Jonathan Martin, Politico’s answer to Maureen Dowd (when she was a snotty reporter) says that the GOP is starting to come to terms with the fact that they are stuck with Trump for another round. I have always thought so (barring some intervening event like Trump dropping dead on the golf course.) He addresses the biggest problem they face — the fact that Trump will never concede gracefully if he loses: Just as progressives privately worried that Hillary Clinton and her party’s moderates would never truly embrace Bernie Sanders if he prevailed, many pessimistic Republicans wonder the same about Trump next year. That ridiculous. The test was in 2008 when the delegate count in the primary was super, super close and yet Clinton endorsed Obama at the convention (saying “were you in it for me or were you in it for the country” to her disappointed followers) worked to get him elected and was then brought into the cabinet as Secretary of State. Both of the primaries in 2008 and 2016 were very tough (I hope to never relive them) but to assume that Clinton would never have “truly embraced” Sanders is typical.
Reading
The Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review is marred from the outset by its bald assertion that China’s military build-up is the largest and most ambitious of any country since the end of the Second World War. China’s military spending is dwarfed by that of the US. According to the authoritative Peterson Institute, US military spending Continue reading »
Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China. In an article titled “Retired US admirals charging Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars per day Continue reading »
This is a historic watershed that the world is living through right now. What China is after is true multilateralism. What’s very important to understand is that most of the world also does not want the U.S. as the global preeminent power. Most of the world wants a truly multipolar world, and is, therefore, not Continue reading »
The reforms recommended by the Review of the Reserve Bank have been well received, but it is questionable whether they will ensure that the Bank’s performance improves and that it can avoid the mistakes of the recent past. The independent review of the Reserve Bank was commissioned by the Treasurer last July, and its report Continue reading »
The Financial Review’s political editor, Phillip Coorey, wrote last week that when it comes to superannuation policy, the Grattan Institute “increasingly resembles the financial policy arm of the Greens”. I am not exactly sure what that means – and I am Grattan’s lead on super policy – but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it as Continue reading »
The war on whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and truth will be examined at a conference called The Persecution of Truth at the State Library of Queensland on Sunday April 30th. An important aim of the seminar is to reacquaint Queenslanders with the extraordinary achievements of Julian Assange and detail his equally extraordinary persecution; how he has been Continue reading »
Having spent decades inculcating their base in poisonous nonsense, there is now no external authority to which right wing media can send their audience when the lies become troublesome. Australia’s Liberal politicians – and their media friends – need to be very careful. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has helped created such a crisis of trust Continue reading »
The alliance is the latest sign of an emerging bipartisan anti-war coalition in Congress.
The post Rep. Matt Gaetz, Progressives Jointly Call for U.S. Military to Leave Somalia appeared first on The Intercept.
“We Need to Synch Our Agile
Framework with Our Projected Workflow”
Okay, listen up.
I don’t know what you just said.
Am I getting axed?
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“We’re Instituting a ‘Return-to-Office’ Mandate
to Improve Company Performance”
What saves you money,
And would help prevent layoffs?
No more offices.
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“Is This a Realistic Timeline for This Project?”
Absolutely not.
It’s the work of three people,
with no overtime.
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“Do You Have a Minute to Talk?”
Oh no. This is it.
Hold on, you just need a file?
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?
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“Happy Employee Appreciation Day!”
Are you kidding me?
We know layoffs are coming.
Thanks for the free pen.
An Army Cyber Command official sought military contractors that could help “attack, defend, influence, and operate” on global social media.
The post Army Info War Division Wants Social Media Surveillance to Protect “NATO Brand” appeared first on The Intercept.
