I'll bet he ate Hitler Ice Cream when he was a kid

 Giridharadas: DSA is Social Democracy, "Not Gulag Socialism"—Center-Left Ideology That "We Can Have Nice Things"

...This is not gulag socialism ...

Yeah, we know, it's final solution socialism.  

 

Yeah, 10-12 for the moment, but Carville is right, the Anti-Semites have to go from the Democrat Caucus, including AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders

But don't kid yourself that the Republican Party is a morally superior alternative anymore.

J. D. Vance already has no anti-semitic enemies to the right in the Republican Party.

Everything forbidden is becoming permitted. 

 

Larry Sabato: We're Talking About 10-12 Democratic Socialists Out Of 200-230 Democrats, "It's A Small Group"

Colorado District One victor over Diana DeGette: Melat Kiros: Gaza "Genocide We Are Complicit In With Our Taxpayer Dollars" Is "A Defining Issue" Of 2026 Campaign

Ocasio-Cortez Endorses El-Sayed in Michigan Dem Senate Primary 

Carville on Democratic Socialists: It's Time To Negotiate A Schism, "I'm Not In That F*cking Political Party"

Carville: Democrats Should Not Seat Avila Chevalier In The Democratic Caucus

 

No good deed goes unpunished in the Democrat Party: Diana DeGette, House leader for the public option in 2009 instead of the Senate's Rube Goldberg Obamacare, defeated in primary after 15 terms

 

 It was Speaker Nancy Pelosi who abandoned the House progressives in 2009, bowing to the Senate plan.

DeGette was progressive before progressive was cool, but now you have to pass the anti-semitic litmus test, as her opponent has, to be a real progressive.

 

 DeGette loses reelection bid to DSA challenger in major upset for Denver-based House seat 

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) lost her reelection bid to former attorney and current Ph.D. student Melat Kiros, marking the third time a democratic socialist has scored an upset in a competitive House primary this cycle, according to Decision Desk HQ. 

Kiros, who studies at the University of Denver, defeated DeGette, who’s served in Congress since 1997 — delivering a major blow to the Democratic establishment despite the fact that DeGette herself was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. University of Colorado Regent Wanda James also ran in the Democratic primary.

... Kiros was fired from her law firm after she wrote a letter directed at U.S. law firms on her Substack in November 2023 in which she disputed the notion that it was antisemitic to call for the state of Israel to be eliminated or criticize Israel’s government.

The former lawyer has also received criticism for declining to say whether or not a 2025 firebombing in Boulder, where protesters calling for the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas were injured, was an act of antisemitism, saying in a recent interview with 9News, “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator.” ... 

 

 

 

When electing a socialist mayor has weightier consequences than many people had first imagined

 Three New York Democrats backed by Mamdani win House seat primaries; 2 incumbents lose

... Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th District; Darializa Avila Chevalier bested Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th District; and Claire Valdez won the primary for the 7th District, where Rep. Nydia Velázquez is not seeking reelection. ... 

The Democratic Socialists of America organization backed Chevalier and Valdez.

A year ago, the DSA’s efforts helped Mamdani stun the local and national political world by soundly defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary, and months later in the general election.

“It’s not just a question of electing more Democrats. It’s a question of electing better Democrats,” Mamdani said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. ...

Two tier Keir calls it quits after the biggest Labour victory in decades in July 2024, had said he wouldn't and would fight

Joe Biden was once king of the heap, too, until his enemies to the left pushed him off.

That's the story in the UK, too, which CNBC doesn't tell you.

Socialist Andy Burnham led the rebellion against Starmer from within the Labour Party.

Burnham is a self-described enemy of British nationalism.

 

UK PM Starmer resigns as Britain faces its seventh leader in 10 years 

... Keir Starmer’s resignation comes almost 10 years to the day since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. His successor will be the country’s seventh leader in that period, underscoring how political and economic turmoil continue to unsettle British politics long after the Brexit process was concluded.

