Right wing disinformation is starting to run wild and it’s very dangerous It’s bad and getting worse. And among the worst are Donald Trump and his misbegotten offspring: Within minutes of circulating the first images of the horrific Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel, the Right Wing disinformation apparatus sprung into action. Right Wing accounts began spreading false information to score political points against President Biden and the Democrats. Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are weaponizing the information as it spreads like wildfire across social media. Fast-moving, real-time events are the most fertile ground for disinformation and propaganda. The public is tuned in, the traditional media hasn’t yet had time to get all the facts, and people are sharing information without context or confirmation. The problem worsened after platforms conceded to wave the white flag against stopping disinformation. Elon Musk encouraged his 159 million followers to get their opinions from an account that has spread anti-Semitic disinformation.
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I always find the Israel-Palestinian issue incredibly difficult to comprehend or write about in an intelligent way because I have deep, reflexive sympathy for both sides and yet so often abhor their behavior toward one another. This war is more complicated than any other war —religion, power imbalance, racism, territorial dispute, ancient historical animosity, oppression, colonialism all of it is present here. I’ve always thought it was the most difficult problem in the world and I have nothing enlightening to say about it. The best I can do right now is offer for you some of the best best that I’m reading around the web and to try to see where American politics are going and guage as best I can what our government and its allies are doing in reaction. Jill Filipovic in her newsletter today speaks for me. I’ve been struggling with what to write today, because the news out of Israel and Palestine is so overwhelming, and so awful, and every time I open my laptop it feels silly to try to write about anything else.
The editors of Israel’s top newpaper don’t mince words The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is theclear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The primeminister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians. Netanyahu will certainly try to evade his responsibility and cast the blame on the heads of the army, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service who, like their predecessors on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, saw a low probability of war with their preparations for a Hamas attack proving flawed. They scorned the enemy and its offensive military capabilities.
A sane, experienced hand is what the world needs, not a narcissistic imbecile Note the date of that Truth Social post. He wrote that today. That’s what he’s thinking about right now. We are in the midst of an international crisis and the putative nominee for the Republican nomination is whining about Forbes Magazine, Stormy Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell. That’s the man Republicans want to put back in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal (which he is blabbing about to his Mar-a-Lago customers.) ****** I highly recommend history professor (and OG blogger) Claire Potter’s newsletter Political Junkie and you should subscribe if you want to read some great political commentaryfrom her and any number of great writers and analysts who write for her. Today she is featuring a great piece about Joe Biden and the “age problem” by Peter Drier the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College: Many voters, including Democrats, think that 80-year old President Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election.
Bobby Junior shows how to destroy a legacy in one easy step This would be sad if it weren’t so dangerous: In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president. “I am here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Mr. Kennedy told a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Since announcing his candidacy in April, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has been a sharp critic of Democratic leadership, which he has accused of “hijacking the party machinery” to stifle his challenge to President Biden. He has also said, in interviews and in public appearances, that the party has abandoned its principles and become corrupted. Running as an independent will entail an expensive, uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states.
Last Friday (October 6, 2023), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – September 2023 – which showed payroll employment rising by 336,000 and the unemployment rate stable, after rising 0.3 points to 3.8 per cent in August. I posed the question last month when…
That appalling pun highlights a problem with economic modellers in general: the treatment of time as a discrete rather than a continuous phenomenon. Though there are (not enough!) exceptions, the habit amongst both Neoclassical and Post-Keynesians economists is to model an economic variable now as depending on other variables one year in the past (and … Continue reading "I’m not Discreet, and Neither is Time"
It’s been quite a morning for the GOP superstar women on TV this morning You won’t find a better encapsulation of Nancy Mace’s phoniness than her going on CBS today & claiming her big problem with McCarthy was he didn’t do enough for abuse survivors, then in the next breath endorsing Gym Jordan for speaker. She stands for nothing beyond getting on TV. — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 8, 2023 Brennan: Do the past allegations of Jim Jordan that he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse give you reservations? Mace: I’m not familiar or aware of that. Brennan: Ohio state university allegations. Mace: I don’t know anything pic.twitter.com/OGQQFqR9pt — Acyn (@Acyn) October 8, 2023 Brennan: McCarthy said his ouster is personal payback from Gaetz for the house ethics committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct… Does that bother you? Mace: Well, again, he’s not indicted for anything. I don’t really — I don’t know much about it.
Trump throws a hail Mary at the Supreme Court in an attempt to finally declare the presidency immune from all legal accountability Last week Trump filed a number of delaying tactics in the courts where he’s been indicted courts around the country but one may be the most significant. His lawyers filed a case in federal court arguing that the president has total immunity from any crimes he may have committed while in office. Therefore, his attempt to illegally block the peaceful transfer of power cannot be prosecuted. It’s complicated but this article gives a good overview of the legal issues at stake: Former President Donald Trump’s legal team went big in their latest effort to derail the prosecution against him for conspiring to interfere in the 2020 election: They filed a motion to dismiss that could be called a motion to make U.S. presidents into kings. The 52-page legal motion filed in the D.C. case asks U.S. District Judge Tonya Chutkan to dismiss the indictment based on the concept of “presidential immunity” that Trump argues makes him immune from any criminal prosecution for acts he took as president.