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Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Monday that parts per million of carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere averaged 424 ppm in the month of May, reaching a level not seen for millions of years. In May 2022 it was only 421 ppm so this is a tremendous jump Continue reading »

London/Beijing– China has called on the United States to shoulder its responsibilities and pay its arrears to the UNESCO after Washington’s plan to rejoin the United Nations’ cultural and scientific agency was announced on Monday. “We hope this time the US decision is made out of a sense of responsibility and aimed at supporting multilateralism Continue reading »

Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring Continue reading »

Contemporary mainstream economics — still — focuses on studying what happens in abstract and unrealistic models. A deeper study of underlying causal mechanisms in the economy could make economic science more realistic. However, when faced with the monumental gap between empirical data and models, mainstream economists often resort to one of their four favourite strategies […]

Also, no Democrat has ever headed the FBI.

The post The Special Counsel Who Indicted Trump Is No Democrat. They Never Are. appeared first on The Intercept.

And the establishment is full MAGA Happy Birthday Donald Trump. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. A mere lad of seventy-seven, you have a very exciting year ahead of you, running for president for the third time while facing multiple felony charges in both New York and Miami (and very likely Washington DC and Atlanta too!) And you will be the center of attention once again, just the way you like it. Yesterday, Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal felony charges for his decision to abscond with extremely sensitive classified documents, store them haphazardly in his wide-open beach club and then refuse to give them back to the government when asked politely to do so. Unless the special counsel’s office has found some evidence that will explain this bizarre behavior we will probably be left arguing about his motives forever. Was it a psychological need to hoard them or simply a product of his extreme mental disorganization? Did he see a monetary value in them or perhaps he had it in mind to use them as leverage for his political future, as he did when he extorted the Ukrainian president to to help him sabotage Joe Biden’s campaign?

And it came to pass that God saw the suffering of the forty-year-old people from plantar fasciitis and said, Let there be a sandal so ugly that everyone shall resist its wearing. But then word will spread like fire from a burning bush that these shoes be a Godsend.

The Lord continued, The Birkenstocks shall be made of hardened cork from trees that grow along the angry seas from which I have brought many floods. They shall measure .00000001 cubits high by .000025 cubits long, and they shall be finished with the hide of male and female cows so that thou may walk as nature intended. And by nature, I really mean Me.

For the first three weeks of wear, thou shalt shed thy skin as blisters form on thine feet like one of my famous plagues. Thou shalt feel holey during the break-in period, and afterward, holy.

Thou shalt not swear; unless thou art swearing by thine Birkenstocks. Because as thy gait realigns, thou shalt find thyself also divinely cured of back pain.

House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith has expressed openness to the idea — saying he’s just asking questions.

The post House Democrats Refuse to Say Whether They Support Cluster Bomb Shipments to Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.

Judge Michael Luttig: There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president.  He has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him from the moment it was learned that he had taken these national security documents.  On any given day for the past 18 months — doubtless up to and including the day before the indictment was returned — the former president could have avoided and prevented this prosecution. He would never have been indicted for taking these documents.  But for whatever reason, he decided that he would rather be indicted and prosecuted.  After a year and a half, he finally succeeded in forcing Jack Smith’s appropriately reluctant hand, having left the Department no choice but to bring these charges lest the former president make a mockery of the Constitution and the Rule of Law.  I’m actually pretty sure that ship sailed when they had to issue a warrant to get the rest of the documents. After all, they didn’t charge him for any of the documents he returned, even under a subpoena.

Former TUC General Secretary says the "ingenuity of working people" will prevail over anti-union legislation.

Just another word for nothing left to know MSNBC hosts often contrast the fact-based reality here on “Earth One” with the Bizarro World inhabited by the denizens of the Trump personality cult, a parallel universe of “alternative facts.” Dante Atkins this morning reminds Twitter that conservative reactionaries’ efforts to “control the narrative,” as it were, are about more than political spin. They are about more than creating a world where facts don’t matter. They are about imposing a reality where all knowledge is proscribed, by them, where freedom to know and do things is eliminated, where freedom means its opposite. When they rail against “grooming,” Atkins suggests, what they really object to “is existing in public, because merely existing in public imparts knowledge that they do not want you to have.” This is the impulse behind the religious right’s home-school movement. Should parents have the right to educate their own children?

Big Finish has a trailer for Doctor Who: Once and Future - "The Artist at the End of Time" with Peter Davison, Georgia Tennant & Colin Baker.

Did the GOP lose its moral compass or ever have one? Thomas Friedman ponders how this country got to where it finds itself by posing several “what ifs”: What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again? What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!” What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E.

To say that Devin Johnston is a master of the sound of poems is to narrow the conversation too much too soon, but it’s useful nonetheless as a starting point for understanding the distinguished power of this poetry. Here’s the beginning of “Tempers,” from Far-Fetched (2015):

Hot days, violent storms,
high clouds, cold rain.

*

Sheets and curtains cast
a white-diamond gloom.

Are you asleep?

Wind heaves
against the glass

and slow breathing
fills the room.

*

Soft pillows, soft
Blankets, soft sheets:

Her kiss? Sweet,
and hard enough
to crack your teeth.

Thank you for calling the office of Dr. Albert Stiener: The Colonoscopy King. Please listen closely as our menu options have changed.

If this is an emergency and you’re in need of immediate medical assistance, please hang up and dial 9-1-1.

If you’re tired of Big Government getting involved in every aspect of our lives and trying to take away our freedoms as well as our medical licenses we never even had in the first place, press the star key now.

If you’re calling to join one of the ongoing class action lawsuits regarding my use of your colonoscopy videos on social media and in various film festivals, please stay on the line. Don’t hang up; just keep waiting on the line indefinitely.

If you’re calling because you’re confused by our slogan, “This ain’t your granddaddy’s colonoscopy,” press the “end call” button, because you don’t get it and you’re not ready for what we’re all about.

Tom Mutch reports from Orikiv in Zaporizhzhia, an area with historic Russian ties, which has turned against Moscow after a reign of torture and terror

John Mitchinson explores what the novelist behind a 1759 masterpiece can teach us about the importance of marketing as a publisher

The Ohio senator quietly delayed the timeline for safer tank cars that regulators say could help prevent train spills like the one in East Palestine.