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Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 01:00
No, not a Tom Hanks sequel The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 4-3 that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not a dead letter. The court found Donald J. Trump ineligible to appear on the 2024 Colorado primary ballot. The Jan. 6 violence was consciously encouraged by Trump, that the violence constituted an insurrection, that his actions are disqualifying, and that no legislative action is required to make it so. The provision is self-executing. The case brought by several Republicans and one independent voter charged that it would violate state election law if Secretary of State Jena Griswold placed an ineligible candidate on the Colorado primary ballot. Specifically, that Trump is ineligible (Washington Post): “A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads.
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 01:00

The Thomas Salto, Timmy Straw’s debut collection, offers what very little poetry in our time seems to manage: work that is both overtly political and unflinchingly aesthetic. Ben Lerner, Brenda Hillman, Jay Wright, Anne Boyer, Chris Nealon are others whose work comes to mind. But Straw’s work marries politics and aesthetics in a way maybe not seen since George Oppen, and the gift of this collection is both the lyric mystery it generates and the position of moral clarity from which it operates. To do this, Straw refuses any neat resolutions that pay lip service to the fashionable pieties—these poems, like Hillman’s or Oppen’s, take those pieties for granted, as background noise, as a starting point at best:

Occasionally,
our freedom intrudes on us

like real sunlight thru a snowglobe
like real sunlight on a painted sun

hot as a fresh-cut tree

as a flung side dappled saw

To turn and see it face to face,
to be

both sight and self
it swings upon

Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 00:00

ABBOTT: Since it has historically caused us heartache, I’m going to grab a program with all the players’ names printed in it.

(Abbott leaves)

COSTELLO (to the Grinch, seated next to him): Hey, do you know who is playing today?

GRINCH: Of course I know. They all are. They’re on first, second, the outfield. Everywhere.

COSTELLO: Who is?

GRINCH: Yes. Look at those Whos all dressed in their hats, with their balls and their gloves and their dumb wooden bats.

COSTELLO: Who is dressed in little hats?

GRINCH: I know, I hate it.

COSTELLO: Well, do you know who that is on first?

GRINCH: Sort of. I took his Christmas presents one year.

COSTELLO: You took whose Christmas presents?

GRINCH: Yes, but the Whos got them back.

COSTELLO: Who gave them back?

Created
Wed, 20/12/2023 - 23:43
En orsakt till bankernas läge är framgångsrik lobbyism, vilket syns särskilt tydligt i betalningsutredningen som just nu behandlas av regeringen. Utredningens huvudfråga var: Ska staten ge ut kontanter och digitala e-kronor – eller ska svenska kronan bli utkonkurrerad av privata alternativ? När vi går igenom utredningen ser vi att den oförblommerat tar bankernas parti … […]
Created
Wed, 20/12/2023 - 20:00
Daniel Albuquerque and Jamie Lenney Rent prices have risen by 9% on average in England since the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) started raising interest rates in December 2021. Alongside this rise in prices has been a widening in the gap between reported supply and demand in the rental sector, with tenant demand … Continue reading Is UK monetary policy driving private housing rents?
Created
Wed, 20/12/2023 - 12:30
For now… The Colorado Supreme Court threw Trump off the ballot because they say he’s disqualified under the `4th Amendment for stoking an insurrection on January 6th: The 4-3 ruling, which rests on an interpretation of the 14th Amendment, will almost certainly force the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve whether Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, is eligible to hold future public office. “We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” the Colorado majority opinion reads. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us.
Created
Wed, 20/12/2023 - 12:00
Hello to the couple of dozen people who still use RSS! As the weekly videos are stopping at the end of the year, this RSS feed is going to change soon. If you just want an update of any new videos, you should subscribe directly via RSS to the YouTube channel, which YouTube supports directly. Just put the channel's URL into your RSS reader. Otherwise, expect this feed to change in the next few days: it'll become an archive of my weekly newsletters, which are continuing into 2024. And which are also transitioning to being on the web as well as via email! Although they will appear on the web a bit after they go out by email, just as an incentive for new email subscribers. Hope that's not too disruptive. It should be a seamless switch from your POV: you'll just see ten new items at some point, which will be the most recent newsletters.
Created
Wed, 20/12/2023 - 11:00
It’s time to tell your people to back off Obama campaign manager Jim Messina has a message for No Labels, which principal Joe Lieberman insisted would only run a candidate for president if they thought he or she could win. And just as important, Lieberman has been clear that they would not run anyone if it looks as though it would help Trump win: The idea that a “unity ticket” featuring a Republican and a Democrat could somehow produce a nominee with “a clear path to victory” is worse than a political fiction. The group behind it, No Labels, is pushing a dangerous lie that would simply serve to put Trump back in the White House. How can I be so certain? Look at the last half-century of election results. In modern U.S. presidential history, third parties have not won much. In 1968, George Wallace won 46 electoral votes by running a regionally-targeted (and racist) campaign. Since then, they’ve won zilch — not a single state. Not Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016, and not Ralph Nader in 2000. None of them broke 5 percent of the vote.