memeorandum: Why 2022 Could Be ‘The Year of the Political Comeback’ (The Daily Beast)

10:10 AM ET, December 27, 2021

Top Items:

Lydia Saad / Gallup:

Justice Roberts Tops Federal Leaders in Americans' Approval — WASHINGTON, D.C. — Chief Justice John Roberts earns the highest job approval rating of 11 U.S. leaders rated in a Dec. 1-16 Gallup poll with 60% approving of how he is handling his role. — Only two other leaders on the list …

Discussion: The Daily Caller

Hugo Lowell / The Guardian:

Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack — Committee to request contents of the call seeking to stop Biden's certification and may subpoena Rudy Giuliani — Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack …

Discussion: emptywheel and Raw Story

Stephen Collinson / CNN:

Trump and the January 6 committee are now locked in a full-on confrontation — (CNN)Nearly a year after his failed coup attempt, Donald Trump's habit of putting his own political gain over truth is playing out again as the ex-commander-in-chief and his associates seek to delay and defy …

Discussion: Raw Story and The Hill

Colby Itkowitz / Washington Post:

House MAGA squad seeks to expand by boosting challengers to fellow Republicans — The defiant far-right acolytes of former president Donald Trump in the House Republican caucus have embarked on a targeted campaign ahead of the midterm elections to expand their ranks — and extend their power — on Capitol Hill.

Discussion: Raw Story

Peter Wehner / The Atlantic:

The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr. — Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting. He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably …

Discussion: HillReporter.com, Mediaite and Raw Story

Parul Sehgal / New Yorker:

The Case Against the Trauma Plot — Fiction writers love it. Filmmakers can't resist it. But does this trope deepen characters, or flatten them into a set of symptoms? — It was on a train journey, from Richmond to Waterloo, that Virginia Woolf encountered the weeping woman.

The Daily Beast:

Why 2022 Could Be ‘The Year of the Political Comeback’ — It's a redemption year for these politicians. — Every election year, American politicians find new and ever more brazen ways to disprove that old F. Scott Fitzgerald adage—that there are “no second acts in American lives.”

Discussion: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Washington Free Beacon:

2021 Man of the Year: Ed Durr — New Jersey's pantheon of legends is, well, legendary. It includes the likes of Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Spielberg, Derek Jeter, Zach Braff. Joining this long and illustrious list is a state senator-elect by the name of Edward Durr Jr.

Mark Niesse / Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Alleged ‘dead’ Georgia voters found alive and well after 2020 election — Trump's allegations of vast voter fraud debunked — False claims that there were thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead Georgia voters can now rest in peace. — Election investigators found …

Washington Post:

Michael Fanone deserves the nation's gratitude. That's not what he has gotten. — Michael Fanone, who resigned Dec. 20 from the D.C. police, was a profile in courage twice this year. — First, when he stood his ground against a violent mob of President Donald Trump's supporters on Jan. 6 …

Discussion: The Guardian

wusa9.com:
Capitol rioter asks judge to let him use dating apps while he awaits trial

Discussion: Raw Story

Daniel Greenfield / Front Page Magazine:

FrontPage Magazine's Man of the Year - Kyle Rittenhouse — Kyle reminds us that any American can stand up to evil. And win. — Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Ian Millhiser / Vox:

Just how much is Trump's judiciary sabotaging the Biden presidency? — More than a year after Trump's defeat, Biden is forced to share power with increasingly partisan judges. — No one has ever elected Matthew Kacsmaryk to anything. — Kacsmaryk, whom former President Donald Trump appointed …

Discussion: Associated Press and Raw Story

Wall Street Journal:

AT&T Slashed Promised Life Insurance for Former Workers—and Time Runs Out at Year-End — The company, which is sparing its executives from the cut, says it brings benefits in line with what other firms offer — When Dean Allison left his job as a property manager at AT&T in 1998 …

Deisy Buitrago / Reuters:

Venezuela's president to visit Iran ‘very soon’ — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday he will soon visit Iran to finalize new agreements on cooperation with the Middle Eastern country, which has become Venezuela's top ally in boosting oil output amid U.S. sanctions.

Discussion: Just The News