How Rep. Andy Biggs proves House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Texas border bonanza was bogus
EJ Montini, Arizona Republic – January 4, 2024
Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs was at the border community of Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday, part of a group of 60-plus Republicans led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, all of whom made the trip to make speeches, make the news, make (perhaps) some campaign cash, and accomplish … nothing.
Accomplishing nothing is something Biggs has proven to be very good (?) at.
“No more money for this bureaucracy of his (President Joe Biden’s) government until you’ve brought this border under control,” Biggs is quoted as saying in The New York Times. “Shut the border down or shut the government down.”
The congressman made the same threat on X, formerly Twitter.
”Shut the border down, or we’ll shut the government down,” he posted, standing with three other Republicans, including Arizona Rep. Eli Crane, who appears to have spent his time in Congress being tutored by Biggs on how to get zero done.
Some make progress. Biggs make noise
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, center left, and Texas Department of Public Safety chief Steve McCraw, center right, lead a group of Republican members of Congress during a tour of the Texas-Mexico border, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024, in Eagle Pass, Texas.
There are two groups of elected officials operating in Washington, D.C.
There is a very small collective who want to make progress. And there is an overwhelming majority who want to make noise. You can guess which group Biggs, Speaker Johnson and the other Texas tinhorns belong to.
Meantime, back at the Capitol, there is a small working group of senators, including Arizona’s independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who are trying to hammer out a bipartisan agreement on border measures.
Sinema told The Arizona Republic, “We’re dealing with very, very difficult, complex issues. Drafting is very technical. It must be done incredibly precise and to avoid unintended consequences and decades of litigation. And so this is really hard. But everyone is working in good faith to solve this crisis.”
Not everyone.
Border isn’t a crisis, it’s a GOP gold mine
Republicans already are using the border crisis as their primary campaign argument for the 2024 election. It’s how they hope to help Donald Trump get back to the White House.
The worst thing that could happen to them, politically, would be for Republicans and Democrats of good faith to reach a bipartisan deal on the border.
Speaker Johnson, like Biggs and Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, was among those who tried to stage a nonviolent coup to keep Trump in office after he lost the election in 2020.
The bogus bonanza in Texas on Wednesday wasn’t about the border. It was about Trump.
Congress can solve this, but will it?
It wasn’t even the first time Biggs threatened a government shutdown.
He did that last year when he and some Republican cronies were trying to strongarm then Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer in Washington said of the Republicans and their Texas two-step, “It’s very nice that they have a trip to the border, but the only way to solve this is here, working in a bipartisan way with Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats and House Democrats to get it done, period.
“I hope the speaker will realize that if he wants to solve the problem on the border.”
Biden’s first 2024 ad focuses on ‘extremist’ threat to democracy
AFP – January 4, 2024
Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021 (Olivier DOULIERY)
President Joe Biden‘s campaign released its first television ad for the 2024 election on Thursday, warning of an “extremist” threat to democracy over images of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
The advertisement, entitled “Cause,” will get its first network showing on Saturday, the third anniversary of the historic assault by Donald Trump supporters which left five people dead.
“All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?” the 81-year-old Democrat says in a passage lifted from a speech he gave in Arizona last year.
“There’s something dangerous happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy,” says the ad, released early on social media.
During the one-minute ad, Biden does not mention by name former president Trump — the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination and the man he beat in 2020.
But over swelling, dramatic music, the ad features repeated images of pro-Trump signs held by the January 6 rioters, as well as a hangman’s noose brought by the protesters to the Capitol.
It also includes pictures of torch-bearing white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
The Biden campaign is increasingly painting the election as a fight for American democracy against Trump, with the president set to give a speech on similar lines in Pennsylvania on Friday.
Polls show Biden and Trump neck and neck despite the populist Republican tycoon, 77, facing multiple criminal trials, including one linked to the January 6 riot.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Republicans had “doubled down” on threats to undermine elections.
“This ad serves as a very real reminder that this election could very well determine the very fate of American democracy,” she said in a statement.
Abcarian: Really, young voters? You want to teach Democrats a lesson by letting Trump back into the White House?
Robin Abcarian – January 3, 2024
President Biden poses with Students Demand Action in Connecticut in June. In 2020, the youngest American voters were squarely in his corner. Not now, according to polls. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press)
I almost spit out my Geritol the other day when I read what one young voter in Philadelphia told NBC News about why she is disillusioned about the upcoming presidential election.
“I don’t think the presidency has too much of an effect on what happens in my day-to-day life,” said Pru Carmichael, who supported Biden in 2020 but says she will not vote for president at all this year if she has to choose between the disappointing incumbent and former President Trump.
Seriously?
Maybe she believes she will never have an unintended, unwanted pregnancy. (However, if she does, she is lucky enough to live in Pennsylvania, where abortion is still legal.)
But how can she not appreciate the profound changes the Trump presidency inflicted on this country? Had there been no President Trump, there would be no ultraconservative majority on the Supreme Court, no Dobbs decision overturning nearly half a century of reproductive rights, no outright abortion bans in 13 states and no suffering by people like Kate Cox of Texas, who was forced to seek abortion care in another state after the Texas Supreme Court said she could not abort her severely compromised fetus, who suffered a condition that was incompatible with life.
In 2020, the youngest American voters were squarely in Biden’s corner. According to exit polls, 65% of those 18 to 24 years old chose him, the largest percentage of any age group. And yet, if recent national polls are to be believed, voters up to age 34 have grown disenchanted with the president. Perhaps this is a reflection on the impatience of youth, or, worse, a fundamentally weak grasp on how government operates.
