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I was unhappy earlier today about all the media attention to some Arizona voters who told a focus group that they think Donald Trump is just dreamy. It’s the same old same old form the media who are once again working feverishly to pump up Trump’s popularity. But Philip Bump at the Washington Post had some interesting information that indicates that an Arizona focus group may not have its finger on the pulse: YouGov measures the popularity of past presidents among all Americans. And a pair of professors conducts a survey asking members of the American Political Science Association to evaluate presidential “greatness.” At the upper end of the spectrum, there’s general agreement. Abraham Lincoln is the most positively viewed president among both groups. George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt are near the top as well. There’s some deviation on John F. Kennedy, who’s third on YouGov’s list and 10th among the presidential scholars. But that deviation is nothing compared with what happens at the other end of the spectrum. The worst-performing past president among the general public is James K.
Concerns over police actions in Germany, proof the British Government knows that Israel is committing genocide and Trump’s suggestion for Gaza is a genocidal act. In Australia we wait for politicians to be equally outraged about attacks on Muslims. Jeffrey Sachs on the US wars of choice. “Where are the lawyers, the guardians of the Continue reading »
No it’s bullshit. This is the Great Replacement Theory which Musk signed on to some time ago. For a quick refresh on what this is about: The Great replacement in the United States is the American version of a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that racial minorities are displacing the traditional white American population and taking control of the nation. Versions of the theory “have become commonplace” in the Republican Party of the United States, and have become a major issue of political debate. It also has stimulated violent responses including mass murders. It resembles the Great Replacement theory promoted in Europe, but has its origins in American nativism around 1900. According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were, “convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.” A May 2022 poll by Yahoo! News and YouGov found that 61% of people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S.
But their toxic compounds could yield useful medicines
The post The Caterpillars That Can Kill You appeared first on Nautilus.
Dave Karpf wrote about the Silicon Valley Edgelords’ plan for world domination and it’s important: Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book, The Network State is a blueprint of sorts. It is the wild fever-dream of Silicon Valley’s libertarian investor-class. It imagines a near future in which online communities use the blockchain to opt out of government and form their own competing “network states.” It’s essentially just Galt’s Gulch, plus blockchain. If you want to know what the Tech Barons are attempting to replace democracy with, then it is important to take Srinivasan seriously. But Balaji is not a serious person. The book is manifestly ridiculous. It is a blueprint drawn in crayon. Balaji’s ideas are stunningly undercooked, offered with such conspiratorial self-certainty that you have to wonder whether anyone has bothered to ask him if he’s alright.
President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that “utter nonsense.” Natsios says USAID is “the most accountable aid agency in the world.” https://t.co/4MwUokAAdX pic.twitter.com/X7hLBiUlYg — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025 > Elon Musk says he would spend millions in primaries on anybody who opposes President Trump. pic.twitter.com/TdroLJXXa4 — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025 Natsios describes himself as a very conservative Republican and strict constructionist who believes that we may be headed to a constitutional crisis if Trump decides to ignore the orders of the Supreme Court. What happens then, he’s asked? “I don’t know,” he replies. None of us do. Trump and his henchmen, especially Musk, are now in something of a fugue state, seemingly beyond reason. They’re dragging massive numbers of people along with them including the Republicans in Washington to appear to believe that they really do have the power to change reality.
The Argentinean president branded himself as an edgy economic genius to ride a wave of financial discontent to power. Now he’s implicated in one of the biggest scams in history, wiping out over $4 billion in market cap in a few hours, leaving Argentineans wondering if they’ve also been rugged. Argentina’s President Javier Milei has been accused of fraud, and is likely to face impeachment charges, after he promoted a sham cryptocurrency token which allowed a handful of con artists […]
The post Argentina’s Milei faces impeachment for promoting crypto scam first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Argentina’s Milei faces impeachment for promoting crypto scam appeared first on The Grayzone.
No doubt. Meanwhile, Trump’s co-president believes he is a god. He’s impregnating as many women as possible (through IVF so he doesn’t have to engage in the dirty work apparently) in order to spread his seed to create some sort of master race. That’s not hyperbolic. He really is that nuts. He has no idea what he’s doing with the US Government and neither does Trump, obviously. (He has never understood how government works.) They are simply taking a wrecking ball to all these government agencies and if somebody dies or people’s lives are ruined by doing that they say they’ll take a look at how they might fix the problem. That’s what he did with his companies and that’s what he thinks will work now. If you don’t care about people at all then this actually makes sense. They are just guinea pigs in your experiment and if they die you learn from what you did wrong. All the years of trial and error, research and implementation are tossed out the window so that a group of teenage coders can “fix” the problems that didn’t exist in the first place.
