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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 08:30
Daddy’s little girl on the stand MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin covered the testimony on twitter this morning: Good morning, I’m back at New York Supreme Court, and I’ll be posting both here and through MSNBC’s live blog of Ivanka Trump’s testimony. I’ll give you the good color and analysis there & will pop in here with quicker bits of the play-by-play: Let’s set the stage with 7 minutes left before the trial day starts. The courtroom is almost full, but not nearly as crowded as it has been on days past and is a relative ghost town compared with Monday’s packed-within-inches scenario.  The Attorney General is here in her usual front-row seat, surrounded by staff, and her team has been at their table for at least a half hour.
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 07:00
“To many voters, the topic of abortion is so important, so we have been completely straightforward and clear. I will back a bill to protect life,” That was yesterday. Youngkin made a bet that the GOP establishment-backed approach to the abortion issue — a 15 week ban — would be enough to neutralize it at the ballot box and he went all-in. How’d it work out for him? Not well. He was banking on the abortion issue to win yesterday and he lost the Virginia House and the Democrats held on to the Senate. So it’s back to the drawing board for the GOP. They have a hardcore base for whom abortion is fundamental. They have shown that they’re “flexible” with wink-wink rhetoric like what Youngkin has been selling but they won’t go beyond that. And after Trump made sure Roe V Wade was overturned, pro-choice voters no longer trust any of their assurances. This issue is killing the Republicans and it should. They spent 50 years building up their base by calling abortion murder and claiming it’s a holocaust knowing that Roe protected them from the consequences.
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 06:23

Internal emails obtained by Siskiyou Rising Tide and Information for Public Use show police treating even the most placid social justice activities as sites of criminal threat.

The post Oregon Police Obsessively Spied on Activists for Years, Even After Pipeline Fight Ended appeared first on The Intercept.

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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 06:19

The Saudi crown prince “would not probably survive as the future king of Saudi Arabia,” Madawi Al-Rasheed said on Al Jazeera English’s “UpFront.”

The post Al Jazeera Censors Video of Critic Who Said Saudi–Israel Normalization Would Be “Suicide” for MBS appeared first on The Intercept.

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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 05:30
MAGA Mike is ready to deliver for the cult Punchbowl News on where the House Republicans go from here: Democrats had a very good Election Night on Tuesday. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in Kentucky, dispatching Republican Daniel Cameron, a close ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Ohio voters enshrined the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. And Democrats won control of the state legislature in Virginia. Gabe Amo, a former aide to President Joe Biden, won a special election in Rhode Island. Maybe for just a minute, this will stop Democrats from hand-wringing over Biden’s lousy poll numbers. Maybe. And anoint a new national political star in the 45-year-old Beshear. Conversely, it was a bad night for the GOP nationally. And it was a bad night for House Republicans, as their version of the FY2024 Transportation-HUD spending bill got pulled from the floor. When it will be taken up is still unclear.
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 05:24
In the U.S., there is a city where industrial visionaries, state leaders, and financial titans all clamor to go. They want to see the future being made today. Revolutionary new ways of working are being combined with technology to create a better standard of living for the employees, cheaper products for the consumers, and unimaginable […]
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 05:00

Baby, you know I’m not a mathematician. You know that adding simple numbers isn’t something I can do. You know that subtracting simple numbers isn’t something I can do either. When we first met, I told you, baby, I didn’t understand quantum physics, regular physics, or how many a dozen is. And you laughed like you thought I was joking. And then I laughed because you were laughing. And then I drank too much because I couldn’t accurately count the number of drinks I’d had. Also, on that date, I explained to you that I had skipped every single math class I had ever had in school because they seemed boring. And you laughed again because you thought I was joking, but I wasn’t.

Baby, I don’t need a fourth-grade math skillset to know that you + me = something special.

Baby, how long have we been dating? You could tell me it’d been a couple of years, because I feel so comfortable with you, and also because I am not good at math. You could also tell me it’d been only a couple of months, because everything feels so fresh and exciting and new and also because I am not good at math.

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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 04:58
Hamas’s refusal to recognise Israel as a state is as absurd as Israel’s belief that the current massacre of Palestinians will destroy Hamas. If all this were mere stupidity it would be bad enough, but the consequent violence against innocent people is extreme and it is accelerating. The 1500 Israeli deaths and hundreds of kidnappings Continue reading »
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 04:56
We should be greatly encouraged by Prime Minister Albanese’s visit to China. Isolation is always a bad thing. Dialogue is essential for relationships to be sustained or nourished. This is the most important aspect of the visit, far outweighing in importance any specific outcome. The visit coincides with the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s visit Continue reading »
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Thu, 09/11/2023 - 04:55
With the Australian government refusing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, what is Australia actually doing to bring about the ‘two state solution’ and a ‘just and enduring peace’ called for by Foreign Minister Penny Wong this week?  Dear Penny Wong, Your Opinion piece on the Israel-Hamas war, published in Saturday’s Guardian was of Continue reading »