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The 2024 Presidential Debate Drinking Game

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-2024-presidential-debate-drinking-game
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 22:00

REQUIRED ITEMS

  • One 750 ml bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey
  • A television or any device capable of streaming the debate live
  • A sense of resigned masochism that can come only from no longer having any reason to believe that we live in a world where outcomes can be predicted using logic and reason.

THE RULES

Every time Biden makes a moderately self-deprecating joke about his age—but manages to lose the thread and stumble over the punchline—take a drink. You’re going to need it to make it through this nightmare.

Each time Trump waves his freakish little jazz hands and places the emphasis on a random simple adverb at the end of his Gordian Knot of a sentence, consider running to the store for something a little stronger. Possibly Everclear.

Any time it becomes clear that both candidates actually agree on an issue—and that issue is nowhere near the border of your own personal ethical road map—take two shots, because why the hell not? What even is the point of this spectacle?

Oh, What Do They Know?

https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/25/oh-what-do-they-know/
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 08:30
A bunch of Nobel prize winning economists have some thoughts on Trump’s “economic proposals” Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists signed a joint letter Tuesday warning of what they see as economic risks if former President Donald Trump were to serve a second term, including reheated inflation. “While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump’s,” the economists wrote. Axios was first to report the letter. “There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets,” wrote the group of politically progressive academics. Trump has so far proposed making his first-term tax cuts permanent, imposing universal tariffs on all imports, with a China-specific tariff rate between 60% and 100%, and pressuring the independent Federal Reserve Board to cut interest rates.

Looney Tunes

https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/25/looney-tunes/
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 07:00
Another MAGA kook planning to hijack the US House and there’s nothng Mike Johnson can do about it. (That’s assuming he wants to.) The aptly named Ann Paulina Luna from Florida is going to force a vote to have the House sergeant at arms to take Merrick Garland into custody. Seriously: “It is imperative that Congress uses its inherent contempt powers and instructs the Sergeant at Arms to bring Attorney General Garland to the House for questioning and compel him to produce the requested evidence,” Luna wrote to her colleagues in a letter on Monday. “This power is not a mere formality, but a vital tool for us to carry out our legislative responsibilities. It is not enough to issue a subpoena; we must also have the power to enforce it,” she added in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. Inherent contempt hasn’t been used in 90 years. But whatever.

What Comes After A Ban On Contraception?

https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/25/what-comes-after-a-ban-on-contraception/
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 05:00
Divorce of course They’ve got so many plans: Some prominent conservative lawmakers and commentators are advocating for ending no-fault divorce, laws that exist in all 50 US states and allow a person to end a marriage without having to prove a spouse did something wrong, like commit adultery or domestic violence. The socially conservative, and often religious, rightwing opponents of such divorce laws are arguing that the practice deprives people – mostly men – of due process and hurt families, and by extension, society. Republican lawmakers in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas have discussed eliminating or increasing restrictions on no-fault marriage laws. Defenders of the laws, which states started passing a half-century ago, see legislation and arguments to repeal them as the latest effort to restrict women’s rights – following the overturning of Roe v Wade and passage of abortion bans around the country – and say that without such protections, the country would return to an earlier era when women were often trapped in abusive marriages.

Freedom for Julian Assange but a history of injustice

https://johnmenadue.com/freedom-for-julian-assange-but-a-history-of-injustice/
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 04:59
After years in a top security British jail, Julian Assange has been freed provided he pleads guilty under an US Espionage Act to unlawfully obtaining and disseminating US defence information. That should be the last and long overdue chapter in a cruel, revengeful persecution of an Australian citizen, a whistleblower, journalist and publisher. Recording the Continue reading »

A child in Gaza

https://johnmenadue.com/a-child-in-gaza/
Created
Wed, 26/06/2024 - 04:58
A silent consequence of the horrifying hostilities taking place in Gaza is the long-term behavioural impairments for the children who, the United Nations estimate, make up 40% of the casualties. The Save the Children organisation estimates, as of June 2024, that 14,000 have been killed and 21,000 are missing, disappeared, detained or buried in the Continue reading »