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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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.
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 ›
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Advocates are charging Big Oil for climate-related deaths, and more from The Lever this week.
Nobody’s singing quite yet CNN: Harris is conducting interviews with final VP contenders Walz, Shapiro and Kelly today, sources say As Kamala Harris closes in on her selection of a running mate this weekend, a renewed focus is being placed on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, people familiar with the search told CNN, even as the vice president continues to weigh whether Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly would help deliver a victory in their battleground states. The potential for a VP pick helping deliver electoral votes has to be a consideration, which is why Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, perhaps the most popular Democratic governor in the U.S. doesn’t get a mention in the lede. Yes, a VP pick historically is no sure thing on that score, but history may have little to say about this crazy election. Beshear is “said to still be under consideration” nonetheless. “Harris’ top consideration is electability, sources familiar with her thinking told CNN.” Stay tuned. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download.
SIMON “Simmo” Braun will be at the Big Banana on Thursday, 8 August, on his nationwide tour promoting blood and plasma donations. Simmo, a Central Coast father, will visit every donor centre across the country over the next year as part of “The Bloody Good Tour”. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth...
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THE annual Push-up Challenge, which raises thousands of dollars for local mental health organisations such as Lifeline, has come to a close. Each participant aimed to complete 3,249 push ups in 24 days from 5-28 June, representing the number of lives lost to suicide in Australia in 2022. Advertise with News of The Area today....
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THE Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) says new research is highly critical of Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs). The AKF says it shows that these agreements, struck between the federal and state governments, override the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us....
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“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.” -J. Robert Oppenheimer [Shame mode] All the times I’ve zipped by the I-82 turn-off to Richland, Washington while driving on I-90 and thought “hey, isn’t that where that Hanford superfund nuclear thingy is?” I’ve never stopped to ponder its historical significance. Adjacent to the Hanford Nuclear Site that was built in the early 1940s to house nuclear government workers at the height of the Manhattan Project, Richland is, in essence, a company town; a true “atomic city” with a problematic legacy. Then again, according to Irene Lusztig’s absorbing documentary Richland (which I caught at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival), how “problematic” depends on who you talk to. Many current residents don’t see why anyone would fuss over the local high school football team’s “mascot”, which is …a mushroom cloud.
The Washington Post has published a blockbuster expose about a big Trump payoff when he was president in 2017. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that his cronies at DOJ shut the investigation down: Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash. Inside the state-run National Bank of Egypt, employees were soon busy placing bundles of $100 bills into two large bags, according to records from the bank. Four men arrived and carried away the bags, which U.S. officials later described in sealed court filings as weighing a combined 200 pounds and containing what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency. Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts. No vax/anti-vax this week.
This is the tech billionaire election and they’re almost all supporting Trump. One of them is Elon Musk. This is his latest contribution: Elon Musk’s new super PAC is collecting scores of voters’ personal information under the guise of inviting them to register to vote, as part of his effort to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Earlier this month, Musk denied reports that he would be donating $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign during an interview with right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson. Instead, the technocrat clarified that he had created a new super PAC, called the America PAC. Musk’s America PAC is a door-to-door canvassing operation, which allows it to work in direct coordination with the Trump campaign, according to an FEC advisory from earlier this year. This allows Musk, and his fellow Silicon Valley donors, to stick their hands—and their cash—right into the presidential race on Trump’s behalf. How exactly they plan to do this is even more disturbing.
I think I’ve mentioned before that the Center of which I am director produces a podcast called Ethics and Education which is about… ethics and education. Just to be clear: the producer/director/voice artist/supremo is Carrie Welsh, and my involvement is mainly as a sounding board about topics and how to approach them, and doing whatever […]
The state GOP just got even crazier There are election deniers in important jobs in many swing states. But Arizona is ground zero for MAGA wackos. Bolts has the latest from the Arizona primaries this week: Democrat Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, the elections head in Arizona’s Pima County, says she drove to work in silence on Wednesday morning, after her counterpart in Maricopa County, Republican Stephen Richer, lost his primary to a far-right challenger. “Are you allowed to print expletives?” she told Bolts. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and 4.5 million residents, is the nation’s most populous swing county—and it’s lately seen a torrent of right-wing activism pushing false claims about recent elections.
The 24th summit of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) concluded on 4 July 2024 in Astana, Kazakhstan. Its communique emphasised the group's determination to enhance its role in influencing world events, an unmistakable challenge to US world leadership. Continue reading »
Pearls and Irritations has long been Australia’s best public policy site and it is now even more important. Pearls and Irritations has long been Australia’s best public policy site and it is now even more important as the regular media have replaced policy analysis with pontification and point-scoring. P&I presents the knowledge and expertise of Continue reading »