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You’ve read about how the Trump White House was basically a pill mill, dispensing uppers and downers like candy and even handing out fentanyl for reasons no one has been able to explain. Right. Perfectly normal. Look what’s been happening at Tesla, the company owned by the other Very Stable Genius, Elon Musk. The Wall Street Journal reports: Several current or former directors at Tesla and SpaceX attend parties with him, go on exotic vacations and hang out at Burning Man, the Nevada arts and music festival. Musk and these directors, including venture capitalists Gracias and Ira Ehrenpreis, tech mogul Larry Ellison, former media executive James Murdoch, as well as Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, have invested tens of millions of dollars in each other’s companies—Ellison held billions of dollars in Tesla shares with about a 1.5% holding in 2022. Some also received career support and help from Elon Musk.
Another right wing outrage-fad runs its course What if they held a book banning and nobody showed up? In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” – should be banned from schools. A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her. Nearly 20 speakers voiced opposition to removing the novels from school libraries. One compared the book-banning effort to Nazi Germany. Another accused Moms for Liberty of waging war on teachers. No one spoke in favor of the ban. About three hours into the meeting, the board voted quickly to keep the two books on the shelves of high schools.
What’s in your basement? Mine is full of things I’ve mostly forgotten about — tools I bought for projects I never completed, long abandoned sports equipment, furniture I planned on refinishing ages ago, and unused cans of paint I thought I wanted when someone was giving them away. We’ve owned this house for nearly 12 years, since just weeks before our son was born. In all that time, I’ve regularly gone down there to do the laundry and store my things (which never seem to stop accumulating). And somehow, it went from being empty when we bought it to chock-a-block full today in a way that would make Marie Kondo’s perfect hair stand straight up. One day recently, I noticed... Read more
Source: Cleaning Out the Basement of My Life appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
In case you needed more evidence that Netanyahu and his boys are holding out for a Trump restoration, here it is: Criticism of President Joe Biden by a far-right minister in Israel’s government who said Donald Trump would allow more freedom to fight Hamas sparked outrage there on Sunday, highlighting the sensitivity of relations as Washington provides key support for the offensive against the militants in Gaza. The Biden administration has skirted Congress to rush weapons to Israel and shielded its ally from international calls for a cease-fire in the four months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. But the White House has also urged Israel to take greater measures to avoid harming civilians and to facilitate the delivery of more aid to besieged Gaza. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal said Biden was hindering Israel’s war effort. “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel (to Gaza), which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir said. “If Trump was in power, the U.S.
Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies offered an impressive episode-by-episode update on the upcoming two seasons & 2024 Christmas Special.
You betcha That is a real post from Donald Trump. last night. From Meidas who watches Trump’s rallies. All of them. So we don’t have to: So it appears that Trump confusing Nikki Haley with his deranged conspiracy about Nancy Pelosi and Trump randomly posting that he looks like Elvis (he does not) has people finally seeing just how delusional, cognitively impaired, and utterly weird Trump’s campaign is. Well, I have been covering all of Donald Trump’s speeches for my reporting with the MeidasTouch Network and it’s just been mind boggling how the media has sought to normalize what can only be described as the strangest and weirdest thing ever. Here is what goes down at a typical Trump speech: 1. He comes out to the playing of the “January 6 Anthem” song which he recorded with some of the most dangerous J6 rioters in jail. 2. He brags how his song with the J6 rioters gets more downloads than Taylor Swift (it does not) 3. He spends a few minutes talking about passing cognitive exams, and how the audience would not pass the exam, but because he is really smart (he is not) he is able to ace the exam. 4.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Global power shift
Everything You’re Told About The Global Economy Is Wrong (interview)
Philip Pilkington, YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 02-02-2024] Grab a cup of coffee. Or two cups. Starting with the Houthis and moving on from there:
Summary of The Truth About The Global Economy | Aaron Bastani Meets Philip Pilkington
When Real Americans cut off their noses to spite their faces: Donna Knoche made her way up to the podium at the Johnson County Commission hearing on June 6, 2022, her new yellow shirt crisp and her voice steady. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d have to do in her 93 years in the place her grandfather first homesteaded in the 1860s. Calmly setting aside her walker, she looked at the county commissioners arrayed to her left and began to speak. “I never in all my life thought I would stand up here to protect our property rights by being able to use our land legally for the best benefit of our family,” she said. To her right, scores of people were in line behind her. Many of them had other ideas. Some implored the commissioners to vote to allow the so-called West Gardner plan, a utility-size array of solar panels, saying the county needed to commit to clean energy for their children’s future. But others were just as passionately opposed.
