It’s a nice idea but really, why bother David Wallace Wells in the NY Times asks us to imagine what would have happened with the dialog around the origins of the pandemic if we could just all get along. It’s true that on a different planet we could imagine such a thing. Unfortunately we live on a planet where the right wing is batshit insane so reasonable dialog is impossible. Steve M makes the point well: But we can’t “imagine that none of this was presented … in partisan or nationalistic terms.” We can’t “imagine that Donald Trump had not been president and that nobody used the term ‘bioweapon'” — or, more memorably, the phrase “China virus,” a name Trump first endorsed on March 11, 2020, when COVID was barely a presence in much of the United States, and then used repeatedly in speeches and on Twitter. Right-wingers poisoned our COVID discourse from the start, the way they poison our discourse on so many other issues.
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Raskin would never call them Banana Republicans Incivility is a reflex among MAGA Republicans, as are gun-toting implicit threats of violence and, as on January 6, the real deal. The GOP’s sneering use of Democrat Party has such a long history that at this point I wince whenever Democrats occasionally refer the the Democrat Party. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) decided to school Republican colleague Lauren Boebert on her use of it. The Associated Press reports that this old Republican shibboleth is “on the rise”: Purposely mispronouncing the formal name of the Democratic Party and equating it with political ideas that are not democratic goes beyond mere incivility, said Vanessa Beasley, an associate professor of communications at Vanderbilt University who studies presidential rhetoric. She said creating short-hand descriptions of people or groups is a way to dehumanize them. Nothing new about that, even if branding the left pedophiles to dehumanize them is. For any young-uns reading this, Lawrence B.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about global heating, where it’s often hard to be optimistic about the future. But there are some bright spots. In particular, there’s a good chance that 2023 will be the year that coal use finally begins a sustained decline, and relatedly the year the carbon dioxide emissions […]
General Paulo Sérgio alegou "falta de condições" para aterrissagem de helicópteros durante crise humanitária dos indígenas em Roraima.
The post Documentos contradizem versão de ministro da Defesa de Bolsonaro para negar apoio aos Yanomami appeared first on The Intercept.
From the “you cannot make this shit up files” Here’s that story: When members of the House Judiciary Committee convened for their first meeting of the year last week, the new Republican majority instituted a change in procedure: Before every hearing, everyone in the room would recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The honor of leading thefirst pledge was given to Corey Beekman, a U.S. Army National Guard combat veteran who traveled to Capitol Hill at the invitation of his congressman, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). “It is my pleasure and distinct honor to introduce to the committee Staff Sergeant Corey Ryan Beekman, an American hero and a constituent of mine residing in Pensacola, Florida,” Gaetz said. He praised Beekman’s 16 years of military service, his Purple Heart award, and his position on the board of a local gun club. For Gaetz, who was seeking to spearhead the GOP’s show of patriotism and invite a fight with Democrats, Beekman was a picture-perfect symbol. There was just one thing that Gaetz didn’t mention in his glowing introduction: Beekman is an accused murderer yet to face his day in court.
The Looking Glass world of Ron DeSantis Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina has a reputation for being a very, very conservative school. But not the most conservative school in town. Rumor had it that a local Bible college forbade its male students from having photos of their mothers in their rooms lest they lead to impure thoughts. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis want to forbid impure thoughts in his state’s schools. Heaven forfend that little ones (and older ones) might have impure thoughts about their country’s exceptionalism and history. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates said at his trial for corrupting youth. DeSantis wants to ensure Florida’s youth go uncorrupted and their lives unexamined. At The Bulwark, Mike St. Thomas who heads the English Department at Rhode Island’s Portsmouth Abbey School, considers what it means to force Florida classrooms to be more conservative, to not to teach AP African American Studies, and to pass such (deliberately?) vague laws that teachers must walk on eggshells around ideas that might lead to thoughts DeSantis deems impure. Himself raised a conservative Catholic, St.
You can understand why these people would believe they can get away with this level of lying. Look at Donald Trump? He has lied about virtually everything in his life and he’s beloved by most of the Republican party. Freshman Republican Rep. Andy Ogles (TN) says he’s a trained economist, but in reality, he only took one community college course on the subject—and he got a C, a transcript obtained by NewsChannel 5 in Nashville revealed. Ogles’ congressional bio says he graduated from Middle Tennessee State University, “where he studied policy and economics.” However, a resume he used in 2009 said he got a degree in international relations, with no mention of economics. But both claims were false, according to the transcript, which Ogles had tried to keep sealed. Ogles actually majored in liberal studies. The congressman also enrolled in classes titled U.S. Presidency, Problems in Government, Political Theory and National Security Policy—failing all of them twice, once in 1995 and again in 1998. It took Ogles 17 years to attain his degree, graduating in 2007 with a 2.4 GPA, NewsChannel 5 reported.
You knew they would I have been convinced for some time that one of the main motivations for the obsession with Hunter Biden is to get Joe Biden to break down in public. I think of it as the “Muskie gambit” which you old duffers will recall was the Nixon dirty trick that made Democratic frontrunner Edmund Muskie cry over a false allegation against his wife in 1972. I think Joe Biden is pretty inured to the stuff about Hunter. But I’m sure they figure that this might work if they go after Biden’s dead son: Comer makes Dan “watermelon” Burton look like an amateur.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product, December 2022 – today (March 1, 2023), which shows that the Australian economy grew by 0.5 per cent in the December-quarter 2022 and by 2.7 per cent over the 12 months. This is a significant decline in growth,…
It is over ten years since I allowed a guest post on this blog. This is because I never listen to anybody except myself. That way I avoid hearing anything disagreeable. (Those last two sentences are a joke, deliberately in the style of Jane Austen. Of course it ruins the joke to explain it, but […]
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