Reading

Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 04:52
It matters for Australia that Biden not be re-elected to the US presidency. A Trump administration might mean domestic chaos, violence, and division for the Republic, however, the danger is that Biden would be more likely to lead the world into catastrophic war. Another Trump imperium would be sadly the least worst, yet still terrible, Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 04:50
On Washington’s telling, Beijing is spreading authoritarianism through producing goods and building infrastructure around the world while the US is promoting freedom and democracy by bombing and selling weapons. People nowadays say literally when they really mean metaphorically. I don’t know why; maybe a linguist can explain. But when I wrote literally in the headline, Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 04:00
Trump keeps saying he’ll be a dictator for one day so that he can close the border and “drill, drill, drill” which, as Philip Bump points out in the Washington Post, he came up with on the fly during a Sean Hannity interview. Apparently the cult just loves it: On Wednesday, UMass Amherst released the results of a poll conducted by YouGov in which respondents were asked about the concept. The framing of the comment was stark, excluding Trump’s specific plans for using his theoretical dictatorial power. It was just, “Trump recently said that if elected, he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. Do you think that this is a good or bad idea for the country?” A plurality of respondents said this was “definitely bad” with 6 in 10 saying it was “definitely” or “probably” bad. Among Republicans, though, a third said it was “definitely good” with three-quarters saying it was at least “probably” good.
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 02:30
Where were you when? It’s tiresome by now, these “where were you when” events. The JFK assassination (or MLK’s or RFK’s) or the first moon landing or the Challenger disaster or September 11 were days you never forgot. Nowadays it’s U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs. If you are reading this between 10 a.m. and noonish EST, you may be missing today’s “where were you when” event at the U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Post): The Supreme Court on Thursday will confront the critical question of Donald Trump’s eligibility to return to the White House, hearing arguments in an unprecedented case that gives the justices a central role in charting the course of a presidential election for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. The justices will decide whetherColorado’s top court was correctto apply a post-Civil War provisionof the Constitution to order Trump off the ballot after concluding his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to insurrection.Primary voting is already underway in some states.
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 02:28
Western China Economic News Is Totally Deranged

So, the New York Times has a headline:

China Deflation Fears Raised By Falling Prices For Food and Cars

No. China’s growth is fine, and some products dropping in price is also fine. Car prices are dropping fast because China has a competitive market for car production: they have hundreds. That is driving tech improvements and price competition. This is a good thing, it is not based on “no one has enough money to spend so everyone has to drop prices” which is what caused the Great Depression (the deflationary episode that makes everyone quake.)

Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 01:31

Yes, the Doomsday Clock keeps ticking — it’s now at 90 seconds to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — but the ultimate time bomb never gets the attention that it deserves. Even as the possibility of nuclear annihilation looms, this century’s many warning signs retain the status of Cassandras. Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew the United States from vital pacts between the U.S. and Russia, the two nuclear superpowers, shutting down the Anti-Ballistic Missile, Open Skies, and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties. And despite promising otherwise, Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden did nothing to revive them. Under the buzzword “modernization,” the American government, a thermonuclear colossus, spent $51 billion last year alone updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in... Read more

Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 01:00
Republicans want their new weapon With the 2022 Dobbs decision abolishing womens’s federal right to an abortion, Republicans lost a campaign issue they’d campaigned on reliably for decades. It was like the Pentagon’s identity crisis after the Cold War ended. The Pentagon spent the 1990s not knowing who it should be planning to fight. Republicans have failed again and again since 2022 to block abortion protection amendments in the states, even as fringe right legislators all but lock women with doomed pregnancies into iron maidens as they bleed out. Abortion is on its way to being a third rail in Republican politics. The issue is now a political loser. To replace abortion, the GOP settled on Great Replacement theory, an isotopic variant of the Southern Strategy. Republicans stoke fears of brown-skinned hordes of immigrants pouring across the U.S. southern border to knock white Americans off the top of the social ladder. It’s not about race as much as power and status. Race is just the icing. Speaking with Sen.
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
Despite the mistakes, video assistant refereeing works. A 2020 study showed that overall decision accuracy improved with the use of VAR from an already high 92.1 per cent to 98.3 per cent. So what’s all the fuss about? Part of the problem is that although the right decisions are being reached more often, it doesn’t feel like they are.
Created
Fri, 09/02/2024 - 00:00
Devotees often exult in the stripping of her beauty and her wealth; she is imagined as a woman of substance, who owned property in Magdala (hence her name), and when she repents and gives all this up, her reduction becomes the source of great satisfaction to the worthy men who love her in spite of – or because of – their general suspicion of and contempt for women.