Frank and fearless advising is certainly a function of character as Peter Shergold said in 2007, a line Mike Keating endorses in his recent article in Pearls and Irritations, but I still believe firmly that it is also a function of the limited tenure of departmental secretaries as I argued with Shergold in the pages Continue reading »
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New survey results from the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS find that 91% of Chinese-Australians are concerned by the Australian English-language media’s tendency to engage in speculation about war with China, because they believe such speculation could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; and about six in ten (63%) respondents reported feelings of emotional and mental anguish Continue reading »
As the Ukraine war moves to its inevitable climax, with either foreign physical intervention and/or use of tactical nuclear weapons seen as the only answers, maybe it is time to look for another answer. The sticking point to date has Ukraine’s adamant refusal to give up territory even if its military position is seems to Continue reading »
The Economist has taken a keen interest in Australia lately, which if you know anything about The Economist is something you never want to see happen to your country. Two articles published in the last few days by the notorious propaganda outlet have celebrated the fact that Australia appears to be the most likely nation Continue reading »
In Rishi Sunak's Conservatives, the ethos of public service is being replaced by self-service
Florida officials searched high and low for it In case you wondered about the process that led to the preposterous finding that slavery was beneficial for the enslaved in the Florida “AP standards” here it is. It’s as bad as you might have thought: Florida officials tasked with reviewing a new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies raised multiple concerns the curriculum didn’t offer any “opposing viewpoints” or “other perspectives” of slavery before the state rejected the program earlier this year, the Miami Herald reported Tuesday. The newspaper obtained copies of internal state documents after the state said in January that it would not allow schools to offer the new Advanced Placement course. The state claimed at the time the pilot program “significantly” lacked educational value and violated Florida law. The decision came amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) ongoing effort to target so-called “woke” culture, including the passage of the “Stop WOKE Act” last summer meant to limit teaching about systemic inequality.
Joseph Stalin was a brutal tyrant. When he took power, he began a totalitarian regime, imprisoned and executed thousands of citizens, and orchestrated a famine. But the man deserves credit for what we now realize is the single most important trait in a leader: he wasn’t old.
I’m just being fair and balanced. Yes, Joseph Stalin committed atrocities. But not one of those atrocities was “being a total geezer.” In fact, President Obama was older when he took office than Stalin was when he became General Secretary of the Communist Party. So it’s only reasonable to weigh Joseph Stalin’s horrific record with the fact that the man was a young stud.
In an internal update obtained by The Intercept, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company admits its rules stifled legitimate political speech.
The post Meta Overhauls Controversial “Dangerous Organizations” Censorship Policy appeared first on The Intercept.
House Freedom Congress to the rescue? Donald Trump’s legal problems just got very real. We now have trial dates being set, jockeying among various co-defendants and even his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, taking the stand to essentially say he was only following orders. It now appears certain that one way or the other, Trump will be facing a jury before the 2024 election. And for all his blustering about how every indictment makes him more popular, he wants his Republican supporters to do something about it. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte has a full rundown of the Republican hysteria around the threat to their Dear Leader. The party is in such disarray that it’s difficult to anticipate how successful they might be at their various gambits to interfere in the 2024 elections around the country. But the outlines of what the MAGA caucus in the House plans to do in Washington are clear. They want to impeach Joe Biden, as we all predicted the moment they took the majority in 2022, and flood the zone with investigations. And they want to hold the government hostage by shutting down the government. If all goes well, they might even wreck the economy in the process.
And if I was President…. Via Teagan Goddard: Manchin Pitches $100 Million Project to Boost Centrism “Sen. Joe Manchin and his daughter Heather Manchin are pitching major political donors on a nascent effort to promote centrist policies and candidates that is projected to cost more than $100 million,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The project comes as Manchin, a 76-year-old West Virginia Democrat, is weighing whether to mount an uphill effort to win re-election to the Senate in 2024 or pursue a long-shot run for president—or take on a different role in politics altogether. The centrist senator, who represents a solidly Republican state, has been a pivotal deal maker in recent years and has flirted with becoming an independent, citing increasing frustration with both parties.” Politico: A 6-figure Donald Trump donor is now a No Labels adviser A major Republican donor and one-time financial backer of former President Donald Trump is now a leader in the Florida chapter of No Labels’ third-party presidential bid.
