If the countries in the East Asian region allied to the United States think that the US has their back and therefore they are safe, think again. While the naive take the promise by the US to have their back as an inviolate commitment, the reality of such a relationship is reflected in President Biden’s Continue reading »
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I’m not going to recap that runner-up debate last night because it’s completely irrelevant and you missed nothing. (I did watch it and that’s two hours I’ll never get back.) The only thing of note that happened in this primary yesterday was Chris Christie’s speech dropping out of the race which is only worth mentioning because he said a lot of things that Republicans need to hear (not that Fox carried them, needless to say.) But it is important to hear what Trump is saying because he is going to be the GOP nominee and he is a danger to all of us. He had a competing town hall last night. A few highlights: Well, actually, he’s answered it many times: Trump has said the town hall was wonderful and congratulated the Fox moderators for being very professional. In other words it was a love fest where he felt very safe and cozy. Nonetheless, he did say the quiet part out loud a number of times.
The National Health Service is under threat unless the Government starts properly paying its workforce, reports Michaela Makusha
You will already be familiar with the fact that broad swathes of social science research are given over to establishing, analysing, generalising, theorising about and using statistical associations that are manipulated with the assumptions of probability theory. This makes sense if probabilities can be attached to broad swathes of the phenomena that social science is […]
Has been brilliantly presented by the South African lawyers, with some assists.
I don’t want to waste your time, though. Israel is committing genocide. Everyone knows it and yes, it meets the legal definition.
But the case is a thing of beauty, because whatever the ICJ decides way the outcome is almost the same:
If the ICJ orders an end to the genocide America, Israel and most of Europe will ignore the order. This will discredit the post-war “rules based international order”. It will be seen as a joke.
2024 REPUBLICAN
PRIMARY DEBATE
DES MOINES, IOWA
JANUARY 10, 2024
8:00 PM: CNN’s debate opens in Des Moines, where the Republican Iowa Caucus is less than a week away. Moderator Jake Tapper tells the two candidates participating, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, “You know the rules, and so do I. A commitment to respectability is what I’m thinking of. You wouldn’t get this from any other guy. I’d like to remind both candidates that I’m never gonna give you up, nor will I let you down.” Co-moderator Dana Bash interrupts him to say she never agreed to let him leave if he Rickrolled the debate and that he was stuck here for the next two hours just like she was.
Museums across the country are being forced to close as the reality of austerity-struck Brexit Britain hits home
Or is that a Sears crisis? Something Anand Giridharadas shares at The Ink is worth noting. He spoke with Daniel Ziblatt, the Eaton Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies about how world democracies respond to antidemocratic movements. Giridharadas writes, “People speak of this as an existential moment for democracy, but it also feels like a business-as-usual moment in terms of how many citizens invest their time and energy.” That’s the way it feels to me too, more like a Sears crisis. People want a movement. Few want to start one. To preseve this republic, Democrats need to step it up a notch. Except here on the ground their idea of stepping it up a notch is typically doing the same thing, the same way, just more of it. Telling ourselves every freakin’ election is the most important of our lifetimes is counter-productive. Because what do we do in the face of an existential crisis? We play it safe. We stick with what we know. We don’t experiment. That’s a mistake. I am trying.
A preliminary decision on genocide charges against Israel could come as early as next week.
The post South Africa Just Made Its Case at The Hague. What’s Next? appeared first on The Intercept.
On a picturesque beach in central Gaza, a mile north of the now-flattened Al-Shati refugee camp, long black pipes snake through hills of white sand before disappearing underground. An image released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shows dozens of soldiers laying pipelines and what appear to be mobile pumping stations that are to take water from the Mediterranean Sea and hose it into underground tunnels. The plan, according to various reports, is to flood the vast network of underground shafts and tunnels Hamas has reportedly built and used to carry out its operations. “I won’t talk about specifics, but they include explosives to destroy and other means to prevent Hamas operatives from using the tunnels to harm our soldiers,”... Read more
For those who missed it Wednesday’s Hunter Biden contempt hearing clown show in the House Oversight Committee made my head hurt. So I checked in now and then but could not stay in. But for those who missed it to preserve their mental health, I wanted to share a couple of clips that popped up later: An ‘X’ user named Modern Man praised the “black girl magic” that Rep. Jasmine Crocket’s (D-Texas) brought to her takedown of Republicans on the committee. Oh, and did she. Right out of the gate. “Let me tell you why no one wants to talk to y’all behind closed doors, because y’all lie.” Enjoy. Democrat’s ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland brought more than his share. While Raskin is from just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, he uses “you guys,” not “y’all.” Either one works. But in the clip above he was just getting warmed up. Yes, it was a sideshow. But the Democrats came ready to perform, and with better material.
by Gary Gardner
In congressional testimony last November, Isabel Munilla, an official from the Department of Energy, gave an alarming assessment of U.S. reliance on foreign minerals. For 31 of 50 critical minerals, she warned,”…the U.S. relies on other countries for more than 50 percent of our requirements…Our reliance on non-allied foreign sources for these materials is neither sustainable nor secure.” Munilla employed what we might call the “scarcity scare”—the panic that supplies of critical minerals may be insufficient for all nations to participate in the transition to clean,
The post How to Avoid the Scarcity Scare appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
So, yeah, I sat next to Phoebe Waller-Bridge to watch the premiere of the second season of Big Boys last night, why, what did you do?
1. Check this place out, it’s dope
2. Technology solves problems (future good)
3. Technology creates problems (future bad)
4. A world much like our own where some subtle differences highlight humanity/reality/society/perception
5. What if your cock was a bomb?
6. Rockets are not phallic, please stop saying that
7. Here is why religion is bad
8. Homestuck
9. Four thousand pages on the adventures of Prentiss Plum, a space pirate, scientist, and award-winning Virgo
10. Winking parody that doubles down on sexbots
11. Cory Doctorow’s most recent night terror
12. “Me am play god”
13. Tracy Chapman’s A New Beginning
14. A list of legally non-binding patents disguised as a narrative
15. There is a secret number and it’s pissed
16. The Strugatsky brothers do not like Stalin
17. Star Trek, but they smash
18. Time, considered as a helix of semiprecious stoners
19. It is 1860, let us go to the Moon
20. Basically Mein Kampf
21. Bomb Cock 2: Mutually Assured Destruction
22. The franchise equivalent of findom
- by Aeon Video
Biden’s proposed immigration crackdown in return for Israeli military funding is the epitome of Democrats' hypocrisy and groupthink.
The post I Resigned From the DNC in Protest of Biden’s Backing of Palestinian Slaughter appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Mark Blagrove
- by David Borkenhagen
Cat Fraser, who has lived with the chronic illness for years, says it’s time to get Long Covid on the agenda and give its many victims the support they need.
Changes in the household liability-to-income ratio appear to have been driven by a rising supply of loanable funds before 2010 and decreasing demand for such funds afterward.
I have a simple morality:
- I like feeling good.
- I don’t like feeling bad. (Suffering)
- I want other people to feel good.
- I don’t want other people to feel bad (to suffer.)
Most people have some of this as part of their morality.
How much is a matter of moral transitivity. How many people are part of three and four?
Let’s outline some variations:
The psychopath. Only my suffering and happiness matters.
The Patriarch/Matriarch. Only the suffering and happiness of me and my relatives matter.
The Back Slapper. The suffering and happeiness of me, my relatives, and my friends matters.
The Noble. The suffering and happiness of me, my relatives, my friends and my dependents matters. (Modern version is the good boss.)
The Aristocrat or Oligarch: Only the suffering or happiness of my class matters.