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The Australian All-Ords share price index rose 0.3% last week after falling 2.9% the week before. The index had been yo-yoing sideways since it escaped its three-year channel ceiling at the end of February 2024, but a fortnight ago had a big drop bringing it back within its previous channel ceiling. Read Percy Allan’s monthly Continue reading »

Israel: Hey Joe, just letting you know Hamas has retaliated to our decades long Occupation and repression and have broken through the prison gates and attacked Israelis. Go figure. US.: Here’s your chance. It’s going to be a tough media manipulation, but we’ll do our best. Good luck. Israel: We’re going to bomb the shit Continue reading »

Yesterday, the Democratic leadership announced that they would vote to save Mike Johnson if Marjorie Taylor Greene went ahead with her threatened motion to vacate the chair. Marge is having a temper tantrum over it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Wednesday she will move ahead with her attempt to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from the House’s top job — though her plan seems doomed to fail. The Georgia Republican, who first introduced a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair in March, held a high-energy news conference outside the U.S. Capitol to say she will trigger a vote on the House floor next week. “Mike Johnson is not capable of that job,” she said. “He has proven that over and over again.” Greene, joined by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, aired a litany of grievances she has with Johnson, who she described as a Democratic speaker working against former President Donald Trump’s agenda.

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Donald Trump has said many things that should have chased him out of politics a long time ago. But in an interview with Eric Cortellessa of Time Magazine this week he finally said something so outrageous that it could make a difference in this upcoming close campaign. When asked if states should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban, Trump replied: “I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.” In other words, he’s fine with whatever medieval torture a state might want to inflict. That wasn’t all. He went on to say that states prosecuting women who get abortions is none of his concern and said that he would reveal his position on a possible national ban on the widely used drug Mifepristone in two weeks. (The two weeks have passed and when Time approached him to see if he had an update he extended it.) He may be waiting to see if the Supreme Court lets him off the hook with a ruling in the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case which they heard last month.

A glimpse of a mind jammed to the rafters with ideas.

The post 10 Brilliant Insights from Daniel Dennett appeared first on Nautilus.

MFF cupmästare 2024

Campus protests have them hot and bothered House Republicans want to launch investigations into federal funding for universities. Young-uns, like minority groups conservatives disfavor, ought to know their places and stay in them. But no. Around the U.S., students upset at the disproportionate carnage and destruction Israeli forces are visiting upon the Gaza Strip are acting out. Naturally, the Deputy Fifes in the House Republican caucus want to nip that in the bud. The Associated Press reports: House Republicans on Tuesday announced an investigation into the federal funding for universities where students have protested the Israel-Hamas war, broadening a campaign that has placed heavy scrutiny on how presidents at the nation’s most prestigious colleges have dealt with reports of antisemitism on campus.

In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between.

Hey, guess what? Show-and-tell is coming up. That’s one of the best days of kindergarten ever. And that means you’ll be giving your very first speech of your whole life. (Unless you were valedictorian of your preschool, in which case I loved that inspiring story you told at commencement about how one time the cafeteria only had regular milk instead of chocolate milk, but you didn’t even cry.)

Here’s how to get an A+.

Bring something you think is awesome.

Trump’s persona is not even “truthful hyperbole” Ahead of the 2016 election Donald Trump won, The New York Times cited a now-famous paragraph from Donald Trump’s ghost-written “The Art of the Deal.” David Barstow wrote: “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” For example, in the now-infamous Trump University litigation, Mr. Trump was asked in a deposition about a script that had been prepared for Trump University instructors. According to the script, the instructors were supposed to tell their students the following: “I remember one time Mr. Trump said to us over dinner, he said, ‘Real estate is the only market that, when there’s a sale going on, people run from the store.’ You don’t want to run from the store.” No such dinners ever took place, Mr. Trump acknowledged. In fact, Mr. Trump struggled to identify a single one of the instructors he claimed to have handpicked, even after he was shown their photographs. Nonetheless, Mr.

We had a joke back in the Bush Jr. administration.

“Evil or stupid? Why not both?”

Bush Jr. was clearly mentally challenged. Cheney was supposedly smart, but he was the type of smart guy who winds up ordering the charge of the Light Brigade: great at internal politics, worthless at anything else.

Biden’s clearly senile (no, don’t even). Trump’s somewhat better, but still makes mistakes frequently and is often incoherent.. We used to sneer at the Soviet politburo of the 70s and 80s, but this worse.

Government cuts post-Brexit have led to drastic cuts in foreign aid and the selling-off of embassies. Much of the chaos is Boris Johnson's fault, writes Iain Overton