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Here are the big green policies Labour should adopt. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 20th February 2024 I’m as likely to be selected for the national gymnastics team. But bear with me awhile, to imagine that, like David Cameron, I’m about to be wafted by the UK’s fairytale political system from my garden […]

Russian troops are now advancing across almost the entire front. It’s slow, but steady. There are no defensive lines built to stop them, the best they’re likely to get is the use of rivers.

Ukraine clearly no longer has enough men or ammunition.

Macron and some other European leaders have discussed sending troops, but sending them to fight Russia is insanity, and hopefully they can see that, since WWIII will suck.

But there’s one play they may feel they can get away with.

Send in “Peacekeepers”. Have them advance to the borders of Russian areas, and use them to secure Odessa and say “we are just separating the combatants.” It’s a way to limit Ukrainian geographical losses and avoid it becoming a land-locked country and the Europeans just bet that Putin isn’t willing to risk or start a war with Europe and/or NATO.

Today (February 28, 2024), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest – Monthly Consumer Price Index Indicator – for January 2024, which showed that the inflation rate steadied at 3.4 per cent but remains in a downward trajectory in Australia as it is elsewhere in the world. Today’s figures are the closest we…

New Reuters Ipsos poll: Worries about political extremism or threats to democracy have emerged as a top concern for U.S. voters and an issue where President Joe Biden has a slight advantage over Donald Trump ahead of the November election, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. Overall, 34% of respondents said Biden had a better approach for handling extremism, compared to 31% who said Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. I get why 31% think Trump can better handle extremism — they want a tyrannical authoritarian to put his enemies in camps and he’s promising to do that. But why in the hell does only 34% back Biden on this issue since he’s what’s standing in the way of an extremist wannabe dictator becoming president again? They think he’s old so Trump would be better? What?

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Last night as I was scrolling through Xitter I came across a dozen or so posts excoriating Joe Biden for discussing a possible Gaza ceasefire while he was eating ice cream. He was asked about by a reporter and he answered it. And it was possibly good news too. (He said he was optimistic that there would be a ceasefire by the end of the coming weekend.) But he was bad for doing it while he had an ice cream cone in his hand which I guess means he should not have been eating any ice cream when there is a crisis in Gaza or he should have told the reporter to fuck off, in which case he would have been accused of avoiding the subject. This criticism came from both left and right, which was bizarre. As for the right wingers — whatever. They have to reach for anything they can and this was on the level of “Obama wore a tan suit at the podium” level sophistry from them. From the left, it’s a little bit more serious. I understand that people are very agitated about this war, and they are right to be so. They’re trying to influence Joe Biden to do something to stop the massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza and are using whatever means they have.

It is more than paradoxical that an ostensibly Christian university leader would say, “We are...

Oh my… From Joe Perticone at The Bulwark: During an appearance yesterday on the Talking Feds podcast, former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, caused a bit of a stir when she floated a rumor that Rep. Matt Rosendale may have a three-alarm scandal on his hands. Immediately after I heard these words, I reached out to Rosendale’s spokesman Ron Kovach, who replied in an email, “This is 100% false and defamatory and former Senator Heitkamp will be hearing from our lawyers soon.” Heitkamp didn’t outright claim that Rosendale is guilty of what she alleged she heard: She mentioned only that the story has been going around. That is a big difference as far as lawyers are concerned, if they do end up getting involved. But Rosendale suddenly leaving Congress would throw the House into an even greater state of chaos, hard as that might be to imagine. Losing another member of the House Republican Conference would leave the GOP majority so thin that if you held it up you’d be able to see the sun shining through it.

The post Doctor Who Magazine 601 appeared first on Doctor Who Magazine.

Opposition leader (till at least Monday), Peter Dutton, has warned voters in the upcoming Dunkley bi-election that if they don’t vote for his candidate then they will be getting a nuclear reactor in their backyard, should the Coalition win the... Read More ›

Israeli media has debunked the ultra-Orthodox group’s stories, but the New York Times won’t say so.

The post American Media Keep Citing Zaka — Though Its October 7 Atrocity Stories Are Discredited in Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

A controversial theory can explain phenomena attributed to the mystery planet.

The post Could Modified Gravity Kill Planet Nine? appeared first on Nautilus.

Salon caught Trump’s latest late night freakout. He seems upset: Donald Trump began his Monday raging about the slew of civil and criminal trials mounting against him, bemoaning specifically local trials like the New York criminal case set to start at the end of March. The former president recently attended a hearing in that case, which was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and charges him with 34 felony counts related to alleged hush-money payments he made to an adult film actress in 2016. The presiding judge denied Trump’s request to dismiss the case and set a March 25 trial date. Despite a triumphant Saturday following his win in South Carolina’s GOP primary, Trump’s slate of legal troubles seemed to take center stage for him Sunday. Just before midnight, he took to Truth Social to praise a Fox News show he was viewing about his New York state fraud case, in which he was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties — now $454 million with interest, and encouraged his followers to watch the rerun at 3 a.m. Eastern time. “Wow!

Catherine Rampell tweeted this short thread that I think expresses the fundamental political message that the Democrats have to hammer home: political FREEDOM. The more significant political fallout of this IVF discourse may not be revelation that GOP is often anti-family (surprise!), but rather the undermining of narrative that Dems are merely “pro-abortion” (rather than pro-reproductive freedom)   Subtext (or text) of Repub attacks on Dem abortion positions is that they’re driven by childless elites who want to kill babies. IVF debate suggests Ds are promoting not abortion, but freedom—specifically, reproductive freedom, to choose when to begin or expand your family If Dems are smart, this is the angle they’ll play up — perhaps taking a page from @SecretaryPete’s 2020 campaign, about how Dems should reclaim “freedom” as a rhetorical device. His message should be even more compelling today, as one party considers putting an authoritarian in office. 2024’s political “freedom” fight isn’t about mask mandates.