Listen to what younger voters told NBC News they’re upset about: the country’s slow pace on reversing climate change, Biden’s failure to fully cancel student loan debt, his inability to federally codify the right to abortion and, perhaps most starkly, his handling of Israel’s war against Hamas and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“I mean, he made a lot of really big promises in his campaign and virtually none of them were followed through on,” one poll respondent, Austin Kapp, 25, of Colorado, told NBC News.
He did try to codify Roe, but was unable to marshal the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster by Senate Republicans.
And what has Trump been doing about abortion, besides taking credit for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade? He’s urging Republicans to mislead voters: “In order to win in 2024, Republicans must learn how to properly talk about abortion,” he told a group of Iowa supporters in September. “This issue cost us unnecessarily but dearly in the midterms.”
We now know, thanks to the horrific experience of Cox and other women who have brought suit in Texas, that the idea of an “exception” to abortion bans for cases of rape, incest, fetal anomalies or the health of the pregnant person is nothing more than a shimmering lie, a mirage to make abortion bans slightly more palatable to the majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose.
As for the Middle East crisis, even if you agree that Biden’s handling of the situation has been uneven, why would anyone think Trump, an outspoken supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would handle it better, particularly if your sympathies lie more with the Palestinians caught in the violence than the Israeli government’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack?
On the campaign trail, Trump has signaled a lack of engagement in the conflict, suggesting that he would “let this play out.” His one concrete suggestion? In an interview with Univision in November, he said that Israel needed to “do a better job of public relations, frankly, because the other side is beating them at the public relations front.”
He has also pledged to “revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.” (Muslim ban, anyone?) Does that sound like an appealing counter-message for the 70% of voters under 35 who told NBC News pollsters they disapprove of the way Biden has handled the war?
With 2024 upon us, and the first contests of the Republican presidential primaries set to take place on Jan. 15 in Iowa and on Jan. 23 in New Hampshire, barring some unforeseen development it could become clear very quickly that the much-indicted Trump is bound for the November ballot as the Republican presidential nominee.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll released on New Year’s Day showed that Trump is out-polling Biden among groups the pollsters described as “stalwarts of the Democratic base,” that is, Hispanics and younger voters. Biden’s support among Black Americans has also slipped significantly, though he still leads Trump.
This is alarming, not catastrophic. Biden, and Democrats, have time to make their case. I remain skeptical that the Democratic base will not come home by November, particularly as Trump continues to embrace his inner dictator on the campaign trail.
“A Republican getting elected isn’t the end. It is the beginning of a much larger fight,” a 23-year-old Wisconsin Starbucks worker and union organizer who is considering withholding his vote from Biden told NBC News. “I want to show the Democratic Party as a young person that you still need to earn our vote and if you don’t, the consequences will be your career.”
Teach Democrats a lesson by electing a democracy-destroying authoritarian?
My mother used to call that cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Here’s why MAGA politicians are deflecting hard & getting VERY NERVOUS about that Epstein list
Ariel Messman-Rucker – January 3, 2024
Alex Jones, Donald Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene
After spending decades calling queer people child predators and groomers, we can’t help but notice that Republicans are getting REAL NERVOUS about who is going to be named in the Jeffrey Epstein court documents that are about to be released.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska recently ordered that the names of 200 associates of Epstein be released on Wednesday, January 3, causing some members of the GOP to push wild conspiracy theories to explain why Donald Trump is going to appear on documents connected to a child sex trafficker.
It’s almost as if right-wing zealots will say literally anything to stay in power.
The list of names will include victims, associates, and employees and could potentially contain the names of high-profile figures. Trump, former President Bill Clinton, and the U.K.’s Prince Andrew are all believed to be among the names on the list, reports Forbes.
While the names of the two former presidents are expected to appear on Epstein’s flight logs, there is no evidence that either of them spent time on Epstein’s island, where underage girls were taken. But that hasn’t stopped admitted liar Alex Jones and MAGA-die hard Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from floating the theory that the former president’s name only appears on the list because “deep state” federal operatives are trying to destroy his name.
They need a new story because this one is getting tired. Honestly, we’ve known these documents were coming out for a while now; you’d think they would have used that time to come up with something a little more creative—though, that might be impossible because they clearly suffer from MAGA brain rot.
Recently, on his show InfoWars, Jones claimed that the CIA has previously faked lists like this in connection with Israeli and British intelligence agencies. “If they put out a client list, and that’s possible that it could be fake, because Epstein’s dead. And that’s something very possible.” Jones said, according to LGBT Nation.
The ease at which Jones tries to blow off Trump being associated with a known child sex trafficker is especially rich considering he and his guests have repeatedly called LGBTQ+ people pedophiles.
“[Trump] gets devoted to one woman at a time, gets totally obsessed with them, totally nice to them,” Jones continued.
Right, because a man who has been married three times, has been accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women, and allegedly had multiple extra-marital affairs is loyal to one woman. The math ain’t mathing.
Greene, on the other hand, took a different tack and focused her vitriol on Clinton to draw attention away from Trump. “For some us, it’s no surprise at all that Bill Clinton will be named in the Jeffrey Epstein files,” she wrote in a January 3 post on X, formerly Twitter. “We said it a long time ago, but they labeled us conspiracy theorists. There will be lots of names you’ve never heard of, and the IC collected info on them. Pedophiles belong in jail, not on secret government lists.”
