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Created
Mon, 20/11/2023 - 02:30
The work is never finished I am reminded. Full quotation: It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Michael Beschloss will be along presently. The anniversary brings to mind something related to Gettysburg that I wrote for Dirty Hippies in 2011, “The Future They Feared”: We were sitting in a Waffle House in Staunton, Virginia discussing the state of the nation over breakfast. I had just read an Ed Kilgore column in Salon  about the nationwide Republican war on voting rights, and the conservative debate over whether voting is even a right or not. As I am standing in line to pay my tab, a African-American man in his forties slides into an occupied booth next to the register and sits opposite an older white man.
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Mon, 20/11/2023 - 02:16
.Macroeconomic models may be an informative tool for research. But if practitioners of ‘New Keynesian’ macroeconomics do not investigate and make an effort to provide a justification for the credibility of the assumptions on which they erect their building, it will not fulfil its tasks. There is a gap between its aspirations and its accomplishments, […]
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Mon, 20/11/2023 - 01:02
“Parkinson’s disease sucks” It’s heartening to see people who still believe in public service as a vocation. A neighbor spent his career in international development. My state representative served first in the Peace Corps. I recently met a couple who retired here after careers as Foreign Service officers. Donald Trump calls Washington, D.C. a swamp and people eat it up in part because guys like George Santos and Bob Menendez give public service a bad name. (Even though there’s some “both sides” to that, political corruption and faithlessness does seem to have a right-wing bias.) Yet some people still believe. They’re not the ones who become notorious in the press. CBS this morning profiles Virginia congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D). Wexton comes from a family of public servants. She’s afflicted with a rare disease, yet forgoes some speech and physical therapy to keep serving her consituents: Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy, as Wexton said, has no cure. At this time, there is no treatment that will slow its progression, and it tends not to respond to medication, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Created
Mon, 20/11/2023 - 00:47
. Statistical reasoning certainly seems paradoxical to most people. Take for example Simpson’s paradox. From a theoretical perspective, it importantly shows that causality can never be reduced to a question of statistics or probabilities unless you are — miraculously — able to keep constant all other factors that influence the probability of the outcome studied. […]
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Sun, 19/11/2023 - 15:11

The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal joins Chris Hedges to discuss his investigation into Israel’s indiscriminate use of heavy weapons against Israeli citizens on October 7, and the shock-and-awe campaign of misinformation it subsequently employed to create political space for its brutal assault on Gaza. This was originally published by The Real News Network. Editor’s note: Since the publication of this interview, an Israeli police investigation has confirmed that Israeli Apache helicopters killed numerous Israeli citizens at and around the Nova electronic […]

The post VIDEO: What really happened on October 7? first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post VIDEO: What really happened on October 7? appeared first on The Grayzone.

Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 10:30
This man is demented — and the audience cheers Back when he was running against Clinton he used to say she belonged in jail and she was crook and that she didn’t “have the strength and stamina” to be president. It wasn’tsubtle by any means. But this … this is beyond grotesque. And his audience loves it. Meanwhile, speaking of stupid: Fine. Everything is fine.
Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 08:00
Don’t let them forget Trump or shirk who they’ve become Following up on the post below, here’s a great piece by Brian Beutler from his excellent newsletter Off Message. He recaps the infuriatingly terrible media response to Trump’s “vermin” comments, proving just how inured they’ve become to his escalating extremism. He notes that the outcry from regular people finally jolted them out of their reflexive “that old Trumps says the darndest things” reaction. But what do we do? But the question now—as days turn into weeks, and fresh stories vie for our attention—is whether this will be a passing kerfuffle, or one Republicans, as long as they support Trump, can never live down.  Reporters have no shortage of Trump outrage porn to cover, and if Democrats can’t differentiate the vermin libel as something that transcends his more typical offenses, it will fade like most of the others. That’s the main source of my small misgivings over the couch-fainting, pearl-clutching way liberals have responded to it. “Ack, Hitler said that!” True enough, he did.
Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 07:52
REMOULADE SAUCE 2 cups mayonnaise or cooked salad dressing1 tablespoon prepared mustard⅛ teaspoon pepper½ cup finely chopped dill pickle1 hard-cooked egg, chopped1 clove garlic, pressed2 tablespoons drained capers1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon or 1 teaspoon dried tarragon leaves1 tablespoon chopped fresh chervil or 1 teaspoon dried chervil leaves1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley2 lb cooked shrimp, […]
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Sun, 19/11/2023 - 06:30
Not that some of us didn’t see it coming… Over the past few years people have argued over whether or not Trump and his movement were fascist. (I came down on the side of yes, quite some time ago..) But others made the point that the word has a specific meaning and Trump didn’t necessarily fit it perfectly. Tom Nichols, Never Trump conservative, was one of those people. In this piece he correctly describes him as a lazy, narcissistic, gadfly who doesn’t really care about anything but himself. He points out that he “had only two consistent issues: hatred of immigrants and love for foreign autocrats.” He writes: “Trump, as a person and as a public figure, is just so obviously ridiculous; fascists, by contrast, are dangerously serious people, and in many circumstances, their leaders have been unnervingly tough and courageous. Trump—whiny, childish, unmanly—hardly fits that bill” He warned that the indiscriminate use of the word word could blind us to the time when it might actually become accurate. He says that time has come: For weeks, Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric.
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Sun, 19/11/2023 - 05:14

Ms Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Esteemed colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, before I address the question of taxing serious wealth seriously, I you forgive my inability to proceed without an acknowledgement of the human tragedy in the Middle East. As Secretary General Goutières correctly put it, nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing is […]

The post How should we tax wealth & multinationals globally? Speech at UNDP, New York 14th NOV 2023 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 05:00
If she can do it there, she can do it anywhere Greg Sargent on the latest accomplishments of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer: Few Democrats would deny that the party must win back working people. Yet one of the party’s long-term conundrums is whether they can pursue ambitious efforts to combat climate change without threatening those very workers’ wages or jobs. In coming days, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is set to sign a package of bills that would transition the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2040. The bills — which also include robust provisions for workers — are among the most ambitious efforts undertaken by any state to move toward a carbon-free future in a manner that is actively good for working people. Significantly, Democrats are testing this approach in a swing state in the heart of the industrial Midwest. […] Climate action tends to expose cracks in the Democratic coalition precisely because it aggravates existing tensions between the goals and interests of environmentalists and workers.
Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 04:58
Judge rules that he will instruct the jury that there is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful military order, reports Joe Lauria. The judge in the case of Australian military whistleblower David McBride dealt the defendant a serious blow on Wednesday when he Continue reading »
Created
Sun, 19/11/2023 - 04:57
James Hansen claims that climate scientists have been too slow to ring the alarm bells. Not so, says Michael Mann. International climate treaties are booming post-Paris. Putting trousers on a starfish. Tackling climate change: are we already too late? The heat is rising among climate scientists. In part about the research evidence and its interpretation; Continue reading »