Former PM (yep, he was) Scott Morrison, has put out the feelers to the Richmond football club to see if they have any interest in having him replace Damian Hardwick as Coach. ”I do love my Sharkies, up, up Cronulla... Read More ›
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Biden negotiating a debt ceiling with Kevin McCarthy was Harry Reid’s worst nightmare.
The post That Time Joe Biden Was Banned From Negotiating With Republicans appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump is hard at work trying to woo voters Trump backed out of the recent campaign event in Iowa and it doesn’t appear that he is planning to leave his beach club any time soon (unless it’s to decamp to his Bedminster club for the summer.) But that doesn’t mean he isn’t campaigning. Here’s what it looks like: Some interesting commentary on all this: “Forcing reality” is a great term. All that bullshit about great polling is nonsense. He posts polls from fly-by-night partisan pollsters and some with no attribution at all that show him winning. The thing is that it works. If he pushes it hard enough and with the back-up of sycophants and partisan opportunists, millions of people will believe him. He has good reason to believe that he can “force reality” on a whole lot of Americans. He’s made tens of millions of them believe that the election was stolen and he is the rightful president. He had help, of course, from the right wing media but really it was almost all him. He “forced reality.” Can he do it again?
We the undersigned are scholars of the humanities and social sciences and other disciplines with expertise in the following issues. We write this open letter to express our concerns regarding the Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) trilateral security agreement. Specifically, our concerns relate to pillar one of the agreement, the joint development with the Continue reading »
When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met face-to-face with Mr Antony Blinken’s China counterpart Mr Wang Yi for eight hours in Vienna on May 10-11, a meeting both sides described as “constructive”, where was America’s top diplomat, Mr Blinken? The Sullivan-Wang meeting not only makes US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s long-awaited China visit a Continue reading »
The cancellation of Joe Biden’s visit to PNG is a gift. A gift of more time to step back from a precipice. The brutal choice, Mr. Prime Minister, is now between your nation’s finest hour and its flip side, its darkest, its recolonisation, this time, as an American client state, a pawn in America’s plans Continue reading »
There is understandable disappointment that the Government did not do more to improve the adequacy of JobSeeker, with many highlighting how this could have been done by scrapping the Stage 3 tax cuts. But the revenues from scrapping Stage 3 are not as great as most commentators suggest; and, though the Budget’s welfare measures provide Continue reading »
In his opening statement to the recent Senate Estimates hearing, Department of Home Affairs (DHA) Secretary Mike Pezzullo again proved he does not understand immigration policy or administration. At the hearing, he said: “I wish to advise the Committee that the average visa refusal rate for the six-year period from 2001-02 to 2006-07 was 1.8 Continue reading »
“We are thankful you are here. We are happy to a be recipient of [the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association] APPEA’s largesse in the form of coming here more often…The South Australian government is at your disposal…” (South Australian Labor minister for energy and mining, Tony Koutsantonis, May 15, 2023). It is more shocking Continue reading »
The streets fall unusually quiet. No local buses blaring pop music, no bikes zipping through toot-tooting their presence. Then you hear it. All the blaring and the toot-tooting multiplied by election fever. It is democracy time in Timor-Leste, and no nation quite does it like this one. Today, Dili, like the rest of the nation, Continue reading »
In Ukraine, grim visions of a new age of nuclear warfare are the natural counterpart of western hardliners’ march of folly towards the nuclear brink. Thankfully, there is an alternative, one that has been possible since the very beginning of the conflict and now has growing support among Western publics. The Harvard-based website, Russia Matters, Continue reading »
A proposed PCB dump site in the town of Lee has residents and town leaders seeking options to stop the plan.
The post A Massachusetts Town Is Suing Monsanto for Its Cancer-Causing PCBs appeared first on The Intercept.
The debt limit talks are still roadblocked by Republicans insisting that the government cut all programs that help children and other vulnerable people to the bone while protecting the tax cuts for the rich. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of those rich people: House Republicans are bidding for steep spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. First, though, they paused during their private weekly meeting on Tuesday to bid for something else: Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s used chapstick. Really. The fundraising auction of McCarthy’s used cherry lip balm ended when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) placed a winning $100,000 bid, as confirmed by her spokesperson. That’s adorable isn’t it? For some reason it makes me feel like crying.
