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Created
Wed, 06/03/2024 - 03:29
Economist Dean Baker: Just to quickly point out why some of us would be very happy to see Biden back in the White House, apart from keeping the dictator out, let’s recount the record.  Biden’s recovery act quickly boosted the economy back to full employment. We know Trump has problems with numbers, but employment growth had slowed sharply by the end of his term.  Biden’s recovery package, which passed with zero R votes and over the yells and screams of many Democratic economists, quickly boosted the economy back to full employment.  The bout of inflation we saw was overwhelmingly due to disruptions created by Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our inflation was little different than Germany’s, France’s or even Japan’s.  The media tell us people don’t care about inflation in Germany, they care about inflation here.
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Wed, 06/03/2024 - 02:30
In other Super Tuesday news…. “The lieutenant governor of North Carolina and the first Black person to hold the office, [Mark] Robinson is heavily favored to clinch the GOP nomination for governor in next Tuesday’s primary and, at a Saturday rally with Trump, got the former president’s formal endorsement,” The Washington Post reported Saturday. Should he win today’s primary, Robinson is expected in the fall to face Josh Stein, the state’s sitting Democratic attorney general. Robinson is something to behold. “Mark Robinson is not running to be governor to be a bully over anybody,” Robinson told the MAGA rally crowd. Why did he feel the need? Left unmentioned: the deluge of offensive comments that made such a declaration necessary. There was the time he called school shooting survivors “media prosti-tots” for advocating for gun-control policies.
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Wed, 06/03/2024 - 01:37

On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at least should be) a stunning and deeply saddening reality. What obvious lessons we seem congenitally incapable of learning! In the previous century, after all, there were two truly global wars, World War I and World War II, that were estimated to have left significantly more than 100 million military personnel and civilians dead, while decimating parts of the planet. The second of those conflicts ended with the obliteration of the... Read more

Source: Living on the Wrong World appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Wed, 06/03/2024 - 01:25
. Ett av de grundläggande feltänken i dagens diskussion om statsskuld och budgetunderskott är att man inte skiljer på skuld och skuld. Även om det på makroplanet av nödvändighet är så att skulder och tillgångar balanserar varandra, så är det inte oväsentligt vem som har tillgångarna och vem som har skulderna. Länge har man varit motvillig att öka de […]
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Wed, 06/03/2024 - 01:00
Freedom for vs. freedom from It’s Super Tuesday. Do you know where your polling place is? MSNBC last night pointed to a New York Times story I’d missed, perhaps because it’s old news to me. The voter fraud fraudsters are — say it with me — doubling down: A network of right-wing activists and allies of Donald J. Trump is quietly challenging thousands of voter registrations in critical presidential battleground states, an all-but-unnoticed effort that could have an impact in a close or contentious election. Calling themselves election investigators, the activists have pressed local officials in Michigan, Nevada and Georgia to drop voters from the rolls en masse. They have at times targeted Democratic areas, relying on new data programs and novel legal theories to justify their push. What began with True the Vote in Texas has spread into a nationwide network of voter fraud sleuths in places such as Michigan. The Michigan activists are part of an expansive web of grass-roots groups that formed after Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in 2020.
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Wed, 06/03/2024 - 00:54

Happy heavenly birthday to my dear, deceased, devil brother Pete Zeldman. Today, 5 March 2024, to celebrate Pete’s life… Lost in Sound Records is releasing an album of solo drums, Enigma, which will keep rhythmic enthusiasts and scholars busy for…well, forever. And ALSO 2.5D, his crazy interesting NYC rock band… [has released] its first single. —Cindy […]

The post New music from the beyond appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Created
Wed, 06/03/2024 - 00:00

“The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restored Donald Trump to 2024 presidential primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to ban the Republican former president over the Capitol riot.” – The Boston Globe

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The nation’s temperature is running hot, and tensions continue to flare as US citizens enter an incredibly consequential presidential election year. As such, we feel it is vital that this country’s highest judicial body comes to a decision in this legal matter put before us. After hearing the arguments presented by both sides and considering past precedent, the following ruling is to be upheld:

We, the Supreme Court of the United States, conclude that you do not possess the proper legal authority to simply stop slapping your face with your own hands, while we sarcastically whine, “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”

Created
Tue, 05/03/2024 - 23:47

On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by far-right paramilitary groups, supported by Germany’s first social-democratic chancellor Friedrich Ebert. Her skull was smashed into pieces and her body was flung in Berlin’s Landwehr Canal, where it was found disfigured several months later. Luxemburg was one of the most interesting and original Marxist thinkers of the […]

Created
Tue, 05/03/2024 - 21:26
Despite the rise of behavioral economics, many economists still believe that utility maximization is a good explanation of human behavior. Although evidence from experimental economics and elsewhere has rolled back the assumption that human agents are entirely self-interested, and shown that altruism and cooperation are important, a prominent response has been to modify individual preference […]
Created
Tue, 05/03/2024 - 19:42

Few Marxist thinkers were more committed to socialism’s internationalist programme than Rosa Luxemburg. She was Jewish, Polish, and German, but her one and only “motherland” was the Socialist International. It is true, however, that this radical internationalism led her to take questionable positions on the national question. For instance, concerning her native country, Poland, she […]