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Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 16:46
It’s Wednesday and apart from music I am talking mostly about poverty – opposites indeed. The beauty of the beat against the ugliness of enforced poverty. Enforced by government policy, which if there is political will can always eliminate systemic poverty. Yesterday (April 18, 2023), a major report was released in Australia by the grand-titled…
Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 11:17

At least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation that was covered up at the highest level, according to an explosive new court filing.  A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI. […]

The post Bombshell filing: 9/11 hijackers were CIA recruits appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 09:00
Here’s the latest on the debt ceiling from TPM. Sigh. This could easily go sideways. It’s a clown show. And after all, Marge Greene is the shadow speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy is Speaker in name only: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has such a tenuous grip on his own conference that the debt-ceiling hostage-taking he is attempting to pull off has all the hallmarks of the bumbling kidnapping capers you see in the movies: -The House GOP can’t agree amongst themselves what to ask for as ransom. -They can’t get the White House to take them seriously enough as a ragtag band of kidnappers to engage in negotiations. -They keep threatening dire consequences for not taking them seriously but are repeatedly hobbled by their own lack of consensus. At this point, McCarthy wants the House to vote by the end of the month on a package that combines the debt ceiling with draconian spending cuts, but he clearly doesn’t have (i) internal agreement on those cuts or on how much to raise the debt ceiling by; or (ii) the votes to push a package through as early as next week.
Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 07:30
Dan Pfeiffer (subscription) explains why MAGA’s usual childishness is actually quite savvy in this case: One of the Super Pacs allied with Donald Trump released a video on Friday morning that took the Internet by storm. The ad uses the potentially apocryphal story of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis eating chocolate pudding with his fingers to attack his past support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. Most Trump World shenanigans are stupid, bordering on self-destructive. That is not the case with this ad, which ran on CNN and Fox News on Friday morning. On the day after DeSantis signed a dangerous six-week abortion ban, it seems trite to care about the manner in which he consumes packaged desserts. While impulse control is a valuable attribute in a Commander-in-Chief who can unilaterally launch nuclear warheads, no one should really care that DeSantis was unwilling to wait for a spoon. Frankly, his pudding impatience may be the most relatable thing about the otherwise painfully awkward, malfunctioning Westworld robot authoritarian.
Created
Wed, 19/04/2023 - 06:00
It’s just a legal license to kill The NY Times had this on the shooting of Ralph Yarl in Kansas City: Chief Graves said that the teenager was expected to give a formal statement to investigators when his injuries allow. She also said that there was a “potential” self-defense or “stand your ground” element that investigators were examining. But the following day, Mayor Lucas said that Missouri’s Stand Your Ground law, which was adopted in 2016, should not apply in this case. “If Stand Your Ground really lets somebody just shoot somebody that rings a doorbell,” he said, “that put the life of every postal worker, every campaigner, every Amazon delivery person at risk in this country.” I’m sure the man believes he was standing his ground because he “felt threatened” when a Black teenager rang his doorbell. Then there’s the man in New York who shot at a car that accidentally turned into the wrong driveway and killed a young woman as the car was turning around. I’m sure he believes he was “standing his ground” too.