This piece by Jenny Boylan is a super important read if you want to understand what transgenderism really is all about. I would imagine that most who read this site believe that all people should have the right to live their lives as they choose and support the rights of transgender people to live freely in our society. This goes much deeper: There they are, in their Chevrolet Colorado, five dudes bouncing up and down as the truck grinds through the rugged American high country. Two guys up front, three in the back. Shania Twain is blasting. The fellow in the middle is singing along. “Oh, I want to be free, yeah, to feel the way I feel. Man, I feel like a woman!” The other guys look deeply worried. But the person in the back just keeps happily singing away, even as the dude next to him moves his leg away. Just to be on the safe side. This commercial aired back in 2004, and even now it’s not clear to me if it’s offensive or empowering, hilarious or infuriating. Twain says she wrote “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” after working at a resort where some drag queens were performing. “That song started with the title,” she said.
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That’s the most popular show on Fox News. They were beating Tucker before he was fired. Gutfield is very popular too. Just thought I’d share that with you. Have a nice evening.
It’s been on the GOP’s chopping block for decades E.J. Dionne notes this morning, as I did, how President Joe Biden’s 2024 launch video leads with the word “Freedom.” Biden deployed it six times in all. He means to reclaim that brand from the faux patriots. “Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency,” the ad declares. Before continuing, Dionne asks readers to hold their skepticism until he’s fleshed out what that means. Franklin D. Roosevelt made “four freedoms” the centerpiece of one his most important speeches: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. Since then, Democrats have ceded freedom to conservatives, preferring in Dionne’s telling, “to talk about justice, equality, democracy, fairness or community.” “The chance to live a life of your choosing, in keeping with your values: that is freedom in its richest sense,” Pete Buttigieg declared during his 2020 run for the presidency.
The more they warn, the less we’ll listen Technology has a momentum all its own. It has a tendency to take us places before we consider whether they are places we need to or ought to go, I wrote here in 2014. Following up on Danielle Allen’s warnings about artificial general intelligence, A.I. pioneer Dr. Geoffrey Hinton gets space in the New York Times to express his concerns: Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work. Hinton, “the Godfather of A.I.,” worries what his creation may do when loosed “into the wild,” as the Times’ Cade Metz puts it.
Democrats have learned they cannot appease terrorist Republicans If you think that old dogs can’t learn new tricks you need to take a look at Joe Biden. Back in 2011, during the first serious Republican debt ceiling hostage crisis and the protracted negotiations that followed, Biden undercut Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and wrecked a deal he had made for a terrible one. There was a lot of hand-wringing at the time over Biden’s tendency to give away the store so when the Republicans pulled their hostage maneuver again in 2013, Reid stipulated that Biden needed to stay out of the negotiations — and the White House agreed. The Obama administration, including Biden, had learned their lesson: Negotiating with the extremist GOP on the debt ceiling is a very bad idea. They refused and the Republicans capitulated, sparing the country and the world economy another jolt. The days of dreaming about a “Grand Bargain” were blessedly over. You may have noticed that we never had one of these fights during the Trump years when the deficit was growing at a very fast pace.
In my previous post “It’s not a Deficit, it’s a Fiat” (which, like this post, is open access on Patreon and Substack), I showed that the so-called “Deficit” is actually government creation of “Fiat” money. If you haven’t read that post yet, read it now and come back to this one later. In that post, … Continue reading "It’s not a debt, it’s a gift"
The Indutrial Revolution and globalization were child’s play Danielle Allen was still at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 2008 when she raised red flags about anonymous viral emails attacking then-presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. “I started thinking, ‘How does one stop it?’ ” Allen told the Washington Post: Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained valuable insight into the way political information circulates, mutates and sometimes devastates in the digital age. Now at Harvard, Allen is still warning about digital mayhem. Only now, her concern extends to “generative artificial intelligence, a tool that will help bad actors further accelerate the spread of misinformation.” She’s signed onto an open letter with technologists, academics, and others calling for a six-month pause in “the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” Email spam was bad enough.
You’re not surprised Pointy-headed intellectuals in their ivory towers oppose Uhmurica! These librul college professors oppose mandating even one course in U.S. history for graduating from the UNC system, alleges Fox’s Pete Hegseth. Never mind that a high school course in United States history is a prerequisite for admission to the system’s colleges. “They think learning about America is, and this is their words, ‘indoctrination’, ” Hegseth tells viewers his network indoctrinates 24-7-365. I’m having trouble even finding indoctrination among “their words.” You’re not surprised, I know. And even less surprised that Fox does not find room for a link to the actual letter in its four-paragraph story. The actual letter is here: We, the undersigned UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, are alarmed by the interference and overreach of the North Carolina legislature, the UNC System Board of Governors, and the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees whose actions violate the principles of academic freedom and shared governance that undergird higher education in N.C. and the U.S.
This is what we’ve come to in the era of Donald Trump. It’s not just that his criminal behavior is overlooked by his idiotic followers. It’s a plus: During E. Jean Carroll’s first day on the witness stand, her lawyer asked what had brought her to a federal courtroom in Manhattan. “I am here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Ms. Carroll replied. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I am here to try to get my life back.” A day later, Mr. Trump, who has denied the attack and called Ms. Carroll a liar, campaigned in New Hampshire, joking to a crowd about his changing nicknames for Hillary Clinton and President Biden. He did not mention Ms. Carroll’s testimony, or the civil trial going on 250 miles away. But he remarked cheerfully on a poll released that day, which showed him far and away leading the 2024 Republican primary field. Since Mr.
Here’s a good analysis of the DeSantis flop (so far) from Harry Enten: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent the past few months running to the right ahead of his expected entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign. From signing into law a six-week abortion ban to fighting with Disney, the governor has focused on satisfying his party’s conservative base. So far at least, those efforts have not paid off in Republican primary polling, with DeSantis falling further behind the current front-runner, former President Donald Trump. Things have gotten so bad for DeSantis that a recent Fox News poll shows him at 21% – comparable with the 19% that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed debunked conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, is receiving on the Democratic side. DeSantis was at 28% in Fox’s February poll, 15 points behind Trump. The Florida governor’s support has dropped in the two Fox polls published since, and he now trails the former president by 32 points. Early polling problems The Fox poll is not alone in showing DeSantis floundering.