 ... Starmer’s government was ultimately weakened by dwindling poll ratings, Labour infighting and growing public frustration over its failure to deliver quickly on growth and the cost of living. ...

The UK Labour Party is cracking up as socialist Andy Burnham is set to challenge Starmer

 UK minister says PM Starmer is considering ‘political realities’ amid leadership pressure

... The threat to Starmer’s position, which has been building for months, increased sharply on Friday when former Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham won a seat in parliament that will allow him to launch a formal leadership challenge.

Starmer’s unpopularity was laid bare by the ruling party’s heavy losses in local elections in May, and polls of Labour party members indicate Burnham would win such a contest.

... Starmer has previously said he would stand in any formal Labour Party leadership contest that sought to replace him.

Leadership contenders need to amass the support of 81 Labour members of parliament - a fifth of those sitting - to launch a formal challenge.

Still can't spell it

MAMDAMI-MANIA: Socialists Took City Hall. Now They're Aiming at Congress...

How do you spell Mamdani?

DC's Mandami Moment? Frontrunner for mayor is avowed Socialist...

 

... Janeese Lewis George, proudly affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America ...

Democrat primary slugfest in Michigan for retiring US Senator Gary Peters' seat features three candidates unfamiliar to a third of Democrats, giving opportunistic Republican Mike Rogers another shot

... Each unofficially represents an ideological faction. El-Sayed is the Democratic Socialists’ candidate, backed by Senator Bernie Sanders and supportive of single-payer health care. McMorrow is the progressive populist, backed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and supportive of a public health insurance option. Stevens is the moderate, tacitly backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and, while nominally supportive of a public option, doesn’t lean into it nor mention it on her website’s issues page. 

And as I covered last week, the three are divided on Israel. El-Sayed would end all military aid to Israel (in fact, he “opposes directly funding foreign militaries” everywhere). McMorrow would stop selling Israel offensive weapons and has the support of the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street PAC. Stevens defines herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat,” and is backed by AIPAC PAC. 

... Moreover, every poll taken pegs at least one-third of the primary electorate as undecided. The Glengariff Group poll shows at least 40 percent of Democrats “never heard” of any of them (for McMorrow, it’s 60 percent), and that number is probably higher among the general electorate. The more they attack each other, the more voters will be introduced to them in the worst possible way. ...

More. 

Stevens is the obvious choice of Michigan voters who are put off by the extremism of the Democratic left. She will complement Michigan's other moderate Senator Elissa Slotkin and help Democrats speak with one clear voice for sensible policies for Michigan workers.

 

US economic growth peaked during the Reagan administration because America is a debt-based economy and we turned our backs on the formula during it

 The trend for the growth of the total universe of US debt, TCMDO or total credit market debt outstanding, rolled over after 1985, one year after GDP did.

TCMDO is the real money, almost $108 trillion at the end of 2025. In 1985 it was $9 trillion.

M2 was merely $22 trillion at the end of 2025. 

TCMDO is the sum total of debt expansion throughout the sectors of the economy.

Historically, most people have experienced it this way.

You get a full time job, which itself was created by a business selling debt in the form of stocks and bonds in order to expand its operations and future profits, and you go buy a house, putting down $100k on a $500k property. The bank loans you the $400k through fractional reserve lending on a small portion of its reserves but secured by the house. That new money is created out of thin air but is actually represented by the "guaranteed" future income stream of your job for 30 years, because you're a smart, reliable guy who never misses a day of work. TCMDO expands, and expands some more each time this happens.

When the conditions disappear for full time job creation, the process slows down. You can see the decline in the growth of the economy in the decline of the growth of the debt. Yes, everything is still growing, but not as vigorously.

Full time as a percent of population peaked 26 years ago, in 2000, at 53.55%, but retested the 1975 low of 46.74% in 2010 and 2011 at 46.97%, back-to-back years in the Late Great Recession.