Détente would be good. Dialogue and diplomacy would be better. An end to US-led covert actions and cold wars would be better still. And what about an enduring peace that balances interests of all concerned? Such a peace, surely, is the end to which the détente statement, led by former Foreign Ministers Carr and Evans Continue reading »
IPAN, the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, is inviting organisations and individuals throughout Australia to sign the open letter to the Prime Minister on Gaza and their freezing of funds to UNRWA. After the International Court of Justice’s ruling on South Africa’s case on 26 January, it is clear Israel is not halting its attacks Continue reading »
Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was a man with a mission. Many missions, obviously. But one maybe stood out above all others: the creation of a universal national healthcare system. Introduction by Croakey: On the 40th anniversary of Medicare, it is important to remember and learn from history, in order to help drive future reforms. Continue reading »
The election of the Albanese Labor government was met with a strong sense of optimism among people who had been lobbying for aged care reform for years. Finally, a government prepared to address the systemic issues that had plagued the sector since the Howard government neo-liberal reforms decades before. Alas, it was not to be. Continue reading »
We all have a responsibility to build trust, encourage a sense of belonging and a community of welcome and optimism. Ambitious New Year resolutions perhaps? But these goals, from the latest Scanlon social cohesion report are much more than just “nice to haves”. Trust has strong economic as well as social benefits. As I show Continue reading »
Current Australian defence policy involves close integration with the United States military in all areas, making an independent foreign policy impossible and ensuring Australia’s automatic involvement in US-instigated wars such as a war with China, our major trading partner. A policy of neutrality would free Australia from involvement in such disastrous military adventures and enable Continue reading »
The Israeli leadership is currently engaged in an undoubted genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. A complementary mopping up operation continues (if in slow motion) in the West Bank. During World War II, a certain genocide took place. More than one if one counts the attempted genocide by the Nazis, consciously on racist grounds, Continue reading »
Those following the U.S. Republican presidential race will have noted from the voter polls that the issue of foreign affairs ranks amongst the lowest or is the lowest of the priority concerns that the American public sees as critical to themselves and their country. A variety of polls held before the recently concluded nomination battles Continue reading »
China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) operates on a huge scale and is the focus of rarely halted negative coverage across many prominent outlets in the Global West. A new extended article in the leading US journal, Foreign Policy, however, provides a measured, informed exception to this general rule. Parag Khanna recently argued in a Continue reading »
JD Vance on This Week, calmly demonstrating his revolutionary MAGA zeal: As you can see, this man is unhinged. But the confident glibness of the slick liar is always unnerving. He’s dangerous.
During World War I, the Ottoman Empire collectively blamed the millions of Armenians in their territory for attacks by Armenian resistance fighters. Around 1M non-combatants were killed by the Ottoman military — in many cases, by forced marches through the Syrian desert without food and water. Denouncing this genocide doesn’t make you an Armenian resistance … Continue reading Taking sides in a genocide
Tell ya what I’m gonna do School voucher salesmen. This is getting to be like an old “I Love Lucy” episode. The facts don’t matter. Taxpayers are lining up to be sheared. Friends like Jeff Byant (N.C.) and acquaintances like Jess Piper (Mo.) have hammered on efforts to privatize public schools for years. No matter what they’re called — school vouchers, charter schools, opportunity scholarships — they are schemes for separating public funding from public education and resegregating schools under the rubric of “choice.” For investors and wealthy parents, it’s about the money, either in profits or in tax breaks. Piper is right, BTW: So is Bryant. Charters that were once local and parent-organized are being squeezed out by the big-money boyz: The aim is to bust school budgets and, in the words of Grover Norquist, drown public education in the bathtub so the mandated not-for-profit spending can wind up in the for-profit world.
Religious politics are the greatest threat to democracy, more than social or economic inequality, lying politicians, or corruption, all of which are bad enough. Liberal democratic institutions exist to resolve conflicts of interests. Disputes over taxation, land use, farm subsidies, and so on, can be settled through argument and compromise between political parties. Sacred matters, […]