Archives for January 2024

Taylor Swift had quite the reaction when called out by 2024 Golden Globes host Jo Koy. The comedian made a joke during the Jan. 7 telecast held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles that poked fun at the NFL’s love for the singer during her appearances at Kansas City Chiefs games. “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift,” Koy said, as the camera panned over to Swift who made a face and took a sip of her Champagne. Swift attended the Globes ceremony in a custom Gucci and De Beers jewelry. The singer’s concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” received a Golden Globes nomination for cinematic and box office achievement. The category is one of two new categories added to this year’s awards show. This wasn’t Swift’s first Golden Globes nomination. She was last nominated in 2023 for best original song, but was not in attendance. Before the singer made her way through the red carpet, people were wondering if she would be at the Globes or at the Chiefs game on Sunday. Swift had attended five Chiefs games in a row — and Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers happened to be in California. While Kelce’s team had a game, the athlete was designated inactive while the Chiefs gear up for the NFL playoffs. The 2024 Golden Globes are airing on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. Follow along as TODAY.com updates the winners list throughout the night.

Jurgen Klopp has insisted there is still plenty more to come from Darwin Nunez, claiming he is actually “a bit afraid” of the striker’s immense potential.

After enduring a mixed first season at Anfield, the Uruguayan is now starting to show the sort of form that convinced Liverpool to pay a fee potentially rising to £85 million to snare him from Benfica last summer.

He has scored seven goals and provided five assists in 14 outings across all competitions thus far, while also showing major improvement in terms of his defensive work and contribution to build-up.

But when asked if Reds supporters are now seeing the best of their No. 9, Klopp replied: “Of course not, but it’s completely different now.

“The first year was hard for him, and then hard for me as well because you see this incredible talent, massive potential, but it’s difficult to unfold it.

“I’m obviously a manager who can help a player but I need contact for that. In an ideal world, you can speed up the process by talking a lot with the player.

“I was not able to do that because I don’t speak Spanish, but his English is now much better and my Spanish still isn’t.

“[He’s] settled in the team, when you see him around the building here, everything is different. He’s in a very good moment and it’s still only the start for him.

“He’s in a good moment and long may it continue, hopefully it will continue like that forever. I’m a bit afraid of the highs he could reach because there is so much there, it’s crazy.

“Now we’ve found the real starting moment and let’s work from here.”

As well as crediting Nunez’s improved English, Klopp also spoke up the importance of having an additional on-pitch translator in Alexis Mac Allister.

He added: “The football English is not complicated, we don’t have to speak about everything in life, but the football communication is now possible which is absolutely helpful.

“And, of course, we have an extra on-field player; so far it was always Ali as the translator, now we have Macca and they are really close

“And Macca is a super smart footballer so if I forget to tell him something Macca tells him anyway.

“Strikers need to know where to go when midfielders have the ball and that’s the stuff you talk to players about.

“In an ideal world the players talk to each other as well about it and Macca is super helpful.

“Lucho’s English is also getting better and they are very close as well and that’s how it is.

“There’s just not a specific amount of time, for each individual it’s different, to really arrive, but who cares? It’s done now and that’s good.”

