“We do not want to be a democracy”* Republicans want to roll back the 20th century a quarter of the way into the 21st. They’ve made no bones about it for decades. In his heyday during the George W. Bush administration prior to the September 11 attacks, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform busily strong-armed Republicans into signing his anti-tax pledge. He dreamed of returning America to “the McKinley era, absent the protectionism.” He wanted, famously, to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist was a radical for his day. But not so radical that he imagined chucking the Constitution itself along with the last 100 years. Among today’s MAGA Republicans, he’s a RINO. Nancy MacLean, author of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” suggests the remnant of the southern planter class, economic royalists and academic libertarians, undertook affecting a restoration of elite dominance beginning in the late 1940s. Their goal: to save capitalism from democracy.
Reading
“Red touch yellow, legless fellow. Red touch black, legs they lack.”
Remembering that neither coral snakes nor scarlet kingsnakes have legs.
“Uplifting. Star-spangled. Anthem.”
Remembering the letters in “USA.”
“A caT has two. A dOg has one.”
How many horns common household pets would have if those household pets had horns, and also if cats had two of them while dogs only had one.
“Red touch yellow, kill a fellow. The largest nation, Russian Federation.”
Distinguishing between a coral snake and the country of Russia.
“An airplane takes you up to a different plane. A submarine goes in the water.”
Determining whether a vehicle is an airplane or a submarine.
“ER = Eating Rounds. ING = Inside, Normally Garments.”
Remembering whether plates go in a dishwashER or a washING machine.
“Red sky in the morn, a day is born. Red sky at night, a day takes flight.”
Distinguishing between sunrise and sunset.
This week’s local elections will be the last significant electoral test for the main political parties before the next general election. Polls indicate that the Conservatives are certain to receive a drubbing, signalling that the end of the road is near for a government that is exhausted and all out of ideas and ambition. Labour […]
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Watchmen/NIN, Always Sunny/Seinfeld, X-Men '97, Doctor Who, Superman & Lois, The X-Files/Taylor Swift & more!
. As argued by Susan, the universalist ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions […]
Festus Akinbusoye is in hot water over potential ethics breaches as complaints mount
- by Shayla Love
- by Adam Frank
The Conservative candidate against London Mayor Sadiq Khan joined a series of events with the extreme anti-ULEZ campaigner
Gaza solidarity encampments have spread to university campuses across the country, inspired by the movement in the US.
The post Uni encampments for Gaza demand end to ties with Israel first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Students in America and increasingly across the world are demonstrating against the Gaza genocide. They’re right to do so, opposing a genocide is never the wrong thing to do.
Student protests that began in the United States have spread to other countries .
At the University of Melbourne in Australia this morning, students pitched tents and began their protests against the genocidal war in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/8oyRXhvRks
— S p r i n t e r F a c t o r y (@Sprinterfactory) April 25, 2024
During the past decade, it has become obvious that economic interconnectedness did not bring forth frictionless international relations as many liberal theorists had predicted. To the contrary, the fact that economic integration has been profoundly uneven has enabled the weaponisation of asymmetrical economic relations for the achievement of geopolitical and/or economic goals (Whyte 2022; Farrell 2023). The weaponisation of the unique international role of the US dollar is one of the most consequential examples of this trend. For instance, in the period since 2001, US sanctions designations have expanded by an extraordinary 933%. In the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, dollar hegemony made it possible to freeze Russia’s foreign reserves and expel the country from the SWIFT payments system and US correspondent banking.
Are they the new soccer moms and NASCAR dads? Dan Pfeiffer looks at the latest (outlier) CNN poll that has the whole beltway gasping with excitement over the prospect that Biden is in the dirt with young people, Black and Hispanic voters. He noted that the polls shows that 25% of Trump voters are what he calls “conviction sensitive” voters who might be persuaded to abandon him if he’s convicted of a crime: Even more interesting, the topline numbers are the characteristics of these conviction-sensitive voters. According to CNN: In other words, these are the exact voters who propelled Trump to his very narrow lead in the polling average. Younger voters, independents, Black and Latino voters are groups Trump struggled with in 2020 but is doing better with now.
Airline-bankrolled lawmakers just advanced a bill that could undermine Biden’s promise of automatic refunds on canceled or delayed flights.
Probably Politicians who have faith in their leadership don’t need to lie as easily as they breathe.
Opposition leader and enthusiastic Voldemort cos-player, Peter Dutton, has sent his apologies to the organisers of last weekends women’s marches, telling them that he was busy washing his hair. ”I know it may appear that I do not have any... Read More ›
Sitting on the banks of the River Trent, the market town of Rugeley in Staffordshire has a rich industrial history. In 1777, it benefited from the construction of the Trent and Mersey Canal, which enabled the smooth transportation of fragile pottery and created a thriving industry. Cooling water from the river later made it an […]
I wish to honour the miners and pay tribute to the families who, in 1984–5, fought the greatest workers’ fight seen in this country since the Chartists, the Diggers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and the Suffragettes in the battle to save pits, jobs, and communities. I especially want to pay tribute to the young miners, who […]
A possible week in London in 1984: first thing on Monday morning on your way to work, you are greeted at your local tube station by a group of miners collecting donations for the coalfields. When you arrive in the office, your union rep is doing the rounds signing people up for a regular levy […]
In the battle of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against Margaret Thatcher’s campaign to break the back of the British labour movement, international solidarity with the NUM remains, forty years on, one of the most inspiring dimensions of that titanic twelve-month dispute. As Seumas Milne, interviewed elsewhere in this issue, has written: ‘The 1984–85 […]