I think we’ll all be talking about Jimmy Carter over the next few days and rightly so. The man led a fascinating and impactful life and there’s a lot to say about his accomplishments, his values and his contributions to America. I thought today that I would just remind everyone of this episode which informs us of the corrupt nature of so much of the GOP’s history, even before Trump. People’s lives were at stake and they did this: It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States. It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent. His mentor was John B.
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Josh Marshall has been closely following the recent South Korean coup and subsequent fallout and has uncovered something (via this article) that I’ve not heard anyone else report. He notes that while S. Korea may be a more recent democracy by American standards it’s actually very well entrenched. But it also has a social media ecosystem that resembles our own with right wing extremists dominating the scene. The country’s reaction to the attempt can best be described as a widespread “What the fuck?” Like not even, “this won’t stand!” or “we’ll defend our democracy!”, though those were there too. The immediate reaction to Yoon’s move was as much bafflement as fear or anger. The whole thing was so crazy and out of left field that people struggled to understand what Yoon had even been thinking. That’s why the attempted coup played out as it did and why Yoon is currently out of power and looking at likely treason charges. So back to our far-right YouTubers.
Is like watching a cage match between the two worst people in the world.
In this corner, the screw the peons billionaires.
In the other corner, the racist anti-immigrant nativists!
Personally I’m cheering for the racist anti-immigrants.
Vivek Ramaswany delightfully opinined that the problem is that American culture doesn’t produce people willing to work hard enough and celebrates prom queens and jocks over math olympiads. (American engineers aren’t keen on 12 hour work days.)
So what did I get through in a year’s worth of "novel" reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading? My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list below.
The post Novel Reading in 2024 appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
When I was young and travelling around the world I’d tell people I was from Alaska and they’d occasionally tell me that we should become part of Canada because America was such a terrible place. I’d feel a little uncomfortable about that, being an American and having some affection for my own country. But now I don’t know that I’d react the same way. Trump and his cult are making it very easy to look to Canada. Robert Reich discusses Trump’s new obsession with territorial expansion and has a modest proposal: But as long as we’re considering changing national borders, why not do it in a more sensible way? How about the West Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and California becoming the 11th province of Canada? After all, the politics of these blue states would fit much better with Canada’s than with Trump’s America. Meanwhile, the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) and New York could become the 12th Canadian province, for much the same reason.
I’ve avoided post-mortems on the US election disaster for two reasons. First, they are useless as a guide to the future. The next US election, if there is one [1], will be a referendum on the Trump regime. Campaign strategies that might have gained the Democrats a few percentage points in November 2024 won’t be […]
Axios reports on a new PRRI survey: President-elect Trump has suggested that he’ll use the military in immigration raids and turn to a 1798 law to put immigrants in camps. His base appears to support those plans despite the likely fierce opposition from most Americans. 46% of Republicans endorse using the military in mass deportation raids and placing immigrants in camps, according to a nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) post-election survey.That’s more than double that of independent voters (19%) who agree with the idea.And that’s more than five times as Democratic voters (8%) who supported this policy. “There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought…I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Robert P.
How we feel about life as we age is not as universal as we thought.
The post Does Life’s Happiness Have a Shape? appeared first on Nautilus.
Her most important qualification is being a longtime Trump loyalist — and she’ll carry out his vision to gut the Department of Education.
The post Linda McMahon Has No Education Experience Except Wanting to Defund Public Schools appeared first on The Intercept.
. Gabriel Fauré’s masterpiece. Hauntingly beautiful. Timeless and profoundly moving.
That’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The new congress is sworn in on Friday. But then, he has so little experience in government that he wouldn’t know that. Well, other than being president for four years and staging a coup in January four years ago. He’s just having a tantrum because he knows that he’s going to be faced with a terrible problem, right off the bat. The fiscal hawks are gunning for the budget and he’s empowered them by giving Musk and Ramaswamy this silly commission charged with slashing spending which they’re using to rally the troops. It was a huge mistake. (He should have given him the mandate to go to Mars or something,) Anyway, hold on to your hats: GOP leaders are staring down two bad options to solve President-elect Donald Trump’s debt-limit problem, after failing to execute his demand to lift the federal borrowing cap in the last government funding bill. One path requires full buy-in from Republican lawmakers to address the issue via budget reconciliation — a huge challenge thanks to the party’s fierce fiscal hawks.
In Gaza we have witnessed a litany of lies by Israel and America peddled by our media day after day.The lives of white Jews and Christians are clearly more valuable than the lives of brown Muslims. An updated post from August 23, 2021 Most political colonies have come to an end. But a colonial mind Continue reading »
In 2024, faster than forecast change taught us new lessons about the climate system. In 2025, worse is to come, as political shock troops steer a course towards climate-driven societal collapse, writes David Spratt. If an unexpected leap in the global average temperature in 2023 was described by one scientist as “gobsmackingly bananas”, are there Continue reading »
There was a time when the world looked to China to reduce its emissions. China was, they quite rightly pointed out, one of the globe’s worst polluters. A repost from Feb 15, 2024 But it’s never been the world’s worst offender. There are many arguments why. The obvious one is the per capita argument:China has Continue reading »
Here’s a sad prediction for 2025. By the end of next year, more states and territories will have dropped the age of criminal responsibility to 10, and adopted punitive laws based on slogans such as Queensland’s “you do the crime, you do the time” for juvenile as well as adult offenders. The greatest proportion will Continue reading »
The arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant sparked outrage in Israel and across the Jewish world. But the ICC’s decision is neither antisemitic nor a modern-day blood libel: it is a call for Jews not to sacrifice the universal ideal of justice on the altar of uncritically defending Israel. Two Continue reading »
The Albanese government has begun to rebuild Australia’s shattered Public Service. The government’s fate depends significantly on it — but there’s much still to do. For almost half a century, the balance of power and influence in government has shifted inexorably from the public service to ministerial advisers. The change has had profound implications for Continue reading »