She is something else. Her speeches are as inauthentic as his are — her motor-mouthed delivery of anecdotes about their little kids using permanent markers on the walls of the Governor’s mansion ring hollow especially since she delivers them in a Kari Lake-esque voice as if she’s reading from a newscast teleprompter. (She used to be a broadcaster and it isn’t helping her.) She’s pushing DeSantis’ “heroic” fighter image and it just isn’t sticking. And she keeps wearing costumes which are as inauthentic as her speeches. This piece in the Daily Beast by Katie Baker is just brutal. But I think she’s right: The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back, with the sneering words, “Where Woke Goes to Die”—that brought to mind nothing so much as the racks of a Red State big-bin store where it would be retailing for $24.99.
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COFFS Harbour Regional Landcare (CHRL) President Barry Powells keenly welcomed volunteer teams of planters from John Paul College (JPC) Coffs Harbour, City of Coffs Harbour’s Coastal Work bush regeneration team members and GeoLINK staff, who gathered on Boambee Headland on Tuesday 23 May to plant over 400 trees. Some 200 trees were once again donated...
The post Landcare bush regen collaboration grows on Boambee Headland appeared first on News Of The Area.
Greenville, CA — Pines and firs parched by a three-year drought had been burning for days on a ridge 1,000 feet above my remote mountain town. On August 4, 2021, the flames suddenly flared into a heat so intense it formed a molten cloud the color of bruised flesh. As that sinister cumulus rose above an oval-shaped reservoir, it collapsed, sending red-hot embers down the steep slopes toward Greenville in a storm of torched trees and exploding shrubs. It took less than 30 minutes for the Dixie fire to transform my town’s tarnished Gold Rush charm into a heap of smoldering hand-hewn timbers and century-old brick walls. Minutes earlier, the last of the nearly 1,000 residents had bolted, some in... Read more
Ugh: Elon Musk endures a lot. Just ask him. In recent weeks, he has again expounded upon his long workdays and his infrequent vacations, all while mocking workers who prefer working from home as living in “la-la land.” Since his first startup almost 30 years ago, the billionaire entrepreneur has epitomized the hustle culture of Silicon Valley that is all about grinding out late nights at the office. His public discussion of pain and sacrifice has helped him create a demanding culture at the companies he runs, including the car company Tesla TSLA 3.11%increase; green up pointing triangle and the rocket maker SpaceX. Now, with the social-media platform Twitter, which he gained control of late last year, that approach is being tested anew as he races to remake the company and its remaining workforce, an effort that he has described as “quite painful.” His live-at-work ethos, through which his own suffering is put on display to motivate others, runs counter to the work-from-home ideal embraced by a new era of employees openly questioning one’s commitment to a job.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has promised to come out swinging in the upcoming Fadden by-election. The statement came after the Queensland LNP selected former partner swapper Cameron Caldwell as it’s candidate. ”I’m hoping my candidate will inspire the Nation to... Read More ›
It’s not a grassroots triumph More hype from Florida Franco: The DeSantis campaign said it had around 40,000 donors in May as “we raised over” $8.2 million, according to text messages and emails to supporters asking for more donations. That works out to an average of more than $200 per donor — a figure far higher than is typical for a campaign heavily funded by grass-roots support. By comparison, Senator Bernie Sanders, who was a Democratic online fund-raising powerhouse, raised $5.9 million in his first 24 hours in 2019 — but from 223,000 donors, for an average donation of around $26. How a campaign raises money matters. Because of strict campaign contribution limits of $3,300 per person for the primary, campaigns that raise money chiefly from bigger contributors cannot return to those same donors again and again for support. Small contributors are particularly valuable because they can give $30 more than 100 times before bumping up against contribution caps. Tim Tagaris, a Democratic digital strategist who oversaw the Sanders fund-raising operation in 2020, called the number of DeSantis donors surprisingly small. Mr.
You could hear, when Biden squibbed the Quad, the Austral-Americans deflate. They watched aghast when Captain Ahab abandoned them, and the sinking big idea of Austral-American grand strategy, the Indo-Pacific, disappeared somewhere in the China Sea. The idea of an international order espoused by the Austral-Americans, to honour Paul Keating’s term, is the free and Continue reading »
World Environment Day – June 5 – demands some sober reflection about the mess we humans have got ourselves into. And how the hell we get out. Even the most insulated consumer of global media must be aware, by now, that the Earth’s twin poles, north and south, are in terrible trouble. And so, as Continue reading »
Somewhere, somehow, China became the number one enemy of the world, or at least to the world that is run by the USA. For many the ‘reason’ has been the challenge that China poses to US economic hegemony, but might not America’s fear of China be based on ideological causes; a battle of ideas? Why Continue reading »
Sudden political excitement about the unethical, almost certainly illegal conduct of a large, too big to disappear, accountancy company, deflects attention from the primary site of a cancerous managerialist disease. That site was infected with the idea that individuals labelled managers, usually but not always accountants, could be trusted to decide how government departments, universities, hospitals Continue reading »
I am the child of holocaust survivors. I cannot remain a member of a party which turns a blind eye to the ongoing persecution of millions of people who have a right to live in peace and freedom in the land of their ancestors. On the 19th of May, 2023, I tendered my resignation from Continue reading »
The Chinese character for China, denotes China as the middle kingdom and understandably so: It borders 14 sovereign states. To the north- Russia, Mongolia and Korea (since there is no formal separation of North and South Korea). To the west – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan To the south west – Pakistan, Afghanistan To the south – Continue reading »
Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images. Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain. Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence. As we head toward the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Continue reading »
Such terms and phrases as a rules-based system, de-risking, democracy vs autocracy, and coercive behaviour are not exhaustive but still expose obfuscation and double standards. Politicians campaigning for election love to use buzzwords and catchy phrases to explain what they stand for and what their policies are. They do that because they assume, probably rightly, Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 4, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Why elites are misanthropic
Billionaires and the Evolution of Overconfidence
[The Garden of Forking Paths, via The Big Picture 5-31-2023]
To understand billionaires, you need to understand horizontal inequality, illusory control, self-selection bias, quantified self-worth, and the evolution of overconfidence.
