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Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 10:30
Can you blame them? House Republicans were shocked by some of the recent high-profile retirements announced by their colleagues, which have included powerful committee chairs and rising stars inside the GOP. But given the miserable state of affairs inside the House right now, they also weren’t exactly surprised. “They’ve signed up to do serious things. And we’re not doing serious things,” said Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a conservative who is retiring after bucking his party on several key issues. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate who represents a key swing seat, pointed to his party’s struggle to govern as driving the departures. “When you’re divided in your own conference, the joy of the job is harder,” Bacon told CNN. “When you have folks on your own team with their knives out, it makes it less enjoyable.” And Rep.
Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 09:16

The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract. When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his […]

The post Exclusive: ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Exclusive: ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 09:00
So much of the media seems determined to portray the Democrats as big huge losers with a constituency full of apathetic losers and it just ain’t true. Just because they aren’t staging freak show rallies with a bunch of nuts dressed like weirdos doesn’t mean people aren’t voting and voting in droves. The problem with this stuff is that they are setting up Trump to say the election was stolen next November. After all, the media has been saying that Biden is universally loathed because he’s old, that the polls have Trump winning in a landslide and that nobody in the country knows anything about what Biden has done as president because he’s … old. How can trump possibly lose? It’s impossible! This stuff might as well be an in-kind donation to fund his legal challenges in the next election.
Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 07:19

Barry Buzan's Making Global Society: A Study of Humanking Across Three Eras is a big and an ambitious book. In this volume he tells us the story of 50,000 years of humankind by constructing a “world history” (p. xi) with the social structure of humankind as its object of study. In doing so, Buzan has undertaken two main tasks.

The post Global Society needs Global History appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 07:00
That ad should appeal to the remaining normie swing voters but you never know. Still, this Pew Survey from a couple of weeks ago seems relevant: That’s a lot of Republicans who say that the war in Ukraine is important to them. It’s true they don’t care as much about it as Democrats but when 75% of the entire country believes something is in the national interest you would think the Republicans would at least be a teensy bit worried that they’re on the wrong side of this one. There is no sign of that as yet. The younger members of the Senate all walked away from the national security bill and are strutting around like they’re Matt Gaetz, proud as peacocks. And I don’t think I have to say anything about the House. They’re on vacation. I always hesitate to post things by Bill Kristol, particularly on foreign policy, but I’ll do it today because this is a case in which I think there’s common ground between people like me and people like him.
Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 06:10
6 servings You will need5 oz. butter6 chicken breasts, boned (each 4 oz.)6 chicken fillets6 chicken legs without meat, boiled¾ cup flour2 egg, mixed with little milklittle bread crumbs6 white bread slices, crusts trimmedvegetable oil for fryingsaltpepper Garnish:8 tablespoons canned green peas2 medium carrots, sliced and glazed*6 small tomatoes6 lemon slicespickled cucumberlittle watercress *Carrots steamed […]
Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 05:30
Lightning Strikes And Third Parties

Here’s the thing about third parties: sometimes they get elected. In first-past-the-post duopolies it’s uncommon, but it happens.

Recently I wrote that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t work.

Most of the time, neither does voting for third parties. But sometimes it does. The NDP (Canada’s most left wing party) had never formed a government in Alberta, then suddenly in 2015 they defied all the polling and won. For most of the 19th century Britain alternated between Liberals and Conservatives, then suddenly in 1924, Labour won—and this is back when Labour actually was fairly radical. The Liberal still exist (as the Liberal-Democrats), but they haven’t formed a government since.

There come times when people are upset with the status quo and truly want to change it. FDR is one, Reagan is another. In both those cases, the change was channeled thru an existing party.

Created
Tue, 20/02/2024 - 05:30
Marcy Wheeler takes a look at Robert Hur today and it’s very good. She is generally less critical of Merrick Garland than some but in this case she is unsparing. She points out that Garland tends to have a naive belief that all career DOJ employees are apolitical even as in the case of Hur who was appointed by Trump as a US Attorney and was involved in some of the most partisan actions of the Trump Justice Department. He clerked for Rehnquist, fergawdsakes! The details of Hur’s tenure are not well known and they are damning: The problem is, with Hur, Garland should have known better, and not just because Hur was obviously a senior member of Trump’s DOJ. At the end of last week’s Jack podcast (YouTube; Simplecast), Allison Gill and Andrew McCabe discussed the role Hur played in Trump’s DOJ. Gill replayed McCabe’s warnings, a year ago when Hur was appointed, about the former PADAG’s willingness to engage in politics.