Montana has become the first state to completely ban TikTok for its residents, and I for one couldn’t be more supportive. As a proud American, I’m gravely concerned about TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, and their access to the personal data of me and my fellow citizens. Also, as a jaded, thirty-something marketing professional, I’m annoyed and vaguely threatened by any social media I didn’t grow up with. So, this is a win-win.
I’d actually like to see the federal government follow Montana’s lead and ban TikTok across the United States. The threats posed by TikTok to everyday Americans are many—security, safety, and control of personal data. And the threats posed to mid-thirties marketers, who pat themselves on the back for watching Hot Ones, are also many—vibe checks, dance challenges, Addison Rae, and so on.
The ratings are … bad Contrary to some certain beliefs, not everyone in this country wants right wing propaganda instead of news. And if they do, they have Fox, Newsmax and OAN to give it to them. CNN made a mistake: More than a week after CNN’s disastrous town hall with former President Donald Trump, the negative impact the fiasco had on the network’s ratings is coming into clearer focus. Last week, the cable news pioneer suffered its lowest-rated week since June 2015, averaging just 429,000 total daily viewers from Monday-Friday. CNN was also down double digits compared to the same week last year in both total viewership and in the key advertising demographic of viewers ages 25-54. MSNBC more than doubled CNN’s daily audience, drawing 976,000 total viewers, while Fox News averaged 1.4 million. Fox News was down 41 percent in the key demo year-to-year and 24 percent in total viewers, having seen its ratings plummet as angry right-wingers flee after Tucker Carlson’s shock firing. In fact, Fox’s post-Tucker weekday demo audience is the lowest its been since the first week of September 2001.
If you haven’t been following all the Clarence Thomas news, I’ve been talking with a lot of media outlets about him, the corruption scandal, how it fits with his larger life story, and where things are headed with Thomas and the Court. At the bottom of this post is a roundup of all the interviews and programs and pieces I’ve been involved in. Aside from tooting my own, I’ve for a reason for listing all my media appearances about Thomas. As you’ve probably noticed, there has been a demonstrable uptick in interest about Thomas—and his Black nationalist origins—since last year. It began with his infamous concurrence in the Dobbs decision, which I wrote about at The New Yorker, and it […]
Emphasizing humanitarian aid and empowering women's self-determination and autonomy might be a better approach to creating meaningful change for women and girls than sanctions as a sole strategy.
Renowned weapons expert Dan Kaszeta reveals how he fell victim to a Soviet-style blacklist after UK officials discovered he had criticised Government policy on Twitter
When you want to go forward, you put it in ‘D’ Something David Roberts (@drvolts) tweeted Monday is worth your attention: As I say over & over, there’s no clearer way to understand the contrast between America’s two political parties than by looking at what they do when they control state gov’ts. Dems solve real problems; Republicans gang up to visit cruelty on vulnerable out groups. Roberts cites the transportation bill the DFL just passed in Minnesota as an example of Democrats solving real problems: Added to an already passed metro-area 0.25% sales tax for housing programs and projects, the seven counties of Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington, Dakota, Scott, Anoka and Carver counties will see a 1% sales tax increase. Taken together, the transportation tax and fee increases would raise an additional $1.48 billion for roads, bridges, transit and other transportation needs in the next two-year budget period and $2.22 billion for the following two-year budget. Memory of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse is still fresh in Minnesota. Rep.
Are you worried about the rising political power of violent white nationalists in America? Well, you’ve got plenty of company, including U.S. national security and counterterrorism officials. And we’re worried, too — worried enough, in fact, to feel that it’s time to take a look at the experience of India, where Hindu supremacist dogma has increasingly been enforced through violent means. While there are striking parallels between both countries, India appears to have ventured further down the road of far-right violence. Its experience could potentially offer Americans some valuable, if grim, lessons. As a start, let’s look at two recent incidents, one in India and the other in the United States. Laws passed in most Indian states against the killing... Read more