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In case you aren’t up on the latest internet lingo ASMR is defined: Note that the original tweet came from the official White House feed. We are dealing with sociopaths. They don’t try to hide it. And because of that it is rational to be horrified and enraged right now about what these people are willing to do to us. Normalizing this level of sadism and cruelty can only lead in one direction. I just assume now that all Republicans agree with these sentiments since none of them have said a peep about any of this.

Francesca Albanese addresses a group in Berlin amidst challenges from the police. The City of Sydney passes a motion for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS), while Patricia Karvelas calls out the facts on Angus Taylor. Francesca Albanese speaks in Germany 🗣️ German police entered a venue in Berlin to intimidate people gathered for an event Continue reading »

Never forget that even as President Musk is destroying the government agencies and Trump’s henchmen are taking apart the Department of Justice piece by piece, when he isn’t pretending to be Alexander the Great and playing golf he’s making money for himself and his family. This term they aren’t even trying to hide it: The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration left her job this weekend after a clash with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service over its attempts to access sensitive government records, three people familiar with her departure said Monday. The Oval Office meeting convened by President Trump brought together the most important leaders in the world of professional golf: Jay Monahan, the top executive at the PGA Tour, and, via telephone, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of the Saudi Arabia-backed league known as LIV Golf. The stated goal was to figure out a way to eliminate roadblocks preventing the planned merger between the rival two groups. But the gathering earlier this month said something even more important about the Trump administration itself. Mr.

“Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration…. Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.” — CNN, 2/14/25

“The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees… just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.” — AP, 2/17/25

“The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), in a post on its website, says it has found $55 billion in savings through a combination of efforts, including a reduction in the federal workforce.” — The Hill, 2/18/25

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John Dean, famous Watergate whistleblower, speaks with David Sirota about Trump’s grab for unitary executive power.

The NY Times has a good piece today (gift link) looking at the inside workings of the Adams case at SDNY. It is truly astonishing. What this case proves is that what’s happening is truly the complete corrupt Trumpification of the DOJ that goes way beyond just seeking retribution for the Special Counsel prosecutions. This is a remaking of the department as a full-fledged political arm of the president and this case was chosen in particular to demonstrate to the lawyers and the public that they plan to use that power. By choosing to protect a Democrat who made an appeal directly to Donald Trump, licking his boots and promising to do his bidding, they have shown that it’s not about the past, it’s about the future. By choosing the SDNY, the flagship office of the DOJ, they prove that no office has any independence. This is the conclusion of the piece: Across the department, dismay has set in over the standoff in the Adams case, which echoes a grim moment during the Watergate scandal known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Rather than carry out an order from President Richard M.

2 pounds rhubarb1 pound sugar3 tablespoons lemon juice3 tablespoons butterThin slices of white breadGolden custard sauce or whipped cream Wash and trim young rhubarb stalks, and cut into 1-inch segments. Combine rhubarb, sugar, lemon juice and butter in thick-bottomed saucepan; bring gently to a boil, stirring continuously; lower heat and simmer, stirring all the while, […]

“They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.” — a White House official. I’ve been a USAID contractor for most of the last 20 years. Not a federal employee; a contractor. USAID does most […]

Last night the White House submitted a filing to Judge Tanya Chutken that Elon Musk does not lead the DOGE and has no power to do anything but advise the president. Apparently, this was an attempt to head off her potential ruling that DOGE is not properly constituted to do what it’s doing, particularly under the leadership of the unaccountable Musk: That’s bullshit and I hope the judge sees these: Everyone knows that Musk is leading DOGE. They are answering to him, Trump has already made that clear. To say otherwise is ridiculous.

A winning image shows stag beetles in an epic fight for a mate

The post Courtship Is a Risky Endeavor appeared first on Nautilus.

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From Ukraine to Cuba, news outlets worldwide are suddenly begging for cash—because their “independent journalism” was actually paid for by Washington all along.

The post USAID Falls, Exposing a Giant Network of US-Funded “Independent” Media appeared first on MintPress News.

I am not suffering from what some of President Donald Trump’s more fervent supporters — both in the US and in Australia — like to call “Trump derangement syndrome”. That is, I’m not disputing that he won the presidential election held last November “fair and square”, as did the Republican Party in both the House Continue reading »

Well, they did it! The Reserve Bank of Australia Board decided, at its meeting conducted over the past two days, to cut its official cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.10%, after having held it at 4.35% since November 2023, and having raised it by 425 basis points over the preceding 18 months. Today’s Continue reading »

Ill winds are blowing in from the United States of America. In the times ahead we will be tested in Australia, across the spectrum, as to whether we adopt a similar approach to our politics. The early signs aren’t good. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has tailored Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” to the more Continue reading »

Before attending a recent talk by Geoffrey Blainey entitled “The Causes of War”, I looked again at his monumental volume – “Causes of War”. The first sentence of Chapter One reads: “For every thousand pages published on the causes of wars there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace.” I agree. Continue reading »

The “China Initiative” was the name of a controversial program run by the US Department of Justice, which was introduced in late 2018 during the first Trump administration. It operated under a typically broad mandate to counter alleged China-related national security threats to the United States. Might messages in Chinese fortune cookies represent, as the Continue reading »

Five years ago, J.D. Vance, who is now the vice-president of the United States, received the Sacraments of Initiation at St Gertrude Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Dominicans to whom the parish has been entrusted presumably instructed him regarding the basic tenets of Catholic Christianity, stressing that love is the basic reality of the universe Continue reading »

The Council of the Australian Association of University Professors has welcomed the announcement of a Federal Parliamentary inquiry into the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers. The governance of Australian universities faces significant challenges, with systemic issues and breakdowns in university governance affecting their functioning at all levels. University management currently operates with no Continue reading »

Zionist lobby groups have been in an unholy alliance with complicit media outlets to fabricate antisemitism narratives since the start of the Gaza genocide in order to silence supporters of Palestine. In the latest episode, a Zionist agitator working with a Daily Telegraph crew tried to provoke staff at Cairo Takeaway in a Sydney inner Continue reading »

The Trump admin just moved to defang NEPA — the law that lets communities protect themselves from polluters.