Lincoln: “repulse them, or they will subjugate us” “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Faulkner wrote in 1951. “Old times there are not forgotten,” wrote Daniel Decatur Emmett in “Dixie” a century earlier in 1859. “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” wrote somebody, but not likely Mark Twain. We’ll come back to harbingers of re-appearing tyranny in a minute. Republicans in Missouri want to bring back “old time” dueling: Sen. Nick Schroer (R-St. Charles County) is listed on the proposal, notes Fox 2 St.
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From more Boeing revelations to fossil fuel propaganda in schools, here’s all news from The Lever this week.
The world’s best recovery and a silent revolution In an economics column headlined, “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery,” David Lynch (no, not that one) writes in the Washington Post: Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners. Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting. “The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.” It was no accident: On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: WWE Royal Rumble, MOTU: Revolution, SNL, True Detective: Night Country, Daredevil, Doctor Who, and more!
Ron DeSantis still opposes recreational cannabis, but his handpicked Supreme Court justices are coming around.
The post Major Florida GOP Donors Stand to Make Windfall Profits If Recreational Cannabis Is Legalized appeared first on The Intercept.
The strapping young man in the photo above is my grandfather Philip Kramer (in his late teens or early twenties, to my best estimation). He immigrated to America from Bialystok circa 1910. While the area is now part of the Republic of Poland, Bialystok “belonged” to the Russian Empire when he lived there (ergo, he was fluent in Russian, Polish, and Yiddish). One of the reasons his family emigrated was to flee the state terror inflicted on Russia’s Jewish population by Czar Nicholas (the Bialystok pogram of 1906 was particularly nasty). I suppose I have Czar Nicholas to thank for my existence. If my grandfather had never left Bialystok, he never would have met New York City born-and-raised Celia Mogerman (the daughter of Jewish German immigrants). Consequently, they never would have fallen in love, got married, and had their daughter Lillian, who never would have met and fallen in love with a young G.I. named Robert Hartley (a W.A.S.P. farm boy from Ohio) at a New York City U.S.O. Club. They, in turn, produced…me (otherwise, you’d just be staring at a blank page here).
Lots of reports coming out that an attack is imminent.
Israel is caught in a bind. The constant attacks on settlements and military targets in the north of Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced settlers to leave. There’s are at least a quarter million internal Israeli refugees, and they can’t return until Hezbollah stops firing. The ongoing war, the problems with trade, the refugees and so on are causing massive budget and economic problems.
Hezbollah won’t stop firing until Israel leaves Gaza, stops bombing it and stops the blockade.
Israel, or rather Netanyahu, needs a win in Gaza or his political career is over.
Hamas won’t give up the hostages until there is a permanent peace and all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza, but the Israeli project is to occupy at least part of Gaza permanently.
Lots of reports coming out that an attack is imminent.
Israel is caught in a bind. The constant attacks on settlements and military targets in the north of Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon have forced settlers to leave. There’s are at least a quarter million internal Israeli refugees, and they can’t return until Hezbollah stops firing. The ongoing war, the problems with trade, the refugees and so on are causing massive budget and economic problems.
Hezbollah won’t stop firing until Israel leaves Gaza, stops bombing it and stops the blockade.
Israel, or rather Netanyahu, needs a win in Gaza or his political career is over.
Hamas won’t give up the hostages until there is a permanent peace and all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza, but the Israeli project is to occupy at least part of Gaza permanently.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
It’s always 1987 in Trump’s world A big new economic plan on the way: Former president Donald Trump is weighing options for a major new economic attack on China if reelected, considering plans that are widely viewed as likely to spark a global trade war. Publicly, the GOP front-runner has endorsed downgrading China’s trade status with the United States — a move that would lead tariffs between the world’s two largest economies to skyrocket. Revoking China’s status as a “most favored nation” for trade — which is applied to almost all countries the United States trades with — could lead to federal tariffs on Chinese imports of more than 40 percent, according to one analysis. Trump has floated imposing a 10 percent tariff on nearly all $3 trillion in annual imports from all countries, including China. Privately, Trump has discussed with advisers the possibility of imposing a flat 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations. All these options would lead to enormous disruptions to the U.S.