Housing strength persisted in the immediate post-Reagan period on the illusory basis of windfalls from massive ordinary income tax cuts combined with the demographic peaking of the 1957 Baby Boom turning 40 in 1997 driving demand, but the hollowing out of the economy had already begun with the move of 20,000 manufacturers abroad after the 1986 tax reform.

Early warning signs began flashing already during the Clinton era.

Clinton immediately raised taxes in 1993 after he promised not to raise them in 1992, began a long series of cuts to federal government employment, and gutted the US Navy.

Americans were already struggling at the time and ominously tapped housing equity to sustain their middle class standard of living. Owners' Equity in Real Estate averaged 70% 1982-1986 inclusive, but plunged ten points within a decade to 60% 1996-1999 inclusive.

Homes had become piggy banks, preparing the way for 1997, the year Clinton and the Republicans went further still and turned homes into mere commodities, which in turn prepared the way for the housing catastrophe of 2008. From 1997 a flood of 70,000 more manufacturers began moving out as globalization kicked into high gear and China gained admission to the WTO in 2001.

Almost no one today wants to say out loud how unpatriotic this whole business was. 

Reagan tried to convince us that we know best what to do with our own money, and we promptly turned around and staked our fortunes on foreign investment, not domestic.

Libertarianism is a lie.  

Today you will be hard-pressed to identify a major manufacturing concern with 100% of its operations in the US. Tesla is a standout (heavily subsidized by the federal government!), but other than that most of the businesses which remain patriotically committed to the American idea are pretty small beer compared with how it used to be. 

The formerly domestic debt expansion was exported abroad, creating middle classes where none existed before, especially in East Asia, and doing so cost businesses A LOT less, the key attraction for them.

As a result, enormous profits accrued to the owners of capital while wage earners here struggled to maintain the American dream. Wealth inequality soared, and now our children are 40 before they buy their first home.   

TCMDO grew at a compound annual rate of 8.355% 1945-1985, but at only 6.398% 1985-2025. The change from optimism to pessimism can be traced in the trend lines.

Continued growth of TCMDO at the former rate but after 1985 would have yielded TCMDO at the end of 2025 of $223 trillion, or 106% more "money" than we actually have.

$115 trillion is "missing", or at least something like that. We will never know for sure, but some of us can still imagine because we watched the great betrayal actually happen.

This is why I say socialism is the future, not because I want it or because I think it will work.

People are going to figure this out eventually, get angry, and do the wrong thing, just like we did during the Reagan administration. 

 

 

Because socialism is expensive

 Scarborough: How Did We Spend Trillions On Defense—And We're Running Out Of Munitions After A One-Month War?

Ohio political strategist is essentially correct that Democrats need to rediscover the New Deal, but seems blissfully unaware that the implication would be a drastic tax cut for 98% of the American people

 

Democrats Need the New Deal, Not Socialism

Brendan Frasier, The Hill

 

The word "tax" comes up only one time:

 

 ... When I asked her why she called herself a democratic socialist, she listed ideas like raising taxes on the wealthy, expanding childcare, paid family leave and strengthening labor protections. I told her that these are not socialist positions. These are social capitalist policies. ...

 

In 1936, 98% of earners made less than $4,000 a year. The tax on that was effectively 3%, or $120. 

 

The average income was far less, about $1,000 a year. The tax on that was effectively 0% because of the $1,000 personal exemption.

 

Revenues were raised by soaking the rich, leaving the rest of us alone.

 

Democrats should by all means revive the New Deal. They'd win in a landslide. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be leftists, not Democrats.

 

Dhey no speaka da language. 

 

 

Rasmussen poll finds the socialist future predicted by Tucker Carlson in 2018 is nearer than when he first believed

 A little Bible lingo for the Christians out there lol.

Rasmussen Poll: 51% of Young Voters Back Democratic Socialist for '28

Hey, I thought young people were going all MAGA?

Re-read Tucker here, or here. He was already highly critical of the feckless Trump in December 2018, who can be nothing but a transitional figure.

