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Okay, so look. I’m your basic galvanized steel thrie-beam guardrail. My job is to keep vehicles from flying off the escarpment and squishing all the people driving on the westbound lane who don’t wanna die just because some mope on the eastbound couldn’t be bothered to keep his hands on the wheel. You know what I wasn’t built for? This Trump bullshit.

If a Mazda spins out at one hundred miles per hour, or a school bus driver has to turn around to yell at Jimmie Jr.—I’m your man. But you drive an eight-ton semi with an airplane propeller stuck to the grill into me at top speed? I mean, there’s only so much malarkey I was engineered to handle, you know? We’re built for normal problems, not the kind of thing you get when you hand the wheel over to a lunatic.

Thus far much of the commentary about Trump’s cabinet and staff picks alternates between “He...

I happened to catch the movie “The Apprentice” recently about the relationship between Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer who was involved in many of the mid 20th century’s most high profile political events. I don’t know that the film told me anything I didn’t already know but it did remind me of just how vicious Cohn was and how much Trump loved that about him. He learned his lessons well. The thru line between Cohn’s nefarious career and Trump’s own ruthlessness is about to manifest in this second term. It’s almost as if it’s coming full circle. Cohn’s first big splash in national politics took place when he was only 23 years old when he was one of the lead prosecutors in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was so well-liked by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that he recommended him to be the lead counsel for Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations communist witch hunt.

With Trump’s election signaling a potential shift in U.S. policy, Yemen’s Houthis mobilize for a violent response to looming American intervention, escalating tensions in the Red Sea.

The post Trump Election Win Triggers Houthi War Drills as Yemen Braces for US Invasion appeared first on MintPress News.

Advice from Carole Cadwalladr Friends have already secured permanent residency in Canada. Others are headed there in January. But then they have the means. Following post-election racist texts targeting Black people come a spread of similar intimidating texts targeting Hispanic and LGBTQ people. They warn recipients they have been “selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp.” The FBI still does not know their origin. “The FBI did not say whether it believes the offensive messages to LGBTQ and Hispanic recipients are from the same source as the previously reported messages,” NBC News reports. Some of my LGBTQ friends were concerned even before this report.

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A conversation with Issue 58 cover artist Ellen Weinstein.

The post The Rituals of Art, Science, and Superstition appeared first on Nautilus.

Cokie’s Law über alles Longtime readers recall Cokie’s Law. Digby coined the term in 2008 for how skillfully the right wing tosses smears into the air to be carried by the media like the wind. Smears, lies, and disinformation become a “legitimate” subject of mainstream reporting not because they are true or meaningful but because they are “out there.” The law is named for the late NPR/ABC reporter Cokie Roberts: “At this point,” said Roberts, “it doesn’t much matter whether she said it or not because it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.” Thus right-wing smears, lies, and disinformation become, in campaign parlance, “earned media.” James Fallows on Saturday did not reference Digby’s law, but essentially conceded that “the death-cloud of misinformation, ignorance, lies, myths, fears, stereotypes” has come to represent, like the shadows in Plato’s cave, an “artificial reality playing out in the minds of citizens.” Fallows: —It’s not a new problem in American democracy.

The right is strongly pro-natal. Some of it is for religious reasons, some of it is because they want to control (no, don’t even, the constant talk of male leadership leaves this unquestionable), but a lot of it is that they figure if they out-breed their opponents they’ll win.

Now if you’re talking ethnicity or “race” this is indisputable. Want more whites, or latinos, or whatever, if you breed less than others, that’s going to tell.

But when you’re talking ideology and culture, it isn’t.

The anti-abortion right thinks that out-breeding will work for them, but out-breeding only works if the kids you’re popping up keep your beliefs.

Look, this place needs to be administrated, and I’m the guy to do it. I know you’ve been doing your best, but you’ve been held back. You haven’t been given what you need to be successful. And I’m not talking about money. I’m not talking about resources and opportunities for growth. You’ve had plenty of that. Your problem is that no one gave you the administration you need to be successful. And that’s why I’m gonna administrate the absolute shit out of this place.

This place is primed to make boatloads of money—and I mean boatloads. Are we gonna help some students along the way? Yeah… probably. But you don’t need to worry about that. All you need to worry about is helping me get butts in seats so we can bring home that sweet, sweet bank.

I’m not just all about the money. I’ve got other priorities—strategic ones, if you know what I mean. And I won’t rest until you are literally dreaming about those strategic priorities. Do I care if those dreams are nightmares? Nope. All I care about is your being fully committed to aligning our existing resources with key growth areas in a way that ensures sustainable development and long-term impact.

As tensions mount over long range missile attacks on Russia, Chris York explains the daily routine for Ukrainians living in the capital Kyiv

A radical magic contest reveals the secrets of manipulation in a post-truth world.

In this 1976 interview, Otto Frank reflects on his decision to give his daughter Anne’s words to the world and their legacy

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Hibernation allows many animals to time-travel from difficult times to plenty. Could humans learn how to do it too?

- by Vladyslav Vyazovskiy

Read at Aeon

Talkative drinking cups and threatening oil flasks tell us how the written word asserted its authority in an oral society

- by Teddy Fassberg

Read at Psyche

When Rachel Reeves was heckled by a pro-Palestine protester during her party conference speech in September, she took the opportunity to make a statement — not about the tens of thousands of Gazans killed in the preceding year or the importance of strengthening the institutions of international law, but about the Labour Party. ‘This is […]

Democrats are in disarray. It’s time to name our enemies and assert our demands to build a party that can win.

The post Take Out the Trash: A Proposal to Clean Up the Democratic Party appeared first on The Intercept.

The global consensus on tackling climate change is fragmenting at the very moment action is most needed

The UK Government is dominated by figures from a discredited past at a time of radical global change, argues Neal Lawson