Reading

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Russell Vought downplayed Trump’s moves to strip protections from civil service employees.

The post White House Budget Office Nominee Tries to Whitewash Trump’s First Term appeared first on The Intercept.

Let me spare you the suspense: Yes, the Democrats will someday come to be ashamed...

Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease fire and the release of at least some of the hostages: Some people are not happy. Not happy at all: Ooopsie! Meanwhile, the press is doing its usual thing. Regardless of American politics, this is good news for Gaza and the families of the hostages. I don’t doubt that Trump’s impending inauguration had something to do with it but I sincerely doubt that he had some magic pixie dust that made it happen. It just makes sense to get it done now before the new regime. Nobody thinks this can go on forever.

How to solve biology’s chicken-or-egg dilemma

The post The Incredible Conundrum of Life’s Origin appeared first on Nautilus.

Low rating news and opinion channel, Sky News Australia, has anointed alleged racist, Peter Dutton, as the white man to lead Australia. ”Enough of this Albanese chap,” said Sky News’ only reporter to be found guilty of breaching the racial... Read More ›

There was a time not all that long ago when confirmation hearings were at least slightly meaningful. Sure, they were mostly just pro forma since the new president is always presumed to have the prerogative to appoint his own cabinet. And even judicial nominees, including those for the Supreme Court, only became contentious when the Republicans started nominating extremist judges. But things have changed. The Republicans have learned that there is no price to pay for appointing unqualified and unfit sycophants and far right ideologues and so that’s what they are doing. In this current round the nominees aren’t even meeting with the Democrats before their hearings as it’s assumed that only Republican votes matter and they know they have enough of those going in because they’ve successfully intimidated anyone who might have had an objection. Jane Mayer’s latest piece in the New Yorker is about the pressure campaign to confirm Pete Hegseth: At the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, on Tuesday, the most telling feature may be the voices from whom the senators won’t hear.

These are such loathsome people I can hardly contain myself. I would say that we should withhold aid from them when the inevitable disaster hits their states but what good would that do? They simply have no understanding of the social contract or even what the definition of a nation is. They are horrible liars and corrupt criminals and I just don’t see how we can survive with people like this running the government. I hope that every Democrat in the country runs ads with these people making these grotesque comments and ask if that’s what America is really all about. Abstract paeans to democracy obviously can’t get people off their couches. Maybe this will. (Sadly, I’m not optimistic.) And then there’s this lunacy: He hates windmills because he hates the way they looked in the ocean outside his Scottish golf course and they wouldn’t remove them.

1. You own music in so many formats that your collection could be housed in an audio museum.

2. Back in your day, people feared measles more than the vaccine that prevents it.

3. You were too young to go to the first Woodstock and too old to deal with Woodstock ’99.

4. You’ve lived through several waves of feminism, and they’ve culminated in two women who were among the most qualified candidates in US presidential history losing to the same misogynistic con artist.

5. You remember when even the cheapest chocolate candy bars actually tasted like chocolate.

6. The “millennial whoop” sets your teeth on edge—and at your age, you can’t afford to lose any more enamel.

7. You are on more medications than your eighty-nine-year-old mother, whose suspicions during your teen years that you were on drugs have finally panned out.

8. The lyric “I want to fuck you like an animal” hits differently when you realize that Trent Reznor, like you, is turning sixty.

9. A hill you will die on is that Doug Emhoff is smoking hot. Maybe not “Michael Hutchence in the 1980s” hot, but close.

Wildfires in California replicate the massive fire storms in the boreal forest in Canada and Siberia, the lungs of the earth. Our addiction to fossil fuel has ignited an age of fire. The apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising Continue reading »

A dramatic escape was cited by Israeli media as the reason that Yuval Vagdani, a soldier in the Israeli army, managed to escape justice in Brazil. Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the only Israeli soldier being pursued for similar crimes. According Continue reading »

A recalcitrant US government could turn-off Australia’s ability to defend itself within days. In 1932, the wonderful Mexican artist Frida Kahlo painted a “Self-portrait along the Borderline between Mexico and the United States”. With due alteration for detail, Kahlo’s passionate political statement of self-respect and independence can be seen as foreshadowing the abject nature of Continue reading »

Some Australian media recently provided a platform for false Taiwanese views about the one-China policy. Here are the reasons they are wrong. In recent years, the authorities of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have been trying hard to promote so-called “incremental independence”, while certain external forces have taken the opportunity to interfere, propagating the “Taiwan’s Continue reading »

Americans were shocked by two fatal events in the United States on New Year’s day 2025, and one was quickly called ‘Islamist terrorism’. Yet the US supports Muslim terrorist groups in Syria. At 3.15 on 1 January 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, aged 42, an army veteran and an American-born Muslim convert, drove around security barriers and Continue reading »

In his unofficial election policy launch this week, Peter Dutton re-announced his promise to cut the migration program and to cap overseas students at metropolitan universities. Without a hint of embarrassment, he also said he was a strong believer in the ‘rule of law’. His record shows he has little belief in the rules embodied Continue reading »

Half a century ago, governments around the world ditched their old psychiatric hospitals for something they said would work better. It didn’t. Australia has a poor record in treating the massive mental health problems in the population. More and more money is spent, without achieving any overall improvement in either the mental health of the Continue reading »

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party hit a bump in the road in 2024 when it lost its majority in the Lok Sabha general elections, held between April and June. The shock jolted passengers a little, but the big orange BJP bus continues to roll down the road to Hindutva – the promised land of a Continue reading »

By blocking Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion purchase of US Steel, the Biden Administration has turned international economic policy inside out. On this point, the incoming Trump Administration is in rare agreement. Like many conflict-prone moves in recent years, this action has been justified on the basis of alleged national security concerns. Yet in the end, Continue reading »

When President-elect Trump held a press availability as he was speaking to Republican Governors last week he rattled off a number of big names who’d made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of the new Don. He actually sounded rather surprised by it, saying, “they all came. Jeff Bezos came, Bill Gates came, Mark Zuckerberg came, many of them came numerous times, the bankers have all come, everybody’s coming. I haven’t had anyone say anything bad about me. I’m not used to it.” He believes they come because they are dazzled by the power and strength of his massive electoral victory (like nobody’s ever seen before!) but none of them are as dumb or as deluded as he is so that’s obviously not the case. I’m going to guess they’re dazzled by the richest man in the world’s proximity to him and they want a piece of that action. Elon Musk has opened the door to a new style of oligarchy, American style. The history of Russia after the fall of communism is instructive here.

Amid devastating wildfires, Many Angelenos are questioning the wisdom of slashing local emergency budgets while billions are allocated to Israel and Ukraine.

The post The Burning Questions: LA Fire Cuts vs. Billions for Israel and Ukraine appeared first on MintPress News.

The Government says it will prevent donors from evading laws designed to prevent foreign funding of UK political parties

Conservatives have been caught admitting that age-verification laws are pretext to shut down pornography entirely.

The post SCOTUS Won’t Hear the Real Reason Porn Age-Verification Laws Are Spreading appeared first on The Intercept.

I love pepperoni rolls. I loved selling them door to door to raise money for my high school marching band, and I have fond memories of Uncle Dave bringing a giant platter of rolls to our Christmas Eve celebrations. They make excellent pepperoni rolls at the Bella Roma Italian Deli in Colonia, NJ. And, althoughContinue reading The Gran Centurions’ L’Amore Della Cucina: Pepperoni Bread (1990) →

In honor of Jemma Redgrave's birthday, here's a proper celebration of UNIT head Kate Stewart and her history in Doctor Who canon.