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.
Reading
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.
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Originally published March 20, 2023.
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“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!
I tend to read a novel a week (53 this year). Academic friends sometimes appear amazed by that, but if I don’t read 20 or 30 pages at night, I’m not going to sleep. Add 10 pages here or there during the week, and it’s four a month. Here were my 10 favourites during 2023: […]
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim explores the rise of the Squad in this short audio documentary adapted from an excerpt of his new book.
An analysis of the 100 largest U.S. cities found that the relationship between income inequality and income segregation became stronger from 1980 to 2015.
Unfortunately, sometimes people have to see the consequences of their actions before it can. If there’s one issue I’ve sadly become so pessimistic about that I can hardly write about it anymore, it’s guns. The ongoing tragedy of our fetish for the grotesque weapons of war with which so many Americans believe they have a right to play makes me feel like pulling the covers over my head and never coming up for air. I’ve noted the failure of NRA in the last couple of years and they did manage to pass a very tepid gun safety bill in the last congress. But even with that it just seems so hopeless that I’ve lost heart. But I read a story this morning in the Washington Post that makes me wonder if maybe something might be changing and I’m sharing it with you with a gift link so you can read it too. It’s about four current and three former Senators who have changed their minds. That’s not something I expected to see. They interviewed these senators who all voted against the bills that were proposed in the wake of the horrific Sandy Hook massacre in 2013.
Anyone who makes a MAGA buck has to kick back to Trump. Dear Leader wants his cut: “It’s my fucking money!” the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner privately vented in October, referring to an alleged sum in the tens of millions of dollars, a source with direct knowledge of the matter tells Rolling Stone. Trump wasn’t talking about a business deal. Rather, he’s been grumbling about money donated to a think tank his former staffers and allies founded in 2021 to “advance the America First agenda.” For several months now, according to three people with knowledge of the situation, the former president has complained to an array of confidants and Republicans about the millions raised by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGAfied think tank launched near the start of his post-presidency. The nonprofit is populated by several former high-ranking Trump administration officials, including Larry Kudlow, Rick Perry, and Linda McMahon, and it’s led by Brooke Rollins, who served as a top White House domestic policy aide to Trump.
Purity for thee but not for he Several years ago, when many Democratic strategists were demanding that the party embrace the tenets of the Christian Right in order to win over the salt of the earth, white, Real Americans (whom they insisted were essential to a legitimate governing majority) the media briefly reported on some of their more extreme rituals. They looked at “purity culture” practices such as gay conversion “therapy”, masturbation abstinence and “purity balls” which feature a pseudo wedding ceremony between a father and daughter. All these practices were disturbing enough that they pretty much went underground after being publicly exposed and the culture wars turned to their next battlefield, the latest being the cruel bullying of transgender teens and banning of gay literature in schools. There was something particularly creepy about the purity balls.
Widely ignored official reports and never-before-seen declassified files suggest shadowy British special forces operatives played a crucial role in one of the 20th century’s most notorious and controversial massacres. In July 2023, few media observers took notice when influential British intelligence operative-turned-lawmaker Alicia Kearns issued a public call for Western boots on the ground in the former Yugoslavia. Addressing a packed session of the House of Commons, Foreign Affairs Committee chair Kearns made the alarming call: “I…urge the Government: let […]
The post Mass graves, grave questions: Britain’s secret Srebrenica role first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Mass graves, grave questions: Britain’s secret Srebrenica role appeared first on The Grayzone.
A geological discovery shows how carbon was captured to chill the planet.
The post How Earth Once Cooled Off appeared first on Nautilus.
Economics bloggers contribute varied content, making it an accessible way to stay informed without delving into the density of academic journals. Below, we’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of blogs that we at INOMICS frequently turn to for engaging and informative articles covering a broad range of economic topics … 7. Naked Capitalism […]
This is chapter 5 of “The Construction of Reality”, one of the rewards of our 2023 fundraiser.
Human at Dawn
We humans adapt to the world in two ways: thru biological evolution and thru changes in culture: where culture is everything from tools and technology to language and philosophy. We are still evolving physically, and it can be seen in different human groups. Northern Europeans are more likely to be able to digest milk properly than those of African descent, for example, while whites have less melanin due to spending time in areas with less sunlight, and so on.
But cultural evolution is far faster and it is how we have done most of our adaptation since we started making stone tools.
This is a viral pic of DeSantis being interviewed for a podcast. It says it all, doesn’t it? His campaign is falling apart. Any competent advance person should have seen to it that this wouldn’t happen. And then they went ahead and posted it. But DeSantis has a history of terrible photo ops and memes. Like the go-go boots: And the flight helmet: The man was never ready for prime time. And I don’t think he ever will be.
BBC iPlayer's 2024 trailer includes a look at Russell T. Davies's Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson-starring Doctor Who - set for a May 2024 debut.