I first said Trump was a transitional figure in July 2018. I just didn't know how long the transition would be. And I still don't. 

But merely transitional he must be. There's no there there. He has no vision thingy, but he does have plenty of people still trying with all their might to pour their vision into him.

The reason is simple. He's empty, and their attempts simply underscore it.

Old man Trump is not attracting a movement like Reagan did. That's what really ticks off the anti-Boomer Cons.

 

 

 

Democratic Socialists of America conduct first poll, find 74% of likely Democrat voters agree with higher taxes, more regulation, and more public ownership of industry

 Socialism going mainstream? New poll suggests might be...

... This survey marks the first formal poll the DSA Fund has released — the latest example of the left seeking to professionalize its operations and create infrastructure to build on its recent electoral victories. The organization said it plans to share its findings with hundreds of socialists elected around the country. ...

In the poll, democratic socialists were defined as believing “that the government should take a more active role to improve Americans’ lives. They generally support higher taxes on corporations and high-income earners, support regulations that protect workers and consumers, and want more public ownership of key industries like housing, health care and utilities.” ...

74 percent of likely Democratic voters said democratic socialism comes closest to their viewpoint, while 16 percent said the same of capitalism. A plurality of independent voters and a majority of Republicans said they preferred capitalism.

The survey of 1,257 likely voters nationwide, conducted from Aug. 22 to 24 using web panel respondents, had a 3-point margin of error.

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip observes America under Trump becoming more like China under Xi

The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics: President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy

 Greg Ip Aug. 11, 2025 at 10:16 am

Recent examples include President Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct.

This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises. 

China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France. So call this variant “state capitalism with American characteristics.” It is still a sea change from the free market ethos the U.S. once embodied.

We wouldn’t be dabbling with state capitalism if not for the public’s and both parties’ belief that free-market capitalism wasn’t working. That system encouraged profit-maximizing CEOs to move production abroad. The result was a shrunken manufacturing workforce, dependence on China for vital products such as critical minerals, and underinvestment in the industries of the future such as clean energy and semiconductors.

The federal government has often waded into the corporate world. It commandeered production during World War II and, under the Defense Production Act, emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic. It bailed out banks and car companies during the 2007-09 financial crisis. Those, however, were temporary expedients.

Former President Joe Biden went further, seeking to shape the actual structure of industry. His Inflation Reduction Act authorized $400 billion in clean-energy loans. The Chips and Science Act earmarked $39 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Of that, $8.5 billion went to Intel, giving Trump leverage to demand the removal of its CEO over past ties to China. (Intel so far has refused.)

Biden overrode U.S. Steel’s management and shareholders to block Nippon Steel’s takeover, though his staff saw no national-security risk. Trump reversed that veto while extracting the “golden share” that he can use to influence the company’s decisions. In design and name it mimics the golden shares that private Chinese companies must issue to the CCP.

Biden officials had mulled a sovereign-wealth fund to finance strategically important but commercially risky projects such as in critical minerals, which China dominates. Last month, Trump’s Department of Defense said it would take a 15% stake in MP Materials, a miner of critical minerals.

Many in the West admire China for its ability to turbocharge growth through massive feats of infrastructure building, scientific advance and promotion of favored industries. American efforts are often bogged down amid the checks, balances and compromises of pluralistic democracy.

In his forthcoming book, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future,” author Dan Wang writes: “China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States’ lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.”

To admirers, Trump’s appeal is his willingness to bulldoze those lawyerly obstacles. He has imposed tariffs on an array of countries and sectors, seizing authority that is supposed to belong to Congress. He extracted $1.5 trillion in investment pledges from Japan, the European Union and South Korea that he claims he will personally direct, though no legal mechanism for doing so appears to exist. (Those pledges are already in dispute.)

There are reasons state capitalism never caught on before. The state can’t allocate capital more efficiently than private markets. Distortions, waste and cronyism typically follow. Russia, Brazil and France have grown much more slowly than the U.S.

