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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 12:22
There is an interesting debate going on in the UK at present about the concept of tiered bank reserves. The concept is now being used by commentators to argue that the new British government does not need to inflict the austerity that the Chancellor has now announced (even though she is denying that is what…
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 08:30
CBS has a new one and it shows that Harris has made up the ground Biden lost but it’s still looking like hand to hand combat… for now, anyway: Boosted by Democrats, younger and Black voters becoming more engaged and likely to vote, and by women decidedly thinking she’d favor their interests more, Vice President Kamala Harris has reset the 2024 presidential race. She has a 1-point edge nationally — something President Biden never had (he was down by 5 points when he left the race) — and Harris and former President Donald Trump are tied across the collective battleground states. Looking ahead, voters are also defining why the next few weeks could be critical. On one hand, Harris has additional edges with the wider electorate that Mr. Biden did not: she’s leading Trump on being seen as having the cognitive health to serve, a measure that was of course central to the campaign before Mr. Biden stepped aside. And on policy generally, Harris is seen as a little different from Mr.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 07:55
Imagine my surprise when, nearly eight months ago, commenting on the state of the country as it approached the 2024 presidential election, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg noted that “Biden has set himself the task of trying to jolt the country out of its learned helplessness in the face of Trump’s exhausting provocations.” Unbeknownst to most Americans, that term, “learned helplessness,” was profoundly and inextricably tied to this country’s disastrous post-9/11 Global War on Terror and, in particular, its horrifying torture program. Yet there it was, being used in a new context — one that, while perhaps altered by the president’s recent decision not to run for a second term, has been employed with remarkable frequency in the intervening... Read more
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 06:30
Watching Trump the last few days it’s been obvious to me that he’s stressed and upset about the race. He didn’t get any kind of bump from his assassination attempt and the RNC which was no doubt a huge shock to him. (Hubris is his middle name, after all.) The new polls show Kamala now slightly ahead with momentum and it’s driving him crazy. Here’s a report from inside the campaign: Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was riding high, envisioning a landslide victory against Joe Biden after beating an assassination attempt, briefly proclaiming himself to be a new man, and enjoying a drama-free convention that felt like an early victory party. Days later, of course, Biden euthanized his campaign, elevating his vice president as his presumptive replacement and definitively resetting the table.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 06:28
Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has sent a letter to organisers of the Garma festival that he will not be attending this year as he needs to stay at home and wash his hair. ”As Opposition leader you are kept very... Read More ›
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 05:12
 Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 4 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
US Urged to Condemn Israel’s ‘Summary Execution’ of Two Journalists
Edward Carver, August 02, 2024 [CommonDreams]
A Palestinian journalist on Thursday pressed a U.S. State Department spokesperson to characterize the killings of two Al Jazeera journalists by Israeli forces as summary execution.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 05:00
There is only Trump and his grievances This is self-destructive and stupid but he just can’t help himself: Just before rallying supporters in Atlanta on Saturday, Trump unleashed a tirade on the state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, whose vaunted ground game operation Trump may need in November, ripping into him on Truth Social for “fighting Unity and the Republican Party.” And when Trump took the stage, he went at him even harder. “He’s a bad guy, he’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor,” Trump told supporters, eliciting boos toward Kemp from the crowd. The attack — on social media and in person at the Georgia State University Convocation Center — marked an escalation of Trump’s longstanding criticism of Kemp. And it instantly unsettled Georgia Republicans, who warned Trump’s comments threaten his already shaky prospects in the state. “I’m sitting here scratching my head,” Bobby Saparow, a Republican operative and Brian Kemp’s former campaign manager, told POLITICO. “Attacking the popular governor of a pivotal swing state makes zero sense.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 03:30
If you are wondering where JD Vance, Elon Musk et al are getting their creepy ideas, they stem from one very creepy guy: In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.” He then concluded that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these people: Imprison them in “permanent solitary confinement” where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an “immersive virtual-reality interface” so they could “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.” Yarvin’s disturbing manifestos have earned him influential followers, chief among them: tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his onetime Silicon Valley protégé Senator J.D. Vance, whom the Republican Party just nominated to be Donald Trump’s vice president.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 02:00
Byron Donalds is slick but not that slick: Good for Stephanopoulos for pushing back but it’s like talking to a wall. These people will never concede … anything. By the way, the AP headline Donalds refers to said that Harris was the first Indian American Senator because she was. She was not the first Black Senator which is why they didn’t mention that she was Black. It makes me feel crazy that we have to make that clear. Which is the point.
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Mon, 05/08/2024 - 00:30
FYI: How this works First off, by the schedule of convention events and the fact that I lose an hour of morning blogging time (Central vs. Eastern) I’m unlikely to be posting in this space from August 19-23. I am a delegate from North Carolina to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I attended the 2012 convention in Charlotte on a press pass. This year’s experience will be very different. Before President Joe Biden dropped out, I’d expected to be an extra at a four-day infomercial. This feels much more monumental. For you who’ve ever thought about being a national convention delegate, a few things I’ve picked up. Becoming a delegate: Every cycle, random callers tell us they’d like to be convention delegates. Doesn’t that sound like fun? They have no clue how this works. Delegates pledged to a candidate and vetted by the campaign(s) are elected by Democrats active in your congressional district. Or you must be an elected official or party insider to win a delegate slot. I am one of five pledged delegates elected from my district. Others are elected at large at state conventions.
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Sun, 04/08/2024 - 23:01
Advocates are charging Big Oil for climate-related deaths, and more from The Lever this week.
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