Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer and his chairman Cliff Kupchan have put America’s looming era of the “asterisk presidency” at the top of their annual list of global risks.

“46*,” they say in reference to Joe Biden’s term starting 12 noon, Jan. 20, marks a doleful era, “when the occupant of the Oval Office is seen as illegitimate by” much of the country.

Click here to read the full analysis but if you don’t, the highlights are below.

The argument about 46* basically falls in the category of Donald Trump’s supposed vice-like grip on the core base of the Republican Party. Mr Bremmer and Mr Kupchan write that “Trump’s popularity extends well beyond his most vocal supporters” and a section of the “broader electoral coalition” he constructed in 2020 sees his “refusal to concede as a display of courage, not an assault on democratic norms…he will leave office as (by far) the most popular and influential figure in the GOP.” …

This week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz will lead nearly a dozen Republican colleagues in a move to reject electors from certain states won by President-elect Joe Biden. The grounds for these are vague but fevered: Mr Cruz and the others cite unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and want an emergency 10-day audit of the election results.

Why?

The answer is bananas no matter which language you use to ask the question.

Mr Cruz and Co plan to muddy the proceedings of Congress’s joint session — hitherto, a ceremonial event — by objecting to some states’ election results. (Those would obviously be the ones that Donald Trump believes — without any evidence — were “stolen” from him: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.) …

There is a lot riding on a pair of elections in the southern American state of Georgia, as it votes to elect its senators two months after the general election. In the first round of voting, which took place during the November presidential election, none of Georgia’s candidates for senate earned the 50 per cent state mandated share of the vote to win.

Now, politics, history and geography are coming into collision in the state. The past and the future are in a furious tussle. Georgia, which last elected a Democrat to the Senate two decades ago and has never picked a black senator, could now call time on the status quo. …

I never thought I’d say these words, but here goes: I agree with Mitch McConnell.

The Republican Senate majority leader refused to move forward with President Donald Trump’s command that most American adults be sent $2,000 checks. This, after Mr Trump had signed into law a $900 billion stimulus bill that included means-tested $600 payments.

But Mr McConnell said he opposed adding more money to the $600 stimulus payments because it would greatly inflate US debt and benefit some families who aren’t in need of financial assistance. Some of the people who would qualify for the payments belong to households earning up to $300,000, Mr McConnell pointed out. …

I have been trying — and failing — to buy a sofa bed for delivery within the next month or two and it’s got me thinking about something that historian Frank Trentmann has called the “ empire of things “.

Mr Trentmann’s 2016 book ‘Empire of Things’ chronicled the “global advance of goods” from the 15th century. He showed that the resulting five centuries of material culture had a fairly consistent loop of supply and demand. The empire won new dominions and grew more mighty with every succeeding year.

To my mind though, the empire of things is actually a universe — of goods and services, as well as the consumerist mindset that brought us up to 2020 in a dizzying swirl of vast shopping malls and department stores, indiscriminate purchase and credit binges. …

Digital vaccine passports. Vaxxies.

The first term signifies antibody protection — those who completed the Covid-19 vaccine course.

The second allows entry into the same exclusive new club — the vaccinated person who takes a selfie while engaged in the act.

Happy new year.

It’s all change in a global pandemic. Expect to see the first digital vaccine passports in the first half of this year. Some private companies and government agencies are working on versions of this digital proof of vaccination. Mostly, it will take the form of an app that would certify an individual’s vaccination status and allow entry into airports, airplanes, schools, offices, theatres, restaurants…anywhere and everywhere really that we used to freely go before SARS-CoV-2 hit. …

Apparently, the digital nomad visa is going to ride the coat-tails of the #wfh revolution. Those who work from home are going to move their remote working somewhere nice.

Somewhere, in fact, like a palm-fringed island nation, the sort you would normally visit on vacation.

According to OZY, the seekers include the African island nation of Mauritius and the Caribbean islands of Barbados, Antigua and Bermuda. All launched one-year digital nomad visas in the past few months. Preliminary charges vary — from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. In return, tax incentives are available to the digital nomads. Estonia and Georgia also have similar provisions. …

So here’s the scenario. On Christmas Day, a suicide bomb blast left an historic part of an American state capital looking like Baghdad after a car bombing. The Nashville bomber is thought to be Anthony Quinn Warner, 63. But there’s continuing confusion if Warner can be described as a terrorist.

What?

A suicide bomber. Christmas Day. The centre of an iconic state capital. Communications knocked out for miles, affecting police and emergency services too. And it isn’t domestic terrorism?

Not according to FBI investigators.

CNN quotes Doug Korneski, the FBI Special Agent in Charge, on what might be considered domestic terrorism. The agent said: “When we assess an event for domestic terrorism nexus, it has to be tied to an ideology. …