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"Swift’s popularity is being twisted into a threat by a contingent of far-right, Donald Trump-supporting conservatives who have started circulating conspiracy theories about the singer, the Super Bowl, and the 2024 election. — NPR

Taylor Swift wakes up, stretches, and thinks, “How can I destroy America today?” It’s so important to set intentions.

She reaches for her guitar but quickly decides against it. “Not now,” she tells herself. “There are still men out there enjoying their lives because they are not thinking about me. They believe they have found a place on this planet where they are safe from my celebrity. I will find my way into their inner sanctuary. And I will fill that sanctuary with glitter. Everyone knows you can’t get rid of glitter. American men will never know peace.”

I’m listening to some talking heads on TV this morning and realizing for the 2,750,236 times that political conventional wisdom is deadly. I won’t go into details but suffice to say that while many of them are reluctantly admitting that the economy is good they seem to be at pains to explain that Joe Biden is still a great big loser and there’s nothing much to be done about it. Yeah, ok, I exaggerate a bit but it’s not far off. Anyway, this piece by Brian Beutler for his newsletter (which is fantastic, by the way, you should subscribe if you can) was a tonic this morning. If only the talking heads on TV would get the message: Once upon a time (about seven years ago) a Democratic Party critic whose identity would probably surprise you conceded to me that, whatever flaws leading American liberals might embody, Donald Trump is worse—a person, he said, who has “no redeeming qualities.” That description has stuck with me all this time less because of its insight (tens of millions of people already felt the same way) than because of how durable it’s been.

I regard the changes made to the carve-up of GST revenues among the states and territories by the Morrison Government in 2019, with the support of the then Labor Opposition, and continued (indeed extended) by the Albanese Government, as possibly the worst Australian public policy decision of the 21st century thus far. But very few Continue reading »

A principal instrument of U.S. foreign policy is covert regime change, meaning a secret action by the U.S. government to bring down the government of another country. There are strong reasons to believe that U.S. actions led to the removal from power of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022, followed by his arrest Continue reading »

After due consideration of the main criticisms, the Labor Government’s rejigged Stage 3 tax cuts seem to be a good way of responding to the cost of living crisis without adding to the Budget deficit and inflation. The details of Labor’s redesigned Stage 3 tax cuts are now well known. What seems to have received Continue reading »

John Menadue has had a long and distinguished career in both the public and private sectors. These days he’s an active blogger – holding and advocating strong views on a range of issues. In this conversation he discusses Australia in 2016 which he says is a far better place than the one he grew up Continue reading »

The 2020s was once described by former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd as a “decade of living dangerously”. He was talking about the bilateral tensions between the U.S. and China. I would suggest that it’s a dangerous decade in large part because the collective west, led by the neocon political elite in Washington, are experiencing Continue reading »

In Asian media this week: Debate gets serious about North Korea’s intentions. Plus: Another Thai progressive party beaten by the court system; Pakistan’s shameful history of removing PMs; India’s Hindu temple celebration will help government; HK’s security law at sprint stage; Interest surges in Oppenheimer’s devastation Over the past 10 days North Korea has launched Continue reading »

Onshore student visa policy gets relatively little attention as it deals with people who are already in Australia, but it is critical to how the overseas student program operates. The new migration strategy released late last year says the Government will: “restrict onshore visa hopping that undermines system integrity and drives ‘permanent temporariness’…the Government will Continue reading »

How the government’s tax changes plan will affect Lamborghini sales. What the CPI really means. Everything economists don’t know about productivity. The case for an Australian king. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. Tax cuts Sound economics from tweaking an Continue reading »

With its decision to suspend or “pause” funding to the United Nation’s key organisation that is providing assistance to Gaza’s famished, desperate population, New Zealand could open itself up to a charge of participating in a genocide. I first read we had “suspended” assistance to UNRWA in the Times of Israel, the Jerusalem Post, the Continue reading »

President Biden is reportedly preparing to begin a new weeks-long bombing campaign in the middle east in retaliation for a drone attack which killed three US troops this past weekend. These strikes are expected to include Iranian targets, tempting the nightmare scenario of a full-blown war with Iran, despite the public acknowledgement that there’s no Continue reading »

Backed by real estate money, Gov. Kathy Hochul refused to make public the secret, problematic companies that own a wide swath of New York.

“The Messenger, a digital media company that launched less than a year ago, has shut down following multiple reports that it was set to do so.” — The Hill

Our new digital media platform is changing the way people consume content. We’re a one-stop-shop location for breaking news, long-form journalism, and in-depth art criticism. We’re also currently shutting down without any notice whatsoever.

We’re giving audiences a combination of bite-sized listicles and long-form interviews, all presented on a blank white screen that says “Page Not Found.”

We’re led by a dynamic team, including our editor-in-chief, who is bold and decisive and is currently hiding from federal agents in Belarus.

All your favorite journalists and commentators are hard at work in our Midtown Manhattan offices, getting to the bottom of hot-button issues like “Why don’t our keycards work?” and “What do you mean we’re not getting severance?”

Nobody on planet Earth has more chutzpah than former president Donald Trump. After claiming over and over again that the stock market would crash if Joe Biden became president, in light of the market reaching yet another high this week, he had the audacity to claim, in all caps no less, “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP.” He always finds a way to blame others for his failures and take credit for others’ successes. And his followers never seem to notice how obviously dishonest he is about it. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is brushing off the stock market’s stellar performance even though he could take credit since every president is largely held responsible for economic conditions during their term, whether it’s fair or not. But unlike Trump he is required to act like a normal human being and the stock market isn’t really relevant to most people.

Buoyed by the staying support of American officials, Israeli forces have continued to commit atrocities in Gaza.

The post Israel Has Killed Nearly 900 Palestinians Since ICJ Order to Prevent Acts of Genocide appeared first on The Intercept.

Om jag ska plocka fram det som jag i efterhand har värdesatt mest från min ekonomiutbildning så var det kursen i ekonomisk historia … Framför allt så fick vi läsa boken ”Manias, Panics and Crashes: A history of Financial Crises” av Charles Kindleberger. Den gav ett mycket intresseväckande perspektiv på kapitalismen och den ekonomiska utvecklingen […]

The Romantic poets, writers, and philosophers of Western Europe — borne out of the mechanising cauldron of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — were among the first critics of bourgeois modernity, the civilisation created by the triumph of capitalism. Romanticism — a “cultural movement” cutting across literature, philosophy, the arts, politics, religion, and history — […]

… is bad news for Biden, of course Cable news was on in the background Thursday night when, responding to a right-leaning critic of some Democratic policy or other, an on-air pundit doubted the critic could name three examples to support the claim. “Oh yeah? Name three,” we said in unison. (“Oh, yeah? Name five,” is a running joke around here.) It’s standard fare for politicians to complain about adversaries’ “failed policies” without naming a single one. It lets the public fill in the blanks with sins real or imagined. The behavior is so rote that reporters never challenge speakers to provide examples. In the Politico article cited in my post below, a Trump spokesperson, on cue, slammed Joe Biden for his “failed policies.” Ya mean, like this one? (CNBC): Job growth posted a surprise increase in January, demonstrating again that the U.S. labor market is solid and poised to support broader economic growth. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 353,000 for the month, much better than the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.