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“Nearly half of Republicans believe California ‘not really American.’ ” — LA Times

After being jolted awake by yet another earthquake, I take a deep breath and compose myself. Ahhh… the sweet smell of smog. I rise, brew up a pot of fair trade coffee, and inject my arm with the mandatory daily vaccine.

Today is my birthday, and I’m going out with friends to celebrate, but I have some things to do beforehand. First, I need to write my monthly mortgage check: $800,000. But it’s no big deal, because I’m saving tons of money not owning a car thanks to our Supreme Leader Gavin Newsom outlawing them.

Along with images from Steven Moffat-penned Doctor Who Episode 3: "BOOM," Russell T. Davies drops an ominous "warning" about one character...

It’s not going to be pretty The mainstream press has finally turned its focus to what a second Donald Trump administration will look like should he win the White House in 2024. Salon has been covering this since Trump first flew off to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and it was obvious that unless something happened to his health, Trump would be the 2024 nominee and the rest of the GOP would be developing a multi-faceted program to grant themselves unlimited power. None of this was anything but predictable once we saw what they were capable of during the post election period of 2020 and the events of January 6th. The mainstream media has caught up and over the past few months has produced in-depth features and front page articles on the new MAGAfied Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Schedule F, Agenda 47 and the details within all of those and other plans which reveal an authoritarian, anti-democratic crackdown on Americans’ rights and a full rollback of safety regulations and vital programs. The proposals for foreign policy and national security are even more horrifying.

Ryan Grim speaks to Ross Wightman about the side effects he experienced from a Covid-19 vaccine.

The post The Silence Around Covid Vaccine Injuries  appeared first on The Intercept.

You are one-fifth of a person to Donald Trump Donald Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen is trestifying this morning in Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial. He’s begun by explaining how Trump would would instruct him to pay creditors twenty cents on the dollar. Take it or get nothing. Even for struggling small, family businesses. Screw you. Anna Bower (Lawfare correspondent) tweets (thread): Before Cohen moved over to Trump Org, Cohen presented Trump with a bill for 100K, which Trump owed for work Cohen’s firm did on a real estate transaction. Trump told Cohen to come work for Trump Org, and Cohen agreed. Later, when Cohen mentioned the bill owed to his law firm, Trump said “Do you want to get fired on your first day?” The bill never got paid, Cohen says. Cohen said that he always reported directly to Trump. There were times when he asked Cohen to negotiate payments or bills. He provides an example: Trump University ran into trouble, and there were vendors who were unpaid. Cohen contacted the vendors, negotiated a reduction in what was owed. Mens rea on two legs Trump did not use email.

Greg Stoker, a former US Army Ranger and intelligence collector, explains Israel's untenable military action in Rafah for MintPress News

The post IDF Rafah Assault Doomed to Fail: Analysis by Former US Special Operations’ Greg Stoker appeared first on MintPress News.

Washington spent 7.5 billion dollars on charging stations. The result?

Seven station.

China has subsidized charging station as well. I can’t find reliable figures, though one source says around 10 billion dollars. How many charging stations does China have? Over seven million, 2.2 million of which are public units. The US has 186,200.

Resisting the right’s fit of pique I’m trying not to repeat the mistakes of 2016. I really am. There was no way the country was crazy enough to elect Donald Trump president, I told myself. “He’s mentally unstable,” I told my parents one night while visiting for dinner. One well-heeled Bernie Sanders supporter, unnerved by Trump signs sprouting like weeds out in the county, printed and fabricated his own quarter-sized Clinton signs by the thousands in response. They went like the proverbial hotcakes. Then I spent the afternoon of Election Day 2016 greeting voters outside a nearby polling station standing a few feet away from Talks To The Sky. You know what happened later. This fall, she might be proudly wearing adult diapers outside her pants in solidarity with her king. Sadly, Americans are crazy enough to elect Donald “88 Counts,”professional huckster. They proved that once already. They left him in charge ahead of a global pandemic and got American carnage and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol.

A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

In the final round of the most important chess tournament of the year, two super grandmasters—two of the fiercest, most competitive chess players alive—apologized to each other. Fabiano Caruana, the American, had the white pieces against Ian Nepomniachtchi, the Russian. To understand why they apologized, we have to understand the unusual situation they found themselves in: they both had to win.

On Doctor Who, the Doctor as the last survivor of a genocide & a foundling who doesn't know their origins redefines the heart of the series.

What is the Forest Service’s new policy regarding the tick problem?
We locate the hellbeasts wherever they have made the mistake of existing and send them to the flaming valleys of the Underworld from whence they crawled out during phase one of The Reaping.

How will this be accomplished?
We won’t sleep or see our families until every blade of grass and every pile of leaves is free of the blood-soaked, virus-infected horrors that ticks are intent on inflicting on our people and way of life. For as long as it takes, we will breathe annihilation and drink destruction until Lord Beelzebub’s eight-legged hordes have returned to the fiery womb of anguish in which they gained their wretched powers.

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: IWTV, The Penguin, PLL: Summer School, X-Men '97, Good Omens 3, Smiling Friends, Doctor Who, and more!

Amid massive public protests and deepening international pressure, the ruling Georgian Dream party has said it may be willing to negotiate on their controversial ‘Russian law'

If Joe Biden’s pause on certain weapons shipments to Israel over the invasion of Rafah lead us to hope something is shifting in the US, the ongoing violence on its university campuses is a reminder of the forces that remain ranged against believers in a free Palestine. Students and staff seeking their institutions’ divestment from […]

The London Borough of Newham has the highest number of households staying in temporary accommodation in the country. For every 1,000 households, 53 are in temporary accommodation. The London average is 17

Putin may replace his long-standing Defence Minister but cannot tackle the real cause of his disastrous foreign policy – himself

Men and women can’t touch in Iranian cinema, so filmmakers creatively work around the ban by using props as a go-between

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

In order to help improve my students’ mental health, I offered a course on the science of happiness. It worked – but why?

- by Bruce Hood

Read at Aeon