Brett Kavanaugh nominated by Trump for the Supreme Court and voted in after an explosive hearing when accusations of sexual misconduct in his Yale college days were swept aside is in for a second going over. A last-minute addition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival is called “Justice” which probes the allegations and conducts the … Read more
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister since 2017, once revered as a progressive and a breed apart, a counter to populist, reactionary politics of Trump, Brexit, Boris et al, is to step down saying she has run out of steam. In recent times she has been increasingly criticised for her hard-line Covid policies as New … Read more
The discovery of classified files from Joe Biden’s time as vice-president stashed at a former office and two of his homes has taken the glow off his recent run of successes. The scandal threatens to embarrass his administration just as the FBI criminally investigates Donald Trump, for putting the nation’s security at risk by mishandling … Read more
Jair Bolsonaro, the defeated far-right Brazilian president, lurking in Florida is facing calls for his extradition after his supporters stormed the Supreme Federal Court and Congress buildings. A pro-Trumper and mutual backslapper, he’s described as a populist with fascist tendencies and he’s another of the Jupiter in hard aspect to Neptune types and was … Read more
The witless, uncharismatic Kevin McCarthy is struggling to gain his party’s votes to replace Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker with the Republican Party in disarray. His problem appears to lie with the Freedom Caucus, the most far-right and conservative bloc of the GOP, despite him having been – and remaining – a fervent pro-Trumper. … Read more
Lying to look good is common enough but fabricating an entire fantasy around a never-happened CV and life history takes deception to a whole different level. George Santos, the newly elected Republican congressman for Long Island claimed to be a wealthy, biracial, Ukrainian descendant of Holocaust survivors whose mother died in 9/11. He claimed to … Read more
The New York Times is back at its Brit-bashing, having made crassly tasteless and misleading comments recently about the Queen when she died blaming her for the sins of empire. A NYT podcast on the Birmingham Schools spat now suggests concerns about a Muslim extremist takeover of children’s education in the UK were just a … Read more
Even Rupert Murdoch must quake in the face of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over repeated claims on Fox News that it rigged its voting machines as part of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. Dominion lawyers have also obtained rafts of internal messages that are “evidence … Read more
Elon Musk has dented his super-genius, miracle-maker reputation to turn into a blundering Don Quixote who by gross misjudgement may sink Twitter altogether. Since he took over a month ago the platform has dropped two-thirds of its workforce; lost half of its top hundred advertisers; seen the introduction and abrupt cancellation of a subscription-payment scheme; … Read more
As Nancy Pelosi exits stage left having been the first woman elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives, she has endorsed as her successor Hakeem Jefferies who could become the first person of colour to lead a political party in either chamber of Congress. Born 4 August 1970 in New York with a … Read more