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The NY Times reports: The only clue to the gambit was in the title of the otherwise obscure hodgepodge of a bill: “The Breaking the Gridlock Act.” But the 45-page legislation, introduced without fanfare in January by a little-known Democrat, Representative Mark DeSaulnier of California, is part of a confidential, previously unreported, strategy Democrats have been plotting for months to quietly smooth the way for action by Congress to avert a devastating federal default if debt ceiling talks remain deadlocked. With the possibility of a default now projected as soon as June 1, Democrats on Tuesday began taking steps to deploy the secret weapon they have been holding in reserve. They started the process of trying to force a debt-limit increase bill to the floor through a so-called discharge petition that could bypass Republican leaders who have refused to raise the ceiling unless President Biden agrees to spending cuts and policy changes.
6:00 a.m. I awake in the dark, heart pounding. My raven black hair is damp with sweat. I was having the Visions again. I hoped for relief the night before the Big Teen Fighting Test, but it’s never that easy for a poor, bullied girl at Magic Private School. Luckily, I live upstairs from a café where the owner’s son is in love with me, so I get my usual cheese sandwich and try to calm my racing thoughts. Café Boy watches me while I eat it. His gentle face is especially ordinary today.
8:00 a.m. I head to school to meet up with my best friend, Givenchy Von Crystal. The Von Crystal’s are the most powerful family in the realm, but Givenchy is really nice, even though her whole family wants her dead. I don’t get why. She’s the only person who’s nice to me here (if I didn’t already mention it, I get mistreated by all the rich kids because I’m poor but powerful and have hypnotic ice-blue eyes). Givenchy’s biggest flaw is she isn’t very good at returning stuff when she borrows it. Also, I think she’s gay, but it’s not narratively clear.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud reveals how the conflict in Sudan betrays the reality of a changing world order amid the decline of American geopolitical power.
The post Winners and Losers in Sudan: Proxy Wars, Superpower Rivalries and the Changing World Order appeared first on MintPress News.
Solve for x — give a single, unique number — in the following equation: x + y = 3. Of course, it cannot be done: under no rules of mathematics can a unique x be discovered; there are one too many unknowns. Nevertheless, someone holding to the subjective interpretation of probability could tell us, say, […]
All Disney had to do was read Ron’s book to make their case: When the Walt Disney Co. went looking for evidence to feature in its new lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, its lawyers found much of what they needed in DeSantis’s own recently published memoir. Buried in Disney’s complaint against DeSantis is something surprising. Numerous quotes taken from “The Courage to be Free” appear to support the company’s central allegation: that the Republican governor improperly wielded state power to punish Disney’s speech criticizing his policies, violating the First Amendment. Memoirs by presidential aspirants often lay out a blueprint for their coming candidacies. DeSantis’s does, too. It boasts extensively about his war on Disney to advertise how he would marshal the powers of the presidency against so-called woke elites. Disney’s lawsuit cites exactly these passages.
Issue 48 of the Nautilus print edition combines some of the best content from our January and February 2023 online issues. It includes contributions from science writer Amanda Gefter, astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter, physician Rahul Parikh, author Philip Ball, and more. This issue also features a new illustration by Deena So’Oteh.
The post Print Edition 48 appeared first on Nautilus.
Available Now: http://audible.com/stevemartin.
This new audiobook incorporates a year's worth of conversations between Steve Martin and his friend and New Yorker writer, Adam Gopnik. In the audiobook, Steve talks (more candidly than ever) about magic, comedy, art collecting, writing, and music. Plus, it includes an original banjo score.
