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Enjoy Steve Benen fills in the background: If this subject sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. In October 2019, while campaigning in Iowa, Biden was asked whether he might follow Gerald Ford’s example in pardoning Richard Nixon after Watergate, at a time when the Republican still faced possible prosecution. Biden said he would choose a different course. “It wouldn’t unite the country,” Biden said, adding, “I think President Ford, God love him, he’s a good guy, I knew him pretty well. I think if he had to do it over again, he wouldn’t have done it.” The topic returned to the fore in May 2020, when Biden joined Stacey Abrams for a virtual town hall-style event on MSNBC, and a voter, referencing the Ford/Nixon example, asked Biden whether he’d publicly commit to a more hands-off approach and leave such matters in the hands of prosecutors. “Absolutely, yes,” the future president replied. “I commit.” Of course, in 2019 and 2020, the prospect of Trump being indicted was entirely hypothetical.
Political Economy Seminar
The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance
Presenter: Jamie Martin, Harvard University
Date: Friday 23 June 2023
Time: 11am (Sydney/Australian Eastern Time)
Online: Please join via Zoom
Please join us for a seminar with Jamie Martin, on his book, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, recently published by Harvard University Press.
Martijn Konings will also speak as discussant.
About the talk
International economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank exert incredible influence over the domestic policies of many states. These institutions date from the end of World War II and amassed power during the neoliberal era of the late twentieth century. But as Jamie Martin shows, if we want to understand their deeper origins and the ideas and dynamics that shaped their controversial powers, we must turn back to the explosive political struggles that attended the birth of global economic governance in the early twentieth century.
Buckle up From what I’ve read, the Rules Committee is considered the Speaker’s Committee. It is stacked with members of the speaker’s party and is considered to be a rubber stamp for anything he or she wants to bring to the floor. This is the case regardless of party. So this little mess is unusual: Rep. Chip Roy accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday of cutting a deal that could complicate negotiators’ efforts to pass a bill to raise the US debt ceiling this week. But McCarthy’s allies quickly refuted the Texas Republican, underscoring the tension ahead of a key meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday – and putting new pressure on a conservative holdout, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has yet to take a position on the plan. Roy contended that McCarthy cut a hand-shake deal in January that all nine Republicans on the powerful panel must agree to move any legislation forward, otherwise bills could not be considered by the full House for majority approval.
The fact that Australia is sleepwalking towards a catastrophic war against China has received very welcome and responsible coverage in Pearls and Irritations and other non-mainstream media. The head-in-the-sand stance adopted by much of the mainstream media stands in stark contrast. The most recent example of the latter was a 15-page supplement in The Canberra Continue reading »
The recent Robert Gregory blog in Australian Jewish News demands a response. Gregory introduces his piece with the observation ‘Australia/Israel relations are at a tipping point’. He goes on to draw attention to some important but nevertheless modest decisions by the present Labor government in the first twelve months in office. They at least evidenced Continue reading »
There are two major dimensions to the US/China strategic competition. One is ideology; the other is economics. Who will eventually win depends on who has a better combination of the two; discounting a war in which all will lose. There is a Chinese saying that a tree without deep roots easily falls over. Both the Continue reading »
Obviously if the Hon. Peter Dutton were to change his mind and offer bipartisan support for the “Voice” Referendum, its prospects would be immensely improved. The history of successful referendums tells us this. The current conflicted public discourse tells us that if both leaders were from now on, seen together, warmly and thoughtfully supporting the Continue reading »
The aged care payment system currently requires providers wishing to make a profit to do so by skimping on care and services. A new payment structure is needed to reverse the incentives, and link higher profits to better care. In several recent articles in The Guardian Henry Belot has highlighted the alleged practice of the Continue reading »
On 8 May, Four Corners (Artificial Intelligence Rising: the new reality of artificial life), portrayed an isolated man’s relationship to a robotic woman and a sex doll, and in another scenario, artificial memories were generated for family members to communicate with the long dead – weird stuff. AI is not new to the work of Continue reading »
The arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan on May 9th sent shockwaves throughout Pakistan, igniting widespread and violent protests across the nation. The unprecedented backlash against the military establishment unfolded in a series of alarming images that flooded the internet. Imran’s supporters from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party stormed the General Headquarters, wreaking havoc Continue reading »
When most people in the English-speaking world hear the word “propaganda”, they tend to think of something that’s done by foreign nations who have governments that are so totalitarian they won’t even let people know what’s true or think for themselves. Others understand that propaganda is something that happens in their own nation, but think Continue reading »
The polls are all going in the wrong direction for DeSantis: Nearly half (45%) of Republican voters – including those who lean toward the GOP – say Trump is definitely the strongest candidate to beat President Joe Biden in 2024, and another 18% think he is probably the strongest candidate. Just one-third of GOP voters say another Republican would definitely (13%) or probably (19%) be a stronger candidate than Trump. Among voters who name Trump as their top-of-mind preference for the GOP presidential nomination, 74% say he is definitely the strongest candidate the party can put up against Biden and 21% say he probably is. Among those who express support for another candidate or have no choice at this stage, nearly 4 in 10 still feel Trump is either definitely (23%) or probably (16%) the strongest nominee the GOP can field. Only 22% of this group says the strongest Republican contender would definitely be someone other than Trump and 33% say it would probably be another candidate.
Your dog takes a highly individualized approach to your care. Instead of saying your Vitamin D is low and suggesting you get more sun, your dog takes you on three walks a day. If you have insomnia, they’ll lay on your stomach and stare into your soul until you fall asleep every night for the next fifteen years. If you’re anemic, they’ll murder a squirrel and leave it under your pillow. Would Dr. Moskowitz do that? Didn’t think so.
Forget long wait times and running between offices to see specialists. Your dog only makes house calls. And they are available 24-7. If you have a high fever in the middle of the night, your dog will check your vitals every thirty minutes from the most scientifically advanced medical facility: under the couch.
Ask your doctor if they want to go to the park with you, and they’ll up your antidepressants and refer you to a therapist. Ask your dog, and they’ll spin around in circles and run to the door, no questions asked.
Big Finish's 60th-anniversary event Doctor Who - Once and Future "A Genius for War" spotlights Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor and Davros.
Looks like Trump misled his lawyer. Again. Trump told Corcoran not to look in his office: Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property. The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited. Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room. He then asked whether he should search anywhere else but was steered away, he told associates. Corcoran never searched Trump’s office and told prosecutors that the 38 papers were the extent of the material at Mar-a-Lago.
Human Rights activist Miko Peled on the theft of priceless archaeological treasures from Gaza, which he argues is part of a larger Israeli campaign of genocide and erasure.
The post The Cultural Looting of Gaza appeared first on MintPress News.
Wisconsin Democrats shifted their strategy The Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin is where Whigs, Free Soilers and Democrats met in 1854 to form the anti-slavery Republican Party. After its recent relocation, it’s been delisted by the National Register of Historic Places. Politico’s David Siders reports that it “now sits across from a vape shop, near a car dealership, a Culver’s restaurant and a sewage treatment plant.” Hope this next makes you laugh out loud too. In the wake of his party’s faltering in the spring elections, Timothy Bachleitner, chair of the Fond du Lac County, Wisc. GOP commented, “It kind of looks like a circus show now,” he said.
Data and content is being weaponised to criminalise people without cause. The police and criminal justice authorities are increasing using tech, data and AI to identify people who they believe are at ‘risk’ of committing crimes. These flawed tactics, which include the Met’s gang matrix, the data mining of social media and the Prevent programme, […]