Did she forget that Trump’s name will appear on that same list? Are these people capable of not being GIANT hypocrites?
We guess it would be too much to ask for Greene, a woman who has spent years spewing hate at the LGBTQ+ community and calling all queer people pedophiles, to hold members of her party accountable for the heinous acts she accuses us of. It’s better to play a game of ‘Hey, look over there!”
Republicans may close their eyes and pretend there are no right-wingers on the list, but we’ll be here to remind them.
So THAT’S Why Drinking Alcohol Makes You Feel Worse As You Get Older
Leigh Weingus – January 3, 2024
At a certain decade in life, many of us lose the enzyme to metabolize alcohol (alcohol dehydrogenase).
At a certain decade in life, many of us lose the enzyme to metabolize alcohol (alcohol dehydrogenase).
“Drink in moderation” is advice we hear often, but as most people can attest to after a booze-filled holiday season, it isn’t easy to stick to.
When we can stick to moderate drinking, however, we usually feel pretty good about ourselves.
According to the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, moderate drinking is defined as no more than two drinks per day for men, and no more than one drink per day for women. That means if we have a glass of wine after work every day, we’re not doing much harm to our bodies and brains, right? That depends.
Dr. Elizabeth Landsverk, a geriatrician and dementia expert, tells HuffPost that the way alcohol impacts the body will vary based on your age. If your 2024 goals include plans to drink in moderation, here’s what she wants you to know.
How 1-2 Alcoholic Drinks Per Day Impact The Body In Your 20s, 30s And 40s
Your 20s, Landsverk says, are a resilient time for the body — which is probably why hangovers aren’t nearly as bad during that decade. “The liver and brain have the most resilience during that time,” she said. “The frontal lobes (reasoning, and judgment) are not quite developed. One is more likely to be open to drinking more or taking more risks, and this can set habits that will cause problems down the line.”
You probably won’t notice a huge difference as you head into your 30s as long as you’re drinking moderately, but it’s important to keep your overall health in mind. “Ask yourself: How is your health otherwise? Obesity, which is epidemic in America, increases the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver,” Landsverk said. “Alcohol increases the risk of liver disease and scarring (cirrhosis). As a geriatrician, I would say a glass or two a week is fine. Some doctors say one drink a day is fine, but it is also neurotoxic and that can catch up with you.”
In your 40s, more health risks begin to pop up, Landsverk explains. “Obesity, diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol all increase the risk for heart attacks, strokes and small stroke dementia,” she said. If you’re living with any of these conditions, even a small amount of alcohol can further increase your risk of events like heart attacks or strokes, so keep that in mind.
How 1-2 Alcoholic Drinks Impact The Body In Your 50s And 60s
Once you hit your 50s, Landsverk says, even moderate drinking can wreak havoc on the body. “Alcohol, besides the vascular damage and dementia risks, increases the risk of breast cancer, esophageal cancer and liver cancer (after disease),” she said. Because cancer risk drastically increases as we age, adding any amount of alcohol into the mix will only further increase that risk. “Plus, as we age, good sleep is more elusive,” Landsverk added. “Substances like caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol all hinder sleep”
In your 60s, you’ll likely begin to feel the effects of moderate drinking on your body. “I can speak from experience: This is the age when tolerance may decrease dramatically,” Landsverk said. “I am healthy. I can ski or swim a mile, but a glass of wine makes me feel ill and slow the next day.”
This, she says, is because older people are more likely to lose the enzyme to metabolize alcohol (alcohol dehydrogenase). “At this point, I can tolerate about one glass a week,” Landsverk noted. “If I had it daily, I would feel sick with just one glass a day. Older people have less reserve in the brain, liver and kidneys. The damage to the brain from even one glass a day is worse [when you’re over 60].”
Landsverk suggests that you think of alcoholic beverages like candy bars. “They’re nice with some meals, but they can increase your weight and blood sugar, and over decades adds to cancer risk and chronic illnesses that can lead to poor health.”
If you want to stay as healthy as possible and feel your best as you age, do you have to give up alcohol completely? No, Landsverk emphasizes, and it’s important to remember to remember that other factors influence the impact alcohol has on your health and well-being, such as if you’re living with a disease like obesity or hypertension.
If you’re older and in generally good health, you shouldn’t worry too much about the occasional alcoholic beverage. That’s certainly the case for Landsverk. “I have decided that a glass of wine with a nice meal is worth it,” she said. “But not every night.”
I tried Dry January and didn’t drink for 30 days straight for the first time in years thanks to these 6 strategies
Anna Medaris – January 2, 2024
I tried Dry January and didn’t drink for 30 days straight for the first time in years thanks to these 6 strategies
After drinking regularly for a decade, I committed to an alcohol-free month in January 2022.
Dry January wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but that’s because I had systems in place.
I journaled about my motivations, joined a like-minded community, and swapped in alcohol-free beers.
After a decade of frequent drinking, I finally decided to commit to Dry January in 2022. I wanted to interrupt my near-daily beer habit, sleep better, lose bloat, improve my workouts, wake up fresh, and just conquer a new challenge.
I succeeded, completing Annie Grace’s 30-day live Alcohol Experiment and banking my longest alcohol-free streak since, well, probably getting mono in college. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as daunting as I’d feared either. At times it was quite rewarding and even fun.
But my success wasn’t down to luck or grit or stellar self-control. I credit it to the systems I had in place before I began. Here’s my advice for first-time teetotalers in 2024.