Maine Democrat Official Can’t Help But Smile on Anti-Trump Media Victory Lap After Singlehandedly Removing 45 from Ballot Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows appeared quite proud of her decision Thursday to remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. Bellows appeared on MSNBC’s “All In” immediately after issuing her ruling saying, “I am duty-bound to make this determination. We also, I rather, lay out that the record demonstrates that in fact the events of January 6, 2021, which were unprecedented and tragic, were an insurrection in the meaning of section 3 the 14th Amendment.” The provision states that anyone who has sworn an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” is ineligible for office. It was adopted after the Civil War as a way to bar from office those who fought for or materially supported the Confederacy. Bellows — who formerly served as executive director of the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union in Maine and was a Joe Biden elector in 2020 — further justified her decision to bar Trump from the ballot explaining, “Under the law there’s a very compressed timeline in evaluating this, I came to the conclusion that I could not, unfortunately or fortunately, wait for the United States Supreme Court to make a decision. The Maine law required me to issue that decision.” Democrat Shenna Bellows explains that she personally decided that Trump was guilty of engaging in an insurrection. So she unilaterally removed the leading Republican presidential candidate from Maine’s ballot. She gleefully tells MSDNC “I could not, unfortunately—or… pic.twitter.com/jPpmaxx9yr — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) December 29, 2023 During the course of the interview, Bellows broke out into a big smile when “All In” guest host Jason Johnson asked her about the voter turnout out in Maine. “How do you get such high turnout in the state among all sorts of political partisans?” he asked. “I smile because we were No. 1 in voter turnout per capita in 2022,” Bellows answered. “We have same-day voter registration. We have no excuse absentee voting up to 30 days prior to Election Day. We make it really easy to register to vote, to cast your ballot and know your ballot will be counted,” she added, still with all smiles. “We’re really proud of our national leadership in voter participation,” Bellows said. View this post on Instagram Bellows clearly places a high premium on voter participation. Let’s just hope that also includes the same level of concern about voter integrity. In a Thursday news release, the Maine Secretary of State’s office made much of a “hearing” Bellows presided over on December 15 as some kind of proof her unilateral decision involved some level of due process for Trump. “Mr. Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions. A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months, culminating in his speech on the Ellipse,” Bellows wrote in her decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” she concluded. Trump hasn’t been convicted or even charged with engaging in an “insurrection,” and there can be little doubt that special counsel Jack Smith would have brought such charges if he felt he could get a conviction. It is a violation of federal law to engage in a rebellion or insurrection, with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Smith’s election interference case alleges that Trump made false statements about the integrity of the 2020 election, which led to the Capitol incursion, as if the participants were not independent actors who could have had their own concerns about the election. On Jan. 6, 2021 in his Ellipse speech, Trump encouraged his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Doesn’t sound like much of a rebellion or insurrection to me. Could you imagine if William Wallace attempted to rally the Scots with that line? Following the speech, Trump reiterated online that he did not support violence. The vast majority of the protesters did just what he said. A relative few engaged in violence, but it should be noted that none of them fired any shots or has even been charged with taking a gun into the Capitol. None of the Jan. 6 defendants has been charged with insurrection, either. The only shot fired that day was by Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd, who killed unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt. By contrast, during the Civil War, millions of shots were fired and hundreds of thousands died. That was an actual insurrection against the federal government. Former George W. Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer suggested it’s Bellows and other Democrats trying to keep Trump off the ballot who are engaging in an insurrection. “Make no mistake: Attempts to throw Trump off the ballot are white-collar insurrections, carried out by Democrats in powerful positions, who falsely use the ‘law’ as a weapon,” he posted on X on Friday. “They fear a vote of the people, so they resort to this. This is an insurrection,” Fleischer added. Make no mistake: Attempts to throw Trump off the ballot are white-collar insurrections, carried out by Democrats in powerful positions, who falsely use the “law” as a weapon. They fear a vote of the people, so they resort to this. This is an insurrection. — Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) December 29, 2023 Similarly, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, no cheerleader for Trump by any stretch, responded to Bellows decision, “Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature.” Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the Legislature. The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned. — Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) December 29, 2023 “The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned,” Collins continued. It’s now up to the U.S. Supreme Court to right this wrong. Hopefully, they will do so unanimously. Truth and Accuracy We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Ryan Reynolds shares hilarious edited picture of himself and Travis Kelce as their partners Blake Lively and Taylor Swift at Beyonce’s Renaissance film UK premiere as the Hollywood star jokes: ‘I feel like I should remember this’ Swift and Lively attended Beyonce’s ‘Renaissance’ premier in London, Thursday Kelce travelled to Green Bay, Wisconsin with his Chiefs teammates on Saturday DailyMail.com provides all the latest international sports news Ryan Reynolds has shared a hilarious edited picture of himself and Travis Kelce as their respective partners Blake Lively and Taylor Swift at Beyonce’s Renaissance film U.K premiere, as the Hollywood star joked: ‘I feel like I should remember this.’ The 47-year-old actor trolled both his wife and the pop icon on social media, Sunday, after they were both snapped at ‘Queen B’s’ special event in London on Thursday. Swift, 33, shimmered in a glitzy Balmain gown as Lively, 36, rested a glove-clad hand on the singer’s thigh while posing in front of cameras. Now, Reynolds cropped his head’s wife for his, while subbing out ‘Tay’s’ with Kelce’s in his latest Instagram post. ‘I feel like I should remember this,’ he captioned the amusing photo. Reynold Reynolds trolled his wife, Blake Lively & Taylor Swift, with an edited pic’ on Instagram Swift and Lively posed together at Beyonce’s Renaissance U.K. Premiere in London, Thursday After her long weekend in England’s capital, Swift will travel to Wisconsin to watch Kelce and the Chiefs play against the Packers on Sunday afternoon. The 34-year-old tight end was snapped getting off his team’s plane in Green Bay on Saturday. A day prior to travelling with his teammates, he joined Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, for a festive bash in Kansas City. Packers safety Darnell Savage has been activated from injured reserve, clearing the way for his potential return from a five-game absence against the Chiefs. Kelce will trade London for Green Bay, Wisconsin, to watch Kelce against the Packers, Sunday Packers safety Darnell Savage Jr. will return against the Chiefs. He hasn’t played since Oct. 22 Savage has been dealing with a calf injury and hasn’t played since an October 22 loss at Denver, but he practiced fully this week and was listed as questionable on Friday’s injury report. His return would boost a Green Bay secondary that has been dealing with multiple injuries. Safety Rudy Ford has missed the Packers´ last two games and is questionable for Sunday night due to biceps and groin injuries. Cornerback Jaire Alexander has sat out three straight games with a shoulder injury and also is questionable for Sunday. Cornerback Eric Stokes has missed five straight games with a hamstring issue and remains on injured reserve, though he was a limited practice participant this week. The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Donald Trump is now describing himself as some type of new avatar for the Spirit of ’76, Founding Father for the 21st century, a defender of liberty and freedom against tyranny. To that point, in fundraising emails and in other communications, Trump is proclaiming that he is waging a great battle against the so-called deep state and “Joe Biden, the Democrats, and their corrupt administration”:

