“A man hears what he wants to hear….” Judd Legum wonders why President Joe Biden gets no credit for what on paper is a good economy: 1. The unemployment rate is 3.5% The U.S. has added an average of 312K jobs every month for the last year GDP growth has been 2.0% or higher for a year Inflation is down to 3.2% If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible? 2. But an August survey by Quinnipiac University found that 71% of Americans describe the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Just 3% say the economy is excellent. What explains this discrepancy? If the U.S. economy is doing well, why do so many Americans say it’s terrible?The leading economic indicators show the U.S. economy is performing well, but most Americans still believe economic conditions are extremely poor — as if the country was mired in a deep recession. Wha…https://popular.info/p/if-the-us-economy-is-doing-well-why 3. One factor is partisanship. More people today will rate the economy as poor if they don’t like the person in the White House, regardless of economic conditions.
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Isn’t it the mark of a successful theory of a range of phenomena that it unites and embraces the causally relevant parameters and state variables within a single theoretical perspective? This question suggests that if our theories are successful, then they should produce descriptions of systems according to which the systems are interactionally simple. I […]
A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid. Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this... Read more
Source: Living on a War Planet appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
James Bedford Forrest Crow III Well, you can’t accuse Tennessee Republicans of not being transparent about their contempt for democracy (The Tennessean): The House Democratic caucus on Monday walked off the floor of the lower chamber to protest a disciplinary vote against Rep. Justin Jones, sparking a scene remarkably similar to legislative protests earlier this year in which the freshman Democrat was expelled from the General Assembly. Lawmakers voted 70-20 to discipline Jones, D-Nashville, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton, R-Crossville, twice ruled Jones out of order during the House floor session Monday afternoon for what Sexton saw as Jones speaking off topic on the bills at hand. The disciplinary vote meant Jones was silenced for the remainder of the floor session, though he could cast votes. A second vote during this special session could lead to a three-day silencing. The Democratic caucus left the floor en masse in what they said was solidarity and frustration with unfair application of House rules. It’s not as if Jones, a freshman since April, is trying to maintain a low profile.
Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson privately backed the same road-pricing schemes the Conservatives are now attacking the London mayor over.
What’s that, Mikey? A piece of playground mulch? Nice. Let’s put that in our bucket, okay?
Oh, and who’s this? Hey there. Mikey, it looks like he has a piece of mulch for your bucket too. Can you let him drop it in? Very nice. Oh, and now you both want to keep collecting pieces of mulch, meaning I’ll get to keep standing next to this other adult, who I assume is your new friend’s dad, for the next few minutes and make awkward small talk with him instead of finishing my Counting Crows podcast? Terrific.
So, uh, hi. Yeah, I’m Mikey’s dad. I mean, I have a first name, but that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you need to know right now. I guess we don’t really have to talk at all while our toddlers collect mulch together, but we are going to be physically adjacent to each other for a little while, right? So we might as well break up staring at our kids to make sure they don’t eat the mulch with the occasional comment about how important it is to mostly stare at them to make sure they don’t eat the mulch. That would be fun, or at least polite.
Born into a family of legendary Bedouin musicians, the Palestinian actor, DJ and filmmaker Mo’min Swaitat is also a son of Jenin, the most northerly West Bank city that has faced some of the most brutal Israeli military operations in recent years — including the 2002 invasion, bombing and massacre of a refugee camp during […]
Big questions remain about Russia's attempts to interfere in US elections
The MVC team discusses the 2017 climate change drama.
Elevated funding costs and tightening credit markets point to the need for bankers and bank supervisors to remain vigilant.
The pandemic has revolutionised how an entire generation see work, education and society
A new wave of unionisation in the cultural sector is pushing back against a decade of austerity in the sector
All the Georgia Jail Kids are here.
And they're off! In many ways.
A veteran South African official detailed meeting with an unprepared and “desperate” Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, begging for local help rolling back the popular coup in Niger. The recent BRICS conference might give Nuland even more to fret about. When US Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, traveled to South Africa on July 29, her reputation as a blunt instrument of Washington’s hegemonic interests preceded her. According to a veteran South African official who attended meetings […]
The post Shocked by Niger coup, Victoria Nuland appeared “desperate” during Africa tour first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Shocked by Niger coup, Victoria Nuland appeared “desperate” during Africa tour appeared first on The Grayzone.
The billionaire presidential candidate leveraged dark money connections amid an “anti-woke” crusade to access workers’ retirement savings.
Mark your calendar. That’s the day Trump goes to trial. Donald Trump will go to trial in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 2024, on charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan set the date, contending that the six-month lead-up to trial would be adequate for Trump’s well-resourced attorneys to prepare for trial while acknowledging the public interest in resolving the case expediently. That schedule met an immediate protest from Trump’s attorney John Lauro, who said he doesn’t believe he can effectively defend Trump on a six-month timeline. He and co-counsel Todd Blanche had pushed for an April 2026 trial, a date Chutkan called “far beyond what is necessary.” The trial date raises the likelihood that Trump will spend nearly all of the presidential primary season in a criminal courtroom.
“Ideas in which economists have reposed the greatest confidence have been proved wrong and therewith, not surprisingly, the responding policy. And this has happened under circumstances which admit of no really plausible explanation, rationalization, or alibi—things in which we economists are more than minimally accomplished. There was, to be sure, more than a suspicion of […]
“This trial must be held out in the open, in a parking lot.”