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Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 23:58

Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.

The post “Military and Moral Failures”: How Iran’s Israel Strike Reshaped the Region Forever appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 23:00
The DNC’s Chicago convention won’t look like 1968 When I told my partner-in-blog I’d been elected a North Carolina delegate to the 2024 DNC convention in Chicago, her advice was to bring a flak jacket. The thought had occurred to me. Those of a certain age remember too well what happened in Chicago at the 1968 convention. It is another reason a 2016 Bernie Sanders delegate insisted I run after Ezra Klein’s reverie about an open convention. Plus, anything might happen between April and August. He wanted me there in case things go off the rails. As things have in Chicago. David Frum writes in The Atlantic why, security-wise, the kind of disruptions Chicago saw in 1968 are unlikely to happen again. Even as American campus protests over the Israeli prosecution of a war in the Gaza Strip draw headlines, 2024 is not 1968. Protesters presuming to replicate 1968 (as some will) are deluding themselves, Frum explains: From 1968 to today, responsibility for protecting political conventions has shifted from cities and states to the federal government. This new federal responsibility was formalized in a directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 22:00

“Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing her dog—and goat—in new book.” — The Guardian 4/26/24

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The dog is wiry and playful. Its red mouth hangs open and the tang of blood briefly throbs through the chilly South Dakota air with every heaving pant. The chicken stares blankly into the sun. The chicken’s owner takes wary steps toward the mongrel fearing its boundless energy and needle teeth. The pup dances back and targets another hen. The pile of corpses grows as the day stretches and warps.

The patriot snarls an oath of contempt at the cur. She had taken it on as a hunter to help scare pheasants into the air and retrieve them when she sends them bleeding back to earth. But in its fourteen months it had discovered it much preferred bouncing joyously through the tall grass in erratic circles.

Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 17:00
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Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 16:17
I have just finished reading a report from the Population Strategy Council (PSC) of Japan – 令和6年・地方自治体「持続可能性」分析レポート (2024 Local government “sustainability” analysis report) – that was released last week April 24, 2024). The study found that around 40 per cent of the towns (municipalities) in Japan will likely disappear because their populations are in rapid…
Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 09:30
Speaking of polls, Philip Bump has a good bit of fun with Trump’s hilariously misleading charts like the one above ostensibly showing his crushing Biden in the latest Bloomberg poll in his newsletter this weekend. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are, Trump is always “crushing” it. He added this bit which I thought was interesting. If the bottom of the red shaded area is not higher than the top of the shaded blue area, it’s best to describe the race as a dead heat or statistically tied. After all, consider those Pennsylvania results, with the margin of error of 3 points. That means support for Biden probably lands between 43 and 49 percent and support for Trump between 44 and 50 percent. So maybe the “real” support for Biden is 47 percent while Trump’s is 46. The crusher has become the crushee! I put “real” in quotes because there’s squishiness all over the place here. Margins of error don’t capture all of the uncertainty, nor do April polls predict November results.  Indeed. Remember this as you look at polling over the next few months.
Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 08:00
The Trumpers insist they were never in any danger of being stolen or observed in that storage room at Mar-a-Lago. Well: A coat hanger or “very tiny screwdriver” could be used to unlock the Mar-a-Lago storage room where former President Donald Trump stored highly classified documents for more than a year, according to a witness in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. The account was relayed to FBI agents by an unidentified aide to Trump in January 2023, according to newly released exhibits, and further undercuts claims by Trump that the highly-classified materials he’s accused of taking with him after leaving office were secured at all times. Not to worry. I’m sure none of the thousands of people who attend paying events there every night of the week, (including all the foreign nationals with sketchy credentials) could figure that out. Certainly they couldn’t have known how to unlock that bathroom door where all the boxes were stored in the shower. They were all very, very secure.
Created
Mon, 29/04/2024 - 07:59
Skolpedagogiska reformimpulser borde så småningom sluta att förlita sig på sjuttiotalets motiv, innebörder och semantik. Annars går det som när en orkester orubbligt fortsätter att spela de gamla välkända melodierna utan att bry sig om att publiken för länge sedan har lämnat salen. Det är på tiden att spela något nytt, man borde våga en […]