Identify your why
If you’re doing Dry January only because a friend asked you to or as punishment for overindulging over the holidays, you’re going to have a hard time sticking to it once your friend gives up and your hangover wears off.
Nick Allen, the CEO of the mindful-drinking app Sunnyside, recommends drilling down on your “why” before getting started. If it’s “I hate hangovers,” ask yourself why again. If it’s “I value productivity,” ask yourself why again, and so on.
You can also write down what you hope to gain: A deeper connection to loved ones? The confidence of knowing you can keep a commitment to yourself? A sharper mind at work? A chance to try new activities instead of defaulting to “let’s get drinks”?
For me, a big selling point was the chance to simply experience life — from dinners out to movie nights in — without booze. If after a month I decided those events were better with alcohol, there was always February.
Find a community
The Alcohol Experiment included free daily videos and journal prompts and, for about $50, access to an online community of people starting the experiment at the same time.
This community and the program’s structure were my secret weapons: Rather than white-knuckling my way through the month feeling deprived, I was encouraged to dive into the alcohol-free lifestyle with excitement and curiosity.
You learn about the science of addiction in a shame-free space, confront whether alcohol is really giving you what it promises, and work out triggers from ski vacations to bad days at work with other experimenters in real time.
There are all kinds of similar programs, including Sober Sis’ 21-day reset and Club Soda, and apps like Try Dry to support your experience. Many are free.
Be vocal about your commitment
I declared my commitment to my partner, friends, family, and coworkers. I posted about my favorite alcohol-free beers on Instagram and pitched story after story about Dry January.
Some research suggests people who post more about their goals on social media are more likely to accomplish them, though it’s unclear whether that’s because they post about only achievable goals or the posting holds them accountable.
For me, it was the latter. I knew that if I’d given a sober month a shot in just my own head, I would have let myself off the hook. But I had too much pride to even consider it when so many others were on board.
More and more shops offer alcohol-free drinks.Abby Wallace/Insider.
Try alternatives
Alcohol-free drinks were instrumental in my success. There are countless surprisingly satisfying zero-proof beers you can find on the online marketplace Better Rhodes, in an alcohol-free shop, or even in regular bars (most, I found, at least carry Heineken’s nonalcoholic beer).
These beers also tend to be much lower in calories — and far less likely to leave you craving three more, since they lack alcohol’s addictive qualities — than boozy brews.
With these alternatives, you can keep the rituals you like around booze — sipping while cooking, unwinding with coworkers, watching a game — without the hangover.
Alternative activities can be key too.
Allen recommends making plans for Saturday morning, such as a hike, a yoga class, or early coffee with a friend, if you’re one of the many people tempted to drink on Friday nights.
He told me that “shifting the reward center in your mind” from wanting to drink in order to relax to not wanting to ruin something you’re looking forward to the next morning “makes a really big difference.”
Best nonalcoholic drinks and spirits
TOST
Nonalcoholic beverages are a great option if you want to enjoy a drink but skip the alcohol. Try subbing in some of our favorite nonalcoholic drinks and spirits, several of which are low-calorie or low-sugar.
Best nonalcoholic beer: Athletic Brewing Co. Run Wild (12-pack) – See at Amazon
Best nonalcoholic spirits: CleanCo Clean T (23.7 fl. oz.) – See at Amazon
If you’ve been drinking regularly for years, the touted delights of sobriety — boundless energy, presence, joy — aren’t going to set in immediately. You may have trouble sleeping as your body adjusts to unwinding without a depressant, feel famished as your body makes up for the alcohol calories lost, and get cranky or sad as you stop numbing your emotions.
You may even gain weight, in part because the body metabolizes alcohol differently from food.
Be patient. Alcohol can stay in your system for weeks. Once your body finds some equilibrium, it’s worth it.
(Side note: If you’re worried you may be physically addicted to alcohol, withdrawal can be dangerous and requires medical support.)
Don’t let a slipup derail your entire month
Grace calls an unplanned drinking moment a “data point” to learn from and discourages people from feeling as if they have to start again at Day One. Quitting drinking, she says, “is not a linear process.”
So if you do throw a few back, she recommends getting curious, not judgy. What triggered you to drink? Did it feel and taste as good as you anticipated? Was it worth it the next day? Journal about it, and make a more informed decision next time.
And keep in mind there are benefits to drinking less. Research suggests that simply reducing your drinking has benefits, and Sunnyside has found that doing so can set you up to maintain a more moderate lifestyle in February and beyond.
“Think of this as a lifetime investment in your health,” Allen said. “If you take that philosophy, then one drink in January doesn’t feel like as much of a big deal.”
‘Dry January’ Can Bring You Health and Happiness in the New Year: How and Where to Start
Lauren Anderson – January 3, 2024
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For many, the new year is a time of resolution, which can come in various forms. After a holiday season of decadent meals, sweet treats, and alcohol, some people choose to do “Dry January” when the new year comes around. But where did the trend of giving up alcohol in January come from? How and why did it start, and more importantly, what are the benefits of giving up alcohol for a month?
Alcohol use in older adults — especially women — has been trending upward over the years with the rate of alcohol use disorder increasing 107% between 2001 and 2013. Drinking alcohol can have a number of negative effects on the body, especially for older adults because of slowed metabolism and decreased body mass.
Whether you’re looking to give alcohol up entirely or cut back on your alcohol consumption, “Dry January” could be a great place to start. Find out why, plus some alcohol alternatives to get your “Dry January” journey started.
