Not me When the 2020 presidential campaign was lurching into gear three years ago, former Vice President Joe Biden had led in the polls for months. Still, everyone kind of assumed he was a placeholder, a former office-holder with high name recognition whose campaign would nevertheless go the way of his two previous presidential bids, meaning nowhere. He was dull as dishwater compared to many of the others vying for the nomination, and nobody had ever really considered him presidential timber. As the campaign took off, other candidates were winning in the early states even as Biden still led in national polls. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg looked like the major contenders after Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, states where Biden did poorly. Then he pulled off a sweeping victory in South Carolina and shortly thereafter the race was effectively over. He went on to win the rest of the primaries handily. America was reeling during the traumatic first year of the pandemic and there was a sense that Democrats were happy to have the race settled so they could concentrate on taking down Donald Trump, which was considered Job One by every faction of the Democratic coalition.
Reading
He just stole all the money.
Before his FTX cryptocurrency empire collapsed, many of Sam Bankman-Fried’s public statements indicated that he made decisions “as though he had no risk aversion,” according to Victor Haghani, the founder and chief investment officer of Elm Partners Management and a co-founder of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund.This is the "effective altruism (his deeply held personal beliefs) led him to make these bets because the future is just so gosh darn important" argument, which was always ridiculous but should've been erased after it became clear he (allegedly) STOLE ALL THE MONEY.
In the eighties, we took hold of the rudder and set about an essential economic transformation which left us able to hold our own in Asia. The key to our success then rested with ourselves. What was needed was cultural reform, reform of our outlook. Success at home depended on that change. Success in Asia Continue reading »
According to the terms of reference Defence Security Review is now required to ensure that Defence has the right capabilities that are postured to meet the growing strategic challenges that Australia and its partner countries will face in the world in coming years. A repost from September 13, 2022, and has been updated on November Continue reading »
The Indonesian G20 year was like no other. The Russian war in Europe divided the G20. No G20 communiques emerged from the ministerial meetings held during the run-up to the summit in mid-November 2022. There was a moment when it seemed that the summit would only tackle low-hanging fruit. But Indonesian President Jokowi Widodo embraced Continue reading »
Certainly the best biography I read in 2022 and possibly the best non-fiction book in any genre, is Terry Irving’s comprehensive and incisive examination of the varied and controversial life of archaeologist, political theorist and leftist practitioner Vere Gordon Childe. Much about Childe’s life remains mysterious, including his death in 1957 aged 65. To judge Continue reading »
A new article by Douglas London in Foreign Policy warns of the dangers of the US CIA involvement in fomenting civil unrest. This excerpt below is valuable: “Fomenting civil unrest, whether it’s in the interest of regime change or simply to increase an adversary’s burden, can and does lead to an array of second- and Continue reading »
Capitalism and “liberal democracy” are failing and destroying our world. In this, the second in a three-part series, we explore how Australia can halt the decline by reversing privatisation of public utilities and embracing a foreign policy based on neutrality. Reverse Privatisation – Manage Energy Pricing and Reserves Australian Federal and State governments should buy Continue reading »
Above a picture of a tired looking Xi Jinping – taken at the G20 – the Sydney Morning Herald ran the headline: The Face of Capitulation. It was as banal as it was predictable. It was for a Peter Hartcher story that crowed at having slayed the dragon (sub-text: this was Hartcher’s personal victory). A Continue reading »
Our 2nd most-read article of the 2022.
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Originally published January 14, 2022.
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The War on Drugs
You make your own paella and take super long naps on Saturday. Like over two hours, consistently. You prefer the smallest possible hardware store with the oldest possible employees. You used to sincerely call male friends “brother,” but you stopped.
The National
You should have moved to Brooklyn when you had the chance. You never had the chance. At what point does the artisanal whiskey interest become just alcoholism with a higher word count? You used to think you were once great at soccer, but now you’re not so sure you were ever good at soccer. This is causing a very low-level existential crisis that will vanish in three years.
