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Democrats have learned they cannot appease terrorist Republicans If you think that old dogs can’t learn new tricks you need to take a look at Joe Biden. Back in 2011, during the first serious Republican debt ceiling hostage crisis and the protracted negotiations that followed, Biden undercut Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and wrecked a deal he had made for a terrible one. There was a lot of hand-wringing at the time over Biden’s tendency to give away the store so when the Republicans pulled their hostage maneuver again in 2013, Reid stipulated that Biden needed to stay out of the negotiations — and the White House agreed. The Obama administration, including Biden, had learned their lesson: Negotiating with the extremist GOP on the debt ceiling is a very bad idea. They refused and the Republicans capitulated, sparing the country and the world economy another jolt. The days of dreaming about a “Grand Bargain” were blessedly over. You may have noticed that we never had one of these fights during the Trump years when the deficit was growing at a very fast pace.

Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: 'Before each major aggression[...] they initiated a press campaign calculated to[...] prepare the people psychologically[...]"

The post John Pilger: From Yellow Journalism to China Bashing, the Media’s Enduring Role in Promoting War appeared first on MintPress News.

How they saved the holes in Swiss cheese

Although preparations are in the primordial stage, the two right-wing icons said that the realm would exist outside the normal bounds of time and space.

The more they warn, the less we’ll listen Technology has a momentum all its own. It has a tendency to take us places before we consider whether they are places we need to or ought to go, I wrote here in 2014. Following up on Danielle Allen’s warnings about artificial general intelligence, A.I. pioneer Dr. Geoffrey Hinton gets space in the New York Times to express his concerns: Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work. Hinton, “the Godfather of A.I.,” worries what his creation may do when loosed “into the wild,” as the Times’ Cade Metz puts it.

Mainstream economists do not believe that “countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt.” Looking at the result from a survey, not a single economist agreed with that statement. If these economists had been right, we would see lots of […]

STEM includes the natural sciences, math, engineering, and technology-related fields. It’s all the rage, and at the same time universities are shutting down or reducing humanities and social science faculties and offerings.

In one sense this is a simple result of market forces: university is ludicrously expensive, especially in the US (but tuition has risen massively in many other countries) and the “degree premium” has declined. Once just having a bachelor’s degree was enough to get you a good job, now it’s enough to let you apply, competing against a ludicrous number of other candidates, for a wage that often won’t allow you to afford a house or children.

But STEM jobs are in demand, although this may be changing. The current downturn has seen a large numbers of coders laid off and Chat-AIs threaten a lot of programming jobs, though I suspect less than it seems, so far.

Systemically corrupt capitalism – part 2 Evan Jones This article by Dr Evan Jones follows on from the first part under the same title, which…

The post Systemically corrupt capitalism – part 2 first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.

The war industry, a state within a state, disembowels the nation, stumbles from one military fiasco to the next, strips us of civil liberties and pushes us toward suicidal wars with Russia and China.

The post Chris Hedges: The Enemy From Within appeared first on MintPress News.

If you're a fan of Catherine Tate's Donna Noble, you're not going to like a three-word tease from Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies.

It’s been on the GOP’s chopping block for decades E.J. Dionne notes this morning, as I did, how President Joe Biden’s 2024 launch video leads with the word “Freedom.” Biden deployed it six times in all. He means to reclaim that brand from the faux patriots. “Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency,” the ad declares. Before continuing, Dionne asks readers to hold their skepticism until he’s fleshed out what that means. Franklin D. Roosevelt made “four freedoms” the centerpiece of one his most important speeches: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. Since then, Democrats have ceded freedom to conservatives, preferring in Dionne’s telling, “to talk about justice, equality, democracy, fairness or community.” “The chance to live a life of your choosing, in keeping with your values: that is freedom in its richest sense,” Pete Buttigieg declared during his 2020 run for the presidency.

Systemically corrupt capitalism – part 2 Evan Jones   This article by Dr Evan Jones follows on from the first part under the same title,…

The post Systemically corrupt capitalism – part 2 first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.

The coming global financial revolution part 2 Russia Is Following the American Playbook – Ellen Brown This is the second part of an article by…

The post The coming global financial revolution part 2 first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.

I took one last look at my parked F-150 and saw my I HEART ND license plate frame glinting gold in the fading daylight. It felt like a good omen.

I wondered again how I’d landed this job as a trail guide. I was just a country boy with a give-’em-hell attitude and a Bachelor of Science from Notre Dame’s top-rated School of Architecture. Sure, I’d mastered all two of the hills back in South Bend, but was I really qualified to shepherd clients up a treacherous mountain? Only time would tell.

My client, Rita, was a knockout—long brown hair, mesmerizing jade eyes, and a nose like Knute Rockne’s.

“Sorry I’m late. I was finishing some paperwork for a large donation to my alma mater,” she said, adding with a wink, “Go Fighting Irish.”

My heart skipped. We had gone to the same college.

“I’m Jake. I went there too.”

“Well then, Vita, Dulcedo, Spes,” she purred, her voice as smooth as the turf at Notre Dame Stadium.

It would be hard to keep my mind on the trail with a dame like her for company.

The coming global financial revolution part 2 Russia Is Following the American Playbook Ellen Brown This is the second part of an article by Ellen…

The post The coming global financial revolution part 2 first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.

Thoughts about full employment Ellis Winningham The commentary below has been extracted from a Facebook posting by Ellis Winningham which appeared on 19 March 2023.…

The post Thoughts about full employment first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Watchmen, Night Court, Mike Flanagan/Netflix, Doctor Who, Star Trek: Picard, SNL, Good Omens & more!

Rosa Luxemburg was one of the great theorists of the workers’ movement in the twentieth century. Her political life began in the 1880s, when she was an organiser for the Polish Proletariat Party – before her activities in support of strikes forced her to flee the country in 1889. In exile in Zurich, Luxemburg studied […]

On Sunday, May 4th, 1890, a demonstration was held in Hyde Park, the like of which had never been seen. It was a demonstration in favour of the Eight Hours’ Working-Day, and by far the larger part of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were and are in favour of obtaining the Eight Hours’ Working-Day […]

Thoughts about full employment Ellis Winningham The commentary below has been extracted from a Facebook posting by Ellis Winningham which appeared on 19 March 2023.…

The post Thoughts about full employment first appeared on Economic Reform Australia.