When did ‘Dry January’ start?
“Dry January” has only been around since 2013. A woman named Emily Robinson gave up drinking in 2011 after signing up for a half marathon. The following year in 2012, she joined Alcohol Change UK, an alcohol charity in the United Kingdom and once again gave up alcohol in the month of January.
“That got us thinking,” the charity site reads. “If we got more people having a break from booze in January, could we get more people thinking about their drinking? And would they drink less after their month off because actually they enjoyed the break so much?”
In January 2013, Alcohol Change UK hosted the first “Dry January,” which quickly became a world-wide trend among people with health goals, the sober-curious, and beyond. In 2023, 175,000 people participated. For 2024, the charity hopes to have 200,000 people enroll in “Dry January.”
What does ‘Dry January’ mean?
“Dry January” is when people choose to abstain from alcohol for the entire month of January. This decision is usually a New Year’s Resolution for many, but it can also be a great way to assess your relationship with alcohol or even kickstart a diet. In some cases, completing “Dry January” inspires people to give up drinking entirely, especially when they see the immediate benefits.
‘Dry January’ benefits
Alcohol can do damage to anyone’s body, especially when it comes to heart disease. But women are more susceptible to alcohol-related heart disease than men regardless of how much less they might consume. Additionally, research points to alcohol causing brain damage more quickly for women than it does for men.
Liver damage is another alcohol-related concern, especially for women. Misuse of alcohol can cause alcohol-associated hepatitis, a potentially fatal liver condition. What’s more, women who have at least one alcoholic beverage a day have a 5-9% higher chance of developing breast cancer — a risk that increases with every additional drink consumed per day.
Cutting out alcohol won’t prevent these conditions from developing, but it may help. Additionally, there are some immediate health benefits you’ll notice if you choose to participate in “Dry January.” A break from alcohol can result in benefits like:
Weight loss
Better sleep
Improved energy and mood
More physical activity as a result of energy and mood
A better diet due to fewer calories from alcohol
Reduced liver fat and blood sugar
A decrease in growth factors associated with cancer, insulin resistance, and blood pressure
How to do ‘Dry January’: tips for success
Did you know there are guidelines for drinking in the United States? For adults of legal drinking age, “drinking in moderation” means limiting intake to 1 drink a day or less for women. Of course, some individuals, like those with health conditions or those on certain medications, should avoid alcohol entirely.
If you’re interested in cutting alcohol out completely or simply cutting back, here are some “Dry January” tips and tricks:
Seek support. Inform friends, family, and loved ones of your decision to cut out alcohol. Having this support group can help keep you accountable and have someone to turn to if the task becomes too challenging.
Take away temptation. Help set yourself up for success by removing alcohol from your home. When you go out, bring your own non-alcoholic drink selections with you, especially if you know there aren’t going to be any present.
Pick the perfect substitute drink. A successful “Dry January” is all about finding a replacement drink that you love. In many cases, you can find non-alcoholic versions of your favorite cocktails, but there are also dozens of other beverages designed to make cutting back on alcohol easier.
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This content is not a substitute for professional medical advice or diagnosis. Always consult your physician before pursuing any treatment plan.
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Trump Will Lose 2024 Because Americans Worry ‘He’s Going to Start a World War,’ Biden’s Deputy Campaign Manager Says | Video
Dessi Gomez – January 3, 2024
Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks thinks Donald Trump won’t be reelected in 2024 because American voters fear, among other things, a world war.
Fulks appeared on “CNN News Central” with anchor John Berman Wednesday to discuss why Trump shouldn’t be reelected considering the lessons learned in the first term of his presidency.
“American voters know what it feels like to wake up every day and be afraid of what their president is going to tweet, if he’s going to start a world war because he can’t control his temper, right? These are the things that are at stake. And voters know that now,” Fulks said. “They’ve seen Donald Trump, which is exactly why the most people turned out than ever before to send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House in 2020.”
Fulks added that voters today should look to Hillary Clinton, who largely predicted Trump’s behavior as president while running against him in 2016 simply by taking the embattled politician at his word.
“Sec. Clinton was right: We should have taken Donald Trump at his word. But the difference here is that Donald Trump has now had four years to prove exactly what he would do,” Fulks said.
He added: “So, maybe you’re right, maybe we should take him at his words and his actions because when he was president, he did all the things that he said he would do. And so that’s the major difference that we have now heading into 2024 is that American voters have seen what Donald Trump would do.”
Watch the full clip from the “CNN News Central” segment in the video above.
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Credit…Amir Cohen/Reuters
I’ve been The Times’s foreign affairs columnist since 1995, and one of the most enduring lessons I’ve learned is that there are good seasons and bad seasons in this business, which are defined by the big choices made by the biggest players.
My first decade or so saw its share of bad choices — mainly around America’s response to Sept. 11 — but they were accompanied by a lot of more hopeful ones: the birth of democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe, thanks to the choices of Mikhail Gorbachev. The Oslo peace process, thanks to the choices of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat. China’s accelerating opening to the world, thanks to the choices of Deng Xiaoping. India’s embrace of globalization, thanks to choices initiated by Manmohan Singh. The expansion of the European Union, the election of America’s first Black president and the evolution of South Africa into a multiracial democracy focused on reconciliation rather than retribution — all the result of good choices from both leaders and led. There were even signs of a world finally beginning to take climate change seriously.
