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Category: Politics

Rep. Granger’s Hill absence, revelation of ‘dementia issues’ reignite age debate

Rep. Granger’s Hill absence, revelation of ‘dementia issues’ reignite age debate

The Washington Post reports: Revelations that Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) has been residing at an independent living facility for seniors and is experiencing dementia symptoms while missing months of votes have renewed a national discussion about Washington’s aging leaders. Granger, 81, left her post as chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in March after announcing last year that she would retire at the end of this congressional term. She has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,”…

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Republicans don’t know who their daddy is: Musk or Trump?

Republicans don’t know who their daddy is: Musk or Trump?

Amanda Marcotte writes: The more Donald Trump denies he’s being controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased the president-elect with over $250 million in campaign spending this year, the less anyone believes him. Last week’s spending battle was complex in the details, but not in the main takeaway: The Tesla CEO is leading the aging and tired Trump by the nose. Trump’s sole ask of congressional Republicans going into budget negotiations was to end the debt ceiling, at least for a couple of years, to spare…

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Musk wants to ‘delete’ vital consumer financial protection

Musk wants to ‘delete’ vital consumer financial protection

Sharon McGowan writes: Nearly every exit poll conducted on Election Day found that, more than any other issues, voters’ concerns about the economy helped to return Donald Trump to the White House and put Republicans back in charge of both houses of Congress. Americans who felt the sting of inflation and who had trouble making ends meet, as companies steadily increased prices for essential goods like groceries and clothing, voted in the hopes that a new administration and new Congress would bring relief for their families….

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Robert Kuttner: How Musk out-maneuvered Trump

Robert Kuttner: How Musk out-maneuvered Trump

  After the Republican-led Congress passes a government spending bill but rejects a last-minute demand for a debt limit suspension from President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, we look at the richest man in the world’s growing influence, with The American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. “At the end of the day, Musk got exactly what he wanted,” says Kuttner, referring to Musk’s influence in the removal of an anti-China trade provision in the bill. “It’s a classic…

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Trump’s imperial ambitions rattle Greenland, Panama, Canada, and Mexico

Trump’s imperial ambitions rattle Greenland, Panama, Canada, and Mexico

Axios reports: President-elect Trump has big plans to make America greater, in terms of square mileage. Why it matters: Trump has been in a strikingly imperial mood since his election victory. He has floated acquiring Greenland, reclaiming the Panama Canal, annexing Canada, and potentially invading Mexico — to the intense consternation of their leaders. In each case, Trump is blending trolling, negotiation and intimidation. He pitched statehood for Canada at least in part to needle “Governor” Justin Trudeau. But he has doubled down in the last 48 hours (including…

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Denmark announces long-planned boost to Greenland’s defence

Denmark announces long-planned boost to Greenland’s defence

BBC News reports: The Danish government has announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland, hours after US President-elect Donald Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a “double digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn). He described the timing of the announcement as an “irony of fate”. On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an “absolute necessity” for…

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The Texan doctor and the disappeared Saudi princesses

The Texan doctor and the disappeared Saudi princesses

Heidi Blake writes: Dwight Burdick, a private physician to the Saudi royal family, was on a rotation at the King’s palace, in Jeddah, when he got an urgent summons. Princess Hala, a daughter of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, had gone wild with a knife. Burdick was asked to enter her quarters and forcibly sedate her. Burdick, a lifelong peacenik with a neat white beard, had moved to Saudi Arabia from Texas in the mid-nineties. He had served for…

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Trump’s choice of Gaetz to be AG revealed their mutual contempt for the law and women

Trump’s choice of Gaetz to be AG revealed their mutual contempt for the law and women

David Firestone writes: There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice. Trump wanted to give that position to a man…

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Musk + Trump = Mump regime

Musk + Trump = Mump regime

  Timothy Snyder writes: For a new world we need new words. Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens (“administration,” “presidency”, and the like). That normalizes the abnormal. And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity…

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How Israel’s plan to carve up Syria was thwarted by Assad’s downfall

How Israel’s plan to carve up Syria was thwarted by Assad’s downfall

David Hearst writes: The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government thwarted an Israeli plan to divide Syria into three blocks in order to sever its ties with Iran and Hezbollah, according to regional security sources briefed about the plot. Israel planned to establish military and strategic ties with the Kurds in the northeast and the Druze in the south, leaving Assad in power in Damascus under Emirati funding and control. This would have also served to limit Turkey’s influence in Syria…

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Israel’s massive attack on free Syria — background and motivations

Israel’s massive attack on free Syria — background and motivations

Michael Karadjis writes: It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has…

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Syria: The rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham

Syria: The rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham

  In this episode of Centre Stage, Patrick Haenni, an author and researcher specialising in Syria, shares his expertise on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Haenni discusses HTS’s origins and ideological transformation and reveals how the armed group played a key role in achieving what no other faction could — ending the Assad regime.

Push to ban highly profitable TV drug ads will face strong resistance

Push to ban highly profitable TV drug ads will face strong resistance

The New York Times reports: Since the late 1990s, drug companies have spent tens of billions of dollars on television ads, drumming up demand for their products with cheerful jingles and scenes of dancing patients. Now, some people up for top jobs in the incoming Trump administration are attacking such ads, setting up a clash with a powerful industry that has long had the courts on its side. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary,…

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With Assad’s fall, Putin’s dream of world domination is turning into a nightmare

With Assad’s fall, Putin’s dream of world domination is turning into a nightmare

Peter Pomerantsev writes: As Bashar al-Assad fell, Russian nationalist military bloggers turned on the Kremlin. “Ten years of our presence,” fumed the “Two Majors” Telegram channel to its more than one million subscribers, “dead Russian soldiers, billions of spent roubles and thousands of tonnes of ammunition, they must be compensated somehow.” Some didn’t shy away from lambasting Vladimir Putin. “The adventure in Syria, initiated by Putin personally, seems to be coming to an end. And it ends ignominiously, like all…

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Syria has been liberated from Russia and Iran – but outsiders still threaten its new freedom

Syria has been liberated from Russia and Iran – but outsiders still threaten its new freedom

Robin Yassin-Kassab writes: The liberation of Syria was long hoped for, but unexpected. Over the past weeks, Syrians have experienced the full range of human emotions, with the exception of boredom. On the first two Assad-free Fridays, millions of celebrants swelled the streets to chant and sing and speak formerly forbidden truths. There was a huge presence of women, who had been less visible during the years of war. Relatives are meeting again and assuaging their pain as hundreds of…

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Assad’s fall is the Middle East’s 1989

Assad’s fall is the Middle East’s 1989

Lina Khatib writes: The spectacularly rapid fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his regime is the Middle East’s 1989. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of 54 years of Assad family rule signals an earthquake in the regional order—with tremors that will be felt for decades to come. Just as 1989 was marked by a series of falling dominoes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and elsewhere, the collapse of the Syrian regime is part of a chain…

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