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I’ve told the story before, but it bears repeating in the context of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. I attended the 2008 convention in 2008 and it was a pretty ecstatic atmosphere. The Democrats were about to nominate their first Black candidate for president and his very close primary competitor, Hillary Clinton was the first woman to make a serious run for it. There had been plenty of bad blood during the primary and there were still some raw feelings that needed to be dealt with before the full celebration could begin. It was up to Clinton to heal the breach and it wasn’t going to be easy. On the night Hillary was to give her big endorsement speech, I stood next to a group of young Black women who were clearly skeptical of her and were big fans of Barack Obama. They were not expecting much.

BEDROOM EXIT/INTO LIVING ROOM

HER: Would you mind telling me where you’ve hidden my shoes?

HER SISTER: What? Moi? I did nothing. No clue what shoes you’re even talking about. [Heavy laugh here, put it in front of mix, so it pops.]

HER: I have a flame thrower in a storage unit in Reno. When you play your witless beige pablum of pranks on me, I get a hot taste of metal and electricity in my mouth. My sweat starts to smell like cat piss and gasoline. I’m suddenly ravaged with a hunger for the unthinkable. So just tell me where you’ve hidden my shoes. It’s not even funny when you do it.

SEATED TWO-SHOT AT CORNER GROUP/COUCH

A record £9.6 million was donated to Labour to fund its successful election landslide in July, but the sources of that war chest radically changed from past elections

My Glamorous Life: late to the pubescence party.

The post Strange Beliefs of Childhood № 99 appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

According to reports in the Financial Times, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering reviving the failed Private Financing Initiative (PFI) agenda to fund some of her proposed infrastructure projects. Among the proposals being considered is the £9 billion Lower Thames Crossing, which, in exchange for bankrolling the project, would guarantee investors returns over staggering ‘indefinite or […]

Dan Wootton, Beverley Turner, David Vance have posted the disclaimer which legal experts have said offers no protection from the law

Jan Cruickshank alleged that a male workmate sexually harassed her in person and via text messages for three years before raping her in spring 2015.

Tihana Škrinjarić How effective is macroprudential policy and how should policymakers measure its stance? My recent paper surveys the literature on the topic of Growth-at-Risk (GaR), which has been developed as a methodology to provide answers to these questions by relating the effects of macroprudential policy tools to real-economy dynamics. While the results are mixed, … Continue reading Growth-at-Risk for macroprudential policy stance assessment: a survey →

It’s overdue A big revision from the BLS today: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised down its estimate of total employment in March 2024 by a whopping 818,000, the largest such downgrade in 15 years. That effectively means there were 818,000 fewer job gains than first believed from April 2023 through March 2024. So, instead of adding a robust average of 242,000 jobs a month during that 12-month period, the nation gained a still solid 174,000 jobs monthly, according to the latest estimate. The revision is based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which draws from state unemployment insurance records that reflect actual payrolls, while the prior estimates come from monthly surveys. However, the estimate is preliminary and a final figure will be released early next year. These numbers might not be exactly right, however: Some economists, however, are questioning the fresh figures. Goldman Sachs said the revision was likely overstated by as much as 400,000 to 600,000 because unemployment insurance records don’t include unauthorized immigrants, who have contributed dramatically to job growth the past couple of years.

It’s Wednesday and so a few topics that have interested me over the last week plus some promotion etc. I have been going back in time lately re-reading some of the classic books that spawned the environmental movements in the 1970s. At that time, researchers were predicting doom because they foresaw that the population growth…

Lawyers with deep connections to the Supreme Court dark-money operative are attacking voting rights in battleground states in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

It’s not just “Uncommitted” activists who are pressuring Kamala Harris on Gaza policy. Her own delegates are speaking out.

The post Democrats Attacked a Muslim Woman for Protesting Biden’s Speech. She’s a Harris Delegate. appeared first on The Intercept.

The mass arrests occurred at a protest outside the Israeli consulate. Earlier arrests left protesters hospitalized and without access to lawyers.

The post More Than 70 DNC Protesters Arrested, Including Several Journalists appeared first on The Intercept.

Last week, our friends at The Believer sent a trio of novelists, poets, and critics to the Windy City to report from inside and around the Democratic National Convention. Daily installments of this limited series, which is inspired by Esquire’s 1968 coverage, will run on The Believer’s website for the rest of the week. Today, we’re catching you up on recent events with a new installment by acclaimed author Jeffery Renard Allen, who chronicles his first day on the convention floor.