On balance, these choices nudged world politics toward a more positive trajectory — a feeling of more people being connected and able to realize their full potential peacefully. It was exciting to wake up each day and think about which one of these trends to get behind as a columnist.
For the last few years, though, I’ve felt the opposite — that so much of my work was decrying bad choices made by big players: Vladimir Putin’s tightening dictatorship and aggression, culminating in his brutal invasion of Ukraine; Xi Jinping’s reversal of China’s opening; Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history; the cascading effects of climate change; the loss of control over America’s southern border; and, maybe most ominously, an authoritarian drift, not only in European countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary but in America’s own Republican Party as well.
To put it another way: If I think about the three pillars that have stabilized the world since I became a journalist in 1978 — a strong America committed to protecting a liberal global order with the help of healthy multilateral institutions like NATO, a steadily growing China always there to buoy the world economy, and mostly stable borders in Europe and the developing world — all three are being shaken by big choices by big players over the last decade. This is triggering a U.S.-China cold war, mass migrations from south to north and an America that has become more unreliable than indispensable.
But that’s not the half of it. Because now that advanced military technologies like drones are readily available, smaller players can wield much more power and project it more widely than ever before, enabling even their bad choices to shake the world. Just look at how shipping companies across the globe are having to reroute their traffic and pay higher insurance rates today because the Houthis, Yemeni tribesmen you never heard about until recently, have acquired drones and rockets and started disrupting sea traffic around the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal.
This is why I referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as our first true world war, and why I feel that Hamas’s war with Israel is in some ways our second true world war.
They are being fought on both physical battlefields and digital ones, with huge global reach and implications. Like farmers in Argentina who were stymied when they suddenly lost their fertilizer supplies from Ukraine and Russia. Like young TikTok users around the world observing, opining, protesting and boycotting global chains, such as Zara and McDonald’s, after being enraged by something they saw on a 15-second feed from Gaza. Like a pro-Israel hacker group claiming credit for shutting down some 70 percent of Iran’s gas stations the other day, presumably in retaliation for Iran’s support for Hamas. And so many more.
Indeed, in today’s tightly wired world, it is possible that the war over the Gaza Strip — which is roughly twice the size of Washington, D.C. — could decide the next president in Washington, D.C., as some young Democrats abandon President Biden because of his support for Israel.
But before we become too pessimistic, let us remember that these choices are just that: choices. There was nothing inevitable or foreordained about them. People and leaders always have agency — and as observers we must never fall prey to the cowardly and dishonest “well, they had no choice” crowd.
Gorbachev, Deng, Anwar el-Sadat, Menachem Begin, George H.W. Bush and Volodymyr Zelensky, to name but a few, faced excruciating choices, but they chose forks in the road that led to a safer and more prosperous world, at least for a time. Others, alas, have done the opposite.
To close out the year, it’s through this prism of choices that I want to re-examine the story that has consumed me, and I dare say much of the world, since Oct. 7: the Israel-Hamas war. It was not as inevitable as some want you to think.
Credit…Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times
I began thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I flew to Dubai to attend the United Nations climate summit. If you’ve never been there, the Dubai airport has some of the longest concourses in the world. And when my Emirates flight landed, we parked close to one end of the B concourse — so when I looked out the window I saw lined up in a perfectly symmetrical row some 15 Emirates long-haul passenger jets, stretching far into the distance. And the thought occurred to me: What is the essential ingredient that Dubai has and Gaza lacks? Because both began, in one sense, as the convergence of sand and seawater at crucial intersections of the world.
It’s not oil — oil plays only a small role in Dubai’s diversified economy today. And it’s not democracy. Dubai is not a democracy and does not aspire to be one. But people are now flocking to live here from all over the world — its population of more than 3.5 million has surged since the outbreak of Covid. Why? The short answer is visionary leadership.
Dubai has benefited from two generations of monarchs in the United Arab Emirates who had a powerful vision of how the U.A.E. in general and the emirate of Dubai in particular could choose to be Arab, modern, pluralistic, globalized and embracing of a moderate interpretation of Islam. Their formula incorporates a radical openness to the world, an emphasis on free markets and education, a ban on extremist political Islam, relatively little corruption, a strong rule of law promulgated from the top down and a relentless commitment to economic diversification, talent recruitment and development.
There are a million things one could criticize about Dubai, from labor rights for the many foreign workers who run the place to real estate booms and busts, overbuilding and the lack of a truly free press or freedom of assembly, to name but a few. But the fact that Arabs and others keep wanting to live, work, play and start businesses here indicates that the leadership has converted its intensely hot promontory on the Persian Gulf into one of the world’s most prosperous crossroads for trade, tourism, transport, innovation, shipping and golf — with a skyline of skyscrapers, one over 2,700 feet high, that would be the envy of Hong Kong or Manhattan.
And it has all been done in the shadow (and with the envy) of a dangerous Islamic Republic of Iran. When I first visited Dubai in 1980, there were still traditional wooden fishing dhows in the harbor. Today, DP World, the Emirati logistics company, manages cargo logistics and port terminals all over the world. Any of Dubai’s neighbors — Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Iran and Saudi Arabia — could have done the same with their similar coastlines, but it was the U.A.E. that pulled it off by making the choices it made.
I toured the site of the U.N.’s global climate conference with the U.A.E.’s minister of state for international cooperation, Reem al-Hashimy, who oversaw the building of Dubai’s massive 2020 Expo City, which was repurposed to hold the event. In three hours spent walking around, we were stopped at least six or seven times by young Emirati women in black robes in groups of two or three, who asked if I could just step aside for a second while they took selfies with Reem or whether I would be their photographer. She was their rock-star role model — this Harvard- and Tufts-educated, nonroyal woman in a leadership role as a government contractor.