… and created a bunch of jobs. Was it worth it? There is a tendency among some on the left to reflexively adopt the enemy of my enemy is my friend concept when it comes to certain critiques of “neoliberalism” and the Democratic establishment. In my view it’s a lazy kind of thinking and I don’t pay much attention to it. That impulse was on display yesterday when The American Prospect published a lauditory piece on Tucker Carlson and the internet blew up. It was a very bad piece. Today the magazine offered a response and it’s quite good: On Tuesday afternoon, the Prospect posted an article about Tucker Carlson on its home page. Focusing almost solely on Carlson’s opposition to corporate globalism, it missed a very large forest for some very cherry-picked trees. It failed to note the roots of Carlson’s positions, in a broader sense failing to note that opposition to neoliberal orthodoxy is an element of both progressive and fascist politics, and hence, depending on whence it comes, not automatically worthy of celebration.
GOP wants to cut $30 billion from veterans spending “The Republican Party is always looking to ‘thank Veterans for their service’ but when it comes time to put your money where your mouth is this is what they do,” tweets Rep. Eric Ager, one of our local Democratic state House members. “So many veterans in NC like me rely on the VA for healthcare and this won’t help.” This is what the GOP wants to do to those veterans. Democrats Rep. Mark A. Takano (Calif.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (Pa.) write at Military Times: Thirty million fewer healthcare visits. Fewer staff, increased claims backlog, longer wait times for benefits. Almost a $30 billion shortfall for veterans funding. That’s the uncertainty that awaits America’s veterans, should Congressional Republicans succeed in dramatically slashing federal spending as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed on April 19. Last Congress, we honored our promise to toxic-exposed veterans by providing benefits and care to approximately three million veterans exposed to toxins, including burn pits.
Just 85,000 voters signed up for the Government's free photo ID – out of a potential two million. Now we may not find out the true scale of 'voter suppression', Josiah Mortimer reports
On the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast, Jessica Jones star Krysten Ritter discussed David Tennant, Doctor Who fandom, and more.
From the ashes of a world war that killed 80 million people and reduced great cities to smoking rubble, America rose like a Titan of Greek legend, unharmed and armed with extraordinary military and economic power, to govern the globe. During four years of combat against the Axis leaders in Berlin and Tokyo that raged across the planet, America’s wartime commanders — George Marshall in Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe, and Chester Nimitz in the Pacific — knew that their main strategic objective was to gain control over the vast Eurasian landmass. Whether you’re talking about desert warfare in North Africa, the D-Day landing at Normandy, bloody battles on the Burma-India border, or the island-hopping campaign across the Pacific,... Read more
“One of the great renewable resources” “You can’t keep a good homicidal maniac down” is an essential trope from slasher films. In the zombie genre, the lingering question of, “How long can they last?” persists alongside the infectious, shambling dead. Given the Outrage Industrial Complex extant since the 1980s, the same uncertainties apply to MAGA. How long can people addicted to daily outrage keep going before burning out? “What used to rule the day on the American right was ‘owning the libs.’ But now they are owning one another,” writes Peter Wehner in The Atlantic. How long can political meth addicts maintain before finally, beset by paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, they crash and/or devour each other? With Dominion’s massive defamation settlement against Fox News, with Tucker Carlson’s ouster from the network, and with looming legal accountability for Donald Trump, perhaps MAGA’s collapse is, if not as imminent as that Fani Willis indictment, on the horizon.
I’ve just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s great, fun novel, Red Team Blues, and I’ve been thinking about how well it exemplifies one of the strengths of good science fiction. Back when we ran our seminar on Francis Spufford’s novel, Red Plenty, there was a back-and-forth between Francis and Felix Gilman. As Francis described it post-hoc, […]
“If you come across spam on Facebook, report it to us. By doing so, you’ll be playing an important role in helping us protect other people from scams.”
— Facebook
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We’re here today asking you to help us remove spam accounts on our platform. Please report any Facebook profiles you think might be bots trying to get you to visit pornography sites, so we can make room for all the real people trying to get you to believe 5G towers are transmitting Chinese pornography into your head.
It’s important we work together on this. In recent years, fake accounts have gotten significantly better at appearing human, while human Facebook users have gotten significantly better at appearing like malfunctioning alt-right drones programmed to say the most insane shit they can think of.
This situation is serious. We need your help eliminating fraudsters that are ruining the Facebook experience.