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Remember when dandruff was the kiss of death? Robin DiAngelo’s 2018 “White Fragility” has plenty of critics. Here and here, for example. John McWhorter writes that her diversity training approach is not only misguided but “deeply condescending to all proud Black people.” But while academics debate sociological theory, aren’t ad men selling millions in products designed around the notion that men’s sense of self is deeply fragile? Seeing another of those ubiquitous Nugenix Total T ads brings home just how deep (strong? powerful? vigorous? potent?) the insecurity market is. Weapons makers sell guns based on it. Nazis sell white supremacy based on it. Mass shooters base their manifestos on it. Fox News built its business model around it. Without “great replacement theory,” drag queens, and sexy M&Ms to get mens’ fee-fees in a knot, what has Tucker Carlson to talk about? In more innocent, mid-century times, it was fears about bad breath, BO, and dandruff that sold mouthwash, deoderant, and shampoo to men worried about not getting laid.
Pompeo has done some very lowdown things in his ignominious career, but this takes the cake. The WaPo editorial board: Mr. Khashoggi was suffocated and dismembered with a bone saw inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. The 15 killers included seven members of the elite personal protective detail of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, who, according to the U.S. intelligence community, “approved an operation” to “capture or kill” Khashoggi. His body has never been found. Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist since 2017, was killed in Istanbul at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in 2018. According to a U.S. intelligence assessment, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill him.
Musk afirmou que o problemático piloto automático seria ‘a diferença entre a Tesla valer muito dinheiro ou basicamente zero’.
The post Exclusivo: Vídeo mostra acidente de carro da Tesla horas após Elon Musk anunciar ‘piloto automático’ appeared first on The Intercept.
Trade masks for body armor? First news out of California this morning was a magnitude 4.2 earthquake rumbling off the coast about 10 miles south of Malibu Beach: The fire department “completed a strategic 470 square-mile survey of the City of Los Angeles following the 4.2M earthquake near Malibu. No damage or injuries were reported and normal operational mode has resumed,” it said. Relax, Southern California. Just another earthquake. Not another mass shooting. The latter will be along presently. You know, “normal operational mode.” CNN reported on the epidemic mass shootings already this year: The scenes of agony and horror are increasingly all too familiar in America. In fact, 39 mass shootings have taken place across the country in just the first three weeks of 2023, per the Gun Violence Archive. Communities from Goshen, California, to Baltimore, Maryland, are reeling while others brace for the possibility of such violence in their own backyards.
After spending the Trump administration cutting taxes for the wealthy and massively raising military spending, congressional Republicans are back to caterwauling about deficits. This was as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning. When Republicans are in power they give away the store and then when the Democrats are called in to clean up their mess, Republicans immediately rant and rave about government spending and the debt. This has been going on for decades and it would have been short-sighted to expect anything different from them this time. Naturally, they’re putting the safety net programs on the chopping block. The Washington Post reports: In recent days, a group of GOP lawmakers has called for the creation of special panels that might recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which face genuine solvency issues that could result in benefit cuts within the next decade. Others in the party have resurfaced more detailed plans to cut costs, including by raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, targeting younger Americans who have yet to obtain federal benefits.
The Good Law Project and MPs have fired off a complaint to the Charity Commission alleging major rule breaches by the Global Warming Policy Foundation
And they’re even more fatuous than usual Charlie Sykes takes it on: In today’s edition of Unfathomable Mysteries: Andrew Sullivan ponders the question: Why is the right losing the young? And what can it do to win them back? It’s worth reading because he gets so much right… and so much very wrong. In the end, Sullivan’s analysis is extraordinarily revealing, but not, perhaps, for the reasons he intends. The problem itself is pretty obvious, as young voters have increasingly been moving away from the GOP, and played a major role in breaking the Red Wave in the midterms. The problem with young women is especially dire, with one exit poll suggesting that “72 percent of women ages 18-29 voted for Democrats in House races nationwide. In a pivotal Pennsylvania Senate race, 77 percent of young women voted for embattled Democrat John Fetterman, helping to secure his victory.” What’s happening here? “It’s dawning on many on the political center and right that the current younger generation in America is not like previous younger generations,” Sullivan wrote last week.
You knew they would be, right? The WaPo reports: House Republicans have started to weigh a series of legislative proposals targeting Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, part of a broader campaign to slash federal spending that could force the new majority to grapple with some of the most difficult and delicate issues in American politics. Only weeks after taking control of the chamber, GOP lawmakers under new Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have rallied around firm pledges for austerity, insisting their efforts can improve the nation’s fiscal health. They have signaled they are willing to leverage the fight over the debt ceiling — and the threat of a fiscal doomsday — to seek major policy concessions from the Biden administration. So far, the party has focused its attention on slimming down federal health care, education, science and labor programs, perhaps by billions of dollars. But some Republicans also have pitched a deeper examination of entitlements, which account for much of the government’s annual spending — and reflect some of the greatest looming fiscal challenges facing the United States.
Paul Krugman on where we stand From his newsletter today (subscription only) The U.S. federal government last ran a budget surplus in the fiscal year 2001. (Fiscal years begin in October of the previous calendar year. Don’t ask.) Since then, the government has borrowed roughly $20 trillion. That’s a large number, even for an economy as big as America’s: Federal debt held by the public has roughly tripled as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 32 percent to 94 percent. I argued in my last column that, despite all this borrowing, we are not in any kind of debt crisis. Historically, in fact, U.S. debt isn’t all that unusual. For example, over the past three centuries Britain emerged from each major war with debt as a percentage of G.D.P. well above the current U.S. level, and took many decades to bring that debt ratio back down:Britain has borrowed a lot over the years. Still, the political history of America’s 21st-century deficits isn’t edifying. George W. Bush squandered that 2001 surplus he inherited largely on tax cuts that favored the wealthy and the invasion of Iraq, both sold to the public on false pretenses.