Compare that with Gaza, where the role models today are Hamas martyrs in its endless war with Israel.
Among the most ignorant and vile things that have been said about this Gaza war is that Hamas had no choice — that its wars with Israel, culminating on Oct. 7 with a murderous rampage, the kidnappings of Israelis as young as 10 months and as old as 86 and the rape of Israeli women, could somehow be excused as a justifiable jailbreak by pent-up males.
No.
Let’s go to the videotape: In September 2005, Ariel Sharon completed a unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli forces and settlements from Gaza, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war. In short order, Hamas began attacking the crossing points between Gaza and Israel to show that even if Israel was gone, the resistance movement wasn’t over; these crossing points were a lifeline for commerce and jobs, and Israel eventually reduced the number of crossings from six to two.
In January 2006, the Palestinians held elections hoping to give the Palestinian Authority legitimacy to run Gaza and the West Bank. There was a debate among Israeli, Palestinian and Bush administration officials over whether Hamas should be allowed to run in the elections — because it had rejected the Oslo peace accords with Israel.
Yossi Beilin, one of the Israeli architects of Oslo, told me that he and others argued that Hamas should not be allowed to run, as did many members of Fatah, Arafat’s group, who had embraced Oslo and recognized Israel. But the Bush team insisted that Hamas be permitted to run without embracing Oslo, hoping that it would lose and this would be its ultimate refutation. Unfortunately, for complex reasons, Fatah ran unrealistically high numbers of candidates in many districts, dividing the vote, while the more disciplined Hamas ran carefully targeted slates and managed to win the parliamentary majority.
Hamas then faced a critical choice: Now that it controlled the Palestinian parliament, it could work within the Oslo Accords and the Paris protocol that governed economic ties between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank — or not.
Hamas chose not to — making a clash between Hamas and Fatah, which supported Oslo, inevitable. In the end, Hamas violently ousted Fatah from Gaza in 2007, killing some of its officials and making clear that it would not abide by the Oslo Accords or the Paris protocol. That led to the first Israeli economic blockade of Gaza — and what would be 22 years of on-and-off Hamas rocket attacks, Israeli checkpoint openings and closings, wars and cease-fires, all culminating on Oct. 7.
These were fateful choices. Once Sharon pulled Israel out of Gaza, Palestinians were left, for the first time ever, with total control over a piece of land. Yes, it was an impoverished slice of sand and coastal seawater, with some agricultural areas. And it was not the ancestral home of most of its residents. But it was theirs to build anything they wanted.
Had Hamas embraced Oslo and chosen to build its own Dubai, not only would the world have lined up to aid and invest in it; it would have been the most powerful springboard conceivable for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, in the heart of the Palestinian ancestral homeland. Palestinians would have proved to themselves, to Israelis and to the world what they could do when they had their own territory.
But Hamas decided instead to make Gaza a springboard for destroying Israel. To put it another way, Hamas had a choice: to replicate Dubai in 2023 or replicate Hanoi in 1968. It chose to replicate Hanoi, whose Củ Chi tunnel network served as the launchpad for the ’68 Tet offensive.
Hamas is not simply engaged in some pure-as-the-driven-snow anticolonial struggle against Israel. Only Hamas’s useful idiots on U.S. college campuses would believe that. Hamas is engaged in a raw power struggle with Fatah over who will control Gaza and the West Bank, and it’s engaged in a power struggle in the region — alongside other pro-Muslim Brotherhood parties and regimes (like Turkey and Qatar) — against pro-Western monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and the U.A.E. and military-led regimes like Egypt’s.
In that struggle, Hamas wanted Gaza isolated and in conflict with Israel because that allowed Hamas to maintain its iron-fisted political and Islamist grip over the strip, forgoing elections and controlling all the smuggling routes in and out, which funded its tunnels and war machine and the lifestyle of its leaders and loyalists — every bit as much as Iran’s Islamic regime today needs its hostility with America to justify its iron grip over Iranian society and the Revolutionary Guard’s control of all of its smuggling. Every bit as much as Hezbollah needs its conflict with Israel to justify building its own army inside Lebanon, controlling its drug smuggling and not permitting any Lebanese government hostile to its interests to govern, no matter who is elected. And every bit as much as Vladimir Putin needs his conflict with NATO to justify his grip on power, the militarization of Russian society and his and his cronies’ looting of the state coffers.
This is now a common strategy for consolidating and holding power forever by a single political faction and disguising it with an ideology of resistance. It’s no wonder they all support one another.
There is so much to criticize about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which I have consistently opposed. But please, spare me the Harvard Yard nonsense that this war is all about the innocent, colonized oppressed and the evil, colonizing oppressors; that Israel alone was responsible for the isolation of Gaza; and that the only choice Hamas had for years was to create an underground “skyline” of tunnels up to 230 feet deep (contra Dubai) and that its only choice on Oct. 7 was martyrdom.
Credit…Pool photo by Menahem Kahana
Hamas has never wavered from being more interested in destroying the Jewish state than in building a Palestinian state — because that goal of annihilating Israel is what has enabled Hamas to justify its hold on power indefinitely, even though Gaza has known only economic misery since Hamas seized control.
We do those Palestinians who truly want and deserve a state of their own no favors by pretending otherwise.
