Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at Pat Robertson for his 2,000-pound leg press claims or to scold him for his vile Haiti comments, but Robertson thrives on the ‘persecution.’ Our list spins the Robertson moral differently and shows just why he’s been a truly dangerous figure.
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There is movement in the electorate For the first time in decades there is a fissure in the Republicans party on the issue of guns: Young Republicans aren’t clinging to guns like the rest of the GOP. As former President Donald Trump and new campaign entrants, including former Vice President Mike Pence, tout their Second Amendment bonafides and opposition to “gun confiscation” to 2024 primary voters, some Gen Z and millennial Republicans are moving in the opposite direction: A significant share of younger conservatives, reared in an age of mass violence, embrace firearm restrictions. One poll conducted by Harvard’s political institute this spring found that a clear majority of young conservatives supported mandatory psychological exams for gun purchasers. A separate, recurring survey from YouGov concluded in March that Gen Z and millennial Republicans are more likely to believe in tougher gun laws than older Republicans and that young conservatives’ support for the idea has grown in the past year.
Remember when transgender Americans seemed to be having a positive cultural moment? Former child actor...
Why is it possible to mistake parts of someone else’s face for your own?
The post Our Super Malleable Sense of Self appeared first on Nautilus.
As activists disrupted Semafor’s celebration with the coal baron senator, we saw the flaws of corporate funded-media in the age of climate catastrophe.
Pat Robertson Dead.
The Washington Post: Paralysis, limbo, stalemate — any of them describe the state of the House of Representatives this week. On Wednesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sent the House home until Monday after spending an entire day talking with a group of far-right conservatives who held up all floor action over their dissatisfaction with the debt limit bill signed into law last week, among other grievances. They failed to reach any path forward. McCarthy told reporters that he’s not exactly sure what they want and that different members are asking for different things. This is a significant challenge to McCarthy’s leadership and his ability to govern and run the House. While it’s not as dire as the motion to vacate — the procedural maneuver by which a single House Republican could trigger a vote to depose McCarthy as speaker — supporters of the rebels say that their tactic of bringing the chamber to a halt by voting against House rules could be just as damaging. They weren’t doing anything real anyway. All they had on the agenda were messaging bills for the wingnut faction.
Australia’s capacity to protect its sovereignty lies not in accession to US interests but in a broad diplomatic and security effort with our Asian neighbours, writes Paul Keating in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Albanese on 24 January, seven weeks before the San Diego AUKUS announcement and obtained by the Guardian Australia under FOI Continue reading »
A few days after coming to power in 1972 Gough Whitlam declared that ‘Australia’s real test as far as the rest of the world is concerned is the role we create for our own Aborigines’. More than foreign aid programmes, more than any role the country plays in agreements or alliances, treatment of the Aborigines Continue reading »
In ordinary anticipatory history the game is waiting for Trump. I think China will wait for the next US administration before making any serious steps towards dialogue. They would reasonably expect that administration to be led by Trump. No one else will break the bipartisan establishment hating China. It’s not a long time to wait Continue reading »
When former NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane was vilified, his home raided and false claims made by a journalist who wanted to promote himself, no apology was given, no restoration made. Instead, the victim became the guilty party, punished for something he did not do. Sounds familiar? These practices occurred between April 2020 and November Continue reading »
Most people can focus to see if they’re looking at a bird, a car or a person. Throw in a military scope and the sharp eyes of youth and ask yourself if you would spot the difference before you pulled the trigger. So why does the IDF constantly claim they mistakenly shoot civilians? They’re either Continue reading »
The ugly situation developing in Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, has parallels with Ukraine. The result could be just as bloody. But is anyone listening? The legal status of Kosovo remains obscure. Originally it was an autonomous province within Serbia. But the Albanian majority in the province claimed Serb victimisation. Their militants had long Continue reading »
America and the West are more isolated from the rest of the world than at any time since WWII. From May 22–23, the Toda Peace Institute convened a brainstorming retreat at its Tokyo office with 16 high-level international participants. One of the key themes was the changing global power structure and normative architecture, with the Continue reading »
Shangri-La Dialogue was a missed opportunity for talks as defence chiefs Austin and Marles insisted on belligerence and doublespeak. When it comes to China, the Joe Biden administration has become a one-trick pony – pretend to be ready for dialogue, then go in for the kill. How effective that has been depends on the eye Continue reading »
Doctor Who star Yasmin Finney on working with Russell T. Davies, some David Tennant foreshadowing, and an interesting 60th-anniversary tease.
