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You have to watch whole thing. He is the dumbest man to ever obtain the presidency. He’s basically saying that Lincoln wanted to be famous and so he refused to negotiate and started the war. The entire comment is so incredibly ignorant, shallow and basically infantile it’s stunning: Any “negotiation” he would have entered into would have ended up allowing slavery to expand to the entire country. That’s how good he is. He cannot learn. This isn’t the first time he’s made an ass out of himself with this issue. Here he is from 2017: “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Examiner, according to a transcript released Monday. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” Trump ruminated after lauding Jackson, the populist president whom he and his staff have cited as a role model. He suggested that if Jackson had been president “you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.
If I adopted MSNBC’s policies against showing Trump or his followers spreading lies, I wouldn’t post that. I have more respect for my audience. I think you’re all smart enough to be able to understand why I do it. These videos are an example of how cultists think and how some of them can possibly come to understand how illogical their thought processes are: “People do not deploy the powerful human intellect to dispassionately analyze the world,” William J. Bernstein writes, in “The Delusions of Crowds” (Atlantic Monthly). Instead, they “rationalize how the facts conform to their emotionally derived preconceptions.” Bernstein’s book, a survey of financial and religious manias, is inspired by Charles Mackay’s 1841 work, “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” Mackay saw crowd dynamics as central to phenomena as disparate as the South Sea Bubble, the Crusades, witch hunts, and alchemy.
Just a little reminder: Most Republican officials know that he’s lying. The election was not stolen. They knew it then and they know it now. They are fine with this because they believe it benefits them.
Maybe they could take a stand as to what reality really is in that headline? And maybe they could be just a little bit more assertive about it in the piece as well? Rarely in American politics has a leading presidential candidate made such grave accusations about a rival: warning that he is willing to violate the Constitution. Claiming that he is eager to persecute political rivals. Calling him a dire threat to democracy. Those arguments have come from President Biden’s speeches, including his forceful address on Friday, as he hammers away at his predecessor. But they are also now being brazenly wielded by Donald J. Trump, the only president to try to overthrow an American election. Three years after the former president’s supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump and his campaign are engaged in an audacious attempt to paint Mr. Biden as the true menace to the nation’s foundational underpinnings. Mr. Trump’s strategy aims to upend a world in which he has publicly called for suspending the Constitution, vowed to turn political opponents into legal targets and suggested that the nation’s top military general should be executed.
The whole world watched in disbelief. And Trump did nothing.” Here are the first words of Biden’s speech yesterday: Today, the topic of my speech today is deadly serious and I think it needs to be made at the outset of this campaign. In the winter of 1777, it was harsh and cold as the Continental Army marched to Valley Forge. General George Washington knew he faced the most daunting of tasks, to fight and win a war against the most powerful empire in existence in the world at the time. His mission was clear: liberty, not conquest. Freedom. Not domination. National independence. Not individual glory. America made a vow: Never again would we bow down to a king. Months ahead would be incredibly difficult. But General Washington knew something in his bones. Something about the spirit of the troops he was leading. Something, something about the soul of the nation he was struggling to be born. In his general order, he predicted, and I quote, with one heart and one mind, with fortitude and with patience, they would overcome every difficulty, the troops he was leading. And they did. They did. This army that lacked blankets and food, clothes and shoes.
Biden almost got medieval on his presumptive rival
Reporting a climate of hope and despair for the environment in 2023, Peter Sainsbury has brought us a raft of issues impacting our environment in his weekly report. We share a selection here to round off 2023. Environment: Life scientists endorse civil disobedience Environment: Rapidly closing window of opportunity to achieve a safe, sustainable future Continue reading »
In Australia, despite the relentless misery conveyed in daily media, we have so much beauty to appreciate, and so much freedom to create more beauty. Our meditation group has a theme this year, focused on beauty. Appreciating and creating beauty is a wonderful theme, yes? At first glance, it seems quite counter-cultural, given the relentless Continue reading »
Where fear of China is involved there is no conscience for the mistakes of the past. Nor can we expect any sensibility in the plans for the future. As we move into the new year, two foreign policy mistakes need to be corrected. First is the idea that Israel needs to be made aware of Continue reading »
What was the advice to Government from officials about the reliability of intelligence on the war? An additional release of Government records on the Iraq War should extend beyond those of Cabinet’s National Security Committee (NSC) of 2003 and be coordinated by Government. The release of NSC records should extend back to the years before Continue reading »
Like so many Australians, I am very worried by our commitment to AUKUS. I agree strongly with many other critics that we have been placed in peril by our government’s submarine agreement with the US and the UK. As John Menadue wrote on 1st April “The AUKUS alliance has forever changed Australia’s sovereignty. Foreign policy Continue reading »
I am currently reading a book by Jeffrey Sachs whose articles often grace these pages. I am struck by the wealth of his experience having advised governments over many years, and his ability to take a long view of world events, in particular the deterioration in the United States position in the world since the Continue reading »
TAFE’s “Competency Based Training” sounds logical but dig a little and its roots are exposed. CBT has its origins in the post WW2 era of the “Scientific Management” of workers and production lines. In this world, products, processes and people are all standardised, the better for a hierarchy of management control. Apprentices commencing their studies Continue reading »
Projections on Australia’s future are bleak if it maintains it’s hostility to China and cloying dependence on America, particularly when coupled with a corrupt and incompetent LNP government. Tell me, where do you think Australia will be in one, five and twenty years time? Let me speculate. One year from now Covid-19 will still be Continue reading »
The difference between “Asia-Pacific” and “Indo-Pacific” is not just geographical. These are entirely different notions with entirely different economic and geopolitical implications. In 2023, President Xi Jinping was in the United States for a meeting with President Joe Biden and for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ meeting in San Francisco. It has been quite a Continue reading »
“Coming for you Pelosi, you socialist c**t!” “We know where you live!” “Antifa’s a bunch of p*ssies!” “If we’re got to hang a bunch of crooked congressmen, we’ll do that, okay?” That’s just a small sample of the patriotic rhetoric heard from these patriots that day. Watch the whole Youtube if you have the stomach for it. It’s about 8 minutes. It’s so easy to forget just how violent these feral criminals were that day. And by the way, Roy Nehls, the congressman attempting to talk to the protesters, wrote this before he voted against certifying the election: Here he is today: Nehls announced Tuesday that he will be serving as a witness for Trump’s defense in the 14th Amendment case that argues the former president should be barred from running for office under the Constitution’s disqualification clause.
We’re just a few weeks away from the 25th anniversary of the Kosovo War, which started in March 1999. So, I’d like to do a retrospective on the war’s causes. This is a long story! It’s going to take at least three posts, and they won’t be short. I think it’s interesting, but it may […]
My problem with Michel Foucault, then, is not that he seeks to “move beyond” the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment. His objective was not to move towards “socialism,” but to be […]
Stop pretending he’s wearing clothes! Friday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case from Colorado that declared Donald J. Trump, Insurrectionist, ineligible to appear on that state’s 2024 primary ballot. And oh, the humanity! The 14th Amendment, the Civil War, Maine, Colorado, a divided nation, MAGA death threats against lawmakers and judges, etc. Plus the kettles of limp-spaghetti arguments desperate Trump’s attorneys have thrown at courtroom walls hoping something, anything, will stick and save their client’s ass. And then there’s the tarnished Roberts court itself (Washington Post): The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite — and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views. “It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court.
With the Doctor Who Christmas Special drawing huge numbers and David Tennant hosting the 2024 BAFTA Awards, the show continues to rule TV.
Plus, a Texas Court throws out a billionaire-backed free speech case, bank tellers organize their industry, and EVs get more accessible.