Gazans know the truth. Fresh polling data reported by AFP indicates that on the eve of Oct. 7, “many Gazans were hostile to Hamas ahead of the group’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with some describing its rule as a second occupation.”
As Hamas’s grip over Gaza is loosened, I predict we will hear a lot more of these Gazan voices on what they really think of Hamas, and it will be embarrassing to Hamas’s apologists on U.S. campuses.
But our story about agency and choices does not stop there. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister — 16 years — also made choices. And even before this war, he made terrible ones — for Israel and for Jews all over the world.
The list is long: Before this war, Netanyahu actively worked to keep the Palestinians divided and weak by strengthening Hamas in Gaza with billions of dollars from Qatar, while simultaneously working to discredit and delegitimize the more moderate Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, committed to Oslo and nonviolence in the West Bank. That way Netanyahu could tell every U.S. president, in effect: I’d love to make peace with the Palestinians, but they are divided, and moreover, the best of them can’t control the West Bank and the worst of them control Gaza. So what do you want from me?
Netanyahu’s goal has always been to destroy the Oslo option once and for all. In that, Bibi and Hamas have always needed each other: Bibi to tell the United States and Israelis that he had no choice, and Hamas to tell Gazans and its new and naïve supporters around the world that the Palestinians’ only choice was armed struggle led by Hamas.
The only exit from this mutually assured destruction is to bring in some transformed version of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — or a whole new P.L.O.-appointed government of Palestinian technocrats — in partnership with moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But when I raise that with many Israelis right now, they tell me, “Tom, it’s not the time. No one wants to hear it.”
That makes me want to scream: No, it is exactly the time. Don’t they get it? Netanyahu’s greatest political achievement has been to persuade Israelis and the world that it’s never the right time to talk about the morally corrosive occupation and how to help build a credible Palestinian partner to take it off Israel’s hands.
He and the settlers wore everyone down. When I covered the State Department in the early 1990s, West Bank settlements were routinely described by U.S. officials as “obstacles to peace.” But that phrase was gradually dropped. The Trump administration even decided to stop calling the West Bank “occupied” territory.
The reason I insist on talking about these choices now is because Israel is being surrounded by what I call Iran’s landcraft carriers (as opposed to our aircraft carriers): Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran is squeezing Israel into a multifront war with its proxies. I truly worry for Israel.
But Israel will have neither the sympathy of the world that it needs nor the multiple allies it needs to confront this Iranian octopus, nor the Palestinian partners it needs to govern any post-Hamas Gaza, nor the lasting support of its best friend in the world, Joe Biden, unless it is ready to choose a long-term pathway for separating from the Palestinians with an improved, legitimate Palestinian partner.
Biden has been shouting that in Netanyahu’s ears in their private calls.
For all these reasons, if Netanyahu keeps refusing because, once again, politically, the time is not right for him, Biden will have to choose, too — between America’s interests and Netanyahu’s.
Netanyahu has been out to undermine the cornerstone of U.S. Middle East policy for the last three decades — the Oslo framework of two states for two people that guarantees Palestinian statehood and Israeli security, which neither side ever gave its best shot. Destroying the Oslo framework is not in America’s interest.
In sum, this war is so ugly, deadly and painful, it is no wonder that so many Palestinians and Israelis want to just focus on survival and not on any of the choices that got them here. The Haaretz writer Dahlia Scheindlin put it beautifully in a recent essay:
The situation today is so terrible that people run from reality as they run from rockets — and hide in the shelter of their blind spots. It’s pointless to wag fingers. The only thing left to do is try and change that reality.
For me, choosing that path will always be in season.
“Extreme sabotage”: Trump rants about new “10,000 soldiers” conspiracy theory on Truth Social
Gabriella Ferrigine – January 2, 2024
Donald Trump Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump spent a portion of his New Year’s holiday blasting perceived political adversaries on his Truth Social platform, on the heels of his Christmas rant in which he told special counsel Jack Smith, President Joe Biden, and others to “ROT IN HELL.” On Monday evening, Trump unleashed an invective targeting former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and once again at Smith.
“Why did American Disaster Liz Cheney, who suffers from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), and was defeated for Congress by the largest margin for a sitting Congressman or Congresswoman in the history of our Country, ILLEGALLY DELETE & DESTROY most of the evidence, and related items, from the January 6th Committee of Political Thugs and Misfits,” Trump wrote. “THIS ACT OF EXTREME SABOTAGE MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR MY LAWYERS TO PROPERLY PREPARE FOR, AND PRESENT, A PROPER DEFENSE OF THEIR CLIENT, ME. All of the information on Crazy Nancy Pelosi turning down 10,000 soldiers that I offered to to guard the Capitol Building, and beyond, is gone. The ridiculous Deranged Jack Smith case on Immunity, which the most respected legal minds in the Country say I am fully entitled to, is now completely compromised and should be thrown out and terminated, JUST LIKE THE RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS DID TO THE EVIDENCE!”
While Trump’s public and online bashing of political rivals is hardly a new phenomenon, this most recent post contains traces of conspiracy theory rhetoric — that any exonerating evidence is mysteriously “gone” — is something that his followers could latch onto,” Mediaite noted. Conspiracy theories such as this work because they cannot be proven false,” wrote Mediaite’s Colby Hall, referencing Trump’s claims of a stolen election in 2020. “But this is where we are at the moment,” Hall added, “and it appears that Trump has resorted to the ‘they lost my homework’ legal strategy, which may reveal just how desperate he actually is.”
