Protests worldwide increase at Israel’s assault on Gaza

As the death toll from the Israeli assault on Gaze rises to horrifying levels, with bombing attacks on even hospitals and refugee camps, protests against those policies have also increased, both in the US and around the world. Many of the critical voices in the US have been Jewish.

Even before 7 October, support for Israel among American Jews – who constitute the world’s second largest Jewish population after Israel – was shifting. One poll showed that while most Jews see caring about Israel as important to their Jewish identity, more than half disapprove of the country’s rightwing government. Another found that a quarter of American Jews agree Israel is an “apartheid state”, and one-fifth of those under 40 do not think the Jewish state has a right to exist.

These shifts have come with a surge in Jewish organizing on the left, with groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, which have long condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, at the forefront of calls for a ceasefire and an end to US support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Since the war started, Jewish activists have shut down New York’s Grand Central station and been arrested for actions like occupying the halls of Congress and rallying in front of the home of the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who is also Jewish.

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Santos continues to surprise

The ethics committee of the US House of Representatives has released its report on George Santos and even though we have been regaled for the past year with the audacious nature of his lies and behavior, this report was still able to provide some surprises, especially as to the nature of the expenses that he charged to his campaign.

They concluded that Santos was at the center of a “complex web of unlawful activity” as he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.” The report describes Santos spinning through various alleged schemes and lies as he obtained funds for everything from casino trips to cosmetic procedures, while dealing with personal credit card debt and negative bank balances. 
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The desperate GOP effort to find an acceptable message on abortion

The recent defeats at elections has resulted in the GOP scrambling to find a message on abortion that will placate the anti-abortion zealots in their base while not alienating everyone else. Will Saletan looks at where the GOP candidates for the presidential nomination have ended up.

AS A PRO-CHOICE BACKLASH against the Dobbs decision sweeps across the country—defeating pro-life ballot measures, passing pro-choice referenda, and taking down Republican candidates—the GOP is scrambling for safe ground. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is telling candidates to oppose a federal abortion ban. The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee is advising them to settle for “reasonable limitations.”

In the Republican presidential race, the two men who stoutly advocated a federal ban on abortions—Mike Pence and Tim Scott—are gone. The candidates who remain on the debate stage or who don’t need it—Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Donald Trump—are hedging or downplaying the issue. They still call themselves pro-life. But they’re finding ways to pretend that they’re not a threat to abortion rights.
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WHICH OF THESES CANDIDATES, beneath their respective façades, is most likely to ban abortions? Here’s my best guess. DeSantis signed the strictest ban as governor, and he’s doing the least to conceal that he’d do more as president. Haley, despite her pro-choice mimicry, would sign any abortion restriction that reaches her desk. Christie is the candidate least likely to sign a ban, since he has set the highest threshold for acting without a consensus of the states. I’m excluding Ramaswamy, who can’t be trusted.

As for Trump: He doesn’t care about this issue at all. He views pro-lifers as an interest group, like the dairy industry. He thinks that by ending Roe v. Wade and giving them the “power to negotiate,” he has sufficiently bought them off. And so far, he seems to be right.

Expect more shifting rhetoric from all of them as they grope around for a formulation that is evasive and vague enough to not antagonize too many people.

It is ironic that the call to ban abortions, which theGOP long used as a rallying cry for their base and resulted in them hailing the US Supreme Court’s overthrow of the Roe v. Wade precedent as one of their greatest victories, has so soon turned into an albatross around their necks.

The need to “pass the rule” is further stymying the GOP leadership

It is when things break down that one learns how things really work. In the case of the US House of Representatives, the highly dysfunctional GOP has resulted in me learning new things every day and the latest is the need to “pass a rule” in order to more easily pass legislation.

The House has two ways to pass legislation: By coming directly to the floor for an up-or-down vote, or making a quick pit-stop at the House Rules Committee.

What’s the difference?

Bills that come directly to the House floor for a vote and bypass the Rules Committee are passed “under suspension of the Rule” and require a two-thirds majority of the voting members to pass. Bills that make the pit-stop in the Rules Committee come to the floor with certain debate parameters that must be fulfilled, but this method enables those bills to pass the chamber with a simple majority. But those debate parameters, called “the rule,” must also first be debated and voted on before the House can debate and vote on the underlying bill.
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Suella strikes back

To no one’s surprise, Suella Braverman wasted no time in lashing out at UK prime minister Rishi Sunak who had fired her as home secretary for her intemperate remarks about demonstrators and the homeless. In what has been described as a ‘brutal’ three-page letter, she accuses Sunak of being a feckless betrayer of promises made to her to gain her support, and who would never have become prime minister without it.

The prime minister has also been accused by a group of “red wall” and rightwing Conservatives of abandoning the voters who brought the party to power in 2019, as anger among some backbenchers grew over Braverman’s sacking and the surprise return of David Cameron.

In her letter, Braverman claimed that Sunak had agreed to a secret pact to introduce key measures to secure her backing during the Tory leadership contest in October 2022, against Boris Johnson, but then “betrayed” the country by failing to deliver.
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Shutdown averted. For a short while. Again.

The House of Representatives passed a two-step stop-gap funding measure, funding part of the government until January 19 and the rest to February 2. There was no aid for Israel and Ukraine. If passed by the senate and signed by president Biden (which seems likely), then that will avert the shutdown deadline on Friday and will buy another two months before the next shutdown crisis.

The voting was interesting. It passed 336 to 95 but most of the votes to pass (209) came from Democrats with only 127 Republicans joining them. Just two Democrats sided with 93 Republicans to oppose the bill. This result is almost identical to the one that passed the previous continuing resolution on September 30th. 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voted in favor while one Democrats and 90 Republicans voted against it. When former speaker Kevin McCarthy passed that continuing resolution without demanding the big spending cuts that his extremist faction demanded, it caused apoplexy among Matt Gaetz and his faction of the GOP who argued that he was caving in to Biden and the Democrats and triggered the process that led to his ouster.

Now that Johnson has done almost exactly the same thing, what will the Gaetz faction do? I cannot see them having the stomach to do a similar revolt against Johnson and oust him after the entire GOP conference had hailed him as the party’s savior after the bruising speaker battle. They cannot afford to go through that again. But if they don’t do anything, then they would have been effectively defanged.

There are reports that they are furious about this vote but are not sure what to do and are trying to find ways to assert their power.

Many House conservatives are fuming that Johnson — the most ideologically conservative speaker in decades — refused to take a hard line in his first attempt negotiating with Democrats and instead leaned on them for help. In the end, more Democrats voted for the measure than Republicans, in nearly identical numbers to the September stopgap measure that triggered McCarthy’s firing. Some tore into his strategy in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, arguing that his plan, which would allow funding levels set under Nancy Pelosi to persist for months, is tantamount to surrender.

They’re not looking to oust Johnson over it. But some conservatives are privately entertaining other ways to retaliate.

Watch the GOP go through yet another drama of infighting.

John Oliver on the Israel-Hamas war

Once again, it is a comedy show Last Week Tonight that provides a serious and balanced look at the carnage that is taking place in Gaza. Oliver points out how even calling for a ceasefire has been made controversial and Biden and Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau are tying themselves up in knots trying to avoid calling for one.