One of my closest friends was recently diagnosed with early stages of dementia. She is 80 years old and believed that the problems she experienced with her memory, were due to normal age-related forgetfulness. She has a science background, and after receiving her diagnosis she started to research the topic in great detail. She read Continue reading »
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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 09 2024
by Tony Wikrent
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Strategic Political Economy
Average Old Democrat, June 02, 2024 [DailyKos]
…What happens to the Republican Party? Where do they go and who will lead them?
The Chinese have an adage — 骑 虎 难 下 – “When you ride the tiger, it is impossible to dismount.”
I think they’re pretty good I don’t know if anyone’s seeing them though. There are a bunch of these. They’re being targeted at specific social media and, I assume, on television in some markets. I think they’re effective but then I’m already on the team. There is now a new Super PAC announced to try to get to young voters: The group, Won’t PAC Down, will raise and spend $20 million to $25 million, according to details shared exclusively with POLITICO. It’s also turning to Hollywood for help. Won’t PAC Down has hired millennial and Gen Z writers, directors and producers to help craft pro-Biden content that’s specifically engineered to sell an octogenarian candidate to typically disillusioned and hard-to-reach voters under 30. Those movie industry creatives, with credits from “Saturday Night Live” to “Parks and Recreation” to “Big Mouth,” have been meeting monthly for the last half year in a rented, loft-style conference room in a downtown Los Angeles office building.
Don’t nominate a criminal Here is where that framing has inevitably led. From Jonathan Chait: John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024. “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo.
The watchdog press needs to watch itself We looked at “radical constitutionalism” on Saturday. But a tweet caught my attention this morning that reinforces why so much ire gets directed at mainstream outlet headlines and bothsidesism: The Times has been taking a lot of well-deserved flak, especially for clickbait headlines that often mischaracterize the stories below. New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it A Deputy Standards Editor for Trust Initiatives might begin by finding new headline writers. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Cars are winning the war on cars while our cities crumble around us, and more from The Lever this week.
Trump fails to learn from it or to learn anything President Joe Biden will return to Washington, D.C. after a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. About 2,000 Americans who died in WWI lie buried there. Donald Trump refused to pay his respects during his presidency because a) rain might mess up his hair, and b) he viewed the dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” (Associated Press): It’s a fitting end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil. Every ode to the transatlantic partnership was a reminder that Trump could upend those relationships. Each reference to democracy stood a counterpoint to his rival’s efforts to overturn a presidential election.
In Doctor Who S01E06: "Rogue," Richard E. Grant was revealed as a "lost" Doctor. Could it be from the forgotten audio "Scream of the Shalka"?
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: SNL, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Doctor Who, Wonder Woman, The Boys, The Umbrella Academy, and more!
At least 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 others were injured in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday after Israeli forces carried out a “rescue operation” to retrieve four captives. Reports of U.S. involvement in the operation have sparked backlash. At least 210 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of others were injured on Saturday in Continue reading »
OK, it may not be Summer yet on the calendar…but try telling that to Mother Nature: Excessive heat warnings are set to expire this weekend after daily temperature records have been set across the US Southwest. Extreme temperatures are expected to continue in California, Nevada and Arizona into Saturday. An excessive heat warning in Las Vegas will expire Saturday night with temperatures remaining around 115F (46.1) on Saturday and dropping to 112F (44.4C) on Sunday. Similar to the trend throughout last week, temperatures will remain high at night hovering around the low 80s. On Thursday, the heat hit 113F (45C) in Phoenix. Record-breaking temperatures led to 11 people taken to the hospital while waiting to attend a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday. Phoenix will see some slight relief after the heat warning expires Friday night, but the high temperature remains in triple digits for Saturday at 108F (42.2C) and 104F (40C) on Sunday. National Weather Service (NWS) alerts remain in place on Friday for the wider area, covering a population of around 20 million people.
I couldn’t help but think that Kimberly may have just realized that she bet on the wrong horse.
Doctor Who Showrunner Russell T. Davies on the connection between "The Legend of Ruby Sunday" and "The Giggle;" new preview visits UNIT.
The story in the NY Times takes apart their ridiculous claim, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now. Millions of people no doubt believe that the FBI tried to assassinate Donald Trump now. The lies just pile on top of each other. It’s good to see the Times calling it like it is. There’s a certain hysteria about the GOP’s talking points right now that indicted a lack of confidence in their candidate. That’s understandable since their candidate is a convicted felon who is also a narcissistic pathological liar. But still, lately they’ve been completely out of their minds. The reaction to he verdict is the best example. They went completely over the top — all of them — complaining that it was a partisan prosecution and a political verdict. It was clearly coordinated to try to intimidate the Democrats into being afraid to use it in the campaign. (That’s not going to work — I hope.) Just yesterday they all went nuts over a random post by a self-professed “shit-poster” on facebook who had written a post before the verdict saying tat his cousin was on the jury and told him they were going to convict.
It’s not the Democrats MSNBC reports: Cornel West’s independent presidential campaign is broke. His former campaign manager says he knows nothing about ballot access. And he spent more on graphic design than petition-gathering in his most recent campaign finance report. But tens of thousands of signatures have been gathered on behalf of the famed left-wing academic in key states thanks to self-organized grassroots volunteers — and some help from outside operatives tied to a Republican consulting firm. […] Emails from elections officials, obtained through a request under North Carolina’s Public Records Law, show the pro-West Justice for All Party authorized three people to pick up and drop off signatures for them statewide — and all three are current or past employees of a Colorado-based Republican political firm called Blitz Canvassing. Blitz Canvassing has worked for numerous Republican House and Senate candidates and took in more than $14.6 million in payments working for Never Back Down, the main super PAC that supported former GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov.
The world economy is experiencing a deep process of economic convergence, according to which regions that once lagged the West in industrialisation are now making up for lost time. The World Bank’s release on May 30 of its latest estimates of national output (up to the year 2022) offers an occasion to reflect on the new Continue reading »
Both the WHO and UN may be starting to take seriously the effects of climate change on health. A global plan to save 1,000 freshwater fish from extinction. Covid reverses life expectancy at birth. WHO resolution on climate change and health It’s difficult to know whether to celebrate (the achievement) or groan (about the delay) Continue reading »
According to the dominant Western narrative, the history of the entire modern world has been prodigiously shaped by Western historical turning points beginning with the Renaissance and running through the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the science-driven, first Industrial Revolution. A recent, US-published book, “China’s Age of Abundance: Origins Ascendence and Aftermath” by Professor Wang Feng, Continue reading »
It’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the warmongering of the western empire these days. In response to the frightening steps that NATO has been taking to allow western-supplied weapons to be used by Ukraine to strike Russian territory, Vladimir Putin warned last week that these escalations can lead to “serious consequences”. “This Continue reading »
We might not like to read this, but here are a few things Western media completely forgot to tell you about Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang… In Hong Kong, the 1987 Joint Declaration states clearly that matters of national defence will be in the hands of the Mainland, while local police and administrative matters will Continue reading »