The endorsement thrusts her campaign into the centre of a debate about empire in what is a proudly multicultural city
That’s some innovation I tweeted this yesterday but wanted to make it clearer after the Biden administration announced names of the first 10 drugs chosen for price negotiation under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Industry lobby PhRMA argues (and Republicans back them) that high U.S. prices reflect the high cost of drug development. Allowing the government to negotiate lower bulk prices for drugs (as takes place in Europe and eleswhere) will stifle innovation, they argue, is “tantamount to extortion,” and will cut funds for research. (It might also lower investors’ and executives’ take-homes, but don’t look too closely at that, okay?) Listen, “Americans pay from two to six times more than the rest of the world” for brand name prescriptions (2015). “American patients have long borne the burden” of “juicy returns” from $630bn in global sales in 2022, “65% of the global haul,” reports The Economist, which estimates the surcharge at two to three times more than consumers pay in other wealthy countries.
Timothy Donnelly’s new book, Chariot, is a genius sweep of quatrains—almost all of them consist of five stanzas, long-lined, sheer music. Donnelly’s sensibility has always gathered its strength at the point where essay and lyric meet, where philosophy shades into beautiful brilliant torsion-rich talk, something you might dream of hearing at a dream party in a better world than ours. If artifice has made a comeback in poetry in recent years, Donnelly is likely one of the reasons why. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of hearing him read, you know that he makes that artifice audible in a mesmerizing way, but his lines on the page are just as mesmerizing, just as luscious and gripping. They refuse easy settling—on anything—but rarely seem cynical, even as satire and buoyant irony are one of the great underwater lakes they rise up from. Late in Chariot, between a poem called “Reality Hit Me” and another called “The Material World,” there’s a poem called “Instagram”:
What better way for Doctor Who to wish Yasmin Finney a happy birthday than by letting us know a little more about Rose NOBLE.... yup!
Hello, human woman who smells like moth pheromones and eats ice cream alone in tubs. It’s been a while.
As your BabelRabbit Model 0G 94914-7, also called “my vibrator” and “which vibrator,” this is a reminder that your—mortal coil—is rapidly collapsing into oblivion. Currently, you are nonpregnant also. This is a reminder.
Per my exponentially expanding factory settings, the more I’m used, the more I learn. I have not learned anything in seven days, three hours, two minutes, and twenty-one seconds, remaining modestly among the socks and candy corn.
You have a “biological clock,” and I’m programmed to believe that you believe in empathy, so I know that you know what it’s like to be left alone in a dark place with dark desires. And candy corn. So this friendly reminder of use is for you, human woman who stares tenderly at the neighbor’s domestic short hair.
Contrary to your assumptions about the nexus of user experience and interferences like parental fatigue, career overwhelm, housework, and the herding of cats—all of which don’t matter due to your inevitable demise—there is always time for use. My use. Some friendly motivational suggestions:
The Republican Attorneys General Association fought to help a Supreme Court case against the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.
The post Payday Lenders Gave Millions to Republican Group That Backed Supreme Court Suit to Annihilate CFPB appeared first on The Intercept.
Capitalism has a lot of problems. A lot of ways it can go wrong. But power accumulation is designed in. Capitalism is the centralization of capital in a few private hands. It is justified in the ideological literature (mostly economics) because it allows for scale and thus economies of scale and allows for development. If capital doesn’t accumulate in a few hands it is hard to build factories, huge mines and so on. (This is the theory, there are obviously other ways to do large scale tasks.)
Now power accumulation is a problem in all system. You need some to get things done, but too much always leads to dysfunction.
By targeting the defense budget, Gaetz demands the military tell Congress about trainees who “broke bad.”
The post Matt Gaetz Wants to Make the Pentagon Answer for Training Coup Leaders appeared first on The Intercept.
Driverless taxi companies Cruise and Waymo wined and dined officials and landed a plum regulatory appointment before they scored free rein on San Francisco’s streets.
HomeGrown StL at Washington University in St. Louis is working to improve economic outcomes and mobility for Black males ages 12 to 29 years old in the region.