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Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 04:51
What are the Australian people doing about their archaic and undemocratic Constitution? Australia has participated in several questionable wars in recent years that resulted essentially from the decision by the PM rather than the federal Parliament. Amazingly, the Prime Minister’s position is not even mentioned in the Constitution. It is pertinent now to ask what Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 04:50
The US military has been showering CNN’s retiring Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with effusive thanks and praise for her lifetime of service, giving some insight into the cozy working relationship between the media and the war machine inside the US empire. “Today closes a remarkable career for CNN’s Barbara Starr, a leader in the Pentagon Continue reading »
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 04:30
He blamed the anti-abortion zealots for the mid-term loss That’s a very big mistake and it makes me think that he really has lost a step. By this time he should know that this is a very important part of his base and fundamental to the Trump Cult. He’s right, of course. But that doesn’t make it smart in his political position to say it, especially so crudely. He used to understand that. Sure, he’s made mistakes on this issue before, by saying that he thought people who have abortions should be punished, but that was a mistake in favor of extremism. That’s always forgivable to the wingnuts. (They approve of killing doctors, after all.) But to blame the extremists for losing and saying they didn’t bother to vote once they got their way is a major error. He’s never been good at nuance but you’d think he would remember that this is a third rail in GOP politics. He’s losing it.
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 02:30
Brace for new GOP efforts to stop younger Americans from voting The Financial Times offers data showing how the Great Recession reset how Millennials view the world. Something odd appears to be overturning an old paradigm about political views and aging. Unlike the generational cohorts before them, they are not getting more conservative with age. “The shift has striking implications for the UK’s Conservatives and US Republicans, who can no longer simply rely on their base being replenished as the years pass,” writes John Burn-Murdoch. “[C]oncepts from public health analytics” suggest the old predictions do not apply to Millennials: Let’s start with age effects, and the oldest rule in politics: people become more conservative with age. If millennials’ liberal inclinations are merely a result of this age effect, then at age 35 they too should be around five points less conservative than the national average, and can be relied upon to gradually become more conservative. In fact, they’re more like 15 points less conservative, and in both Britain and the US are by far the least conservative 35-year-olds in recorded history.
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 02:30
Leaving aside the particulars of the current situation, I do find it odd that many people think that Supreme Court Justices are actually supposed to die in office. That they are for life if they want them (whatever the wisdom of that) does not mean they are obligated to stay until the end! Retirement isn't a punishment!
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 01:59

t is time for Morocco and others to reconsider their ties with Israel, as they risk political isolation and social instability, a far greater price to pay than the empty promises of Washington and Tel Aviv.

The post The Price of Betraying Palestine: Morocco Challenges Normalization with Israel appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 01:00
Something is seriously broken Two items this morning should be clues to how around the bend and down the rabbit hole this country has traveled in recent years. Brian Klaas (subscription req’d) posts about the lack of basic standards for elected officials. Looking at you, George Santos: Much of the modern world has created what I call the broken pyramid of scrutiny. In principle, levels of scrutiny and accountability should increase as the potential to do catastrophic harm increases. The higher up the hierarchy you go, the more that you should be monitored to make sure that you’re not going to destroy the company, or bring down the government, from your perch at the top. The least powerful should face the least scrutiny; the most powerful the most oversight. Instead, as I wrote in “Corruptible,” we do the opposite. Santos would have been exposed as a fraud before being offered “any run-of-the-mill government job.” But not in Congress. Klass contrasts the training he had to go to volunteer as a tour guide at an English historical site: In my spare time, I volunteer as a tour guide at a historic site in England.
Created
Tue, 03/01/2023 - 01:00

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When it comes to grief, there’s no room for second best. Sure, there are other guidebooks aimed at helping you cope with the emotional and practical challenges of losing a loved one. None, however, have been written by a comedy writer whose “therapeutic training” went no further than an undergraduate degree in psychology, and who lived through this terrible experience and emerged intact enough to write a bunch of jokes about it. What The Daily Show’s America (The Book) was to civics and The Onion’s Our Dumb Century was to the history of the twentieth century, Jason Roeder’s hilarious (and often moving) Griefstrike!: The Ultimate Guide to Mourning is to death, mourning, and somehow getting on with your life.