Should we blow up pipelines? By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th April 2023 There’s a fundamental principle that should apply to every conflict. Don’t urge others to do what you are not prepared to do yourself. How many wars would be fought if the presidents or prime ministers who declared them were obliged […]
“It’s a teaching and learning job” Candidates and officials could be using powers they don’t know they have for doing good, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) argues. The American Prospect profiles the candidate for U.S. Senate from California: The tough-as-nails single-mom image caters to the legions of suburban parents in the Golden State. But what actually differentiates Porter from her main opponents in the California Senate race—progressive antiwar hero Rep. Barbara Lee and Trump impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff—is that she’s been able throughout her career to make progress without carrying institutional authority. Porter acknowledged that she, Lee, and Schiff would likely take the same votes, at least on the major issues. But there’s more to politics than that. “I just want to fix some shit,” Porter writes in her book.
“In order to fully recover, we must first recover the society that has made us sick.” I can still hear those prophetic words, now a quarter-century old, echoing through the Church Center of the United Nations. At the podium was David, a leader with New Jerusalem Laura, a residential drug recovery program in North Philadelphia that was free and accessible to people, no matter their insurance and income status. It was June 1998 and hundreds of poor and low-income people had gathered for the culminating event of the “New Freedom Bus Tour: Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger, and Homelessness,” a month-long, cross-country organizing event led by welfare rights activists. Two years earlier, President Bill Clinton had signed welfare “reform” into law,... Read more
When governing is not your agenda If Jared Leto in “a head-to-toe, mascot-style cat costume” at the Met Gala doesn’t satisfy your appetite for weird, there are always Republican governors. Jamelle Bouie gazes upon attempts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to make a trip to Florida the next best thing to vacationing on another planet. Be warned: Planet Ron is fighting an outbreak of the “woke mind virus.” DeSantis warns Ronians with little exposure to Earth 1 that the infection is “a form of cultural Marxism that tries to divide us based on identity politics.” Bouie wonders what Ronians make of that (New York Times): Now, I can follow this as a professional internet user and political observer. I know that “woke mind virus” is a term of art for the (condescending and misguided) idea that progressive views on race and gender are an outside contagion threatening the minds of young people who might otherwise reject structural explanations of racial inequality and embrace a traditional vision of the gender binary. I know that “cultural Marxism” is a right-wing buzzword meant to sound scary and imposing.
For all its claims of modernity, the 'Corps' still joins the Crown and the Church in a god-ordained trilogy of state power in the forthcoming ceremonies
Good morrow, traveler. Ah, it appears your long and arduous journey has reached a most perilous fork in the road. Your only way forward is through one of these two doors.
One leads to freedom, the other certain death. But which to choose?
You may ask us a single question. Although, be warned. One guard always lies, the other always tells the truth.
Oh, and uh, this next part is unrelated to the door bit. Someone’s been spreading this totally unfounded rumor that I have a small penis. And I just want to assure you this is not true.
Now, choose wisely, dear traveler, for your ver—
No, as I said, my penis has nothing to do with the doors. Let’s not get stuck on this. Remember, your life hangs in the balance. I was only saying that if, during your time in the Village of Sorrow, you had spoken to, say, a vindictive Bal maiden or her twin sister, and they said I had an unusually small and odorous member, they are liars. My penis is a good size and smells of jasmine. Besides, most peasant women I have known biblically say the big ones hurt.
Just a fraction of the two million people who lack photo ID have applied for the government's free scheme. How many will be denied a vote - or simply not bother - on Thursday? Josiah Mortimer reports
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: The Flash, AHS 12, SNL, Superman & Lois, WWE Raw, Adult Swim, James Gunn/DCU, The Boys/Gen V, and lots more!
On this week’s MVC, Rivka and Frank are joined by historian Harvey Kaye to discuss the 1992 live-action Disney musical Newsies.
- by Greg Gbur
- by M D Usher
It is reported that Geoffrey Hinton “the godfather of AI” is leaving Google and has voiced some serious worries about the future of humanity as AI continues to develop. I don’t have anything interesting to say about grey gloop or paperclips or AI robots waging wars, but I have been thinking a bit about the […]
An analysis looks at how England moved from the stagnant economic growth after the bubonic plague to the rapid growth of the modern age.