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Most policy areas are toxic for the prime minister, but his education gambit is on a par with my idea of a free cactus for all
Continue reading...A couple of days ago Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, attacked GPs, saying their finances are murky, in the process obviously seeking to blame
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A funny thing I've never read anything about is that Jon Anderson spends a lot of time doing stuff with The Kids. Kashmir transitioning into Don't Kill the Whale. Hilarious stuff.
This week in the United States of America, a former British colony on the North American continent, long-brewing political and social problems culminated in a messy speaker election in the lower chamber of the bicameral national parliament.
The Republican party, by far the more conservative of the two major parties in what effectively is a two-party political oligopoly, gained narrow majority in the chamber in November elections, but was unable to effectively execute on its new-found power. A small far-right splinter group within the party blocked the election of the speaker — a procedural position that has gradually become heavily politicized — demanding political favors in return for their votes. This resulted in four days of heated and often chaotic proceedings, at one point devolving into a brawl.
Russell T. Davies shared additional details on his Doctor Who return, a key difference with this run, and a three-word tease for Episode 2.
Driver crashes and flips vehicle inside drive-through car wash (Thanks to Doug Ogg)
11:47 a.m. A man kept screaming “namaste” at passersby. (Thanks to pharmaross)
Determined to prove to a skeptical police officer that he was stone-cold sober, a suspected drunken driver performed a backflip as part of his field sobriety test. (Thanks to pharmaross, who says "This is NOT a RENO 911! video.") (But...
Las Vegas strip club deploys 4.5-ton robotic bouncer for tech weekend (Thanks to pharmaross)
Inflation is on the run Not that this has penetrated the news media which just today was running scare stories about the price of eggs. But it’s real. This is from economist Alan Blinder: Maybe we should start the new year with some good news: Inflation has fallen dramatically. No, that’s not a prediction; it’s a fact. With one month remaining in 2022 (in terms of available data), inflation in the second half of the year has run vastly lower than in the first half. In fact—and this is astonishing—it’s almost back down to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Even more astonishing, hardly anyone seems to have noticed. Yes, there’s a catch or two or three, to which I’ll come back. But first the good news: Over the past five months (June to November 2022), inflation has slowed to a crawl. Whether measured by the consumer-price index, or CPI, which most people watch, or the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, which the Federal Reserve prefers, the annualized inflation rate has been around 2.5% over these five months. Yes, you read that right.
Birthday for Mr. L. Footlose is one of those movies you don't expect to be good, but it is!
Can I just say how impressed I was with the Democrats during that long Bataan Death March? Not that they had to do much except clap for Hakeem Jeffries over and over again but still, their unity and calm behavior really helped illustrate for the whole country what a circus freak show the right has become. This is how it’s done.
With the reality of climate change becoming more apparent in the form of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods, it is clear that the future of all life on the planet is in peril. read now...It's my job, but sometimes I got nothin'.
Trump posted a video of McCarthy thanking the former president on his social media platform Truth Social, captioning it: “Thank you Kevin. It was my great honor.” In the video, McCarthy, who was elected House speaker just past midnight Saturday morning after a historic deadlock, said he doesn’t “think anybody should doubt [Trump’s] influence” and that “he was with me from the beginning.” McCarthy said he talked to Trump Friday night, as the former president and 2024 GOP hopeful helped him secure a victory—four GOP House members that had voted for Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Andy Biggs (Ariz) in the fourteenth round instead voted “present” in the final round, reducing the threshold needed for a victory. Trump had suffered an embarrassment earlier in the week when many hardline conservatives—formerly Trump’s greatest supporters—ignored his call to support McCarthy after the fourth round of voting on Wednesday to avoid an “embarrassing defeat.” Photos from the chamber also showed Rep.
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We need to replace gender roles with chores. It's a win for everyone.
Today's News:
“Mr Republican” led the way If you think this Nazi thing is new, even in the upper reaches of the US Government, think again. It’s not. This piece by Mike Lofgren in Salon takes a look at the most famous of all American isolationists, Robert Taft: Readers may be familiar with Rachel Maddow’s explosive new podcast, “Ultra.” It tells the incredible story of a German spy who infiltrated Congress in 1940-41, inducing two dozen congressmen and senators to spread Nazi propaganda in floor speeches, op-ed columns and constituent mailings. Simultaneously, armed extremist groups began training for a violent takeover of the country. In many ways, the eight-decades-old story is a disturbing forerunner of the Trump era. Contrary to our nostalgic memories of unity, America was deeply divided over the war in Europe, military aid to Britain, and whether fascism was the wave of the future that we might as well submit to.