Let’s take a look at the two candidates on the day after the debate: Blah,blah, blah. He’s just as offensive and nuts as ever. And this says it all: Meanwhile, here’s Biden. (I posted this earlier but it needs to go viral so here it is again.) Then he went to NY to dedicate the new Stonewall LGBTQ Monument visitor’s center. If you start this speech at about 10 minutes in you’ll hear him tell a story I’ve never heard before about how he first saw two men kissing when he was 16 years old and he turned to his dad for an explanation and he told him, “they just love each other.” I’ll admit it brought a tear to my eye. Nobody does that better than him. I know we’re all traumatized by what we saw last night. Despite the hand wringing by the pundits and anonymous Democrats, today is a reset. And today Biden is better than Trump. By the way, the Biden campaign raised 14 million yesterday. Trump raised 8. Just saying.
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“The Democratic Party is more invested in trying to maintain control than it is in trying to win an election in November,” said one DNC member.
The post Can Anything Stop the Democratic National Convention From Being a Biden Coronation? appeared first on The Intercept.
A winning photograph shows millions of Monarchs dripping from Mexico’s fir trees in winter.
The post The Haunted Forest of Butterflies appeared first on Nautilus.
That was Biden at a rally in North Carolina today. He was the guy we usually see. I don’t know who that guy last night was. CNN has a snap poll about the debate. Make of it what you will: Registered voters who watched CNN’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump largely think Trump outperformed Biden, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with most saying they have no real confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country. At the same time, a majority who tuned in say it had little or no effect on their choice for president. okay… Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday. Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden. And in 2020, Biden was seen by debate watchers as outperforming Trump in both of their presidential debates. Republicans who watched the first 2024 debate expressed broad confidence in Trump’s performance, the poll finds, with Democrats less sanguine about their party’s presumptive nominee.
The Supreme Court’s conservative bloc advances a key aim of the Project 2025 manifesto: “deconstruct the Administrative State.”
The post The Supreme Court’s Latest Power Grab: Regulatory Oversight appeared first on The Intercept.
Not Kamala, David Frum: A word to everybody writing, “The Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves” takes … The fundamental reason we’re in this crisis this morning is that the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is about to nominate for president a dictator-loving criminal against the Constitution. That disgrace and shame is theirs. If President Biden had posted an equally poor performance against presumptive GOP nominee Nikki Haley, then in that case yes, the Democrats would have nobody to blame but themselves – too bad for them, but the Constitution would not be in danger. The Republicans could have nominated somebody else. They chose Trump over many alternatives. They did it because their core voters like and enjoy Trump. Tell me again, who has nobody to blame but themselves? Last night, operating in the truest spirit of “good people on both sides,” a CNN moderator asked President Biden whether he thought that Trump’s voters were voting against democracy.
The champers toasting the release of Julian Assange was delightful after many years of struggle against his clearly unjust indictment and years of imprisonment. I am sure we all enjoyed sipping it. After the excitement and sweetness has assuaged however, a certain bitterness still remains, a cold realisation just what his plea bargaining signifies. Of Continue reading »
Currently, the Palestine issue has become a question of how to get Israel to vacate and stop controlling Palestinian territories. That requires Israel to accept that it cannot continue pretending Palestine does not exist. Thankfully for Palestinians, however, it looks like much of the world already recognises that Palestine is a state. Many await the Continue reading »
One of the charms of sport is seeing underdogs upsetting the established order by overcoming teams they seemingly have no chance of beating. All sports have examples of such upsets. Long-term realities about relative strengths can fall in the short run. Ah, the glorious uncertainty of sport! On occasions, the underdogs even do it against Continue reading »
The world has made up its mind on the move to renewables. All you have to do is listen to the markets, look at what global capital is doing and ask businesses here in Australia. A new fissure has emerged in Australia’s political landscape with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton casting doubt on the LNP bringing Continue reading »
Mike Pezzullo once bestrode the federal public service like a colossus, or so some fancied. He may have thought so too. Sundry journos we’re in the habit of describing him as the most powerful public servant in the land; he never was. Whatever he was, Mike fell to earth last year when he was sacked Continue reading »
Details of Coalition’s rooftop nuclear initiative revealed, Australia to close borders to all immigrants other than brickies and nuclear scientists, ACCC considering a Coles-Woolworths merger application. Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues. The Coalition’s nuclear fantasies Dutton couldn’t have picked Continue reading »
The corporate world is afraid of youth demanding change, particularly as rapacious business practices look set to drive us over the climate cliff into a frightening future. One solution the Right has implemented is the Christian Classical Education movement. It is an ultraconservative educational fashion from the US. Michigan’s Hillsdale College is its lodestar, celebrated Continue reading »
It’s been argued that Indonesia’s next President may be good for Australian interests; for domestic progressives that’s doubtful. It’s not just computer apps that get updated. Indonesian President Joko ’Jokowi’ Widodo is fiddling with the future by rewriting history and binning the past. It’s a task made easier by voter ignorance. The remake started when Continue reading »
The USA has shot itself in the head with its own wonder weapon. The most powerful weapon in the US arsenal is not F-16 jets, Himar missiles, or any of the other conventional war toys. Real US power resides in the US dollar. Continue reading »
Trump’s racist remarks toward migrants and Palestinians were met with little more than “thank you, President Trump.”
