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“I don’t see a pandemic finishing us off, and climate change itself would (to quote Keating) ‘do us slowly’. The one sure path to extinction is nuclear war.” – Professor Peter Doherty AC, Nobel Laureate, communication to the author, 9 Sep 2024. Two days after Donald Trump’s election last week, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Continue reading »

As you may have noticed, the Government has announced changes to student loans and debts, subject (eyeroll) to their re-election. Tick; even the Greens are taking credit. But, and here’s the but, they do little about how the current system, and I am moderating my language for publication, screws over students by burdening them with Continue reading »

The Albanese Government’s obsessive enthusiasm for matching Coalition and News Corp demands with policy responses was on show twice last week. On both occasions it was enshrined in legislation, the first on immigration detention and the other on laws to restrict social media access. Last Thursday the High Court ruled that the electronic devices and Continue reading »

With a Federal election early next year, and opinion polls showing Labor at best only level with the Coalition, it would seem wise for Labor HQ to ensure that no mistake is made in the choice of candidates even in supposed safe seats. But head office need to control, which in 2022 led to parachuting Continue reading »

The US election guru James Carville is credited with putting Bill Clinton in the White House with the slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid” on his election strategy white board every day of the US Presidential campaign in 1992. The New Zealand Election Study indicates the economy was also front of mind for voters in the Continue reading »

Remember this the next time you see a Mail headline lambasting human rights lawyers and the ECHR

Trump’s campaign line about ending taxes on tips could run into the GOP’s goal of extending his 2017 tax cuts for the rich.

The post The First Big Test for Donald Trump’s Promises of Economic Populism appeared first on The Intercept.

Hannity can see that this (apparently drunk) guy is going to be a nightmare for Republicans, not to mention the country. But there’s nothing he can do. These people won’t see it coming: Watch to the end of this too. These voters are deluded: Then read this about some undocumented workers who themselves don’t believe they will be deported. Sigh. I assume that some Latino Trump voters are fine with deporting undocumented immigrants. That’s an old story: pulling the ladder up behind them. But there are an awful lot of stories out there just like these folks who think that if you’re a good person and “haven’t done anything illegal” and happen to be undocumented that they aren’t going to come after you. No. They consider undocumented people to be criminals and they are going to deport them. Sure they say they’re coming for the gang members “first” but let’s be clear. Gang members and criminals have always been deportable.

There is growing evidence of links between senior Trump appointees, associates, and Kremlin-linked entities

Hold it. Exhale slowly. Get busy. Here in still-purple North Carolina, the 2024 election clock ran out at 7:30 pm last Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean we’re done. We’re in overtime. The contest to hold the critical seat of state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is razor thin and closing as local boards of election count more absentee and provisional ballots. We’re out on the streets urging voters (friendlies, we hope) whose absentee ballots need defects corrected, or who need to present acceptable IDs at their local Board, to git ‘er done. The “curing” deadline is Thursday, close of business. So I’ve got to get rolling. As pundits from the Church of the Savvy blame Democrats for the American carnage that comes next and treat Donald Trump’s 75 million voters as having clean hands, let Stuart Stevens you offer some reassurance. (You already know what I think.) [Emphasis mine] I’ve been involved in winning presidential races and races that lost. One common thread is that everyone seems to have a reason why you won or lost which usually reflects a personal perspective or agenda.

Islamophobia Awareness Month is a campaign which hopes that small, collective efforts can lead to large, systemic changes #IAM

The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Former Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovitch's bestselling London fantasy book series "Rivers of London" is finally getting adapted for TV.

Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history? And yes, in case you think that, as in his novel 1984, published in 1949, a year before his death and just as the Cold War (a term he was the first to use in an essay in October 1945) was getting underway, our world, too, seems to be heading for a nightmarish future, I suspect that — were he capable of returning to this planet of ours — he wouldn’t disagree with you for a moment. Phew! Sorry for such a long, complicated sentence, but little wonder given the way our world is now... Read more

Source: 2084 appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Yes, they mean it “Blinded by the Right,” David Brock’s memoir of his time as a conservative operative contains anecdotes on Grover Norquist, the anti-tax radical (by G.W. Bush-era standards), once considered “field marshal of the Bush plan.” Among them, his fondness for rhetoric like Lenin’s “probe with bayonets, looking for weakness.” Lenin’s portrait hung in Norquist’s Washington living room, Brock writes. And another: “Grover Norquist sent out an invitation to a post election party at his Capitol Hill home. Quoting from the movie Conan the Barbarian, it said: ‘TO CRUSH ENEMIES, SEE THEM DRIVEN BEFORE YOU, AND HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN.'” Brock added the all-caps. Norquist was tame by standards of the first Donald Trump administration. That was the Trump who deployed tear gas and rubber bullets outside the White House to clear the streets for a photo-op. His generals convinced him shooting protesters in the legs was uncool. Trump 2.0 really does mean to deport millions.

Without cigarettes, I would not have survived my childhood. My mother smoked a pack a day—more than a pack when our circumstances grew dire, and/or she was bound to the state via a prison cell, a mental ward, or the welfare office. Bump that pack up to a pack and a half. She could only buy them pack by pack. Never could afford the savings bundled in a ten-pack carton. She took it day by day, every night, making sure she set aside at least one to have with her morning cup of Folgers.

Without the snug fit of a cigarette between her index and middle fingers to weigh her down, my mother’s anxious thoughts would’ve carried her away, mistrals of the unfortunate winds careening through both the front and the back door and every closed window of the house, leaving my mother heels over head in a heap on the floor. When the dust devils whirled in, kicking up crisis after crisis, it was hard to hold steady. A cigarette gave her something to hold on to, something to wield as a weapon—a sword and shield made of smoke to choke out despair.

Steven Moffat teased plot details for his upcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special, "Joy to the World." How does a "time-traveling hotel" sound?

This blog has been around since 2009. I had just stepped down as managing editor of FireDogLake (one of the larger progressive blogs of the time) after editorial direction disagreements. Running FDL was a seventy hour a week job for not very much money, you had to really believe in it. I had for most of my run, and under my editorship readership increased about 70%.

A bombshell investigation reveals hundreds of former pro-Israel lobbyists working in America’s top newsrooms. How neutral is our media when it comes to Israel?

The post Revealed: The Israel Lobbyists Writing America’s News appeared first on MintPress News.

It’s been a tough stretch, and it’s not looking like it’s going to get better any time soon. I know that for months we’ve been saying, “We’re not going back,” but actually, I am. I’m headed back to 2014. Hop in, if you want to join me.

If you’re asking, “Why 2014, exactly?” then clearly, you don’t remember all of the great things about that year. Like how you can grow a mustache and wax the ends so they curl up. Or pair it with a beard and a manbun. Or get a tattoo of a mustache on your finger, so when you hold it up under your nose, it looks like you have a mustache. That shit never gets old.

When we get back to 2014, we’re going to write a lot of fanfic. We’re going to wear outfits that make people wonder, “Hipster or Amish?” We’re going to eat salad out of mason jars and make our own kombucha. We’re going to knit giant scarves. We’re going to play ukeleles.

It’s going to be fantastic.