The new first principle of politics The Games of the XXXIII Olympiad take place in Paris in July 2024. The organizers periodically add new events and remove others from sports that have fallen out of use/favor. Not having checked to see if that’s happened for the upcoming Olympics, I have a suggestion for a new event. Credit where due, David Frum inspired the idea. Frum (indirectly) identifies in The Atlantic the dominant principle held by the Party of Trump: flexibility. “Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once advised a staffer and, hoo-boy, are Republicans flexible.* Frum provides a few examples where the Trump faithful nimbly pivot whenever it suits them. There’s a new first principle on the block. Point out where Republicans benefit from and leverage our system’s anti-majoritarian features to engineer for themselves permanent minority rule? We’re a republic, not a democracy. States rule that Donald Trump, post-insurrection, is ineligible under the 14th Amendment to hold public office in any capacity? Let the people decide!
Reading
Our 11th most-read article of 2023.
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Originally published August 25, 2023.
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Colleagues, friends, and adjuncts —
As many of you know, the university is facing unprecedented budget shortfalls. These shortfalls aren’t directly your fault, but to be honest, it is you who will absorb the consequences of our lack of funds. That said, please know we think you’re doing a fantastic job. (Except for the English department, which persists in assigning long books that our market research has decisively concluded students do not find cool.)
Instead, the budget shortfall is primarily due to changes in demographics. There are fewer college-aged students now than before, and of the remaining college-aged people, fewer than before are choosing our kind of institution. Thank you to Frank, our Executive Vice President of Reading Inside Higher Ed and Telling Us What It Says, for that insight.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Rick and Morty, Jeremy Renner, What If...?, Bleeding Cool's 2023 Top 5 New TV Series/100 Most-Read & more!
I only had an oldish iPhone on me, unfortunately
This is one of the most surprising articles I’ve read in the NY Times in a long while. It’s about the Israeli military’s total lack of preparation for the October 7th attacks. I can’t really believe how bad it was. This was just not something most people ever thought could happen. They’re supposed to be the best military with the best intelligence in the whole region. My God. Here is a gift link for you to read the whole thing which I highly recommend you do. The administration just approved a$147.5 million emergency shipment of military aid. Wherever you come out on this issue, I think everyone can agree that the US should be very concerned about its ongoing military support for the country. And I would hope that it would convince even the hawks in both countries that Netanyahu has got to go. The buck stops with him. A short excerpt: The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry.
This isn’t the first time he’s said this, of course. He claims he actually won the popular vote in 2016 because of all the undocumented immigrants who voted for Clinton. He even created a commission to investigate it and, of course, they came up with nothing because it’s utter nonsense. But today this actually refers to the Great Replacement Theory, which is much more pernicious. Sure, he’s laying the groundwork to claim he actually won again. And his people will be convinced of it, of course. But the Republican Party has now adopted this white supremacist theory and it’s inspiring people to take matters into their own hands. Example: The Tree of Life and El Paso mass murders, which were clearly inspired by this grotesque, racist propaganda. Trump may be doing it for his personal purposes, but a whole lot of people are absorbing this idea as a major threat to their way of life. It’s bad.
Her name is Marge The Hill interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene who has obviously feeling irrelevant since she bet on the wrong horse in MyKev. She’s loaded for bear: In an extensive interview with The Hill, Greene did not hold back when asked about Johnson’s early Speakership record — “terrible” — or his need to earn her trust. “He went from having a voting record to literally a month later … going against his own voting record and being Speaker of the House,” Greene later added. “Literally all of a sudden talking about doing things that he had literally voted against only a month before that. And, you know, that was unacceptable to me, and it still is.” In the first two months of the Johnson era, Greene moved to force votes on a pair of politically prickly issues that split the Republican conference, hurled sometimes explicit insults at GOP colleagues who opposed those efforts, and frequently criticized the Speaker’s strategy on major issues including government funding, Ukraine aid and the annual defense policy bill.
Nikki Haley finally gets some scrutiny Over the holiday I heard a few people saying that we liberals really should get behind Haley and help her beat Trump because even though she polls better than Biden we should do what we can to defeat him even if it means losing the general election. My response (in my head) was “wtf are you smoking? Haley is horrible!” Sure, maybe she’s not as bad as Trump in some ways but we don’t really know that because she is an empty vessel and nobody knows what she really thinks about anything. Politico took a look at the flap and what it says about her: After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.
