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There’s been a lot of debate lately over the US strategy of surrounding nations like Russia and China with war machinery in order to deter them from aggressive actions. Some argue that since powerful nations tend to respond aggressively to the amassing of military threats on their borders, this policy actually provokes the very aggressions Continue reading »

So long as swamp creatures like Cheney. Bush and Blair can direct our gaze exclusively at Trump, they grow in power. They can keep waging wars, keep stealing resources, keep bombing children – and keep getting richer.

The post The Priority Must Be To Put Bush, Blair and Cheney Behind Bars Before Trump appeared first on MintPress News.

… is right twice a day Matt Gaetz on the House floor: “It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation.” pic.twitter.com/LXNxi9YMs4 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2023 That will make a nice campaign ad, don’t you think? Gaetz didn’t pull the trigger on the motion to vacate. But he told the press on the capitol steps that he still plans to do it later when the full congress is back in town. Stay tuned.

If you haven’t yet listened to Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story, you probably should, now. It’s brilliant, if profoundly depressing. Very brief synopsis: the methods routinely used to teach children to read in the US don’t work well for large numbers of children, and the science of reading has been clear about this for decades. […]

Thank you for submitting your grant application for a homelessness shelter expansion.

We received many competitive proposals, including yours. With the limited funds available, we were forced to make some difficult decisions. Consequently, the city’s budget committee has not recommended the shelter expansion project in lieu of creating thirty-five new pickleball courts across our community.

While your proposal to increase the bed availability in your shelter from 80 to 140 by purchasing accessory dwelling units was a surprisingly resourceful plan that did not conflict with existing zoning laws, the budget and governance committees have identified pickleball as the issue that voters care about most. With a meager twenty-five pickleball courts in our metro area, this is obviously a critical need for our valued citizens. The approved funding project will increase the number of courts to sixty and is a necessary measure to reach the goal of 250 pickleball courts within the municipality by 2030.

Scotland Yard has announced that a man in his 40s is under a formal investigation. It comes three months after Byline Times handed a dossier of evidence about 40-year-old GB News star Dan Wootton to detectives

Join the Future of Journalism ► https://www.patreon.com/DoubleDownNews

The post My latest visit to Julian Assange at Belmarsh – Double Down Network appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Most of the world’s trade is done in dollars, even for trade that never goes to the US.

Most of the world’s money transfers at some point go thru the western banking system, and quite often an American bank, even if both parties are not in America. This is how the US justified its’ anti-FIFA case: the bribes, though at never point involving any Americans or going to America, at some point went thru a US bank on their way to their target.

Everyone needs (or needed) dollars, and everyone needed the Western banking system. There was no real alternative, and to a large extent there still isn’t.

As GB News goes into meltdown following Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox's on air comments about Ava Evans, Byline Times reveals the controversial personal histories of five employees – including CEO Angelos Frangopoulos, who enjoys the protection of a non-disclosure agreement over sexual harassment allegations

“Kevin McCarthy needs to look at himself in the mirror and ask if he wants to be an adult, or a Republican,” the congressman said.

Real talk Last week President Biden gave a speech that went largely unmarked in the press and it’s really too bad. It may be the best speech he’s ever given and if people saw it it might set their minds at ease a little bit about his prospects in the next election and the following four years. He’s never been much of a speaker but the speeches he’s been making on the threat to democracy are excellent. This is the fourth one he’s given and it’s a sincere effort on his part to which we should all pay attention. After all, while we are all painfully aware of the right wing’s anti-democratic turn, he is the president and it stands to reason he sees this from a different perspective. That he is so determined to sound the alarm should get much more attention than it does. On the heels of a bizarre impeachment inquiry hearing last week in which Republicans House members threw out outrageous smears against him without a shred of evidence and a GOP primary debate that had the candidates yelling at each other like drunk sports hooligans, Biden traveled to Arizona to open the John McCain Institute and Library.

The largest telescope that will ever be built*

Rishi Sunak's Party is placing itself in opposition not just to its own record, but to observable reality itself, reports Adam Bienkov

If the rain comes | They run and hide their heads Brooklyn flooded on Friday. Again. Subway lines shut down as water poured off streets, down stairways and into stations. A niece reported she had to take cabs into the city for work and the basement entry was knee-deep. Nancy Walecki wrote last week at The Atlantic: New York City’s sewer system is built for the rain of the past—when a notable storm might have meant 1.75 inches of water an hour. It wasn’t built to handle the rainfall from Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, or, more recently, Hurricane Ida—which dumped 3.15 inches an hour on Central Park. And it wasn’t built to handle the kind of extreme rainfall that is becoming routine: The city flooded last December, last April, and last July—an unusual seasonal span. “We now have in New York something much more like a tropical-rainfall pattern,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York City’s environmental-protection commissioner, said yesterday at The Atlantic Festival. “And it happens over and over again.” It happened today.

Dave Eggers’s latest book, The Eyes and the Impossible, is the story of a dog named Johannes. Johannes is a free dog, a fast dog—such a fast dog! He lives in an urban park by the sea, and every day, he runs through the park, seeing all, missing nothing, and reporting what he sees to the park’s three ancient Bison, the Keepers of the Equilibrium. But the Equilibrium has been disrupted.

Gorgeously illustrated throughout by Shawn Harris,The Eyes and the Impossible is a lyrical, soulful book full of wit and passion—a timeless story for readers of all ages. To celebrate the release of a new, oversized edition, we present an interview with Dave and editor Taylor Norman.

Republican urges Chaos Caucus: “All of them need to grow up” Crisp fall air on the first Monday in October is perhaps a reminder to take a moment Yes, the ethics-challenged U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term, God help us. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern do some teeth-grinding over having to write the obligatory journalistic “curtain-raiser” as the new term opens. The question “is not if we should be worried, but exactly how worried we should be.” What will the Roberts court do next with “the most dangerous and radical ideas to emerge from the conservative legal movement” courtesy of Donald Trump and Leonard Leo? Yes, despite all the oddsmakers’ bets on which elected Black woman California Gov. Gavin Newsom, would appoint to fill out the term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, he chose instead Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler. The Washington Post reports, “She will become the second Black woman after Harris to represent California in the Senate and the first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress, a statement from Newsom’s office said.

Rather than demand U.S. citizens receive fair and decent treatment by Israel, the Biden administration added yet another award to the government leader of apartheid Israel.

The post Biden’s Visa Waiver: A Gift to Netanyahu’s Apartheid Regime appeared first on MintPress News.

If you aren’t familiar with the tune, here it is, but be warned, it will be droning on in your head for the rest of the day.

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
by Emily Dickinson

Hopey, hopey, hopey, hopey,
Feathered thing when I am mopey,
Perched in my soul—man, I hope she
Never stops singing at all!

Sweetest in the gale is heard,
Not even storms can stop this bird,
Keeps you warm, despair deferred,
I love my sister-in-law!

I think I’ll stay in tonight, my room rules!

Gettysburg Address
by Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln,
Eighty-seven years ago our forefathers were thinkin’,
We’ll bring forth a new nation; now it’s shrinkin’,
We’re in a Civil War!

The world won’t note what we say here today,
(I’m just being modest, okay?),
But can’t forget the price that they paid,
My wife’s middle name is Todd!

In the USA, you can’t break away. I’m gay!