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Sun, 10/12/2023 - 02:30
Worth repeating “America is more than a country. America is an idea,” former Speaker Kevin McCarthy told an Oxford Union audience in late October. That idea is freedom [timestamp 7:35]. At the New York Times DealBook event last month, McCarthy repeated something else he’d said at Oxford about Americans who are the true caretakers of that idea (Washington Post): “I became leader when we took the minority, and this was a turning point for me,” McCarthy said, describing having attended the 2019 State of the Union address. “I’d just become leader and I’m excited and President Trump’s there. And I look over at the Democrats and they stand up. They look like America,” he told Sorkin. “We stand up. We look like the most restrictive country club in America.” Called it: Robert Calhoon once wrote about colonists who supported the Crown during the American Revolution. “Historians’ best estimates,” he wrote, “put the proportion of adult white male loyalists somewhere between 15 and 20 percent,” a figure not far removed from the Republican base.
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Sun, 10/12/2023 - 01:01
Stop hand-wringing People feel what they feel. Don’t tell them otherwise, suggests Dave Johnson (now blogging from across the Pond). “Biden & Dems need to be saying, ‘We understand how hard it has been and we’ve been working on it. It is starting to turn around,’” Johnson reminds readers of Seeing the Forest. That was Bill Clinton’s message to the DNC convention that renominated Barack Obama in 2012. The economy was a wreck when Obama took over, but he’s turning it around, Clinton told the assembly: Now, look. Here’s the challenge he faces and the challenge all of you who support him face. I get it. I know it. I’ve been there. A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy. If you look at the numbers, you know employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend again. And in a lot of places, housing prices are even beginning to pick up. But too many people do not feel it yet. That was two months before the 2012 election. You know how that worked out.
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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 17:50
Think ‘Quadrangle’ and an image might come to mind of the University of Sydney and the Quadrangle which forms its nucleus: grand sandstone buildings, gargoyles, perfect lawns and the (replacement) talismanic jacaranda tree.   Unless you frequently travel through Cammeraygal country, along Eastern Valley Way. In which case you might also think of the shopping […]
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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 13:33
No lad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, is very sad, and Barry rode towards Dublin thinking not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind him, but of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring. -from Barry Lyndon Oh man, oh God…we’ve lost another one: Ryan O’Neal, the boyish leading man who kicked off an extraordinary 1970s run in Hollywood with his Oscar-nominated turn as the Harvard preppie Oliver in the legendary romantic tearjerker Love Story, has died. He was 82. O’Neal died Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal, a sportscaster with Bally Sports West in Los Angeles, reported on Instagram. He had been diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and with prostate cancer in 2012. “As a human being, my father was as generous as they come,” Patrick wrote. “And the funniest person in any room. And the most handsome clearly, but also the most charming. Lethal combo. He loved to make people laugh. It’s pretty much his goal. Didn’t matter the situation, if there was a joke to be found, he nailed it. He really wanted us laughing. And we did all laugh. Every time. We had fun.
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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 11:30
Baby monkey! There is a new, tiny face at the San Diego Zoo. A De Brazza’s monkey was born Oct. 28 to parents Lillie and Augustus, and it is the first De Brazza’s monkey born at the Zoo in 26 years. The little primate, whose gender has not yet been determined, can be seen holding tightly to its very attentive mother’s chest while they bond. In the next few weeks, the infant is expected to start walking and climbing. It will stay close to its mother until it is weaned, at around 1 year old.
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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 10:00
The DC Circuit speaks The gag order in the January 6th case stands. Trump will be allowed to personally insult and threaten Jack Smith and the Judge but witnesses and federal employees are off limits. They write: “We do not allow such an order lightly. Mr. Trump is a former President and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means.” Here is his response: Waaaaaaah!!!
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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 09:26

Issue 52 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our September and October 2023 online issues. It includes contributions from science writer Philip Ball, journalist Elena Kazamia, astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter, writer Shruti Ravindran, and more. This issue also features new illustrations by Mark Belan.

The post Print Edition 52 appeared first on Nautilus.

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Sat, 09/12/2023 - 08:30
There was more good news about the economy today: Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Friday showed the unemployment rate was 3.7% for the month, down from 3.9% in October. The US economy added 199,000 jobs in November, an uptick from 150,000 the previous month as striking auto workers and Hollywood actors came back to the workforce. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected job gains of 185,000 with unemployment holding steady from the prior month at 3.9%. Wages, a closely watched indicator for inflation and a gauge of how much leverage workers have in the labor market, increased 0.4% on a monthly basis and 4.1% over last year; economists had expected wages to rise 0.3% over last month and 4% over last year. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate ticked higher to 62.8%, up from 62.7% the month prior, while average weekly hours worked moved up slightly from 34.3 to 34.4. The largest jobs increases in Friday’s report were seen in healthcare, where 77,000 jobs were added. Employment in government rose by 49,000, reaching its pre-pandemic level. Leisure and hospitality rose by 40,000.