Yesterday, we celebrated the 247th anniversary of our independence as a free nation.

We paid tribute to the great patriots who sacrificed everything so that we could have the chance to be free.

But sadly, our great nation is on the brink of falling victim to the dark forces of tyranny that our Founding Fathers fought so valiantly against.

We now find ourselves in a new quest for independence.

A cabal of unelected bureaucrats, often referred to as the Deep State, are attempting to amass total control over our country and stop you from having a voice in your own government.

There were many times when the cause of our Founding Fathers looked bleak. The odds were certainly not in their favor.

They were standing up to the largest empire the world had ever seen…

…But the cause of freedom proved to be the most powerful force on the face of the planet.

Our Founding Fathers won their David-vs-Goliath battle for liberty and gave us the greatest nation on God’s green earth.

Now, our nation is engulfed in the final battle for America. If we win the 2024 election, we will reclaim our independence, our liberty, and our justice.

But if we lose, then our Republic will be gone for good.

Just as the patriots – who we honor today – refused to surrender, neither can we.

Together, we will save our country and we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

Trump is especially proud that Tucker Carlson, a neofascist and fake right-wing populist, reportedly anointed him as one of the most important leaders in American history, a type of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. In a recent fundraising email, Trump crowed that:

Tucker Carlson recently said that President Trump’s emergence will go down as the most significant turning point in American politics in 100 years.

In other words, in 2024, YOU can cast the most consequential vote in a century.

Just like Americans before you had the chance to vote for Washington and Lincoln, YOU now stand at a very unique point in our nation’s history to cast a monumental vote to SAVE our Republic and stop our nation’s descent into tyranny.

President Trump’s ascent to the national stage gave a voice to what was once called the Silent Majority.

But, we’re not so silent anymore!

On November 5, 2024, the ENTIRE WORLD will hear our voice as we peacefully take back the reins and put President Donald J. Trump back in the White House.

Trump literally wraps himself in the American flag. For all intents and purposes, he is also carrying a big White Christian cross in his role as MAGA Jesus martyr – although he has not set the cross on fire…yet. His MAGA cultists have repeatedly demonstrated that they most certainly believe that he is their savior and a great – if not the greatest — American president and patriot. 

There are in fact connections between Trump and America’s War for Independence from the British. Contrary to Trump’s fantasies, he is more like the tyrant and demagogue King George III than America’s Founding Fathers and other heroes. To wit: Donald Trump is promising (threatening) to implement what he is describing as “Agenda 47” when he takes back the White House in the 2024 Election.

Agenda 47 would consist of an end to birthright citizenship, further criminalizing transgender people and the LGBTQI community more broadly, expanding the thought crime and other censorship laws to end the teaching of “critical race theory” and to defeat “Woke” and “Black Lives Matter”, attacking academic freedom and replacing it with “patriot education”, implementing a national stop and frisk law, pardoning the Jan. 6 terrorists, putting homeless people in camps or some other designated area under threat of arrest, building high tech “freedom cities”, ending the professional civil service and replacing it with right-wing political appointees and other such partisan agents, gutting the Department of Justice and other parts of the government that opposed Trump’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law, executing drug dealers, starting a trade war with China, and making “peace” with Vladimir Putin by withdrawing support for the Ukrainian people and their freedom struggle. In many ways, Agenda 47 is a continuation of the fascist and other authoritarian policies Trump put in place during his first regime but now made even more extreme and cruel.

For the most part (the Washington Post being a notable exception), the American mainstream media and political class have responded to Trump’s Agenda 47 and its earlier iterations with a combination of laughs, mocking, schadenfreude, and indifference. And of course, there were the obvious jokes about the Jetsons cartoon with its flying cars and futuristic cities.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

But nothing about Agenda 47 is childish, innocent, or funny. Fascism in its various forms is a revolutionary project that draws inspiration from a fictive past and “golden age” in order to destroy the current order and replace with some type of ideal society based upon the authoritarian leader and the movement. Trump’s Agenda 47 fits that model almost perfectly.

