As GOP-gerrymandered legislatures vie for Most Authoritarian North Carolina Republicans held the state budget and Medicaid expansion hostage to a failed attempt to expand casino gambling for three months. They finally passed the budget on September 22. Gov. Roy Cooper allowed it to become law without his signature. A veto and inevitable override vote would have been a pointless additional delay. We sounded the 🚨 on this when the NC budget dropped with this hidden language. Now the national media are paying attention. Thanks to @JuddLegum and @tesszeeks for putting some ☀️on what’s happening here in NC. https://t.co/vnl6425yhP — Sen. Graig Meyer (@GraigMeyer) October 2, 2023 There was one teensy rider added. Judd Legum reports in a thread: In other words, something like National Security Letters provided for in the Patriot Act (for those who ain’t). 5. Gov Ops is dominated by Republicans and pursues partisan investigations. It is co-chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R).
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UsForThem is linked to controversial anti-vax campaign figures and organisations believing in a global socialist 'Great Reset' led by powerful capitalists
Consider another problem of motivation in the house of fiction: why characters write.
On August 28th, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks chose the occasion of a three-day conference organized by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the arms industry’s biggest trade group, to announce the “Replicator Initiative.” Among other things, it would involve producing “swarms of drones” that could hit thousands of targets in China on short notice. Call it the full-scale launching of techno-war. Her speech to the assembled arms makers was yet another sign that the military-industrial complex (MIC) President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about more than 60 years ago is still alive, all too well, and taking a new turn. Call it the MIC for the digital age. Hicks described the goal of the Replicator Initiative this way:... Read more
Source: AI Goes to War appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
After several years of infighting, leadership challenges, and policy shake-ups, the Conservative Party is truly beginning to look like a spent force. This apparent exhaustion was laid bare by the ghostly spectre of a Conservative Party Conference being held in Manchester in the midst of a major row over whether the government will axe a […]
En fiktiv dialog med en skotsk 1700-talsfilosof på spårvagnen genom Göteborg – det låter som en usel idé. Rentav pinsam. Men har man Horace Engdahls bildning, stil och värdighet kan man uppenbarligen förvandla ett sådant upplägg till en bladvändare. Värdigheten, förresten. Den är fortfarande sårad efter metoo-skandalen vid Svenska Akademien, där Engdahl försvarade sin vän Jean-Claude […]
While many in the West take a very dim view of China, China expert John Ross is far more positive, telling MintCast that China has seen the highest sustained economic growth of any country in world history. "People don’t understand the scale of China’s success, and they still don’t understand what it means, therefore, in the transformation of the lives of ordinary Chinese people,”
The post Why China’s Rapid Rise is Terrifying the United States, with John Ross appeared first on MintPress News.
A time for “calling in” If the threat posed by the authoritarian right is as existential as it seems, some of us might want to unhunch our shoulders and not be as reflexive about running off potential allies. If Digby’s Monday post about Red Caesarism was not a wake-up call, you just ain’t woke. About that. A repeated theme in Anand Giridharadas’s “The Persuaders” is “Is there room among the woke for the waking?” Do those on the left edge of the left — at the cutting edge of consciousness, if you prefer — possess enough critical mass to achieve the progressive goals they seek: Veteran activists Giridharadas profiles have decided they do not. Success means expanding their movements without compromising them. They’ve learned to “call in” progressives with whom they mostly agree rather than just calling them out for their failings, to focus more on conversion than on hunting heretics. They walk a fine line seeking to coalition with more moderate allies without watering down their own goals. A listserv I once enjoyed blew up when the “call out” fad hit the progressive movement.
Following the flow of US taxpayer dollars: How the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy funds anti-North Korea propaganda.
The post Unreliable Sources: News on North Korea, Brought to You By the CIA appeared first on MintPress News.
Attention, everyone!
I have decided to start wearing dainty little rings.
For those wondering, “How many dainty little rings? How many fingers?” I am excited to announce the answer is multiple fingers across both hands. Currently, I am up to three total dainty little rings: the middle and pointer fingers of my left hand and the middle finger of my right. From there, only time will tell where we will go.
You can expect to see the impact of this on my personality, effective immediately.
When I slip on my dainty little rings, I immediately feel ten years older and five times sluttier. Of course, there are still times when I do feel like a man who is still wearing his wedding ring, despite the divorce papers sitting in his desk drawer and the fact that his wife is in Cabo with her trainer, Stephen—the same feeling that prevented me from wearing rings in the first place. But when the rings are dainty, and my nails are shaped and painted like little Jordan almonds, I don’t feel like I have big fat man fingers; I feel like a Woman Who Works in PR.
Plus, how to consider the next generation without despair.
By backing ambitious and transformative environmental policies, Labour could offer a clear vision for substantive change, writes the CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation
Miriam Margolyes says, "Tom Baker wanted me for his sidekick, but they wouldn't have it because I was too fat. I couldn't fit in the TARDIS."
The MVC team unpacks Michael Cimino’s infamous Western about the struggle of European migrants in 19th century Wyoming.
In just one year, book bans in the US have increased by a third – largely targeted at works containing content on LGBTQ+ rights, race and racism, physical abuse, grief and death
- by Shayla Love
- by Gulzaar Barn
In recent decades, computer technology has made the job application process easier and faster. Yet the job finding rate has remained unchanged during that time.
Back in 1991, when yours truly earned his first PhD with a dissertation on decision making and rationality in social choice theory and game theory, I concluded that “repeatedly it seems as though mathematical tractability and elegance — rather than realism and relevance — have been the most applied guidelines for the behavioural assumptions being […]
This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for several months at Kyoto University in Japan. It’s slightly cooler now in Kyoto but still warm. I have spent a lot of time in my life in the Netherlands and Belgium and they are very bike friendly countries…
It’s a movie we’ve seen over and over again in US politics. Centrists engage in respectful discussion with a thoughtful conservative[1], only to discover they are actually talking to a dishonest troll. Yet, just like Charlie Brown lining up to kick Lucy’s football, they keep coming back for another try. Examples include Paul “policy wonk” […]