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Trump and Fox Nina Burleigh has written a great piece for TNR about Joe Biden’s other opponent in the 2024 election: Fox News. I urge you to read the whole thing if you can. It will be worth your while. It opens with this: On October 6, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report for September. The numbers were extremely positive, with 336,000 jobs added, almost double the forecast. Most media outlets were reporting the numbers as a sign of improvement in the economy—which they are. But Fox reported otherwise. On his prime-time show that night, host Jesse Watters called the report “a straight-up scandal.” He accused the Biden administration of “cherry-picking and double counting the numbers.” As he babbled, chyrons drove home the point in capital letters, for anyone watching with the sound down, in, say, a bar or a gym: “Biden’s Jobs Numbers Scandal” and “Biden’s Economy Is Smoke & Mirrors.” That day, the network flooded all its zones with the same shade.

Our 15th most-read article of 2023.

Originally published April 13, 2023.

My heart breaks for would-be homeowners priced out of housing markets across the country. We need to do something to bring the price of all houses down, except the house I own and plan to sell for one (or many) million dollars.

People deserve to buy a home at a price they can afford, a price that will somehow also cover my entire initial investment, three decades’ worth of repairs and home improvements, allow me to purchase a new condo in an expensive coastal city, and fund the next two decades of my retirement. It’s that simple.

Take a look on Zillow and you’ll see how wildly expensive housing has become out there, and by “out there,” I mean “on my property.” Just look at my asking price; sort the list from “Most Expensive.”

Let it be clear friends: silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and an end to the occupation, and the shallow words of empathy without direct action: all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message: Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. If you are Continue reading »

The AJA is seeking to suppress Palestinian identification with the country … for political purposes from an exhibition entitled Ramses and the Gold of the Pharoahs. The Australian Museum, Sydney, is currently hosting an exhibition entitled Ramses and the Gold of the Pharoahs. A controversy – in one sense a little controversy, but in another Continue reading »

China will need Australian iron ore and coking coal for its booming EV industry. In 2023, the projected revenue in China’s Electric Vehicles market is expected to reach a staggering US$292.1bn. This forecast indicates a promising future for the industry. Furthermore, it is anticipated that the market will experience a steady annual growth rate of Continue reading »

The American republic today and the Roman republic in the years following Cicero’s consulship (63 BCE) have enough similarities to entertain an interesting comparison. They are also different enough as to make the drawing of firm predictions specious. Nevertheless, there are shared factors that offer warning signs for today from the fall of the ancient Continue reading »

From China’s perspective, Australia will always follow the US no matter what. And the US is out to contain China – there is nothing that China could do to change that. Australia has made relatively little effort to change this perception. This means for China, there is little point in putting much effort into dealing Continue reading »

In these sad, anxious times, pearls of hope are rare and truly valuable. Thankfully, here are a couple to contemplate… In 1988 a group of Israeli and Palestinian women got together and did something extravagantly unlikely: they founded a peace movement. Women In Black. Regularly standing together in sombre clothes, their silent vigil sent out Continue reading »

The fear that the world is falling apart is not new. It stretches back into antiquity. End of the world fears have manifested over thousands of years. For almost all recorded history, and no doubt beforehand, there have been wars, violence, greed, and cruelty committed in the name of some collective cause. For most of Continue reading »

The recent Senate Interim Report on ‘The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms’ has attracted the usual short-term media indignation followed by the ever-present indifference from our education leaders and politicians. This is not the first time there is an acknowledgement that severely disruptive kids exist. Statistics such as: almost a quarter of Continue reading »

Israel may well wipe out Christian presence in Gaza as part of its genocide, and Western leaders would not care less. Since October 7, Israel and its allies have tried to put the war in Gaza within the “war on terror” framework, actively comparing Hamas to ISIS. Many who instinctively equate Palestinians with Muslims have Continue reading »

Despite its failure to isolate Cuba and overthrow its government, and its near unanimous opposition from the international community, the 62-year old US embargo seems likely to endure into the foreseeable future. When President John Kennedy issued the first executive order implementing the US embargo against Cuba in 1962, the Cold War was at its Continue reading »

As Americans, our money is paying for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. How much did you give?