Chinese state capitalism isn’t the success story it seems. Barry Naughton of the University of California, San Diego has documented how China’s rapid growth since 1979 has come from market sources, not the state. As Chinese leader Xi Jinping has reimposed state control, growth has slowed. China is awash with savings, but the state wastes much of it. From steel to vehicles, excess capacity leads to plummeting prices and profits.

The U.S. hasn’t fared any better. Interventions made in the name of national security or kick-starting infant industries lead to boondoggles like Foxconn’s promised factory in Wisconsin or Tesla’s solar-panel factory in Buffalo, N.Y.

State capitalism is an all-of-society affair in China, directed from Beijing via millions of cadres in local governments and company boardrooms. In the U.S., it consists largely of Oval Office announcements lacking any policy or institutional framework. “The core characteristic of China’s state capitalism is discipline, and Trump is the complete opposite of that,” Wang said in an interview.

State capitalism is a means of political, not just economic, control. Xi ruthlessly deploys economic levers to crush any challenge to party primacy. In 2020, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, arguably the country’s most famous business leader, criticized Chinese regulators for stifling financial innovation. Retaliation was swift. Regulators canceled the initial public offering of Ma’s financial company, Ant Group, and eventually fined it $2.8 billion for anticompetitive behavior. Ma briefly disappeared from public view.

Trump has similarly deployed executive orders and regulatory powers against media companies, banks, law firms and other companies he believes oppose him, while rewarding executives who align themselves with his priorities.

In Trump’s first term, CEOs routinely spoke out when they disagreed with his policies such as on immigration and trade. Now, they shower him with donations and praise, or are mostly silent.

Trump is also seeking political control over agencies that have long operated at arm’s length from the White House, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve. That, too, has echoes of China where the bureaucracy is fully subordinate to the ruling party.

Trump has long admired the control Xi exercises over his country, but there are, in theory, limits to how far he can emulate him.

American democracy constrains the state through an independent judiciary, free speech, due process and the diffusion of power among multiple levels and branches of government. How far state capitalism ultimately displaces free-market capitalism in the U.S. depends on how well those checks and balances hold up.

Anti-democratic airhead DHS Secretary ICE Barbie says Feds are in LA to liberate it from duly elected governor and mayor

 

 We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have imposed.

 

Imagine if the Democrats interfered like this in Wyoming or West Virginia. Republicans would throw a fit like they're doing in LA. 

Nowadays socialism is dressed up as billions of taxpayer dollars given to chipmakers

 

Tim Walz does not believe in free speech

 Here.

He's a neighborly socialist.

Or is he a socialist neighbor? I forget.

Kamala Harris has made her choice for VP, the Minnesota governor who let Minneapolis burn to the ground in 2020

 

LOL Democratic Socialists of America National Political Committee withdraws conditional endorsement of AOC for insufficient anti-semitism

 

NPC is withdrawing our conditional endorsement of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, although she will remain endorsed by our New York City chapter. ...

Many members have supported national endorsement while at the same time demanding that AOC demonstrate a higher level of commitment to Palestinian liberation, self-determination, and the immediate end to the heinous genocide in Gaza committed by Israel that aligns with DSA’s positions and expectations of socialists in office. 

We recognize that AOC has taken many courageous positions on Palestine such as co-sponsoring several House Resolutions (3103, 786,  496), naming Israel’s genocide as well as opposing House Resolution 894. However, members have raised their concerns regarding a number of her votes, including a vote in favor of H.Res.888, conflating opposition to Israel’s “right to exist” with antisemitism. AOC also co-signed a press release on April 20, 2024, that “support[s] strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems” 

Finally, AOC recently hosted a public panel with leaders from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, lobbyists for the IHRA definition of antisemitism. On this panel, she conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism and condemned boycotting Zionist institutions.  This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide through political and direct action in recent months, and in decades past.

More.