Reading

The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker with a long overdue proper description of Trump’s campaign theme: In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery. The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration. It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack.

In an open letter, activist Zoe Rogers describes the horrors of war in Gaza and her emotional drive to confront the UK’s complicity in arms sales to Israel.

The post A Letter From Jailed Palestine Action Activist Zoe Rogers appeared first on MintPress News.

You betcha In her newsletter today, Margaret Sullivan discusses the astonishing fact that media organizations are sitting on a trove of hacked emails from the Trump campaign and refusing to publish them, in stark contrast to their behavior in 2016 when they eagerly pounced on similarly hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. She asks herself, what if it these were hacked emails from the Biden or Harris campaign. Would they be similarly protected? A group of well-known journalists got together last week to kick this topic around at the behest of Steve Adler, the former top editor of Reuters who now runs an ethics initiative at NYU. Adler moderated a panel including Ben Smith of Semafor who — when he was the editor of BuzzFeed News — famously published the so-called Steele dossier. That dossier was full of unverified and in some cases salacious information about Trump, much of which has turned out to be untrue. The other panelists were Sewell Chan, the new editor of Columbia Journalism Review, and Kathleen Carroll, the former executive editor of the Associated Press.

“‘I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure,’ Trump said. ‘Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and their lives will be great again. So women, we love you. We’re going to take care of you.’ The former president said women won’t have to think about abortion because decisions about regulating it are now left to the states.”
— Los Angeles Times, 9/21/24

The people of Dune are thirstier, sandier, less safe in the dunes, and unhappier now than they were four years ago. I am also unhappier now than I was four years ago. That’s the last time I ruled this planet, or, as you may recall, the last time Dune (or “Arrakis” to be “politically correct”) was great, again.

Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans got a little bit of good news over the weekend with some highly respected polls coming in showing that Kamala Harris is continuing to grow a lead over Donald Trump. According to the NBC poll, Harris leads by 5 points nationally and has received a mind-boggling 16 point bump in favorability since July. NBC reports that it’s “the largest increase for any politician in NBC News polling since then-President George W. Bush’s standing surged after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” It appears that the more people see of her, the more they like her. The CBS News Poll found Harris up 52-48 percent nationally and 51-49 percent in the battlegrounds. Importantly, the poll found that views of the economy have improved a bit and her numbers on that issue have improved with them. Those who are voting on personal qualities favor Harris 66-33% and those who are voting on “policy” are 50% for her and 50% for Trump. G Elliot Morris of 538, posted this on Sunday night: That does throw some cold water on any euphoria Harris supporters might be feeling.

Stoking and exploiting racist fears of immigrants is essentially all that Trump is running on.

The post Trump’s Conspiracy Theory Campaign appeared first on The Intercept.

In this episode of The Watchdog, Lowkey is joined by co-host Mnar Adley and former Labour Shadow Cabinet member Chris Williamson and his communications officer Ammar Kazmi to discuss the limitations of the political systems in the US and UK.

The post How the Democrats and Labour Party Protect the Status Quo in the West appeared first on MintPress News.

Mark Robinson’s sinking campaign N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Republican candidate for governor, had a pretty lousy weekend. He’s looking at a blue Monday too (CNN): Several top operatives on Republican Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor have stepped down, just days after a CNN report uncovered inflammatory comments the candidate made on a porn website. Robinson’s campaign announced Sunday evening that general consultant and senior adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, campaign manager Chris Rodriguez, finance director Heather Whillier and deputy campaign manager Jason Rizk have stepped down from the campaign. Pogorzelski confirmed the news when reached by CNN. “The reports are true that I, along with others from the campaign have left of our own accord,” he told CNN in a statement. Republicans expect Robinson to lose. Reports suggest he is persona non grata at Trump-Vance rallies in the state. Trump frets that Robinson’s drag on the slate will cost him North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes and the presidency (and in due course, his freedom).

It’s good knowin’ she’s out there Sam Elliot has had lots of memorable film roles, but perhaps none more memorable than the The Stranger in The Big Lebowski (1998). The Lincoln Project recruited the voice of that icon of manliness to pitch Kamala Harris to the dudes out there who need to hear it. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again,” Elliot begins. “Are we really going back down that same fucking, broken road? Or are we moving forward? Towards hope? Towards freedom? Towards change?” “It’s time to be a man and vote for a woman,” made me burst out laughing. That’s pretty damned unsubtle. Hope it has an impact with the target audience.

Yesterday, Angela Rayner gave her first speech to the Labour Party conference as Deputy Prime Minister, with legislation to ban ‘no-fault’ evictions being touted as a central commitment. Ending no-fault evictions could not come sooner. Repossessions through no-fault evictions are currently at a six-year high, and half a decade has passed since this policy reform […]

Forty years ago this month, the great Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” was the number one song in the United States.

If I tend to look dazed, I’ve read it someplace that it’s been forty years since that song hit number one. Four decades! Hard to believe. We’re Sheryl and Roger. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment on Seventeenth Street. Our apartment was great. We had several Nagel prints and a waterbed—because, of course, we did. We lived above a pizza place that made an excellent thin-crust pie but burned its garlic knots with alarming frequency. The smoke from those charred knots was a part of our daily life, seeping through the floorboards and making everything smell like burned garlic knots. The smoke inhalation often made my pulse react. Which is why we often had to go outside to quarrel. I realize now those garlic knots are a metaphor for our relationship. The shiny brushed-egg-white sheen on the surface—but perpetually charred underneath.

Campaigners plan civil disobedience outside courts, demanding meeting with Attorney General over harsh sentencing of peaceful protesters

Fifty years in the making, the Great Wall of Los Angeles is a half-mile monument to the marginalised histories of California

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Research is revealing the mood benefits of making intuitive decisions, but some situations call for an analytical approach

- by Carina Remmers

Read at Psyche

The waste and exploitation of fast fashion shouldn’t blind us to the joys of making beautiful clothing with care

- by Roger Tredre

Read at Aeon

An estimated 30,000 foreign-born soldiers are fighting for Israel - and many are leaving a questionable trail of evidence on social media

Gas and oil firms operating in the North Sea have expressed 'grave concerns' about the Government's decision to raise the Energy Profits Levy