What can we say about the shape of things to come in world politics, the probability of different possibilities, and the reflexivity of our anticipations? Building on post-Keynesian economic theory and classical theories of imperialism, my new book discusses a new era of insecurity, confrontations, armaments, and wars.
The post Globalizations: The Shape of Things to Come appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).
Yesterday Trump made another ceremonial visit to Real America while President Musk ran the country: Donald Trump swept into Daytona, Florida for the Daytona 500 on Sunday while the arrival of a rainstorm — combined with the president’s own pre-race stunt — threatened to delay the race for hours. Sunday afternoon storms forced race officials to stop NASCAR’s biggest event on the 11th lap. Initial reports indicated that the race could be held up until around 7 p.m. EST. But the rain couldn’t stop the president from hogging the spotlight, which a crowd of cheering Trump fans in the audience didn’t appear to mind. The president took a lap around the track in “the Beast,” the president’s armored vehicle, followed by his motorcade ahead of the race’s start, while the Foo Fighters’ “There Goes My Hero” blared comically loud throughout the track. If it was meant as an ironic gesture, it was lost on the crowd who cheered the flyover of Air Force One and the arrival of Trump’s motorcade.
In Australia at the federal level of government, we have some of the shortest election cycles in the world: often barely three years. This mitigates against even medium-term planning. A new government takes a year to learn the ropes of office, another year to govern before preparing for re-election in the third. And even if Continue reading »
Senate Democrats have the power to block federal contracts to Tesla and SpaceX. It’s the path to pushing Musk out of politics.
The post This Is the Way to Stop Elon Musk appeared first on The Intercept.
Axios conducted a focus group that I’m seeing touted all over the media as if it’s the Oracle of Delphi. I’ll let you be the judge if anyone should take this seriously: Every Arizona swing voter in our latest Engagious/Sago focus groups said they approve of President Trump’s actions since taking office — and most also support Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government. Public opinion can constrain presidents when Congress does not. But these 11 voters — all of whom backed Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump last November — said they’re good with Trump aggressively testing disruptive, expansionist expressions of presidential power that are piling up in court challenges. It’s needed to “get America back on track,” one participant said. One notable area of disagreement with Trump: The idea of the U.S. displacing Palestinians and taking over and redeveloping Gaza. These swing voters want Trump to stick with Americans’ needs inside the U.S. Some would like to see him do more, sooner, to rein in consumer costs.
. Danke, guter Gott, dass es Politiker wie Heidi gibt!
Using democracy to kill democracy The only thing American about supporters of Donald Trump’s rolling coup is their birth certificates. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel (and others) excluded, of course. * Resistance isn’t futile, The Ink reminds readers this morning. Trump 2.0’s revival last week of NIxon’s Saturday Night Massacre, and its rejection of the rule of law nowadays is “just what happens on a Thursday.” The Ink begins: JD Vance claimed last week that mere judges had no place restraining the president’s “legitimate power.” Bad enough. But over the weekend, his boss went further. A lot further. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie called it “the single most un-American and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an American president.” And it’s hard to think of one that outdoes it. But the refusal of acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle R. Sassoon, last week to carry out AG Pam Bondi’s demand to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams demonstrated that the rule of law is not dead yet.
Keep leopards from eating your faces He Who Would Be King on Saturday gave dubious legal advice to those who would do him harm. That’s not what he intended. He meant to declare that no law can touch him, to issue a royal corollary to his Fifth Avenue declaration. But the chaos inside his brain case instead issued a statement with a dual meaning that escaped a man once nicked by an assassin before he becoming legally bulletproof. The statement is not original. Donald Trump picked it up online like a dime on the sidewalk. One of his believers likely found it first and dropped it there weeks ago. The quote is from a movie on Napoleon, not likely by the emperor himself. But it’s serviceable enough for a naked emperor to pick up, try on, and walk around in. Today is Presidents Day, so presumably the would-be-king will not be celebrating. But those opposed to a return of the monarchy will be anti-celebrating “Not My President’s Day” today across the country: These demonstrations are being organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states.
While the media mogul spent more than half a century building up back-door political influence, the social media broligarch stormed into the US Government in just two years. Peter Jukes explores how the use of power through media has evolved