I asked Paul Mason, who is author of the book “How to Stop Fascism: History, Ideology, Resistance” for his thoughts about Trump’s Agenda 47 and the mainstream new media and political class’s failure to take it seriously. Via email he warned:

The key difference between Agenda 47 and the original Trump pitch in 2016 is its total lack of focus on corporate, capitalist goals, and its total focus on fulfilling right-wing populist fantasies. Dud city building projects in the desert, the expulsion of homeless people to tent cities, the pardon of fascist insurrectionaries and a year-long funfair… it’s like a politics designed around video-game fantasies. The good news is, it’s a signal of how detached Trump is even from the libertarian-turned-fascist wing of the American tech elite. It lacks any sense of realism even about the agenda they want – massive deregulation and the marketisation of public services.

The bad news is that it could work. Like QAnon, this collection of fantasies will take on a life of its own and is intended to: you can design your own state fair, state by state, with the Gadsden flags and AR-15 firing ranges. You can fantasize about which particular homeless street you would hose down first, the day after the inauguration. What matters is that serious GOP politicians push back and explain gently to the American people that this is baby talk, and that what stands behind it – should Trump succeed – is the intended collapse of American power and status in the world.

The imaginary cities are about more than just Jetson fantasies – they will be read, quite openly, as white only; and on Federal land they will be designed to abrogate the rights of homeless people – they’re a sop to the fantasies of the seasteaders and the preppers. Like all fascist myths they are designed to animate action in the present rather than actually to get built – just like Hitler’s never built Germania model: it was something to clear slums for and remove populations long before they ever actually planned to build it.

I also asked Jared Yates Sexton, who is the author of the book “The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis”, for his thoughts and concerns about Trump’s Agenda 47. Via email he offered this context:

The entirety of what Donald Trump offers, or rather the cronies around him who handle the ideology and focus of his disgusting campaigns, is a reheated version of prior fascist and authoritarian movements. Promises to “clean up” the messes in government while using new technologies to deliver the “future” and powerwash culture.

We’ve seen this before. And we’ll see it again. Whenever demagogues understand an opening that prioritizes cruelty and meaningless hope, they are quick to fill the voice. And the people around Trump understand it is a perfect environment to unleash their wildest and most violent dreams.

Why have the mainstream news media, commentariot, pundits, and responsible political class, failed, for the most part, to correctly assess and respond to Trump’s fascist-authoritarian Agenda 47, and the Trumpocene and America neofascism, more generally?

Beyond moral cowardice, careerism, “bothsideism”, “centrism”, and financial concerns, many people in the mainstream news media and Fourth Estate are uncomfortable with big ideas about society and politics. By training and intellectual orientation, they tend towards incrementalism and serving Power and existing regimes of knowledge and truth. The mainstream media, the Fourth Estate, and larger political class are also limited in their ability to understand the real origins and dimensions of America’s democracy crisis because of a slavish commitment to folk theories of democracy and normal politics where both the Republican and Democratic Party and their voters are imagined as being reasonable and decent people who are equally committed to democracy and the civic health and survival of the nation.

That is no longer true: today’s Republican Party and the larger “conservative” movement and white right view multiracial pluralistic democracy, the rule of law, the Constitutional order, and its governing institutions as illegitimate and corrupt.  They are to be torn down and replaced with a system of competitive authoritarianism and White Christian herrenvolk tyranny of the minority where the Republican fascists and larger right-wing rule for all time and by any means necessary – including violence.

To that point, James Scaminaci III, who is a sociologist and a retired intelligence analyst, briefed me via email on the escalating danger(s) embodied by Donald Trump and his MAGA movement:

Trump is the most dangerous politician in America, perhaps even more dangerous than the treasonous, seditious original Confederates that seceded from the Union. Trump has pursued a Fourth Generation Warfare strategy to delegitimize the federal government, especially but not limited to those with the real power to detect, investigate, and prosecute him for federal crimes up to treason: the FBI, the DOJ, the NSA, the CIA, and the DOD. His objective if he becomes the 47th president is to completely gut these institutions, what the revolutionary MAGA call the “deep state.” He will eviscerate the excepted civil service and completely destroy the rule of law, transparency in government, and efficient, non-partisan bureaucratic institutions. For all intents and purposes, democracy will be over, and the peace and security of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region jeopardized for hundreds of millions of people for generations. He will have destroyed everything our ancestors, including the “Greatest Generation’s” key accomplishments of fostering European and Asia-Pacific stability, prosperity, and peace.

At its core, fascism is a movement and political project that is based on big ideas, a grand vision, and passionate emotions. To not understand those dimensions of fascism means that one is not able to defeat it. Because of that fact, we the Americans are in big trouble. Our leaders have failed us.