The rats are already eying the exits on the sinking Trump ship

In the wake of the massive repudiation of Trump and the Republicans, you can expect them to indulge in all manner of shenanigans to rush through as much of their policies as possible before the new Democratic-led congress is sworn in on January 3. But the old congress goes on a Christmas recess December 18-31 so effectively, the old congress ends on December 17, though the leaders of the chambers can bring them back into session for the rest of the year.

Some of Trump’s most vicious enablers are expected to make quick getaways before congressional investigations rain down on them for their rampant corruption and abuses and the various committees issue subpoenas for them to appear and explain their actions. Up to now, the Republican committee chairs and majorities in congress had blocked any serious attempts to check their excesses.

Already Robert Garcia, who is expected to be the next chair of the powerful house oversight committee, has issued a terse warning to Trump officials.

Robert Garcia, the Democratic congressman set to become the next chair of the oversight committee of the House of Representatives, had two words for Republicans on Tuesday evening: “Lawyer up.”

The House oversight committee serves as a “watchdog” committee and has broad authority to call witnesses, request government documents and issue subpoenas.

Garcia has previously said that, if Democrats won, he would lead investigations into Elon Musk’s role in the “department of government efficiency (Doge)”, the Trump family’s business dealings, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abuses and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

“We’re not starting from scratch here,” Garcia previously told Punchbowl News. “There’s an enormous amount of work that has happened that is public, and there’s an enormous amount of work that’s happened that we’ve been quietly working on for many months.”
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Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator poised to lead the Senate finance committee, also flexed on his potential future authority. “Subpoenas,” Wyden wrote on X.

With the Senate and House back in Democrats’ control, Garcia, Wyden and other congressional leaders will be able to lead and steer investigations into the US president, his allies and agenda.

“We have the power to go to the courts on behalf of the House. We have the power of contempt, and not just criminal contempt, but civil contempt that goes to the courts. We have the power of subpoena,” Garcia told Punchbowl News.

Other reports spelled out more potential investigations.
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Democrats also won big in governor and state house races

There is a lot to analyze in Tuesday’s election results and that topic will occupy this blog for a few days as I focus on different aspects.

While a lot of attention was focused on the sweeping wins by Democrats in the federal races for the US House of Representatives and the Senate, there were also significant wins by them in down ballot races and for state and local offices. The races for governor and state houses tend to get less attention than the ones for federal offices but they are really important because who controls the governors’ mansions and state houses has immediate effects on the everyday lives of people. Furthermore, the party that controls the state power apparatus has a huge influence in how federal elections are run.

This article discusses the importance of state races.

State governments shape a wide array of policies affecting everyday lives, including tax rates and abortion rights, school choice and education funding, data center development, and the use of artificial intelligence and law enforcement surveillance cameras.
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Abdul El-Sayed’s rousing victory speech

In the end, Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Senate seat quite easily by a margin of 52.5%-45.5%, defeating Trump toady Mike Rogers despite the last minute defection to Rogers of Haley Stevens, the Democratic congresswoman he defeated in the primary.

In his victory speech, El-Sayed pulled no punches, trolling Trump and JD Vance (he referred to him as ‘habibi’ which is an Arabic term of endearment that roughly translates as ‘my dear’) while reaffirming his commitment to the progressive policies that enabled him to ride to victory and not ‘moving to the center’ as the establishment pundits love to advise Democrats.

Meanwhile in Maine, the abominable Susan Collins got really trounced by Troy Jackson by a margin of 54%-46%. Boy, am I glad to see her and her bogus ‘concerned’ schtick come to an end. James Talarico also trounced Ken Paxton in Texas by 56%-44%.

The egg on my face tastes great!

I am notorious for making wrong predictions in elections. But even given that poor track record, my predictions for the mid-term elections yesterday were spectacularly bad, since I said that results would not live up to the optimistic predictions of a blue wave and that the Democrats might win the House of Representatives by just a small margin and the Republicans would likely hold on to the Senate.

It looks now like there was a massive blue wave. At the time of this writing (about 10:30 pm Pacific time), Democrats have flipped 27 seats to win control of the House. They already have 224 seats to 127 for Republicans with 84 races still to be called. In the Senate, they have flipped seven seats to already have 53 seats to the Republicans 42 with five races still to be called. In the Senate, 51 seats would not have been enough for control since Pennsylvania’s supposedly Democratic senator John Fetterman seems to have lost his marbles and makes unconditional support for Israel, however awful their actions, his main concern and could vote with the Republicans or switch parties at any time. You can be sure that they are heavily courting him. If Democrats had only 51 seats, he could hold the party hostage to go along with his appalling policies. Now he becomes marginalized.

I have been waiting for the Michigan Senate seat to be called before going to sleep since I fervently wish that Abdul El-Sayed prevails after the disgusting racist campaign that was waged against him by Trump and the Republicans and the last minute endorsement of his opponent by his primary rival Haley Stevens, who is a Democratic congresswoman. He has a slight lead but it is close.
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The ‘moderate’ or ‘centrist’ Democrats are the real radicals

So here we are on election day, after one of the most disgusting campaigns by Republicans in my lifetime, and I am not feeling good about the prospects.