Rufo’s Documentary Foundation received an influx of untraceable money in 2021, as his national profile grew.
The post Funded by Dark Money, Chris Rufo’s Nonprofit Stokes the Far Right’s Culture War appeared first on The Intercept.
But it’s on life support From Professor Melissa Murray: Some initial thoughts on Allen v. Milligan. Media is trumpeting this as a “victory” for the Voting Rights Act. And it is. And I don’t want to be a turd in the punchbowl… but this is pretty weak sauce from this Court. First, this doesn’t “strengthen” the VRA. It preserves the status quo. And the status quo is that this Court has done an A+ job of hobbling the VRA over the last 10 years. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, it eviscerated the preclearance formula. The preclearance regime required states with a history of voting discrimination to first “preclear” any changes to their voting rules and regs with the DOJ or a three-judge federal court panel The Court invalidated the preclearance formula on the ground that progress had been made and minorities were voting and blah blah blah. This progress narrative prompted RBG to note in dissent that throwing out the preclearance formula was like throwing out your umbrella in a rainstorm because you weren’t getting wet.
Thanks so much for sending me your script. There’s tons of great stuff in here, but I think it’d be a lot stronger if you kept in mind the utter meaninglessness of human existence.
I loved all the action sequences. Jimmy and his crew of bank robbers are a lot of fun, but some of their decisions confused me. For instance, when they take the security guard hostage, why does anyone care? At some point in time, the security guard will eventually die. Whether it happens in the moment or years from now, the morbid outcome is immutable. The reaper’s scythe cannot be outrun!
But I loved the moment when he slipped on the banana peel—hilarious!
I did have trouble following when Jimmy’s mom tells him that everyone has a purpose in life. As we all know, the human species came into being due to a random set of atmospheric conditions. Any attempt to decipher meaning from this is pure egotistical delusion. Furthermore, how can his mom even be giving him advice when all knowledge is an illusion meant to give us a false sense of mastery over the world? Just something to consider.
I loved when she slipped on the banana peel, though. I was cracking up.
“All the color drained from his face,” a campaign aide said. “Mike was even whiter than usual.”
This is what he’s come to I can’t tell you how much I love this: Had it come from anyone else, the transition would have been amusing. “The media lie,” the host says, looking into the camera for a video posted on Twitter. “They do. But mostly, they just ignore the stories that matter.” Stories like what, you ask? Well, fast-forward a few seconds and you get your answer. “Yesterday, for example,” he explains, “a former Air Force officer who worked for years in military intelligence came forward as a whistleblower to reveal that the U.S. government has physical evidence of crashed, non-human-made aircraft, as well as the bodies of the pilots who flew those aircraft.” Ah, okay. Everyone over the age of 13 can see where this is going. But the speaker here wasn’t one of the unidentifiable talking phenomena that litter social media. It wasn’t even Alex Jones, who made a career out of elevating skepticism in authority so high that people might even believe that his nutritional supplements were worth the cost.
I’m off to do a talk to mark World Ocean Day, so this is posted in haste. The ocean needs advocates. It’s our biggest ecosystem, probably our biggest carbon sink, a major source of oxygen. It regulates temperatures, and drives weather patterns. Hundreds of millions of people are nutritionally dependent on fish. But the ocean […]
Trump-DOJ news took some keeping up with on Wednesday Luckily, Marcy Wheeler keeps up better than anybody.
by Daniel Wortel-London
Inequality threatens people and planet alike. Billions struggle to make ends meet while a tiny minority grows fabulously wealthy. At the same time, the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy and the waste they generate takes an enormous environmental toll. The intertwining of social and environmental damage suggests that standard fixes for inequality are inadequate.
Herman Daly thought that waste from the wealthy could not be ended through redistributive taxation alone.
The post Limits to Wealth = Limits to Growth appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.