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“Donald Trump’s candidates keep delivering… for Democrats. Republicans didn’t learn their lesson in 2022 as MAGA mini-mes could once again cost the party winnable races.” — Vanity Fair, 9/30/24

As a party, we have to apologize for how things are going. We’re just having a minor “candidate quality” problem, but things should be back to normal once we’ve fixed this glitch.

There’s nothing wrong overall. Our party is healthy and strong. We just accidentally ran extremely low-quality candidates up and down the ballot. Whoops.

Our policies are not out of step with the American public. At least, not if we deny any association with the nine-hundred-page authoritarian manual that outlines them exactly. The only problem is our candidates, many of whom are running campaigns entirely staffed by the writers of said manual. It’s a bummer, but it doesn’t represent us.

As a New York transplant originally from the South, my body is hard-wired to welcome the fall season once the temperature hits 70. I’m not proud of it, but I have been known to dust off my sweaters and light a cider-scented candle during the final week of August. This year, as my neighborhood Target started to swap sunscreen for pumpkin carving kits, a new seasonal item caught my eye: a cinnamon-creme chocolate bar called the Kit Kat Ghost Toast.

Once September began, I figured it was socially acceptable to give this Kit Kat a taste test. Store after store, however, the Ghost Toast was sold out. My interest was doubly piqued: why is this spooky-themed treat taking the city by storm in early September? Are shoppers in New York buying autumnal goods to seek a reprieve from the dog days of summer, or is the candy just that delicious? As a chocolate connoisseur and a Halloween hobbyist, I knew what I had to do. I made a trip to the motherland (Hershey’s Chocolate World in Times Square) to answer my question: Will I be able to boast that the Kit Kat Ghost Toast is the candy I love the most, or will I be forced to pen a roast because the flavor is gross?

We finally arrived in Gaza at around 7pm. Since there is no direct route into Gaza, we had to fly into Cairo before making the drive to the Rafah Crossing. I had lost count of the number of Israeli checkpoints we passed through — a daily reality for Palestinians living under apartheid. We were staying […]

One of Bell’s last actions before taking Rep. Cori Bush’s seat in Congress was to charge protesters arrested on the 10-year anniversary of the police killing of Michael Brown Jr.

The post Wesley Bell’s Swan Song: Felonies for Ferguson Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.

To make sense of a dark and confusing world, the acclaimed puppeteer Ronnie Burkett shrinks it down to a ‘manageable size’

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Intellectual humility has recently been hailed as the key to thinking well. The story of Barbara McClintock proves otherwise

- by Rachel Fraser

Read at Aeon

Cutting-edge computational techniques are shedding light on how the emotional experiences of past cultures compare to ours

- by Juha Lahnakoski & Ellie Bennett

Read at Psyche

Ioana Neamțu, Umang Khetan, Jian Li and Ishita Sen What do the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse and the 2022 UK pension fund crisis have in common? Interest rate risk. Several sectors in the economy run significant asset-liability mismatch that makes them vulnerable to rapid interest rate changes: pension funds and insurers have short-term cash … Continue reading Sharing interest rate risk: who is trading and what affects the costs? →

. For more on the pitfalls and intricacies of statistical tests and confidence intervals, have a look at this article by Sander Greenland et al.

How the former campus law organization dug its claws into the federal judiciary.

COFFS Volunteering staff are busy matching interested locals to a range of service roles. An increased understanding of how local volunteer services operate, has seen curious community members coming into the office to chat about how they can help. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for your business. Message us. Phone...

The post Coffs Service Matches Volunteers With Vacancies appeared first on News Of The Area.

One theme of this blog, for the last four years or so, has been the end of the unilateral, American, order.

Let’s review:

The US & NATO poured support into Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are losing the war. This is clear now, and anyone denying it is either lying, stupid or a complete captive of propaganda.

The West can’t produce enough weapons or ammo. There have been massive drawdowns of stocks and production is not enough to replace it, nor is production ramping up either enough, or quickly enough, to deal with the issue.

Russia, however, was able to ramp up weapons and ammunition production fast. At the start of the war, and for far too long afterwards there were cries that the Russians would run out of missiles, shells and so on. No such thing. Their allies came thru, plus they massively increased their production.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Some of it, at least That was last night. This is today: Special counsel Jack Smith has outlined new details of former President Donald Trump and his allies’ sweeping and “increasingly desperate” efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, in a blockbuster court filing Wednesday aimed at defending Smith’s prosecution of Trump following the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling. Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as “crazy,” prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing. “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the filing said.

In our five-minute scroll on X: Julian Assange recognised as a political prisoner; shameful, divisive western media commentary; Iran strikes Israel’s most secure air base; Russian carpet bombs in Volchansk; Malcolm Turnbull speaks his mind on Peter Dutton, and Hong Kong anti-China groups awash with mystery cash. Julian Assange recognised as a political prisoner @@wikileaks Continue reading »

Toyota Camry

I’m a regular guy like you. I drive cars, sometimes several at once, and say “zoom zoom” and “brrrrrbrrrbrrrrbbbbbbrrrrr” when I drive fast. Just like you do. I know cars—in fact, I’m married to a car, but please don’t check. So, when I look at a Toyota Camry, I see the watery eyes of a child gazing up at me, hoping they can afford healthgroceryhousingcarecaid. It’s a sad state of affairs. Purchasing this Camry from me and my boss, who will be SO mad if I miss this sale, is like taking a deep breath of clean air and exhaling. Think about that, not the car itself. And if you have doubts, just know that this—this right here—this is my face, and it’s talking, and it’s got the gift of the gab, and it’s 100 percent real human. Trust.

A letter from four construction bosses’ organisations to Murray Watt, Minister for Employment, has blown open the real agenda behind the attack on the CFMEU.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Bosses’ letter to Labor reveals conditions, union rights the real reason for attack on CFMEU first appeared on Solidarity Online.

Rick Perlstein is out with another interesting piece in the American Prospect today, this time about “undecided voters.” He references the great Chris Hayes piece from 2004 that I’ve often discussed over the years. It had the same effect on me that it had on Perlstein who describes it as “the most important piece of political journalism I have ever encountered.” As he says: The future MSNBC host’s TNR piece was an account of the lessons he learned canvassing among undecided voters in Wisconsin for John Kerry. It incinerates a basic foundation of how political junkies think: “Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the ‘issues.’ That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs.” Chris noted that while there were a few people he talked to like that, “such cases were exceedingly rare.

North Carolina was once a climate leader, but more than a decade of Republican and corporate obstruction left the state ill-prepared for the historic disaster.

The Opposition’s shadow minister for home and foreign affairs, Barnaby Joyce, has called on the Government to look into the issue of shrinkflation. Namely the shrinkflation he gets whilst swimming. ”Albo’s keen to get out their and tackle shrinkflation, fair... Read More ›