I am not of the same mind as the many people who are predicting a blue wave of sweeping Democratic victories. I hate to be a buzzkill but I have been burned too many times before by high pre-election expectations that have been thwarted because there seems to be a large contingent of right-wing Trump supporters in the electorate who remain undetected by pollsters but show up to vote for Republicans. I am also wary about the supposed drop in Black and Hispanic support for Trump. It may well end up that Democrats gain just enough seats in the House of Representative to barely become the majority but not win the senate.

The only ‘October surprise’ that occurred was a relatively small one in which Haley Stevens, who lost the primary race for the Democratic nomination for the Michigan senate seat, suddenly and at the last minute endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, who is an ardent Trump supporter and thus opposes everything that Steven had claimed to support. While I dearly hope that Abdul El-Sayed wins the senate seat, I fear that the lackluster support that he seems to have among the Black community could sink him.

Natasha Lennard of The Intercept says what needs to be said, that the so-called moderates and centrists within the Democratic party (like Stevens) are the real extremists, willing to thwart the desires of the party’s base for the sake of their own agenda and to protect Israel’s genocidal policies.
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The ugly mid-term election campaigns run by the right

The US mid-term elections have seen a level of outright lying and racism and bigotry and fearmongering by Trump and the Republicans that is far beyond anything that I have witnessed before. Things that used to be signaled with coded dog-whistles to avoid being seen as an awful person have been abandoned and are now on naked display. They are owning to being disgusting people.

The ugliness is sickening and can be better stomached if wrapped in satire as in this piece by Jordan Klepper.

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North Carolina’s attempt to suppress the vote of Black college students

Republicans are going all out to try and rig the mid-term elections in their favor by a variety of means: gerrymander seats to make them more favorable to them, remove voters from rolls, try to make it harder for voters to show eligibility to vote, and remove polling stations in locations that they think favor Democrats.

The last feature was on display in North Carolina to prevent Black college students from voting but that effort may have backfired.

On 15 October, the first day of early voting in North Carolina, mostly Black students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (NC A&T), Bennett College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) marched from their college campuses to their nearest polling sites for the first day of early voting.

Previously, students were able to vote on their respective campuses; however, late last year, with Republicans at the helm, the North Carolina board of elections removed several polling sites from local colleges: UNCG, NC A&T, Western Carolina University (WCU) and Elon University. As a result, students have taken it upon themselves to organize voting. The marches – two, so far – took about two hours round trip, but protecting their right to vote, the students say, is worth it.
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The self-immolation of America

The 20th century saw the apex of US power. Even during the Cold War with the Soviet Union as a rival nuclear superpower, the US was still dominant. This dominance came with a massive cost for many people in other countries. as we saw the US being behind the murder of millions of people all across Asia, Africa, and Central and South America in its global anti-Communist rampage, that left many countries devastated and reeling and still struggling to recover. The cynical and callous way that the US behaved is something that many Americans do not fully appreciate since the US and other western media have been complicit in hiding the ugly truth from its own people, enabling them to think that the US has largely been a benevolent force in the world.

(For those who think I am exaggerating, I recommend the book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by journalist Vincent Bevins that describes in great detail how the US instigated coups and put into power rulers in many countries who carried out large scale massacres of leftists and democracy activists. Starting after World War II, this program saw its fruition in Indonesia and Brazil in the 1960s and that murderous model was later used in dozens of other countries across the world. I will be giving a detailed review of the book in the future.)

But along with this brute force military-based dominance, there was also the concomitant development of soft power.
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Lula wins in Brazil! And so does popular movement in Serbia!

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after coming in second in the first round of presidential voting three weeks ago, staged a dramatic come-from-behind victory in the run-off, defeating Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president and Trump acolyte Jair Bolsonaro.

With nearly 99% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 51.75% of the vote to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.25%.

Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.

But Lula did precisely that on Sunday, prompting joyous scenes on the streets of São Paulo, where he had been following the count, and at the hotel where he was watching the count.
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For Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, the victory represents a sensational final chapter in a storied political career that began when he emerged as a union leader in São Paulo’s industrial suburbs in the late 1970s.

After entering politics, the former factory worker who was born in rural poverty made three unsuccessful presidential bids, in 1989, 1994 and 1998, before finally becoming Brazil’s first elected working-class president in 2002.

Lula stepped down after the maximum two consecutive terms allowed by the constitution but returned to power after winning the 2022 election against Bolsonaro’s father, then the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, who was subsequently jailed for plotting a coup.

Lula’s win is bad news for Bolsonaro who is serving a 27-year sentence for that botched power grab and was hoping to be freed and given a role in government had his son prevailed.

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The Hugging Face episode reveals cult-like behavior of AI agents

Dire warnings about the dangers posed by AI have been around since it first burst into the news. But back in July, more serious alarms were raised when it was revealed that the company Hugging Face had been hacked by agents from the OpenAI system.

I did not quite understand what had happened or why this particular incident had raised alarms to a whole new level or even what the difference was between a ‘bot’ and an ‘agent’. So I was glad to come across this explainer as to why there was so much concern about this particular hack.


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