What would you do if you suddenly had a billion dollars?
The way you answer that question will tell you something about how likely you are to become a billionaire in the first place.
I guess we shouldn’t be shocked. Aside from climate change denialism, the war on science includes killing abortion doctors, declaring war on public health officers,threatening medical scientists with jail. I suppose it makes sense they would want to jail doctors providing gender affirming medical care. And now they are adding therapists to the mix apparently under the assumption that if you even acknowledge gender dysphoria and attempt to help minors deal with it, you are some kind of deviant? We are now perilously close to thought crime territory now. Therapists work with the mind, they don’t perform surgery or (unless they are medical doctors) prescribe hormones. So I guess if your kid experiences gender dysphoria, your only path to help him or her through it is through one of those violent conversion camps or what … exorcism? These people believe they can force this whole idea out of society and they are willing to use the power of the state to do it. That’s what is referred to as “freedom” in the American right wing.
Seriously, comparing the fight against Target selling tuck swimsuits and Churchill’s fight against the Nazis is beyond cringe. It’s grotesquely stupid. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Saturday that “woke is an existential threat to our society.” DeSantis, greeting Republican activists at a major GOP 2024 presidential cattle call in Iowa, the state whose caucuses lead off the Republican White House nominating calendar, was asked about comments former President Donald Trump made two days earlier. “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear ‘woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is,” the former president said on Thursday during remarks at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa. Asked about Trump’s comments, the Florida governor said Saturday that “to say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.” I dunno.
“It is a trope of twentieth and twenty-first century-life that governments faced with financial shortfalls look first to the services they provide their citizens when making cuts. Instances like these …
The post Politicians’ fine-sounding pledges offer little more than a deceitful illusion when sound finances dictate the strategy appeared first on The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies.
Generalissimo DeSantis opens a new front All the GOP presidential candidates (except for Donald Trump who apparently had some urgent hysterical posting and golfing to do) converged on Iowa last weekend for Sen. Joanie Ernst’s Roast and Ride gathering. They gave speeches in front of haystacks and wandered around in dad jeans pressing the white Republican flesh. Florida first lady Casey DeSantis sported a black leather jacket with the words “Where Woke Goes to Die” emblazoned on the back and Mike Pence donned a leather vest and rode around on a Harley trying desperately to imitate a regular guy. It was a magical time. There were a lot of speeches but one stood out among all the rest: “… we will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob! “ As you can see, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is fashioning himself as a wartime leader, aping Winston Churchill’s most famous speech given June 4, 1940 after the miraculous rescue of tens of thousands of British troops at Dunkirk.
Whether to pardon January 6 convicts will be the most revealing question of the Republican primary.
The post Oath Keepers Leader Stewart Rhodes Says He’s a Political Prisoner. Republicans Are Listening. appeared first on The Intercept.
During the height of the pandemic, workers at Allied Bakeries in Liverpool were hard at work. The workers, members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), were on the verge of strike action in a pay dispute but abandoned their strike to assist with the national effort. Classed as essential workers, they strived […]
And a mockery of democracy The massacre of pro-democracy supporters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 stays with me. I was out of town on business and saw the shocking reports in my hotel room. Maybe I remember because the next day I joined 6,000 Chinese students from across the Midwest in a protest in downtown Chicago. Or maybe we all remember because of “Tank Man.“ Anne Applebaum reminds Twitter that, far from China, Polish voters on the same day chose democracy in “partly-free elections that contributed to the fall of communism” (Associated Press): In the election, Poles voted heavily for Solidarity candidates over communists in a clear sign that they wanted a change of power. That vote accelerated the fall of communism in Poland later in 1989, and fueled the wave of revolutions in eastern Europe over the following year or two. “Poland showed to Europe and to the whole world that you can build a democracy without violence or bloodshed,” European Council leader Donald Tusk said during ceremonies in his hometown of Gdansk. Tusk was a Solidarity activist and served as Poland’s prime minister from 2007-2014. After Jan.
Showing ’em how it’s done “American carnage” was an unlikely inauguration theme. It had the merit of being memorable, even if it was “some weird shit.” And in unlikely ways prophetic. Just the sort of thing that appeals to radicalized Independent Charismatics. So what is happening in Minnesota under DFL Gov. Tim Walz is easily lost in the “carnage” fallout, rightward lurch of red-state legislatures, revanchist backlash, and Beltway hostage-taking. E.J. Dionne wants to be sure that doesn’t happen. Is the “avalanche of progressive legislation” passed with a “two-vote Democratic majority in the Minnesota House and one-vote advantage in the state Senate” a “Minnesota Miracle”?
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Life on Mars, Always Sunny, The Try Guys, Star Trek: SNW, The Winchesters, TWD: Dead City, Doctor Who & more!