The post I Calculated How Much of My Money the U.S. Sent to Kill Palestinians. You Can Too. appeared first on The Intercept.

What a doozy Republicans have a real problem when it comes to simple questions about the civil war and slavery. Nikki Haley got caught in a major gaffe yesterday in New Hampshire but Ron DeSantis has a lot of nerve dinging her for it though. He’s the guy who said defended a high school AP curriculum that said slavery helped enslaved Black people develop skills that could be applied for their personal benefit. Please. Here’s the whole Haley exchange: This isn’t hard. As Ron Brownstein pointed out, “South Carolina’s 1860 proclamation outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union mentions slavery in its opening sentence & points to the ‘increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery’ as a reason for the state” seceding.” She tried to clean it up today. First, she said it was a Democratic plant in the audience, as if that would make a difference. And she also said this: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery … But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.” Hmm.

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Georgia Tennant shared a look at David Tennant checking out Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson in Russell T. Davies's Doctor Who Christmas Special.

by Daniel Wortel-London

Advertising works. A recent study by the Advertising Association finds that every dollar of ad spending drives up sales by $21. Ads get us to recognize brands and hum jingles even if we are annoyed by pop-ups. They are particularly effective in driving the kind of unsustainable consumption that is destroying our planet.

This begs a question: Should advertising be limited for the sake of the environment?

The post It’s Time to Ban Earth-Damaging Ads appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

He’s not even your retribution, MAGA The man spends (how much?) time, bronzer and hairspray on himself each morning before going to work late. He had to have daily presidential security briefings dumbed down to maps and bullet points because he has a short attention span for anything not Donald Trump. He has other priorities (which don’t include personal hygiene). But question his star power (or his liquidity) and you have his full attention. Daily Beast: Donald Trump kept the Christmas spirit going strong on Wednesday when he used his Truth Social account to go after the director of Home Alone and Home Alone 2 for suggesting in an interview that he “bullied” his way into a now-iconic cameo in the 1992 sequel. Just as Trump has frequently accused special prosecutor Jack Smith of having a fake name, the former president suggested the same of Chris Columbus as he disputed the director’s claims about how his appearance during a scene at the Plaza hotel, which he owned at the time, came to be.

You can’t win if you don’t show up to play I’m giving space this morning to the youngest Democratic state chair in the country. One year ago, Anderson Clayton, a 2020 Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy McGrath field organizer took on “the powers that be” in the N.C. Democratic Party. She ran for state chair at 25. And won. Last night, she looked back on that decision (on the hellsite). (Full disclosure: I’m a friend and a fan. Clayton consulted with me for 3-1/2 hrs weeks before announcing her run. She did everything I recommended and more, including getting an early start. I funded a chunk of her campaign and watched it unfold as the only supporter over 35 on her campaign Slack.) (Since winning the chair, Clayton has appeared on television, in national newspaper profiles, and raised funds across the country.) If anyone is going to redeem the global climate and our reeling democracy, it’s not going to be the generations that oversaw bringing the world to this crisis. Fixing what needs fixing is not going to come from a dial-tested three-word slogan or a dead-on-arrival five-point progressive policy.

For a long time, two of the great gerontocracies were the Roman Catholic Church and the Chinese Communist Party. It is quite a thought that if Joe Biden were a Catholic bishop, he would have been required to submit his resignation to the pope five years ago. If he were a cardinal, he would, when […]

The post Eldest Statesmen appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Our 16th most-read article of 2023.

Originally published March 20, 2023.

“As local bills on gender, sexuality, and diversity make their way through Florida’s state legislature, new legislation would ban any discussion of menstrual cycles in school before sixth grade.” – USA Today

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Rick and Morty, The View, What If…?, Doctor Who, The Last of Us, James Gunn/Batman, Prime Video, and more!