Reading

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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 06:00
Joe Scarborough, former hardcore right winger, dealing with what the GOP has become: “The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning. That is un-American. They know they’re lying. Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that JD Vance and Trump’s family would out and out say what they said takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to January the 6th. This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are.” He’s not wrong. The desperation is just dripping from the Trump clan.
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 04:59
As a result of its belligerence and intransigence, Israel is now almost completely ostracised by the international community, and also faces grave economic and military threats as the regional war expands. Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would profoundly endanger Israel’s national security. In fact, it is the lack of Continue reading »
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 04:58
It has been a year of erasing a people, systematically, ruthlessly and unrelentingly. A massacre here and another there. 500 killed yesterday and ‘only’ 140 today. It has been a year of obliterating a culture, an identity and a collective memory. A year of levelling universities, libraries and museums. A year of burning archives, photographs and centuries-old Continue reading »
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 04:54
One year on, we renew our calls for a ceasefire, hostage deal and an end to Israel’s impunity and aggression. October 7 marks one year since the Hamas attacks which led to the killing of over 1,000 people in Israel. This week also marks the start of Israel’s genocidal war, which has led to the Continue reading »
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 04:30
Will anyone know about it? Look at this: The number of migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally at the southern border reached the lowest point of President Biden’s administration in September, three months into his crackdown on asylum claims, according to internal Department of Homeland Security statistics obtained by CBS News. In September, U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded nearly 54,000 apprehensions of migrants who crossed into the country between legal entry points along the border with Mexico, the government figures show. It’s a smaller figure than the previous Biden-era low in July, when Border Patrol processed roughly 56,000 migrants who crossed the border without authorization.  Border Patrol’s tally of migrant apprehensions in September is the lowest number recorded by the agency since August 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions countries enacted in response to it led to a sharp decrease in migration to the U.S. southern border. It would be nice if there were screaming headlines about this but there are a lot of screaming headlines about everything right now.
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 04:00

Good evening, and thank you all for attending this important town hall meeting. Due to budget cuts, we’re excited to announce our groundbreaking merger with Spirit Halloween.

Yes, you heard correctly—Spirit Halloween, your go-to for spooky décor and flimsy costumes that disintegrate in a light breeze, is the new future of this hospital. But don’t worry, patient care is still a top priority. Half of the ER will still handle medical emergencies. The other half will be a fully functional Spirit Halloween pop-up store. I realize this is an unconventional decision, but let’s be real, the only part of this hospital turning a profit has been the parking lot. It’s time to expand our portfolio.

I know some of you may be concerned about the optics of a giant inflatable ghost hovering outside a hospital. Does it send the wrong message? Maybe. But when weighed against the message of “We’re shutting down, and the closest emergency room is 178 miles away,” Casper here doesn’t seem so bad. Plus, it’s a friendly ghost. Sort of.

Created
Tue, 08/10/2024 - 03:00
I happened to spend some time with a highly intelligent 17 year old over the weekend who’s taking AP Government and is keenly interested in the election. She’s following all the polling and the punditry and knows the ins and out of the battleground map better than most adults I talk to. And she said something that struck me because I hadn’t really considered it before. We were talking about the VP debate and she found it odd that it was so civil. She kept waiting for something to happen. And I realized that there are millions of people for whom Trump’s brand of demagogic politics is normal. They are either young like this person and have literally grown up in this era of bad feelings or they are those for whom politics wasn’t of interest until Trump came along. That’s a lot of people who don’t know that it isn’t supposed to be this way. Granted we have had more spirited arguments in televised political debates than the one we witnessed last week between JD Vance and Tim Walz. But we never had the kind of debates like those that Donald Trump has participated in since 2016.
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Tue, 08/10/2024 - 01:30
They will defend disinformation to your death It’s been an article of conservative faith for as long as I can recall that government ought to be run more like a business. On that topic…. A long time ago, in a high school far, far away, a decade before the breakup of Ma Bell, I read a book about corporate rip-offs. It included a tale of a private school bus service in Greensboro or High Point, NC that (IIRC) had a run of burned-out clutches in its fleet of brand new buses. Despite his repeated complaints, the owner kept getting the runaround from the maker’s regional manager who claimed that no other customers had experienced similar problems. This was a lie. The owner had contacted other fleet owners by long distance and letter (remember when this was) and had a file of receipts. Yet the regional manager insisted the breakdowns must have been caused by the service’s drivers. The money quote went something like this: “He was lying to me. I knew he was lying to me. He knew I knew he was lying to me.
Created
Tue, 08/10/2024 - 01:24
We all heterodox economists who have chosen the road ‘less traveled by’ know that this choice comes at a price. Fewer opportunities to secure ample research funding or positions at prestigious institutes or universities. Nevertheless, yours truly believes that very few of us regret our choices. One doesn’t bargain with one’s conscience. No amount of […]