Reading

Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 08:30
Oh my… From Joe Perticone at The Bulwark: During an appearance yesterday on the Talking Feds podcast, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, caused a bit of a stir when she floated a rumor that Rep. Matt Rosendale may have a three-alarm scandal on his hands. Immediately after I heard these words, I reached out to Rosendale’s spokesman Ron Kovach, who replied in an email, “This is 100% false and defamatory and former Senator Heitkamp will be hearing from our lawyers soon.” Heitkamp didn’t outright claim that Rosendale is guilty of what she alleged she heard: She mentioned only that the story has been going around. That is a big difference as far as lawyers are concerned, if they do end up getting involved. But Rosendale suddenly leaving Congress would throw the House into an even greater state of chaos, hard as that might be to imagine. Losing another member of the House Republican Conference would leave the GOP majority so thin that if you held it up you’d be able to see the sun shining through it.
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 07:00
Salon caught Trump’s latest late night freakout. He seems upset: Donald Trump began his Monday raging about the slew of civil and criminal trials mounting against him, bemoaning specifically local trials like the New York criminal case set to start at the end of March. The former president recently attended a hearing in that case, which was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and charges him with 34 felony counts related to alleged hush-money payments he made to an adult film actress in 2016. The presiding judge denied Trump’s request to dismiss the case and set a March 25 trial date. Despite a triumphant Saturday following his win in South Carolina’s GOP primary, Trump’s slate of legal troubles seemed to take center stage for him Sunday. Just before midnight, he took to Truth Social to praise a Fox News show he was viewing about his New York state fraud case, in which he was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties — now $454 million with interest, and encouraged his followers to watch the rerun at 3 a.m. Eastern time. “Wow!
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 05:30
Catherine Rampell tweeted this short thread that I think expresses the fundamental political message that the Democrats have to hammer home: political FREEDOM. The more significant political fallout of this IVF discourse may not be revelation that GOP is often anti-family (surprise!), but rather the undermining of narrative that Dems are merely “pro-abortion” (rather than pro-reproductive freedom)   Subtext (or text) of Repub attacks on Dem abortion positions is that they’re driven by childless elites who want to kill babies. IVF debate suggests Ds are promoting not abortion, but freedom—specifically, reproductive freedom, to choose when to begin or expand your family If Dems are smart, this is the angle they’ll play up — perhaps taking a page from @SecretaryPete’s 2020 campaign, about how Dems should reclaim “freedom” as a rhetorical device. His message should be even more compelling today, as one party considers putting an authoritarian in office. 2024’s political “freedom” fight isn’t about mask mandates.
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 05:00

I’m so sorry that my arrival gave you a fright, Mrs. Lovett—but after stumbling into your pie shop, I couldn’t help but offer up my services. You see, I’m a professional marketing consultant for local restaurants, and never in my life have I seen an establishment in such dire need of help. So please allow me to share some advice with you, the first and most important is that you simply need to stop singing a song about how terrible your pies are the second a prospective customer walks in.

I would have thought that would be obvious, but by the second chorus, I realized you weren’t aware that this is actually a major faux pas in the food service business. While the song itself was very good and quite catchy, the subject matter, detailing why the pies you’re trying to sell are, in fact, the worst in London, isn’t good marketing. Especially considering that you were squishing scurrying roaches throughout (albeit on beat with the song).

Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:59
As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Australia is obliged to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people and failure to do so risks complicity in genocide. In the absence of a response from the Australian government to the ICJ ruling, at least 100 groups representing civil society are observing Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:58
Why, when the majority of civil society opposes Australia going to war against China, and public confidence in the United States’ will and capacity to defend Australia is declining, do successive governments pursue AUKUS and a war with China over Taiwan with such enthusiasm? The daily spillage from government and media delivers so little reliable Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:57
The Australian people have been betrayed by their own Government, morally, legally, economically, financially, militarily and politically. Betrayed morally Australia’s moral standing in the world has been betrayed by the government providing political and military support to Israel as it carries out the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinians and the destruction of their living environment. Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:55
Faced with what some saw as long odds at the Fair Work Commission (FWC) Antoinette Lattouf’s team moved her unfair dismissal case to the Federal Court on Friday. Andrew Gardiner asks why they felt the need to do so, and what that says about this country and its future: Antoinette Lattouf has escalated her case Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:54
The idea of state capture is usually associated with the global south, but Australia, and Western Australia in particular, demonstrates that established democracies are far from immune. As the Australian Democracy Network explains, ‘a key element of state capture is the management of political parties both in government and opposition…a range of techniques are brought Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:53
Palestinians are known as one of the most educated people in the world. They have accomplished this as a key strategy in their resistance to dispossession and displacement. The scholasticide committed by Israel is not accidental but a pillar of the genocidal acts taken against Gaza. As a group of concerned scholars from South Australian Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:52
If it wasn’t already clear, the writing is now well and truly on the wall for the fossil car makers: Just a week after BYD launched its $US15,000 “Corolla killer” and with the world’s largest EV battery maker recently announcing it’s on track to cut battery costs in half this year, new research suggests the decline in Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:51
The country is the second U.S. ally in the past month to end an investigation into the pipeline explosions. Denmark became the latest country to close its investigation into the underwater explosions that caused leaks in two pipelines that were built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, with authorities saying they had found that Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 28/02/2024 - 04:50
I watched the uncensored video of US airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolating in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington while screaming “Free Palestine”. I hesitated to watch it because I knew once I put it into my mind it’s there for the rest of my life, but I figured I owe him that much. I Continue reading »