Author: admin
Trump just sent a sinister message with ‘appalling’ ballroom design: Nobel laureate
Economist Paul Krugman said President Donald Trump’s removal of a whole White House wing is typical Trumpian style: an “act of vandalism” being paid for by large corporate donors mostly tech and crypto companies seeking to buy Trump’s favor.“I am sure there will be a Trump meme-coin dispenser installed on every table,” Krugman said. But the vandalism is a symbol of an even bigger destruction, warned the Nobel laureate. Trump’s demolition of the White House “isn’t a remodeling or building an addition, it’s a teardown.” And he added it’s a “highly visual metaphor for the way MAGA is tearing down almost everything good about our country.”“Masked government agents are snatching people off the street. The National Guard has been sent into major cities on the obviously false pretext that these cities are in chaos. The U. S. military is essentially murdering people on the high seas. Huge tariffs are, in addition to their economic costs, undermining a system of alliances former presidents spent generations building,” Krugman said. “Green energy is being eviscerated, vindictive prosecutions are the norm, and many millions are on course to lose their health insurance.”So why does Krugman talk about Trump’s “appalling design sense”?“.[B]ecause tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand,” he said. “Yes, Trump has terrible taste and probably would even if he didn’t have power and, thanks to that power, wealth. But the grotesqueness of his White House renovations is structural as well as personal. For the excess and ugliness serve a political purpose: to humiliate and intimidate. The tawdry grandiosity serves not only to glorify Trump’s fragile ego, but also to send the message that resistance is futile.”“. And that ballroom’s hideousness is an equally good metaphor for all the political ugliness that lies in our future,” Krugman said. “. The ballroom is a sign, not just of Trump’s personal vulgarity, but of the collapse of small-r republican norms. Trump is turning the people’s house into a palace fit for a despot partly because that’s his taste, but also to show everyone that he can. L’etat, c’est moi (I am the state).”Spying Trump’s handiwork, Krugman said he now finds himself “frequently thinking of how the Roman Republic degenerated into a dictatorship.”“What happened? Modern historians of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire mostly agree upon one explanation for the Republic’s collapse namely that the enormous loot from Rome’s conquests created a class of incredibly wealthy oligarchs who were too wealthy and powerful to be constrained by republican norms, institutions and laws.”“The modern parallels are obvious,” said Krugman, who posted a photo of Jeff Bezos’s $250 million yacht, with its large pool, jacuzzi and personal “beach club.”Read Krugman’s full essay on his Substack here.
Federal monitors to descend on 2 blue states as Trump DOJ pursues ‘election integrity’
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is planning to send federal election monitors to California and New Jersey next month after receiving requests from state Republican officials. The Justice Department said it would send monitors to Passaic County, New Jersey, as well as to Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside and Fresno counties in California. Federal authorities claim they want to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.”“Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process, and this Department of Justice is committed to upholding the highest standards of election integrity,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told The Associated Press in a statement. The Guardian called the move efforts the “latest salvo” in Republicans’ “preoccupation with election integrity after Donald Trump spent years refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election and falsely railing against mail-in voting as rife with fraud. Democrats fear the new administration will attempt to gain an upper hand in next year’s midterms with similarly unfounded allegations of fraud,” the report noted.“In recent elections, we have received reports of irregularities in these counties that we fear will undermine either the willingness of voters to participate in the election or their confidence in the announced results of the election,” wrote California Republican chair Corrin Rankin. The two states both have elections with broader ramifications. California voters will decide on a Democratic-backed constitutional amendment that would authorize the use of new congressional district maps for the 2026 through 2030 election cycles. The measure was a direct response to Texas’s mid-cycle redistricting, which was aimed at bolstering Republican control of the House. The California measure aims to counterbalance that by redistricting five GOP-held districts to be more favorable to Democrats. New Jersey voters, meanwhile, will cast ballots for governor, lieutenant governor, and all 80 seats in the state’s General Assembly.
Young pilot rescued after small plane plunges into marsh in St. Augustine
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (WSVN) A young pilot is lucky to be alive after her plane came crashing down into a marsh in St. Augustine,.
Xbox fully surrenders the console wars: ‘Halo is on PlayStation going forward,’ a fact that just doesn’t seem real
Xbox fully surrenders the console wars: ‘Halo is on PlayStation going forward,’ a fact that just doesn’t seem real
Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft & Meta are all donors to Trump’s White House ballroom project
The White House is in the midst of a major renovation, and some of the biggest names in tech are helping to foot the bill.
Ending Senate Filibuster, History Shows, Could Backfire for Republicans
Ending Senate Filibuster, History Shows, Could Backfire for Republicans
I’ve been a dentist for 41 years — 7 rules I have for my children, including a fun Halloween tradition
The average American eats 3. 4 pounds of candy around Halloween every year, with kids consuming 7, 000 calories and 3 cups of sugar on the holiday, research shows.
Macy’s Parade to have Mario balloon in celebration of 40th anniversary
Macy’s Parade to have Mario balloon in celebration of 40th anniversary
Pentagon accepts $130 million donation to help pay the military during the government shutdown
Pentagon accepts $130 million donation to help pay the military during the government shutdown
Trump admin broke the law as anonymous ‘friend’ pays troops during shutdown: ex-GOP aide
In the past, lawmakers have approved conditions for government shutdowns, ensuring that national security and the military are still paid despite the closure. That didn’t happen during this government shutdown. So, President Donald Trump came up with a ploy to dodge Congress’s decision not to approve military and national security funding. The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 ensured retroactive pay for federal employees affected by any appropriations lapses beginning on or after Dec. 22, 2018. It leaves them hanging in the interim, however. CNN reported Friday that Trump has an “anonymous donor” who intends to funnel money to the Pentagon. The problem with that, however, is that it isn’t legal, according to one budget expert. “The donation was made on the condition that it be used to offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement to CNN.Parnell also said that the Pentagon took the money under the department’s “general gift acceptance authority.” According to Trump, the donation came from “a friend of mine.” It was given with the explicit purpose of being used for shortfalls. Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) spokesperson told CNN that they are seeking further information on “how this gift—and other recent reprogramming—complies with the Antideficiency Act.”CNN explained that The Antideficiency Act stops any and all federal agencies from using money that wasn’t allocated to them by Congress. But it was a former Republican Senate budget aide who explained that this move isn’t legal. “The Antideficiency Act is explicit that private donations cannot be used to offset a lapse in appropriations,” said Bill Hoagland, who now serves as a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.“I think they could accept it, but they could not use it for that purpose because the law is very clear,” Hoagland added.Read the full report here.