It was only a matter of time I confess I didn’t see this coming. And I should have. Of course the normalization of the narcissistic imbecile Donald Trump would lead inexorably to a Nixon revival on the right. After all, how can you hold him responsible for his crimes if everything Trump has done is perfectly above board? Politico reports: In late August, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy took a break from his typical campaign events to make a pit stop at an unusual venue for mainstream Republicans: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Speaking before a packed house, Ramaswamy was slated to deliver a speech on foreign policy. But his opening remarks served the more provocative purpose of challenging Nixon’s much-maligned status in the annals of conservative history. “He is by and away the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country — probably in all of American history,” said Ramaswamy, without a hint of irony. Ramaswamy’s homage to America’s most disgraced ex-president perplexed some liberal commentators, for whom Nixon remains the ultimate symbol of conservative criminality.
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I really didn’t want to write this article; I’d rather be saying something about the theological meaning of Christmas. Much safer. But John Menadue wrote to me last week with a challenge: “It may look too dramatic, but it would be highly symbolic if the Pope went to Gaza to celebrate Mass on Christmas day Continue reading »
Exmouth Gulf threatened with industrial development. Africa being forgotten as global economies develop. Australia’s emissions reductions likely to stall long before we get to net zero. Read on for the weekly environment update. Living in our environmental bubble Florence Miller is the Director of the UK-based Environmental Funders Network, the aim of which is to Continue reading »
Hymn # 7,000 – “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War” As Christmas approaches we envisage the serene nativity scene of baby Jesus in Bethlehem. It’s a time of reflection and peace as two billion Christians focus on the reason they have Christmas and stop to celebrate the birth of their saviour. There’s no such Continue reading »
The Atlas Network’s main goal has been to spot and train global talent in the ultra free-market libertarian field and connect it to the free-flowing money that the alliance functions to assist. They now have at least 515 partner organisations in over 100 nations. Secrecy is key for the corporations and plutocrats funding this model, Continue reading »
The results from the OECD’s PISA tests released last week showed that in Australia demography is destiny, revealing that by the time young people reach Year 9 a staggering five years of learning separates students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. This week, a major report advanced a compelling explanation for our educational woes – and Continue reading »
We’ve never before had a war like this, a war of complete consensus, a war of total silence, a war of blind support; a war without objection, without protest, without refusal to serve, without opposition, neither in the beginning or in the middle. A unanimous war, with wall-to-wall approval – excluding the Arab citizens of Continue reading »
Moms For Liberty, flash in the pan It looks like another vaunted group of culture warriors bites the dust: Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents. So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board. “Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign. Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms.
Why did the CDC hand a groundbreaking harm-reduction program over to a new firm with “zero experience” in public health?
The post A Defense-Linked Contractor Took Over a Successful CDC Anti-Overdose Initiative. It Imploded in a Day. appeared first on The Intercept.
A film about the PPE scandal did not declare to some contributors it was being funded by a company that won £203 million in Government PPE contracts
I know many Crooked Timber readers will want to mark the passing of Harry’s father, Tim Brighouse. Harry has sometimes written here about his father’s pedagogy and influence, and more obliquely at his singularity and sheer loveliness. Today’s Guardian newspaper carries an obituary: “Teachers and education experts this weekend paid tribute to Sir Tim Brighouse, […]
Can we “match the level of in-the-streetsness”? Moonstruck Cher GIFfrom Moonstruck GIFs “I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” my best friend from college used to complain. By that he meant that all his smarts and cleverness were stumbling blocks to getting what he wanted out of life. Which was another way of saying he thought too much. Democrats and lefty allies have the same problem: stubbornly insisting this is a survival-of-the-smartest world when it isn’t. Anand Giridharadas the other night issued a warning about that. First he notes that while lefty anger is dialed up to 11, our actions do not reflect it. Are we serious about stopping fascism or what? Do our actions “really match the level of in-the-streetsness” we saw in the 1960s, Giridharadas asks. Just as I’ve argued before: Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills. At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes.
Plus, Google suffers a big antitrust defeat, New York’s private colleges could lose wasteful tax breaks, and Massachusetts says goodbye to natural gas.
On Democrats fighting the last war Trying to teach Yellow Dogs new tricks sometimes seems pointless. With few exceptions, Democrats always seem to be fighting the last war because that’s the one they learned on. Brian Beutler sees it too. Beutler perceives that social media has fundamentally shifted our political ground: When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the strength of a media feeding frenzy over emails, it dawned on me that either my intuitions about partisan politics had been wrong, or something fundamental had changed. With the benefit of hindsight, I soon came to see the 2014 midterm campaign as a precursor. Republicans back then turned a closely fought election into a blowout in the final stretch by fanning a different media feeding frenzy—this one over a far-off outbreak of Ebola. […] All of this happened because Republicans situated themselves to win an information war in 2014, then situated themselves to win another information war in 2016. I had simply been underestimating the effectiveness of their antics.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, Archer, Rick and Morty, What If...?, Pete Davidson/Netflix, Walker, Evil, Loki, and more!
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Hacked and leaked datasets are more common than ever. Here are some ways to verify they’re real.
The post How to Authenticate Large Datasets appeared first on The Intercept.
In this decade, left-wing publishing is awash with works on technology. With ease, you can find a wide array of discussions over technology, how socialists should approach the platforms which govern our digital lives, and the dizzying potential of tech workers to build utopias of the future and transform existence as we know it. Life […]
Animals opening their presents! Aaaaand kids opening their presents: Happy Hollandaise, folks. I know some of you like the Friday Night Soother more than anything else I do. If so … 🙂
