The New York Times takes a look at the latest polling for Ron Desantis: It’s been a tough few months for Ron DeSantis. Donald J. Trump and his allies have blasted him as “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” a “groomer,” disloyal and a supporter of cutting entitlement programs. Now, he’s getting criticism from many mainstream conservatives for calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute.” Is all of this making a difference in the polls? There are signs the answer is yes. In surveys taken since the Trump offensive began two months ago, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, has steadily lost ground against Mr. Trump, whose own numbers have increased. It can be hard to track who’s up and who’s down in the Republican race, since different pollsters have had such wildly divergent takes on Mr. Trump’s strength. In just the last few days, a CNN/SSRS poll showed a tight race, with Mr. DeSantis at 39 percent and Mr. Trump at 37 percent among registered voters, while a Morning Consult poll found Mr.
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Baby Zoomies! Merida the highland cow is now just over a week old! Be sure to hello to this bundle of fluff on your next visit to Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol, UK. She’s so fluffy! The Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm’s (Bristol, UK) highland cow, Agnes, gave birth to a female calf in early March. Her keepers have named her Merida.
Do not despair. There may be politicians who have abandoned any genuine intent to gain Scottish Independence, but the path is still open. It is a question of nerve and will. I think we should lift our eyes beyond the current SNP leadership contest – although I shall in future be commenting on its incredible […]
The post The High Road to Independence appeared first on Craig Murray.
Techies should know that. Should. Believe it or not, a pair of tweets about last Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank are still current. Eugene Robinson writes about those conditionalities this morning: Question: What is a socialist? Answer: A libertarian tech bro who had money in Silicon Valley Bank. There is nothing funny about the second-biggest bank failure in the nation’s history, which has roiled financial markets at a time when the economy is already unsettled. It is richly ironic, though, to hear luminaries of the tech sector, after years of complaining that “big government” was the problem, suddenly clamoring for massive federal intervention and largesse.
Mike Luckovich is a treasure The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is lucky to have him.
Damon Silvers, deputy chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the 2008 bank bailout, explains how deregulation paved the way for SVB’s collapse.
The post Understanding the Silicon Valley Bank Run appeared first on The Intercept.
Josh Marshall has a story that will make you want to throw something it’s so infuriating. You can read it here. He did a brief twitter threat with the basic outline: Rarely do I stumble upon something quite so gross and stupid as this. So if you’ll indulge me for a brief thread, I’d appreciate it. Over the last couple days there’s a claim making the rounds in right wing media that Silicon Valley Bank went under in part because it gave more than $73 million to “BLM”. So they were so focused on woke culture they forget to run the bank, etc. Even if the claim about why the bank went under was silly I couldn’t believe that even a medium sized bank could have possibly given that sum of money. A little poking around quickly led me to newly published database put out by the Trumpist think tank Claremont Institute. It probably won’t surprise you that of course SVB didn’t donate $73 million to “BLM”. But that only scratches the surface of this hideous little bundle of racist garbage.
That’s some obscure right wing influencer but I think his comment is a good example of the incoherence of the current wingnut worldview. In an earlier tweet he says this: It’s possible that he’s agitating for war with Mexico. That’s a growing desire on the right: Yes, she says “cartels” but even Desantis says that we need to withdraw support for Ukraine because we need our weapons for the border. I don’t know how else you can interpret what these people are saying. Let’s face it, they don’t want any part of defending against Russian aggression because Russia is a white, anti-gay, Christian nationalist authoritarian state — their dream. But that doesn’t make them anti-war. They are violent people who want to wage war against non-white people only. And they are itching to wage war, whether it’s against China or Mexico or right here at home. People like Marjorie Taylor Green or Donald Trump are not pacifists, fergawdsakes. I mean, come on… As for training American schoolkids in the classroom to handle semi-automatic weapons, I would guess that’s on the agenda too.
The knives are out and it’s getting ugly. And it’s not just coming from Trump: At any given fundraiser or VIP room where he’s present, Ron DeSantis is usually easy to find—in the corner, keeping to himself. Despite having a job that entails exchanging small talk and pleasantries on a daily basis, the Florida governor tends to brush off those obligations and struggles with basic social skills, according to a source close to DeSantis, several of his former staffers, and other GOP operatives who have worked with him and his team. As DeSantis gears up for a potential White House run in 2024, his aloof public persona is being thought of by his rivals—namely, former President Donald Trump—as his Achilles heel in the retail politics-heavy early primary states. And even though he hasn’t announced a bid yet, DeSantis’ apparent desire to test the waters of a presidential campaign—while barely dipping a toe into the aspects he recoils from—is already being put to the test.
This piece by Zach Carter on the SVB crisis is the best I’ve seen. (Carter published the great biography of John Maynard Keynes last year. If you haven’t read it, it’s excellent.) The most important bank in Silicon Valley failed on Friday, prompting a Sunday night bailout for some of the wealthiest people in the world as the Federal Reserve opened a new emergency lending program hoping to prevent the crisis in California from triggering a nationwide banking collapse. As with any financial crash, it’s impossible to predict where exactly the money will flow next, but it’s clear that the tech sector that reshaped American business and culture in the 21st century is coming apart. The nexus of this breakdown is Silicon Valley Bank, a firm with $209 billion in assets as of December 31, 2022. SVB works hand-in-glove with venture capital firms, tech start-ups, and a lot of very rich people in California, claiming nearly half of all VC-backed tech companies and over 2,500 VCs as its clients.