Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important: Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected. The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?” Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.
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Specialized underwater photographers reveal secrets of the sea’s flamboyant babies.
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You’ll note that Trump’s lower number was in November 2019, before the pandemic hit and the numbers surged. Biden’s low number, on the other hand, is from hard work digging out of the carnage that was left behind. Those high numbers for Reagan and Obama improved dramatically in the last year and there is every reason to believe that Biden’s numbers are going to go lower still. After this segment, Dana bash said to the reporter something to the effect of, “that’s nice but nobody’s feeling it so that’s bad news for Biden.” The reporter explained that since prices are higher than they were five years ago you can’t expect people to feel good about anything. Americans need to get some perspective. It always takes some time for this stuff to catch up but there’s no reason for the mainstream media to be so relentlessly negative. Anyway, here’s your hit of hopium for the day to counterbalance that kind of coverage if you’ve happened to be exposed to it: Update — And lookie here: Detroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s.
Our 13th most-read article of 2023.
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Originally published February 13, 2023.
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Has there ever been a bigger narcissist in the history of the world? Ever? And this lunacy is feeding it.Imagine how much that cost? Donald Trump has denied claims made by the director Chris Columbus that he “bullied his way into” appearing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The former US president said on his social media platform Truth Social, that the film’s production team were “begging me to make a cameo appearance”. Trump said of the 1992 film: “They rented the Plaza hotel in New York, which I owned at the time. I was very busy, and didn’t want to do it. They were very nice, but above all, persistent. “I agreed, and the rest is history! That little cameo took off like a rocket and the movie was a big success, and still is, especially around Christmas time. People call me whenever it is aired.” The sequel to the 1990 comedy Home Alone, Home Alone 2 made $359m (£280m) and was the third-highest grossing film of 1992. In 2020, Columbus, who directed both movies, told Business Insider that Trump’s cameo was a condition of being able to film inside the Plaza hotel, on top of the usual fee.
Once again, thanks so much to everyone who has supported Hullabaloo this year. It’s such a blessing to have such generous readers and I sincerely appreciate it. I’m particularly grateful right now because I know this next year is going to be a doozy and I’m girding myself for months of angst and worry— tempered by focus, hope and determination. It’s not going to be an easy one. In fact, I absolutely believe this is a make or break election for this country. If we don’t get this right, it’s hard to see how we recover in time to keep the entire world from turning into chaos as we face out-of-control climate change in a time of authoritarian strongmen dedicated to their own self-preservation. (See: Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Orban etc…) It’s hard not to sound crazy when you talk about it… but we have to talk about it. I hope that many of you were able to take the whole week off and get some down time to rest up and get ready. It’s going to be a very tumultuous 2024.
America is falling into a trap. It thinks the future will be decided by military dominance, despite losing one war after another. China, on the other hand, recognises that the future will be decided by economics. (A repost from October 2023). Pearls and Irritations has posted an outstanding series of articles by Percy Allan on Continue reading »
In January, 2023, Ezra Klein from the New York Times interviewed Yuen Yuen Ang. Professor Ang is a widely published, China scholar at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Towards the end of this long interview, Ang provided an acute summary of what US-China competition came down to. What matters most, she argued, is: Which Continue reading »
A major problem for a settler society like Australia is to reconcile our history and our geography. In the last 10 years we’ve lost ground in reconciling the two. Editor’s Note: In 2023, the world continues to witness significant changes and turbulence. As we approach 2024, we conducted in-depth interviews with leading strategists from various Continue reading »
Events of the last three months or so will shape the way large cohorts of the Australian population assess the character, integrity and fitness for office of federal politicians and parties on issues of fundamental importance to them, much as happened during the years of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But whereas the Vietnam Continue reading »
“He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible tidings…”. A collection of stories from the late, great, veteran political reporter Mungo MacCallum: Australia’s true journalistic believer. MUNGO MACCALLUM. The patience of our first nation, while remarkable, is not inexhaustible. MUNGO MACCALLUM. Cook and the continuing culture wars. MUNGO MACCALLUM. In the Continue reading »
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday. Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said. It Continue reading »
Catholic and independent schools had the biggest declines in the OECD’s Programme of Student Assessment (PISA) test results since 2009. Their students lost 1½ to nearly two years of learning in reading, mathematics and science. The falls in test scores were far bigger than for public schools. The learning loss in Catholic and independent schools Continue reading »
Australia added 518,100 people through net migration in the 2022-23 financial year, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is a record high by a very wide margin. The strain is obvious to all, in the rental crisis and infrastructure crowding. The Albanese government knows this is both unsustainable and Continue reading »
An award-winning livestock auctioneer went viral last year after selling a trucker cap on a Melbourne tram. Harry Cozens, a sheep and cattle auctioneer from Albury, was handed the cap by a fellow passenger and challenged to sell it, before launching into his call. First published by Guardian Australia December 13, 2023 Continue reading »
Terrorism takes different shapes and forms, and it is important always to be perceptive. A lot has been written about terrorism and terrorists these days, and most writings blame Muslims. It is true that there have been Muslim groups that have acted against both civilians and the military with great violence and savagery, and they Continue reading »
Nikki Haley’s gaffe illustrates her emptiness If there’s a worse time to drop a nuclear powered campaign gaffe than the week between Christmas and New Years less than a month before the primaries begin, I don’t know what it is. Many people are off work, sitting around watching TV, talking about world events with relatives and otherwise tuning into the news with a focus and attention they usually don’t have time for. Meanwhile, the news is usually pretty slow that time of year so any gaffe is going to get outsized attention on a loop because the media is desperate for campaign stories that aren’t dull as dishwater. Something that might be one little item in a crowded new cycle becomes The Major Story and a campaign is pushed back on its heels. If you’re one of those who tuned in over the past 36 hours you’ve heard about former S. Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s massive gaffe in New Hampshire on Wednesday when she was asked a very simple question at a town hall meeting: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” That’s not a trick question or a gotcha.
Extremists insist you fund religious schools They are relentless. Give them that. The investor class backed by useful idiots among Christian nationalists are determined to tear public education down to the foundations. Just as the fringe right finally ended women’s right to bodily autonomy with Dobbs, education remains in the crosshairs. They’re teeing up another Supreme Court test case (Politico): Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June.
What astronomers see in the light bouncing across the universe.
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