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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 07:30
Ron DeSnowflake didn’t make much of an impression overseas I’m afraid. But why would he? He’s just the latest great whitebread hope of the GOP with a personality that’s as flat as a pancake: He hopes to win the hearts and minds of devoted Donald Trump supporters ahead of next year’s U.S. election. But Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis failed to impress British business chiefs at a high-profile London event Friday, in a tired performance described variously as “horrendous,” “low-wattage” and “like the end of an overseas trip.” The Florida governor, expected to launch his bid next month to challenge Trump as the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race, met with more than 50 representatives of major U.K. firms and business lobbying groups as a part of a four-country “trade mission” ending in London Friday. His trip was officially billed as an attempt to build Florida’s economic relationships with the U.K., Israel, South Korea and Japan, but it has been widely seen in Washington as a chance for DeSantis to present himself as a statesman on the world stage.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 07:08
A federal judge recently ordered a briefing on whether the 13th Amendment grounds a Constitutional right to abortion.  Legal academics such as Michele Goodwin, Peggy Cooper Davis, and Andrew Koppelman have made serious originalist arguments for a right to abortion on 13th Amendment grounds.  I am no originalist.  But I believe that a deeper historical […]
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 06:30
The “autopsy” is finished. And they want to bury the results: Republican Party officials plan to keep private an internal “autopsy” report assessing why many of their candidates fell short in the 2022 midterm elections, two people familiar with the party’s thinking on the matter told NBC News on Friday. In late November, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced that the party would conduct a post-election review of the GOP’s disappointing performance in a cycle that should have favored Republicans. A panel created by the Republican National Committee has completed a draft of the introduction of the report, but in a break from past practice, it’s not likely to be widely available. “I believe that the post-election analysis is meant to be for internal use only; taking the lessons we’ve learned so we can improve,” one RNC member said.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 05:30
Kyrsten Sinema is interviewed by McCay Coppins and makes a very poor impression. The woman has a shockingly unpleasant personality: Sinema tells me that there are several popular narratives about her in the media, all of them “inaccurate.” One is that she’s “mysterious,” “mercurial,” “an enigma”—that she makes her decisions on unknowable whims. She regards this portrayal as “fairly absurd”: “I think I’m a highly predictable person.” “Then,” she goes on, “there’s the She’s just doing what’s best for her and not for her state or for her country” narrative. “And I think that’s a strange narrative, particularly when you contrast it with”—here she pauses, and then smirks—“ya know, the facts.” You can see, in moments like these, why she bothers people. She speaks in a matter-of-fact staccato, her tone set frequently to smug.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:58
Effective carbon capture is needed to stay under 2oC but need does not guarantee supply. A national park in Wales is regenerating culturally and ecologically. Helping you to know your cirrocumulus from your altostratus. Capturing carbon: where are we? Part 1 of 2 I mentioned a few weeks ago that the most recent IPCC report Continue reading »
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:54
Constitutional enshrinement of rights through a federal Human Rights Act is essential. In response to approaches from the Australian Human Rights Commission Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has recently announced an Inquiry into Australia’s Human Rights Framework, charging the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights with considering whether the Australian parliament should enact a federal Human Rights Continue reading »
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:53
On Wednesday I met with a wonderful Australian geologist, Jim Bowler, famous for discovering the Lake Mungo remains – ‘the oldest human remains in Australia, dated to 40,000 years ago.’ ‘Mungo woman’; Mungo Man’. Jim and I will dream dreams on Sunday, within the abundance of the divine. Asking, against the backdrop of nuclear bombs Continue reading »
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:51
Hersh’s latest revelations on 12 April 2023 in his self-published Substack blog, Trading with the Enemy, detail, among other Ukrainian corruption scandals now widely known in Washington military and intelligence circles, the Zelensky regime’s embezzlement of $400 million from US military aid to Ukraine. This article is proving even more incendiary in Washington than was his Continue reading »
