They shouldn’t but they do. This country is nuts. Dan Pfeiffer analyzes the current polling and the task ahead in his newsletter today: Last week, Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned for being part of a criminal organization that tried to illegally overturn the 2020 election. His mug shot was released and quickly went viral. Trump fumbled the COVID pandemic that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and even more jobs; and he is personally responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. On the other side, President Joe Biden conducted his presidency with decency and compassion, exceeding even the most optimistic expectations of what could be achieved with a Republican Party that won’t acknowledge the legitimacy of his electoral victory. Unemployment is under 4%, the economy is growing and inflation has been coming down for months. Yet somehow — against all common sense — the 2024 election between a competent President and an incompetent criminal — will be incredibly close. He goes on to lay out the latest polling which shows that Trump and Biden are within a point of each other. It’s appalling.
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Nobody can say anything about Joe Biden except how old he is. Nothing else is relevant apparently. Except that his age is actually irrelevant, particularly when you look at what he’s done. Any progressive should be proud of accomplishments like this: The Biden administration Tuesday identified 10 expensive prescription drugs that have been chosen for price negotiations with pharmaceutical manufacturers as the government seeks to ease the financial burden on older and disabled Americans. The announcement marks an unprecedented step in a long political war over the nation’s exorbitant drug costs even as the pharmaceutical industry is still trying to block the plan. Half of the drugs chosen first for price negotiations are medications to prevent blood clots and treat diabetes and were taken by millions of people on Medicare in the past year, according to a list released by federal health officials who oversee Medicare, the vast public health insurance system. Others are used to treat heart trouble, autoimmune disease and cancer. Consumers will not see benefits swiftly; the lower, negotiated prices are due to become available in early 2026.
Anthony Albanese needs to see for himself what the Chinese economic miracle looks like close up. It is time for Anthony Albanese to begin to understand what it is we are balancing with China, and what a challenge that is going to be. That the prime minister has mostly, but not entirely, clarified his position Continue reading »
In 2011, Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, roughly 250 kilometres north of Tokyo, was hit by a magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami. Three reactors stopped immediately but the loss of electricity supply led in the days and months that followed to breakdown of the cooling system and to a series of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns of Continue reading »
Stuart Rees has provided us with a penetrating look at the hyper-masculinity of recent utterances by the government Minister Pat Conroy. As is now de rigueur for most of the MSM (including, sadly, the ABC) these utterances are focussed on justification for AUKUS and naturally, implicit demonisation of China. SNAFU – but wait: there’s more! Continue reading »
A tonic for readers who are drowning in news about China, climate change and socioeconomic problems… Boldly refusing to follow the pack mentality of the mainstream media, and not afraid to reject the Cold War mindset, Pearls and Irritations is essential reading for those who want to make a positive difference in politics and policy-making. Continue reading »
In 2009, after receiving a report from prominent Catholic priest Frank Brennan which recommended it, the Rudd Labor government abandoned the quest for a national human rights act. Instead it established a parliamentary human rights committee which came into operation in 2011. But, as one might expect, this committee was dead on arrival. It is Continue reading »
Age 65 is no longer relevant to define older people in a new Aged Care Act. It was introduced by Bismarck in Prussia in the 19th century at a time when life expectancy was less than 50 and few people lived past 65. It was reinforced by the US Social Security Act under Roosevelt in Continue reading »
One of the what-ifs that the Albanese government should be asking itself is; what would it mean if America invaded Mexico in 2025? If the leading Republican presidential candidates are to be taken at their word this is not a foolish question. Could anything have a greater impact on the foundations of Australia’s foreign and Continue reading »
President Joe Biden’s decision to skip Asean-related summits in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Sept 5-7 in favour of the G-20 leaders’ meeting in India just two days later has been greeted with howls of disappointment and criticism around Southeast Asian capitals and elsewhere that are concerned about America’s role in the region. Mr Biden’s Continue reading »
Brett Baier spreading doubt about the new vaccine. He doesn’t have to do this but it’s what his audience wants to hear so that’s what they’re serving up. BRET BAIER (HOST): There’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know really the stats. They don’t seem to match up, even today after all that we’ve been through. DR. MARTY MAKARY (CONTRIBUTOR): That’s right. There’s a lot subject to interpretation because some people point to statistics that are massively inflated. We know that the hospitalization numbers are not real. We know the COVID death numbers are not real. BAIER: Why do you say that? MAKARY: Well, maybe half of those are real numbers because we don’t know who’s in the hospital for COVID versus an incidental COVID positive test. And when you test positive in the hospital when you’re in there for another reason, like heart failure, you get a stigma, you get a label. And so that goes down as a COVID hospitalization. BAIER: And we as a country have not delved into the problems with vaccines, right? Other countries have, I know Germany had a big study.
