In contrast to its attitude to private debt, which it ignores, mainstream economics obsesses about government debt. But this volte-face doesn’t besmirch its record of being 100% wrong. This is the first half of chapter nine of my draft book Rebuilding Economics from the Top Down, which will be published later this year by the … Continue reading "It’s a Mixed Credit-Fiat World"
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What would a second Trump term mean for the climate? Ok, kids, pay attention. This is for real. Back in the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election, I stated that a second Trump term would be “game over for the climate.” That hasn’t changed in the years since. In fact, it’s become even more true. We are three years further down the carbon emissions highway, and the devastating consequences of the 1C (1.8F) warming we have already caused are now apparent in the form of unprecedented dangerous, damaging and deadly extreme weather events. As yet, we have not taken the exit ramp needed to avoid a far worse planetary warming of 1.5C (3F). Yes, real progress has been made during the Biden era, with “staggering” green energy growth nearly on track to reach the needed reductions in carbon emissions in the power generation sector. But power generation is only a slice of the carbon emissions pie, responsible for about one-fifth of total carbon emissions. The rest comes from transportation, industry, agriculture and buildings.
If only there were cameras The head of the Trump Organization takes the stand this morning in its Manhattan civil fraud trial. You can say a lot that will roll of this odd duck’s back, but questioning Trump’s net worth cuts to the core of his pathologically insecure self-image. He’s prone to lash out at those who do. We know that here from experience. The 2019 post that drew a threat letter from one of Trump’s lawyers commented on MSNBC reporting that Trump’s real estate empire was in such shaky financial shape that he had hostile foreign powers backstopping his loans. Hullabaloo got caught in the backlash. Former Trump personal attorney, Michael Cohen, thinks Trump will respond just as poorly to having his financial condition questioned to his face on the witness stand. He won’t be able to keep his cool, Cohen told CNN anchor Phil Mattingly (Raw Story): “At the beginning, he’s going to try.
Trump’s minions are busily drawing up plans to prosecute enemies and deploy the military into the streets of America Over the weekend, Democrats celebrated their biennial tradition of hand-wringing and panic about the election a year hence. Every cycle about this time, polls showing that their voters are unhappy with their candidates and wish they had someone better are floated by all the major polling outfits and everyone starts hyperventilating. It seems like only yesterday that the polling showed Democrats being swept away by a “red tsunami” in the midterms and it was inevitable that they would lose both chambers of Congress for the foreseeable future. Oops! One of the more extreme examples of this came back in 2011 when President Barack Obama was running for re-election. With a 61% disapproval rating on the economy and 73% saying the country was heading in the wrong direction in some polls, there was growing talk of running a primary opponent or replacing Joe Biden as vice president on the ticket.
Whomever made this, bravo! pic.twitter.com/75H43v32RT — Majestic (@MajesticResists) November 5, 2023 How do they explain this?
Look to the Double Haters Dan Pfeiffer does some useful analysis about the NY Times poll and the “double haters” in his newsletter: I am still processing this poll and will have more to say in the coming days. But I do not want to sugarcoat it. While some of Trump’s gains among Black, Hispanic, and young voters may be hard to believe, numbers like these are broadly consistent with the trendlines in recent polls. This poll shows that not only can Trump win, he might now be a slight favorite to do so. Even if we don’t take the results literally, we should take them very, very seriously. Instead of doom-scrolling and tweeting through our panic, we should see this poll as a roadmap on how to reconstitute the anti-MAGA majority. We have to persuade the voters we have lost since 2020. Here’s one place to start. Who are the “Double Haters” Every election cycle, the political press likes to identify a specific group of voters as the ones to decide the election.
and the royalist style in American politics The reason people chose an authoritarian for president in 2016 was not economic anxiety, although that was there. And it was not racism, although that was there too. Robert P. Jones, founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) spoke with Chauncey DeVega about the apocalypticism behind White Christian nationalism and the desire to restore “traditional American values.” With violence, if need be. Jones discusses his findings in “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future.” Results of a recent American Values Survey reveal, says Jones (Salon): Three-quarters of Americans believe that the future of democracy is at stake in the 2024 presidential election. It’s one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on, 84% of Democrats and 77% of Republicans. Now, of course, they mean very different things in terms of their concerns about “democracy.” There is also great pessimism about the country.
He and his teenage son check each other’s porn habits Not a joke: SPEAKER OF THE House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022. During a conversation on the “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana representative talked about how he installed “accountability software” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from internet porn and other unsavory websites. “It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it,” Johnson told the panel about the app. “It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice.
Imagine what would happen if Trump testified in a criminal case. pic.twitter.com/nDhZM6O98N — Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) November 6, 2023 Cue the reporting about how Trump, a 77 year old conspiracist who is delusional about basic aspects of reality, is too cognitively impaired to be president. Right? Right? pic.twitter.com/3Gdp2tgOBc — Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) November 6, 2023 Here’s a minute by minute of the morning session. Jesus H. Christ. Tens of millions of people want to put this psycho back in the White House: “All rise.” Court is now in session. Justice Engoron alludes to the photographers, who are about to come in to photograph Trump and counsel at the defense table. Note: This will be the second time that Trump takes the stand in this trial. The first time, Justice Engoron found him “not credible” — and in violation of his gag order. Engoron remarked that they’re often referred to as a “gaggle” of photojournalist, a word usually used to describe “geese,” he notes. NYAG’s counsel Kevin Wallace: “The People call Donald J.
Israelis want Bibi gone: Angry protesters paid Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a home visit over the weekend, chanting, “jail now!” They were echoing rising cries from across the country for the veteran Israeli leader to step down. A new poll by an Israeli news station found that 76% of respondents want Netanyahu to resign. Many blame him for the security failures behind Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror rampage across southern Israel. “He must resign!” shouted Moshe Radman outside Netanyahu’s home over the weekend. Radman is one of the Israelis who’s been leading the protests against the country’s leader. Asked by CBS News what motivated him, he said it was Netanyahu “lying again and again and again.” “A leader needs to think 100% about our soldiers and our country and 0% about himself,” he said.