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Sun, 11/06/2023 - 00:30
What kind of a country do we want? Fox News and guests threw a blizzard of chaff into the air last night to reassure MAGAstan that the 37-count Trump felony indictment was a malicious hit job by the left against the patron saint of kitch. After a few glances, I needed a palate cleanser. John Pavlovitz regularly reposts some of his sermonettes. One from April he posted last night, “The Conservative War on Everything,” outlines how the conservative project “is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people.” Their view is as bleak and cold as Trump’s “American carnage.” Their oversized displays of “patriotism” smack of flop-sweat desperation. “In this environment,” Pavlovitz wrote, “the human heart become unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks.” The result is a withered soul. Millions of them. Another post he wrote just days ago, “Woke Will Win,” indirectly lays out the choice America faces: fear or hope.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 23:55
Zlatan i all ära, men för mig kommer alltid den här grabben att vara nummer ett.Bosse Larsson spelade 16 säsonger i MFF. Han vann sex SM-guld och toppade skytteligan vid tre tillfällen. 1965 gjorde han 28 mål på 22 matcher. Denne legendar är — precis som yours truly — uppvuxen på Rosendalsvägen på Backarna i Malmö […]
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 23:00
Disinformation, slippery slopes and whataboutism The Department of Justice released the indictments in the Trump documents case Friday afternoon and it was much worse (and far more detailed) than many commentators anticipated. It included 37 felony counts in all against Trump for national security violations and obstruction of justice. The bathroom photo (above) became instantly iconic. Pages 28-33 of the indictment reveal that documents found at Mar-a-Lago contained national defense, foreign intelligence, and U.S. nuclear secrets. From the indictment: The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room. Soon after the release, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered a brief statement.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 20:05
A few weeks ago, Daniel Dennett published an alarmist essay (“Creating counterfeit digital people risks destroying our civilization”) in The Atlantic that amplified concerns Yuval Noah Harari expressed in the Economist.+ (If you are in a rush, feel free to skip to the next paragraph because what follows are three quasi-sociological remarks.) First, Dennett’s piece is (sociologically) notable because in […]
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 09:30
… found that the companionship with this Lab has not only helped it calm down, but thrive. This is a thing: CHEETAHS AND DOGS WEREN’T ALWAYS friends. And at first glance, the feline-and-canine couple seems an odd pairing—one that turns heads for its cuteness, if not its unconventionality. But the practice of rearing young cheetahs with a canine companion has become a major means of relaxing the notoriously nervous cats at U.S. zoos from New York to San Diego. The relationship didn’t begin there, however. Nor, for that matter, did it start on an African wildlife reserve. Captive cheetahs and dogs first became friends in a small town in Oregon. In 1976, research scientist and conservation biologist Laurie Marker was living in Winston, a town of about 3,000 people. As the curator of a cheetah-breeding program at Wildlife Safari, she found herself hand-rearing a lonely cheetah cub named Khayam. Cheetahs are companionable litter-mates, but Marker had no other cats to put with Khayam. So she decided to try pairing the fastest land mammal on the planet with the animal typically thought of as a human’s best friend.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 08:00
In case you were wondering what the dark corners of MAGA land are talking about, grab a (large) whiskey and read on: In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke Thursday that the former president was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House without permission. “We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.” Trump has been indicted on seven counts following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into classified documents taken by Trump from the White House in 2021.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 07:00
I just read through it quickly and it’s much, much worse than we thought. He had very sensitive documents including war plans and classified info about America’s nuclear arsenal and showed them to people. He kept them in totally insecure locations, including an unlocked bathroom and a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. When they asked for them back he moved them around, rummaged through them and tried to get his lawyer to lie about what was in them. I highly suggest that you read the whole thing if you have time. It’s better than a Nordic Noir. Meanwhile, here’s a first draft analysis from Politico: A federal indictment unsealed Friday charges former President Donald Trump with 37 felony counts stemming from an investigation into the presence of a trove of classified information at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 05:00
This is going to be a circus I’m not surprised that two of Trump’s lawyers quit today. He probably wanted to fire them anyway because they failed him: Two of Donald Trump’s top lawyers abruptly resigned from his defense team on Friday, just hours after news broke that he and a close aide were indicted on charges related to their handling of classified documents. Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who helmed Trump’s Washington, D.C.-based legal team for months and were seen frequently at the federal courthouse, indicated they would no longer represent Trump in matters being investigated and prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, who is probing both the documents matter and efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election. The resignations were shortly followed by an announcement from Trump himself confirming that a close aide, Walt Nauta, had also been indicted by federal prosecutors. Nauta, a Navy veteran, had served as the former president’s personal aide and was a ubiquitous presence during his post White House days.
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 04:57
In 2016, President Obama visited Hiroshima. He was the first US President to do so since the bombing in 1945. He said that he would not be apologising for the dropping of the bomb and would not try and second-guess President Harry Truman’s decision. A repost from May 27, 2016 The widely accepted moral justification Continue reading »
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Sat, 10/06/2023 - 04:56
As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Australia has a hand in emissions several times larger than those we generate here. To avoid climate catastrophe, all greenhouse emissions must be cut, fast. It is time to introduce a test of the impact on the global climate before big new projects are approved. Driving yesterday with Continue reading »