China and the U.S. are collecting the same proportion of their populations’ DNA profiles — and the FBI wants to double its budget to get even more.
The post FBI Hoovering Up DNA at a Pace That Rivals China, Holds 21 Million Samples and Counting appeared first on The Intercept.
ONE STAR. If I could, I’d give it zero stars. I cannot believe I wasted six hours making this so-called banana bread. I did everything right. I followed the recipe exactly, except for changing every single ingredient.
All I did was swap the all-purpose flour for whole wheat—no big deal. And I think eggs are gross, so I used soaked chia seeds instead, which was a major improvement to this recipe I had never made before. Then for the vanilla, butter, and sugar, I added these in the EXACT AMOUNTS, except instead of vanilla, I used almond extract; instead of butter, I used coconut oil; and instead of sugar, I used raw chicken breast.
Also, I didn’t have bananas, so I used boiled celery mush leftover from when I swapped the sugar in that revolting angel food cake recipe.
I just watched Andrea Mitchell attempt to interview the fast-talking hustler Vivek Ramaswamy. It wasn’t pretty. Anyway, this is making the rounds today: Philip Bump has this interesting take: This Oct. 27, 2003, exchange between Sharpton and Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show “Hardball,” has reentered circulation in the past few days because there was a 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the room. The event was hosted by the Harvard University Institute of Politics and, at the time, Vivek Ramaswamy was a Harvard student. So when Matthews turned to the audience for questions soon after the event started, Ramaswamy was the first to offer one. “Rev. Sharpton, hello, I’m Vivek,” he began. “I want to ask you — last week on the show we had Sen. [John] Kerry and the week before we had Sen. [John] Edwards, and my question for you is: Of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for the one with the least political experience?” And right there, you can probably see why the clip has gained new attention.
Things have now become so bad for the UK economy that almost no one disagrees it is time for radical change. On the rare occasion that public debate turns to issues of political economy, you almost never hear the question, ‘But how are we going to pay for it?’ Much as doctors in most private […]
The party's accounts suggest there is "significant doubt" about whether it can continue as a "going concern" due to a series of legal challenges.
“A man hears what he wants to hear….” Judd Legum wonders why President Joe Biden gets no credit for what on paper is a good economy: 1. The unemployment rate is 3.5% The U.S. has added an average of 312K jobs every month for the last year GDP growth has been 2.0% or higher for a year Inflation is down to 3.2% If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible? 2. But an August survey by Quinnipiac University found that 71% of Americans describe the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Just 3% say the economy is excellent. What explains this discrepancy? If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible?The leading economic indicators show the U.S. economy is performing well, but most Americans still believe economic conditions are extremely poor — as if the country was mired in a deep recession. Wha…https://popular.info/p/if-the-us-economy-is-doing-well-why 3. One factor is partisanship. More people today will rate the economy as poor if they don’t like the person in the White House, regardless of economic conditions.
Isn’t it the mark of a successful theory of a range of phenomena that it unites and embraces the causally relevant parameters and state variables within a single theoretical perspective? This question suggests that if our theories are successful, then they should produce descriptions of systems according to which the systems are interactionally simple. I […]
A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid. Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this... Read more
Source: Living on a War Planet appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
James Bedford Forrest Crow III Well, you can’t accuse Tennessee Republicans of not being transparent about their contempt for democracy (The Tennessean): The House Democratic caucus on Monday walked off the floor of the lower chamber to protest a disciplinary vote against Rep. Justin Jones, sparking a scene remarkably similar to legislative protests earlier this year in which the freshman Democrat was expelled from the General Assembly. Lawmakers voted 70-20 to discipline Jones, D-Nashville, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, twice ruled Jones out of order during the House floor session Monday afternoon for what Sexton saw as Jones speaking off topic on the bills at hand. The disciplinary vote meant Jones was silenced for the remainder of the floor session, though he could cast votes. A second vote during this special session could lead to a three-day silencing. The Democratic caucus left the floor en masse in what they said was solidarity and frustration with unfair application of House rules. It’s not as if Jones, a freshman since April, is trying to maintain a low profile.