The whining and handwringing from the right over the release of Trump’s tax returns is making me crazy. Seriously? The man who refused to release his returns as every other presidents for the past half century hve done, had foreign business entanglements, refused to divest his companies and was clearly still involved in the businesses throughout his term is running for president again! He officially announced it! As Noah Bookbinder in the Atlantic writes: Getting Trump’s tax returns should not have been this hard. Every president elected since Richard Nixon—with the exception of Trump—has publicly disclosed his tax returns. Tax returns can tell the American people, and Congress, whether a president is following the law and behaving honestly. Crucially for Trump, who uniquely and inappropriately retained ownership of a massive international business while president, they can provide information about conflicts of interest that may have swayed his decision making. They’re out.
New Year's Eve eve lunch.
Always the most hilarious "criticism," though one which political reporters love to take seriously.
Text from an insider in NY politics: “The so called progressives have now completely politicized the selection of chief judge.” https://t.co/GUkPRnbOVv
— Gerson Borrero (@GersonBorrero) December 30, 2022
It seems that the NYT wants to push a story of declining homeownership rates, but the data refuse to cooperate, so they ignore it.
The post The NYT Doesn’t Have Access to Census Data: We Do Not Have a Record Number of Renters appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.
What’s that we hear from Mar-a-Lago? It finally happened at 9 a.m. ET this morning (NBC News): A House committee made public six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns Friday, the culmination of years of legal wrangling and speculation about what might be contained in the filings. The House Ways and Means Committee had voted to make the thousands of pages of returns public in a party-line vote last week, but their release was delayed while staffers redacted sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents. Here they are. What is in there that Trump was so desperate for the world not to see? After all, he bragged in 2016 that paying no taxes made him smart. The smartest guy around. Why not showcase that brilliance? Tax pros will study Trump’s 500 or so business empire of trusts, limited liability corporations and partnerships.
U.K. medical practice mistakenly texts patients they have "aggressive lung cancer" instead of wishing them a merry Christmas (Thanks to gahick)
...you need to believe us. (Thanks to pharmaross)
Tasmanian devil found under couch in Hobart home, after being mistaken for dog's plush toy (Thanks to Janice Gelb, Rich Alpin and Doug in Sacramento)
The latest links… “A.I. [learns] through statistical distribution the best word to use, the distribution of the reasonable words that could come next. I think moral decision-making can be done like that as well” — an interview with computer scientist (and MacArthur “genius” grant winner) Yejin Choi (Washington) on morality and artificial intelligence. “Some researchers say it does not make sense to frame something that is a normal biological process as disease. Further complicating things… is that there is no agreed-upon point at which a person becomes old” — Is old age a disease? Is a “yes” answer “ageist”? Or is the view that ageing is acceptable ageist?
Russia is a major metals producer and exporter. According to Institut Polytechnique de Paris, last year the country held a 13% market share for titanium production, 11.2% for nickel, 10.5% for platinum, 5.4% for aluminum, 4% for copper and 4.4% for cobalt. It is the world’s top producer of palladium, a rare metal used in car manufacturing, accounting for 37% of production in 2021.…
Russia is not only a major producer of primary aluminum but it is also embedded in the global supply chains needed to make the metal....
RT (Russian state-sponsored media)
Russia to divert metals away from WestHaving posted review articles for the past couple of days I did wonder what I thought my most important post of the year was since many others seem to be working that theme at present. Somewhat randomly (meaning I did not go back and look at them all, and nor did I look at stats) I settled on this, which was published on the blog on 2 July 2022 having previously been on Byline Times:
"Center-left" instead of "left"? It's simply moving the Overton window somewhat to the left after it having been pushed rather far to the right toward the fascistic model of a corporate state. The correction that Richard Murphy suggests is just that, a course correction rather than a radical proposal. But something is better than nothing. Neoliberalism pursued to its logical conclusion ends in corporate as a type of fascism rather than the freedom it advertises as "economic liberalism." The end-state is not democracy as rule of, by and for the people but rather plutocratic oligarchy, empire, and imperial wars.