The post Trump Used “Palestinian” as a Slur. Biden and Debate Moderators Didn’t Say a Word. appeared first on The Intercept.
The high court overruled the Chevron precedent. It’s not entirely unexpected but like Dobbs it’s going to have huge ramifications. Kate Riga at TPM: The Supreme Court overruled a key pillar of federal agency authority Friday, appropriating a massive amount of executive branch power to itself. In overruling Chevron, the Court decided that federal agencies no longer get to fill in the gaps of Congress’ laws with their experts’ own reasonable interpretation of how to carry them out; that authority now resides in the judiciary. It’s a power grab that the right-wing legal world has been marching towards for years — and they finally got a Court activist enough to do it. Chief Justice John Roberts, often the tip of the spear for this movement, wrote the majority. Justice Elena Kagan, probably the Court’s best pro-agency voice, wrote the dissent, joined by her two liberal colleagues. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas wrote solo concurrences. Roberts completed the takeover with very little humility.
“On the biggest stage in US politics, Biden did not meet their modest expectations. And by the end of the 90-minute showdown, the Democratic president’s allies—party strategists and rank-and-file voters alike—descended into all-out panic following a debate performance punctuated by repeated stumbles, uncomfortable pauses, and a quiet speaking style that was often difficult to understand.” — The Boston Globe, 6/28/24
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Your staff has been broken, White Wizard. We Free Peoples saw it happen—LIVE.
But it wasn’t just Biden. Trump was awful too There’s no sugar coating it. The best you can say about that debate last night is that it was a missed opportunity for Joe Biden to put to rest the questions about his age and focus on Donald Trump’s extremist agenda and his criminality. The worst is that he gave a disastrous performance that should lead to his resignation and an open convention in August to choose a successor. There are plenty of Democrats pushing for that right now and it’s always possible they’ll succeed in getting Biden to drop out and turn the Chicago gathering into a shitshow not seen since 1968. Maybe that’s the kind of spectacle that will finally bring the Democratic party down to the level of the Trump Show. And maybe that’s what the American people really want. I don’t know what was wrong with Biden. It’s hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We’ve seen him recently in Europe holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine.
Despite deciding not to decide, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority laid out a legal road map for anti-abortion zealots.
The post Alito’s Dissent in Emergency Abortion Case Provides “Building Blocks” for More Extreme Bans appeared first on The Intercept.
If the president steps down, the DNC committee that could pick the new nominee is stocked with corporate lobbyists looking to influence public policy.
Helluva cognitive wizard The moment last night when Donald Trump brought up “acing” his cognititve test (actually a screen for early dementia, including Alzheimer’s), Joe Biden should have pounced. He didn’t. “This guy over here boasts about passing a dementia screen. Boasts! Anyway, how good was it? Donald Trump is obsessed with sharks and showerheads, with windmills and electric boats,” Biden might have responded. “Can he even draw the clock? Next thing you know, he’ll be accusing relatives of stealing his steak knives.” (A former landlady of mine with dementia complained about that.) “Trump thinks having an uncle who taught at MIT makes him a genius,” for goodness sake, Biden didn’t say. Last week Trump got wrong the name of the physician who gave him the test. But Biden didn’t pounce. Missed opportunity. The choice the debate presented was “Hell no” vs. “Oh, no,” as MSNBC’s post-debate panel put it. Joe Biden is an accomplished legislator and a surprisingly successful president. But he’s not a communicator on par with Barack Obama. That’s okay.
Doctor Who Season 1 is coming to Blu-ray & DVD, with every episode and all the supplemental video extras on August 12th - but only in the UK.