It’s a winner. Huge. You go boys and girls: Republicans leading the party’s effort to defend the House in this fall’s elections are pushing GOP colleagues to openly discuss their positions on abortion, rather than try to sidestep the issue like many did in the previous campaign, arguing that doing so will be critical to winning competitive races. A memo prepared by House Republicans’ campaign arm and viewed by The Wall Street Journal says Republicans have a “brand problem, not a policy problem,” as their reluctance to discuss the issue left it to Democrats to define where the GOP stood. Many voters view the party’s hopefuls as opposing abortion under any circumstances, when there are actually a variety of positions held by candidates, particularly in swing districts, the memo states. The guidance tells candidates that they must “confidently articulate” their stance and that “being unwilling to stake out a clear position with voters is the worst possible solution.” Abortion has weighed on the party’s success in recent years.
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We now know the recipients for the next Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Awards. This year’s RBG Awards will go to entrepreneur Elon Musk, actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, lifestyle expert Martha Stewart, philanthropist Michael Milken and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. This award is given out by a right wing foundation through the Library of Congress so I guess that explains it. But why is the Library of Congress involved in something like this? And they couldn’t find more than one woman for the RBG award? Sylvester Stallone?
A new “post-quantum” theory of gravity says we can wave dark matter and dark energy goodbye.
The post The End of the Dark Universe? appeared first on Nautilus.
Judging from the bots on my social media feeds none of this reality makes any difference. People are convinced that their lives are the worst they’ve ever been, they’re are all barely getting by, unable to buy food or gas and have no jobs and no future. Americans are starving while “illegal” criminals are killing them in their beds. We are in a dystopian nightmare from which we cannot awaken — at least until Donald Trump makes America great again. Here’s just another little reminder which will be refuted immediately because as it happens, Trump’s term actually ended in 2019 rather than 2020 according to many Americans. He bears no responsibility for anything bad and gets credit for Obama’s recovery. Isn’t that special?
A tendency to reframe negative events may be embedded in our neurobiology.
The post Why We Search for Silver Linings appeared first on Nautilus.
Last week, Katie Britt, one of Alabama’s two Christian nationalist senators, provided a now-notorious rebuttal...
Today, the United States House of Representatives voted to require the Chinese company Bytedance to sell its stake in the popular service Tiktok. If the company does not comply, the bill would ban the use of Tiktok in the US. The bill still needs to pass the Senate and get delivered to President Biden’s desk, … Continue reading Tiktok and the Fediverse
I was asked this question by a friend today and I found myself uncertain if there would be a great power war or not.
My thoughts were roughly five:
There was a pretty energetic push to get primary voters in the state of Washington to vote “uncommitted” to protest the administration’s Israel policy. It got 7.5% of the vote representing 48,600 votes which is quite a few. It’s not a state with a large Arab American population but there are a lot of lefties there and they made their voices heard. Still, it’s not a battleground state so perhaps it’s not as relevant as it was in Michigan. Dave Weigel reported on the project for Semafor: Next week, they’ll try again in Kansas. Next month, they’ll do it in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin — all states where “uncommitted” efforts have come together quickly, inspired by campaigns in Michigan, Minnesota, and Hawaii that have denied Biden 20 delegates so far. “We’re focused on ensuring that President Biden and his campaign listen to us,” said Rami Al-Kabra, the 47-year-old deputy mayor of Bothell, a city in Seattle’s suburbs. “What happens in November?
The second anti-Muslim hatred advisor proposed in a week has problematic connections to the Quilliam Foundation and the Gatestone Institute
We shall never get anywhere with the Australia-China relationship if we are not pragmatic, as Bismarck famously said. While we must avoid over-ambitious goals, forthcoming official talks with China’s top foreign affairs official Wang Yi will present a unique opportunity to test the government’s relationship reset. A two-day visit by Wang Yi later in March Continue reading »
As we speak, international law is being openly flouted by powerful actors, [the US, the UK, and Israel] with devastating results for Julian Assange, and other political prisoners, for thousands of innocent civilians slaughtered in Gaza, and for the continued viability of international human rights and international law themselves. Introduction by John Jiggens: Craig Mokhiber Continue reading »
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive! Whatever else he might have been, Sir Walter Scott was no clairvoyant. Deeply cemented into Scottish history and folklore, his long narrative poems are now largely forgotten. But this single line captures the essence of AUKUS, where a cocktail of strategic conceits Continue reading »
AUKUS has become a stillborn project. Vassal states, satellites – in other words the butlers of international relations, the minders of the royal stool – are a rarely respected lot. In Australia’s case, being Washington’s butler is hardly like being Jeeves to Bertie Wooster. Jeeves is, after all, a near omniscient being, a confidant who Continue reading »
The irony was thick as lard. What an indigestible image for International Women’s Day. What an appalling advertisement for the Melbourne ASEAN Summit and its Australian host, a claimed world leader for gender equality. The above pic appeared last week just before Minister for Women Katy Gallagher released the government’s Working for Women strategy to “ensure Continue reading »
Having a comfortable place to live is a human right. It is enshrined in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia has signed. But it is clear from today’s housing crisis Australia has lost its way. It is April 1943. The war in the Pacific is in its 17th month. While Continue reading »
Last week on Brisbane radio I briefly canvassed a proposal that all our state & federal parliamentary buildings should be alcohol-free zones. At first glance, this might seem to be either outlandishly radical or an example of wowserism. But it’s important to note that in 2024 many workplaces involved in critical decision-making processes are now Continue reading »
In recent years, there has been a notable shift among certain Western politicians, media outlets and think tanks regarding their perspective on China’s developmental trajectory. The once popular theory of an imminent collapse of China, famously asserted by Gordon G. Chang over two decades ago, has finally begun to lose traction. But there is still Continue reading »
My hosting service is having some issues with the shared server I’m on. I’m not sure when it will be fixed (heck, as I write the site is loading fine, so it may be fixed now or it might not), but if you’ve been having trouble getting here that’s what’s going on. I’ve talked to them twice with no luck, if issues continue I’ll have another more forcible chat and may wind up moving to another hosting company, though I’d prefer to avoid that as I’ve been with the current one for 15 years and this is the first time I’ve had a problem which couldn’t be solved with one or two calls.
Here’s part of that story: Hur’s February report stated that following a yearlong investigation into Biden’s possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents, he had concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted.” But journalists quickly fixated on Hur’s incendiary and unfalsifiable description of Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and his references to specific Biden memory lapses over the course of their five-hour interview. The mainstream political press treated Hur as an impartial voice levying credible accusations, unleashing a deluge of reports calling Biden’s mental acuity into question. Hur’s background as a former clerk to right-wing judges and a Trump administration appointee — and his gratuitous swipes at a Democratic president that happened to align with a yearslong GOP campaign to portray Biden as addled — failed to raise their alarms.