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Celebrities actually do help I have to admit that this surprised me. Not that I don’t think celebrities should be able to support whomever and whatever they choose.They’re citizens too. But I’ve never been sure that it makes any difference. Apparently, it does, which means the left has a huge advantage. The right has far less support among artists, athletes and celebrities in general. Former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump brought out Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock to the RNC last month, while Megan Thee Stallion, George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston are among the star-powered artists who have voiced support for Vice President Kamala Harris in her White House bid. But do election efforts by celebrities move the needle? Or is it all just hype? A new study by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, shared first by CNN, found that celebrities do play an influential role in promoting civic participation.
There’s stupid and then there felony stupid: Georgia Republicans are having a bad case of déjà vu. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again taken to attacking Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, leaving GOP leaders and strategists fearing that the public and ugly intraparty feud could hurt Trump’s chances in this battleground state. Trump’s loss here in 2020 left the state’s Republican Party deeply fractured, with Trump blaming Kemp and other statewide GOP officials for refusing to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Republican officials have blamed the feuding for repeated losses in Senate races. “I thought any kind of bad blood had blown over, and I don’t know why President Trump would want to reopen that wound and attack a very popular governor,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III , a member of the Georgia Senate GOP’s leadership. Trump, at an Atlanta rally recently at Georgia State University, called Kemp “a bad guy.” “He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor.
44 year old Accounts payable officer Mark James has proudly strode into his office wearing his city-to-surf medal, after taking three and a half hours to complete the race yesterday, allowing for a 20 minute stop for a beer at... Read More ›
When it comes to our nation’s military affairs, ignorance is not bliss. What’s remarkable then, given the permanent state of war in which we find ourselves, is how many Americans seem content not to know. Citizens of courage will surely choose the path of challenge. There are many reasons for this state of affairs. Our civilian leaders encourage us to be deferential toward our latest commander/savior, whether Tommy Franks in 2003, David Petraeus in 2007, or Stanley McChrystal in 2010. Our media employs retired officers, most of them multi-starred generals, in a search for expertise that ends in an unconditional surrender to military agendas. A cloud of secrecy and “black budgets” combine to obscure military matters, ranging from global strategy to... Read more
I’m not one to quote Maureen Dowd but when she’s right, she’s right: From the first time I went on an exploratory political trip with Trump in 1999, he has measured his worth in numbers. His is not an examined life but a quantified life. When I asked him why he thought he could run for president, he cited his ratings on “Larry King Live.” He was at his most animated reeling off his ratings, like Faye Dunaway in “Network,” orgasmically reciting how well her shows were doing. He pronounced himself better than other candidates because of numbers: the number of men who desired his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss; the number of zoning changes he had maneuvered to get; the number of stories he stacked on his building near the U.N.; the number of times he was mentioned in a Palm Beach newspaper. By his mode of valuation, if his numbers aren’t better than his rivals’, he’s worthless. That’s why Trump is always obsessing on his crowd numbers and accusing the press of lowballing head counts. And that’s why he couldn’t admit he lost the election.
The training videos The Heritage Foundation published their 900 page plan to create a fascist state some time ago. But one of the primary purpose of the project and the Heritage Foundation itself is to train operatives to carry out their plans. This time, in order to hit the ground running, they are already drawing up lists of people to fill all the jobs left open after their planned purge of the Executive Branch and have a full transition and first 100 days battle plan which they have assiduously avoided making public. And they have been “training” people for months, including some of the people at the center of Trump’s inner circle. Pro-Publica got a hold of some of the training videos: ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees “to be ready on day one.” Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and its allies for a future conservative presidential administration, has lost its director.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 11 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
In 2023 the world’s forests stopped acting as a carbon sink
[REDD Monitor, via Naked Capitalism 08-10-2024]
The Trump campaign says that it was hacked by what they suspect were foreign agents agents. The hacked emails were sent to Politico and The Washington Post which decided not to publish them. You read that right. They received hacked documents from suspect origins which have been authenticated by the campaign itself and they are choosing not to publish. Can you see the problem here? Will Bunch said it so succinctly I have no need to go further: The hot mess that was the political media in 2016 continues to slime America 8 years later In 2016, there was no reasoned debate about the ethics of publishing Russian-hacked documents. Not that it’s not a tough call, morally — but the debate wasn’t even held. The documents were just published without any thought. Only after the election did anyone wonder so much regard was given to the (mostly inconsequential) leaks and so little to shockingly illegal methods to obtain them. So now.. I’d agree Politico and other news media are technically correct to consider the source and the motive before deciding whether or what to publish.
