The Washington Post has a long piece about a Virginia family whose current (substantial but not huge) wealth derives from their slaveholding forebears and who may now be greatly enriched by the discovery of uranium under their land. There’s an interesting discussion of the arguments for and against reparations Buried in the middle of the […]
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That’s the headline for my latest piece in Inside Story, a review of Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia and Sebastian Edwards The Chile Project . Some extracts The Chile Project, of which Edwards was a generally sympathetic observer, ranks with Thatcher’s Britain as the paradigmatic case of what I’ve called “hard neoliberalism,” which combines authoritarianism […]
A decade ago, when the issue of Republican anti-science bias was raised, a common response was to point to attitudes to vaccination, where, it was claimed, Democrats were the anti-science party. I observed at the time that this claim wasn’t justified by the available evidence. A little later, I noted the likelihood of the Republicans […]
There is no excuse for this The only reason they could be this inept is if they are looking for reasons to deny disability benefits to people who need them. (And yes, I’m sure there are people who have abused the system, but that doesn’t make this ok.) He had made it through four years of denials and appeals, and Robert Heard was finally before a Social Security judge who would decide whether he qualified for disability benefits. Two debilitating strokes had left the 47-year-old electrician with halting speech, an enlarged heart and violent tremors. There was just one final step: A vocational expert hired by the Social Security Administration had to tell the judge if there was any work Heard could still do despite his condition. Heard was stunned as the expert canvassedhis computer and announced his findings: He could find work as a nut sorter, a dowel inspector or an egg processor —jobs that virtually no longer exist in the United States. “Whatever it is that does those things, machines do it now,” said Heard, who lives on food stamps and a small stipend from his parents in a subsidized apartment in Tullahoma, Tenn.
COVID is still here. How to figure out what makes sense. I know that most people are just done with COVID and are living their lives, accepting that they may get it the way they accept getting colds and flu. But those who are older or have underlying illnesses or live with people who fit those categories need to be a little bit more analytical about this because COVID is still super contagious and the threat of serious illness and the residual effects of it loom large. I would feel terrible if I thought I gave it to someone. When there is a surge, I mask up in public spaces. Since I live in Southern California I have the good fortune to be able to go to restaurants and bars and stay mostly outside or in well ventilated places. (And I will never get on an airplane unmasked again — I always caught something before and now I am well when I travel. Yippie!) Anyway, here is UC San Francisco’s Dr. Bob Wachter’s latest tweet thread about how to mitigate your risk which I have often found very informative: Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 1013 As we enter Covid Year 3, it’s clear we’ll be in our current predicament for the foreseeable future.
But their quarry may not be dead It looks like the GOP race for the presidential nomination is on. Trump is probably fine with a bigger crowd since it may work for him in the long run. With winner-take-all primaries, if he does end up politically crippled by all his baggage, he could slip under the wire with his solid 30% of the GOP base. (He didn’t start winning majorities until the very end of the process in 2016.) The Washington Post reports: Potential contenders are well into laying groundwork for campaigns, as more than a dozen have signaled interest or have declined to rule out a run amid speculation. Yet it’s unclear how many will actually take the plunge. A crowded field could play to Trump’s advantage, as it did in 2016 when the rest of the party did not unite around a single alternative as Trump won key early contests with a plurality of the vote. “We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” said Pompeo in a recent Fox News interview. Pompeo’s political action committee did not respond to a request for comment. Nikki Haley, the U.N.
Go ahead, make our day The parallels between Prime Video’s “Jack Ryan” Season 3 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are simply eerie, says actor and producer John Krasinski. “But even having to explain that we wrote and shot the show before the conflict even happened seems like an alternate reality.” The Ukrainian government’s cocky messaging crew, however, is not above drawing purposeful parallels between its fight against Vladimir Putin’s invaders and a popular David-versus-Goliath tale from Hollywood. Enjoy, MFers. Here’s another.
Wasted days and wasted lives “This is a foreign language unto itself,” tweeted author Tom Zoellner. He responds to an “I quit” rant by a follower of QAnon. Except QAnon is just an add-on here. The woman is not leaving the QAnon cult. She is just so pissed at “Q” that she’s decided to go culting by herself. Q, it seems, is an ancient alien affiliated with alien “orbs.” So, the New Age is not as old-hat as I believed. It may have largely dropped out of sight where I live (once nicknamed “the Sedona of the South”), but has not died out. The rant below is confirmation. I don’t speak the language, but some of it is familiar. She’s taking down “the ET transmissions” in retaliation for Q’s failure to acknowledge her six years of “disclosure” and for failing to stop the “pandemic of child trafficking.” “During the sinking of Atlantis, the Archons took over,” she says, “and that’s how long it’s taken you to get back here and do anything at all.” Atlantis, Archons, alchemy, aliens, angels.
They finally overturned Roe 2022 marks the year that they finally got the Supremes to overturn Roe vs. Wade. I’ve been following this issue from the very first days of writing this blog. It’s been a depressing trajectory. On the 10th anniversary of this blog, I wrote the following: My advocacy for a woman’s right to abortion predates this blog by decades. It’s a fundamental struggle for half the population and I’ve very much appreciated the attention and support of my readers over these last 10 years of writing about it. In this last election rape unexpectedly became a campaign issue. Oddly enough the concept of “legitimate rape” was something I’d written about some years ago when South Dakota tried to pass a ban on abortion without an exception for rape or incest (pending reversal of Roe vs Wade, of course.) This was, at the time, an unusual position. It’s much more mainstream in the pro-life community today.
It’s so hard to choose! It’s fair to say that the Republican Party of 2022 is a much broader coalition than it used to be. Once upon a time it was defined as the party of Main Street and the country club: white middle-class and upper-middle-class guys in gray flannel suits. But in recent years they’ve opened the doors and invited in a whole bunch of other Americans who don’t fit that mold. Starting in the 1960s they willingly veered into overt racism mantle and with their embrace of the Christian right in the ’80s, all the anti-gay, anti abortion flock began to move their way as well. The new Trump majority within the party captured a chunk of the previously nonvoting public that believes in fringe conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies and worships at the altar of vapid TV celebrity. That said, the Republican coalition still isn’t very diverse. It’s nearly all white, of course, with only a tiny fraction of racial and ethnic minorities. It’s almost all Christian and most are non-college-educated and rural.