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If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, it stays with you for the rest of your life. Yet I could not ignore the visions of myself in Los Angeles. They said there was a place called Santa Monica. It called to me.

I have never been drawn to the rugged American West. I prefer Key West, Spain, or Cuba. But I have an innate sense of adventure. This is what drew me to the Pink Pony Club in West Hollywood.

For weeks before the journey, dreams taunted me, insisting that I visit the Pink Pony Club. I knew I could be happy there. I can be happy anywhere there is liquor. I heard this club was a place where boys and girls could both be queens every single day.

I want to be clear: I have never wanted to be a queen. I respect a man’s desire to make himself into whatever he wishes. Anyone who can pull himself up by the bootstraps should be free to do so.

Though the journey itself is important, it is good to work toward an end. I was happy to finish my trek at the doorway of the Pink Pony Club in West Hollywood. When I walked into the club, I said, “God, what have you done?”

They’re going to stop certification of the votes I said a couple of weeks ago that if President Biden decided to withdraw from the race it would awesome if he would do it on the night Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination. That didn’t come to pass last night but the news media did spend the whole day speculating that it was about to happen which no doubt irritated Trump almost as much since he always wants to be the center of attention even when his opponents are doing his job for him. It’s obviously helpful to him that the Democrats fighting each other over the fate of their candidate just three months from the election but the drama around Biden potentially withdrawing from the race has stepped on Trump’s martyr story line even as he’s ostentatiously sporting a bizarrely large bandage on his right ear and cynically playing the sympathy card. But he made up for it with a smarmy opening to his acceptance speech in which he gave a mournful minute by minute recitation of the assassination attempt.

New Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has a decision to make over the weekend

Doctor Who stars Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill share why the final goodbye between the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz worked for them.

This is not a drill Republicans and their allies “are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system,” a “wide-ranging and methodical effort … to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.” You heard multiple speakers claim that this week in Milwaukee. It’s not just rhetoric (gift article): But unlike the chaotic and improvised challenge four years ago, the new drive includes a systematic search for any vulnerability in the nation’s patchwork election system. Mr. Trump’s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious — and legally dubious — attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power. That’s on top of state legal challenges to Democrats changing candidates in midstream if thatn happens.

Lowkey is joined by John McEvoy to discuss his work uncovering Israel’s surprisingly firm grip over the British political system. John McEvoy is an investigative journalist for Declassified UK, a media outlet covering British foreign policy and intelligence agencies’ true role around the world.

The post Israel’s Vice-Like Grip Over British Politics, with John McEvoy appeared first on MintPress News.

As world leaders brace themselves for another potential Trump presidency, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quickly re-establishing the UK's global influence

AOC lays out the stakes In an hour-long live-stream, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attempts to lay out the plusses and minuses of Democrats swapping out their presidential candidate (Joe Biden) this late in the election season. The election isn’t in November, she reminds viewers, it’s in September when the first ballots go out. The end of September to early October. She’s not seeing Beltway influencers gaming out the consequences of swapping out a presidential candidate without closely examining their watches and their calendars. Making a radical decision like this based on July polling, she reminds viewers, is unwise. She’s won elections where polling showed her down by double digits. An open convention at this point is convention is “crazy.” People considering one are not gaming out how that would play out. I’ve said repeatedly here to those who say, “Joe needs to go,” get back to me with a candidate and a plan and we’ll talk. AOC is in some of the rooms where these discussions among leading Democrats take place. When she asks the “Joe needs to go” faction for their plan, she gets back blank stares.

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white.

“They look like white elephants,” said the girl.

“Whatever,” shouted the man, not bothering to look up. “Waitress,” he shouted to the señorita behind the bar, “nueve cervezas.” He thought that “nueve” meant “two” in Spanish.

“Do you think things will be the same when… Sorry. The hills just moved.”

“Don’t be silly. Hills don’t move,” he shouted.

“I know hills don’t move. That’s why I was so surprised. Look for yourself.”

The man turned to face the hills. “Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Those are elephants!”

“White elephants,” said the girl, vindicated. “That’s what I said.”

“And not just elephants! Elephants the size of hills! God help us all! Also, they’re white.”

“I just said that.”

“Nueve cervezas,” said the waitress. She was carrying a tray full of beers.

“Señorita,” said the girl. She pointed toward the horizon. “Look! Giant elephants!”

The waitress turned her head. “Jesus fucking Christ!” she exclaimed. She dropped the tray on the table and ran back into the bar.

“I’m going to shoot them,” shouted the man.

Almost half of voters in the 251 seats lost by the Conservatives in the 2024 General Election believed that the Government should not have abandoned its net zero policy commitments

Modern day Brian Eno is dancing to a Fela Kuti track playing from YouTube at his office desk. The writer Paul Morley is vox-popping members of the 1990s British public about who exactly is Brian Eno. On the cusp of fame, a twentysomething Bono looks up from his long mullet for reassurance from an older […]

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Cobra Kai, The Ark, Charmed, Starfleet Academy, Superman & Lois, The Boys, Doctor Who, and RIP Bob Newhart

As Andrew Malkinson's case shows, the Criminal Cases Review Commission has become an organisation obsessed with hitting key performance indicators – mainly relating to deadlines and ‘closing’ files, writes Jon Robins

Or will they actually fight to win?

A damning first report from the COVID Inquiry reveals how three successive Health and Social Care Secretaries failed to put a plan in place to handle the crisis that struck

Not that they require fascism, but they’re OK with it:

David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Tuesday:

Asked about the upcoming Presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which party wins, so long as the next president was friendly to business.

“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.”

One of the few things Biden has been good on is anti-trust, so this means Trump.

In a similar vein:

An irreverent, nostalgia-tinged dive into an enduring Hollywood narrative trope: the ugly-duckling-to-swan makeover

- by Psyche Film

Watch at Psyche

At times complicit in racism and oppression, psychology has also been a fertile ground for radical and liberatory thought

- by Rami Gabriel

Read at Aeon

VOLUNTEERS from Marine Rescue Woolgoolga have assisted three people stranded at Anemone Bay, North Solitary Island after their 5.3 metre vessel succumbed to a flat battery last Friday. Volunteer radio operators at Marine Rescue Wooli took a call for assistance from a skipper who could not restart his boat twelve kilometres from the mainland. Advertise...

The post Marine Rescue Woolgoolga crew assists stranded boaters off North Solitary Island appeared first on News Of The Area.

The story of the Dunnes Stores strike, when it’s told, often begins on 19 July 1984, with a woman approaching a supermarket till on Dublin’s Henry Street. Mary Manning, the 21-year-old sitting behind the till, tells the woman that she can’t handle the two grapefruits in her basket because she’s following an instruction from her […]