In AIPAC’s absence, a Samuels campaign staffer and pro-Israel super PAC donors strategize to oust another Squad member.
The post Inside the “Zionists for Don Samuels” WhatsApp Group Raising Big Money to Oust Ilhan Omar appeared first on The Intercept.
As you have probably heard, Trump mixed up Brown with another Black California politician named Nate Holden who was from LA and had nothing to do with Kamala Harris. He has memory issues.
Now get to work This time next Sunday, I’ll be in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Don’t expect to see much from me in this space for a few days. At a dinner last night, several people asked if I’m excited. I disappointed them. Not really. I’m more about the business than the hoopla. When returns come in on Election Night and our candidates win, others pump their fists, scream and jump. I go quiet so I can savor the moment and a job well done. To each their own. For now, savor this. Then get to work. And this. “Some are calling our rally the largest in Arizona political campaign history,” the Harris campaign tweeted. “At some point media is going to notice that for once a major political party delivered what people really, really wanted and in doing so, ignited a civic renaissance just in time to save American democracy,” added strategist Rachel Bitecofer. This has got to be ominous for Arizona Republicans, and Republicans elsewhere. But don’t get cocky.
by Basak Kus* It has now been almost two decades since the 2007-10 financial crisis shattered the exuberance that surrounded American capitalism in the 1990s. The immediate issues the crisis posed—negative growth rates, rising unemployment, and falling stock prices—were addressed long ago. Crises like the Great Recession, however, are more than temporary setbacks; they necessitate […]
MAGA goes back to the drawing board So the whole fake electors and Green Bay Sweep did not work as Trumplandia planned for overturning the will of the voters in 2020. And since the coup plan counted heavily on Republicans holding the vice presidency, and since Congress reformed the 1887 Electoral Count Act in 2022 to prevent a recurrence, the enemies of democracy went back to the drawing board for 2024. Sure, red-state legislators have since erected every new hurdle to voting they could conjure and pass. But what’s a MAGA Republican to do if troublesome citizens still manage to muster enough votes to elect a Democrat and not Donald Trump to the White House in 2024? Monkey-wrench election certification, that’s what. As a Rolling Stone investigation explained, “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials” stand ready to question “the validity of elections” and to delay or refuse to certify results as mandated by law.
YAZIDI House in Coffs Harbour has hosted a solemn commemoration to mark the 10th anniversary of the Yazidi genocide. The Islamic State (IS) began their genocidal campaign against Yazidis in Iraq and Syria on 3 August, 2014, and continued until 2017. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message...
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FORMER Coffs Harbour High School student Lachlan Walmsley is on the flight path to becoming a pilot. Now studying a Bachelor of Aviation (Pilot) at the University of South Australia, eighteen-year-old Lachlan earned a Certificate III in Aviation (Remote Pilot) as a TAFE-delivered Vocational Education and Training (TVET) student in year 11. Advertise with News...
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COFFS Harbour has become well-known as one of the epicentres of whale watching on the NSW coast. People from all over the world realise their dreams of a close encounter with these ocean mammals on local whale watching experiences. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone...
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I thought I’d catch you up on a few recent and notable Blu-ray reissues. All aboard! Peeping Tom (Criterion) – Michael Powell’s 1960 thriller profiles an insular, socially awkward member of a film crew (Carl Boehm) who works as a technician at a movie studio by day, and moonlights as a soft-core pin-up photographer. He’s also surreptitiously working on his own independent film, which goes hand-in-glove with another hobby: he’s a serial killer who gets his jollies capturing POV footage of his victim’s final agonizing moments. The film is truly creepy, a Freudian nightmare. The solid supporting cast includes Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, and Maxine Audley. Powell, one-half of the revered British film making team known as The Archers (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) nearly destroyed his career with this one, which, due to its “shocking” nature, was largely shunned by audiences and critics at the time (thanks to Martin Scorsese, the film enjoyed a revival decades later and is now considered a genre classic on a par with Psycho).