Here’s yet another disturbing story about the malign influence of Leonard Leo, Federalist Society founder and architect of the conservative Supreme Court we are now stuck with for a generation or more: 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. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools. Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions.
Increasingly, organs of the state are used to harass critics of the government. Six months ago India was accused of involvement in the murder of a leader of the Khalistan movement in Canada and what followed was predictable: expulsion of diplomats from both countries, stalled trade talks and temporary stopping of visa services. But in Continue reading »
That the Albanese government could further compromise Australia’s sovereignty, international integrity and national interests seemed inconceivable. Yet, intelligence, a vital government function inextricably connected with independence and protecting national interest, is being penetrated and colonised by the Americans. At the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) 2023 the establishment of “a Combined Intelligence Centre – Australia” (CIC-A) Continue reading »
Former U.S. Ambassador Charles Freeman questions the true intentions of Israel’s renewed bombing of Gaza. Charles “Chas” W. Freeman Jr. is an American retired diplomat and writer. He served in the United States Foreign Service, the State and Defence Departments in many different capacities over the course of thirty years. Most notably, he worked as the Continue reading »
More than 9,000 children have been injured in the Gaza Strip, leaving them grappling with the loss of an arm or a leg. In the Gaza Strip, the life of any child could turn into a nightmare in the blink of an eye. Families try to keep their children safe, but this becomes harder and Continue reading »
Five out of six major Australian media outlets have substantially imbalanced reporting when it comes to covering the Gaza conflict, new research claims. Dr Susan Carland of Monash University, examined Instagram posts made by ABC News, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, 9News, news.com.au and The Daily Aus between October 7 and November 7 this year, and found most neglected the Palestinian side of Continue reading »
Up is down, black is white, in is out, and wrong is right The Bizarros at Fox News stand reality on its head every day and make money for the Murdoch family doing it. The Fox audience tunes in to lap up bald-faced lies. Here their talking heads claim that Donald Trump turned aound the “miserable” Obama economy (that crashed under George W. Bush). Joe Biden’s looks the same to them, dontcha know? MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen (No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen) was having none of this Foxsense. He responds on the hellsite: Every good economic trend that happened under Trump started under Obama. Trump then wrecked it with his disastrous COVID response, and Biden fixed it. Cohen backs that up with some Washington Post graphics from September 5, 2020 (the thick of the pandemic): Now let’s get some current data for the Biden administration. I can’t find a chart-for-chart comparison, but…. The current unemployment rate is 3.7%. The unemployment rate under Trump before the pandemic was 3.5%. The S&P 500 closed on Friday at 4,769.83. It peaked at 4,766.18 at the end of 2021. Job creation is another point of departure between Trump and Biden.
Pwnallthethings lampoons 14th Amendment punditry I’m ripping this off wholesale for the reading enjoyment of those not on Blue Sky. First replace Trump with Obama and the 14th Amendment with the 22nd, says Pwnallthethings: Now do it everywhere: If you know, you know: Naturally The Wall Street Journal gets in on the act: One Connor Lynch comments: These rewrites really capture the solipsistic pedantry of the highly implausible counter arguments that keep popping up in editorial pages.
Doctor Who Christmas Specials are magical and joyful - but here's why New Year's Day has been pretty terrible for the Doctor.
Our 12th most-read article of 2023.
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Originally published February 16, 2023.
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You’ve been on the lookout for a cardigan in a color that’s less edgy than “fawn” or “heather oatmeal.”
You recently traded your favorite slingbacks for a pair of Dansko clogs recommended by your podiatrist.
You have a podiatrist.
Invisibility seemed like a really cool superpower when you were a child; now, it’s your reality.
Neighborhood cats have been following you home.
You have two pairs of eyeglasses: a regular pair and a “fun” pair.
In the grocery store, a trio of women in cashmere twinsets murmurs, “Her wizening is nigh,” when you pass them in the probiotics aisle.
Your favorite necklace is made from large vintage buttons, beaded flowers, and repurposed copper pipes. It really pops with a cowl-neck sweater.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: James Gunn/Green Lantern, What If...?, Doctor Who, Echo, Jeremy Renner, Rick and Morty/Pop-Tarts, and more!
Long holidays are nice. But sometimes, amid all the relaxation, you can feel your brain getting a bit mushy. What do you do then? Personally, I usually solve crosswords, chess problems, and the occasional mathematical puzzle to keep the grey brain cells active over Christmas and New Year…