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:50
Recently, the former senior Singaporean diplomat and respected geopolitical consultant Kishore Mahbubani offered Australia some acute advice: Stop betting on the past. Mahbubani’s article was figuratively bookended with visits to Beijing by President Emmanuel Macron of France (shortly before publication) and President Lula da Silva of Brazil (soon after publication). It looks clear that these Continue reading »
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 04:00
Just a little bit out of touch… “Just two ounces is equivalent to three joints” — the Republican arguments against legal cannabis are going well. #mnleg I don’t know how to explain to you that other states have legal cannabis and are doing fine pour one out for all the victims of cannabis overdoses. RIP "How I almost wrecked my life" — anti-cannabis Minnesota Republican says he used weed in college and it made him lazy and hurt his grades. I guess this is his reason to keep it illegal. the same Republican who is against weed because it made him lazy talks about getting a DUI during the same speech This probably made sense in his head Originally tweeted by Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) on April 28, 2023. People actually vote for clowns like this. Go figure.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 02:30
Jamelle Bouie’s newsletter makes an important observation about the state of our democracy. As I watched what they did to that brave transwoman in Montana fighting for her right to …well, exist it just shocks me how cruel these people are. It’s the same look on those people’s faces as those above. It’s an ugly, ugly display. And as Bouie explains, it’s a threat to all of us, our democracy in general, as they use whatever power they have to silence dissent: On Tuesday, I wrote about the Republican effort to limit the reach and scope of initiatives and referendums as another instance of the party’s war on majority rule. One thing I wanted to include, but couldn’t quite integrate into the structure of the column, was a point about the recent use of legislative expulsion to punish Democratic lawmakers who dissent from or challenge Republican majorities. We saw this in Tennessee, obviously, where Republicans expelled two Democratic members — Representatives Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin J. Pearson of Memphis — for loudly supporting a youth protest for gun control from the statehouse floor using a bullhorn.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 01:31

1.(BOAO FORUM) For starters, this year’s Boao Forum undoubtedly brings great opportunities for exchanges between Chinese and foreign business people who may not have been able to meet since the outbreak of the pandemic. So what can we expect from such a good opportunity? And how do you think the Boao Forum could help or Continue Reading

The post What Can The World Expect From China’s Recovery? first appeared on Michael Hudson.
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Sun, 30/04/2023 - 00:30
Watch your backs Just Google shooting. Really. Just shooting. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition: Oh, look here. Wonder who it could be? What’s the world coming to when you can’t go to a CONVENIENCE STORE without getting shot? You know, we’re getting really good at this. Anyone have a friend at the IOC? If shooting people was an official event, American competitors would sweep all the medals. Those who survive. Obviously, this kid isn’t ready for the U.S. trials: This one is a gem from The Guardian: An Illinois man using a leaf blower in his yard was killed by his neighbor, local television reported. William Martys, 59, was reportedly using his leaf blower in his yard in Antioch when his neighbor, 79-year-old Ettore Lacchei, got into an argument with him then shot him in the head. Lacchei was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. A neighbor told WLS, Chicago’s ABC affiliate, the two men had a history, and Lacchei had pulled a gun on Martys before.
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Sat, 29/04/2023 - 23:00
If “politicians in robes” fits “The attempt of a radical minority to enforce their will on the rest of us, who constitute a majority, by stealing control of the states and then, through them, control of the federal government is precisely what the Confederates tried to do before the Civil War: it is no accident that one of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried a replica of a Confederate battle flag,” writes Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters from an American” this morning. She cites events Friday in North Carolina. There’s a word for this sort of thing: Bad (CBS News): In massive victories for Republicans, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday threw out a previous ruling against gerrymandered voting maps and upheld a photo voter identification law that colleagues had struck down as racially biased. The rulings likely give the GOP-controlled legislature the ability to rework the state’s congressional map for next year’s election to help Republicans gain seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House.