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Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 23:00
You thought we’d put this behind us? A reliable feature of our politics is that people from the center to the left, including the press, direct more fire at Democrats than at Republicans. It’s not that Democrats deserve more criticism. It’s that the aggrieved see more chance that their complaints will leave a mark on the left than on conservatives better armored against them. If shamelessness is conservatives’ superpower, giving a damn is the left’s kryptonite. Protecting our freedoms matters. Improving other people’s lives matters. A more perfect union matters. Equal justice under law matters. Just not to our opponents, if ever it was. Joe Biden’s terrible debate performance bleeds, so it leads. The media feeding frenzy is dispiriting in the extreme. Some Democrats tearing out their hair in panic and others circling the wagons around Biden makes quite a messy show. Pixels and ink, eyeballs and clicks.
Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 21:34

Originally published July 2, 2019

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The full transcript from the CNN Presidential debate between President Thomas Whitmore and challenger Governor Patrick Stevens.

WOLF BLITZER, MODERATOR: Welcome to the CNN debate for the 1996 presidential election. President Whitmore, let me begin by thanking you for saving our country and the entire world from the alien invasion this past July Fourth.

(THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE)

PRESIDENT THOMAS WHITMORE: I just did what any other fighter jet pilot hero president would have done.

(THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE THAT TURNS INTO A STANDING OVATION)

Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 18:24
Heute scheint unklarer als je zuvor, was das politisch überhaupt genau bedeutet, links und rechts. Die Unterscheidung hat zwar eine lange Tradition, die auf die Sitzordnung der verfassungsgebenden Versammlung in Frankreich im Jahr 1789 zurückgeht, wo die Royalisten rechts vom König Platz nahmen, die revolutionseifrigen Jakobiner hingegen links. Doch mit dieser Klarheit ist es lange […]
Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 10:00
Oy vey. Just what we need, right? Axios has been one of the most hysterical of all media outlets over Joe Biden’s debate debacle so I’m loathe to put much stock in their gossip reporting. However, this is actually informative: If President Biden steps aside, Vice President Harris would be almost impossible to beat for the nomination, thanks to endorsements, money, optics  and 2028 politics, top officials tell us.  All Harris needs is Biden’s backing. If she gets it, the Obamas and Clintons likely would follow, making any challenge an affront to the sitting president and two former presidents.  If she gets Biden’s endorsement, the only way a top-tier Democrat could challenge her would be to risk their future by saying “not your turn” to the first woman vice president, first Black American vice president and first South Asian vice president. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chaired the House Jan.
Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 07:00
There are two huge elections taking place in Europe right now, one in the UK and one in France. Most of you no doubt understand that various electoral systems but it is rather complicated, especially in France, so in case you have some questions I thought I’d direct you to an excellent guide by Daniel Nichanian at Bolts.com. Here’s the intro: Two major elections are taking place this week, within days of one another. The United Kingdom votes on Thursday to elect its members of parliament for the first time since 2019. France then heads to the polls on Sunday for runoffs that will decide the make-up of its National Assembly. The timing of both elections are major surprises. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called them in late May, while French President Emmanuel Macron shocked his country on June 9 by announcing that he was dissolving the National Assembly and organizing elections within a month. Each election will decide who governs the country, using rules that often differ from U.S. norms.
Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 05:00
A friend sent this, which I’d never heard of: Gödel’s Loophole is a supposed “inner contradiction” in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Gödel told his friend Oskar Morgenstern about the existence of the flaw and Morgenstern told Albert Einstein about it at the time, but Morgenstern, in his recollection of the incident in 1971, never mentioned the exact problem as Gödel saw it. This has led to speculation about the precise nature of what has come to be called “Gödel’s Loophole”. It has been called “one of the great unsolved problems of constitutional law” by F. E. Guerra-Pujol. When Gödel was studying to take his American citizenship test in 1947, he came across what he described as an “inner contradiction” in the U.S. Constitution.
Created
Fri, 05/07/2024 - 04:59
The world and its people are facing serious local and global challenges. Climate change, economic instability, limits to free speech, threats to independent media reporting, and increasing social inequality all signal the breakdown of democratic systems across the world. Our political institutions and leaders are failing us with increasingly conservative policies that favour big business. Continue reading »