And that’s all that matters to the cult Dahlia Litwick with a fascinating observation about the Trump trials and the effect they are having in the political culture: Tacopina’s mistake in representing Trump’s interests in that first defamation suit lay in trying to win the case in the eyes of the law, which meant keeping Trump far away from the jurors. Trump has corrected for that by retaining Habba, who understands that whether Trump wins or loses matters less than ensuring that he feels like a winner, whatever the verdict. And what is winning if not getting to do the thing you were instructed, under penalty of sanctions, not to do? Habba knows that the outcome of these trials (how much money he has to pay) doesn’t matter nearly as much as establishing that Trump is as immune to law, judges, gag orders, and threats of sanctions as he is immune to reality, fact, science, and election results. She is the stage mother who comes to all his ballet recitals and T-ball games and tells him he’s a star and that everyone else is doping. And if a little lawyering happens on the side, well, that’s a solid day’s work.
She’s a terrible lawyer and a terrible actress And she’s just as nuts as he is: Following a massive verdict where a New York federal jury ordered Donald Trump to pay over $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll for making defamatory statements about her, Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, exited the courtroom, on the brink of tears, and lambasted the court and the process for holding Donald Trump accountable. Watch the moment below: Following her meltdown, CNN’s Jake Tapper put her speech into perspective by talking about her “effectiveness” as Trump’s attorney. Watch for yourself: This is the woman who said she’d rather be pretty than smart because she can fake being smart. Actually, she can’t. She proved that with her embarrassing performance in federal court. She’s better hope that Trump keeps her on for the rest of his life and actually pays his bills because no one else in their right mind would hire this ridiculous person.
The Wall St. Journal breaks from the MAGA GOP which may have some effect on donors and, therefore, Republican politicians: The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board is warning Republicans that they may pay a political price for letting Donald Trump rip up a deal to beef up border security measures and provide more aid to Ukraine. On Wednesday, Punchbowl News reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had told his colleagues that they were in a “quandary” because Trump opposes the deal and the caucus doesn’t want to do anything to “undermine” the likely Republican presidential nominee. The Journal submitted that following Trump’s command “would be a self-inflicted wound.” “President Biden would claim, with cause, that Republicans want border chaos as an election issue rather than solving the problem,” argued its editors. “Voter anger may over time move from Mr. Biden to the GOP, and the public will have a point.
Only a commitment to the precepts of realism can explain the procrastination and distancing by politicians from the slaughter and destruction in Gaza. Only the realist logic could see the flood of crocodile tears from governments for the poor Palestinians, without ever condemning America as the arsenal of Israel’s war on women and children. Only Continue reading »
Canadians are destroying their boreal forests. Kelp forests need help worldwide. Advice for Australian company directors on preparing for climate change. New uses for old wind turbine blades. I thought I’d finalised my first column for 2024; it was going to open with the next two tree-related stories. However, an article in last Saturday’s Sydney Continue reading »
Nuclear risk reduction, abolition, more, urgent than ever. With the iconic ‘Doomsday Clock’, curated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists founded in 1947 by Einstein and others associated with the Manhattan Project, seemingly stuck at 90 seconds to ‘midnight’ (midnight being the catastrophic end of civilisation) for at least another 12 months, we are Continue reading »
Lost in the sands of Iraq… Lost in the sands of Iraq A reward for fantasy WMDs may just spark A reality check for those who refused to accept The flimsiest of flimsy intelligence was maybe incorrect That danger did not lurk under the hot blazing desert sands Now benign with the thousands of bodies Continue reading »
Anyone who thinks so is just plain dumb. It has obviously been stunningly successful. It has produced huge increases in wealth, for instance in the last few years the three richest people in Australia doubled their wealth. It has worked like a dream. The trouble is that it does not and is not designed to Continue reading »