My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: Rape, US attitudes to inequality, and, idle or vulnerable?
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: Work, American Lies and Science.
Gay marriage looks set to become a “key election issue” in the Obama vs Romney presidential contest. How utterly depressing.
With the effective withdrawal of Rick Santorum from the Republican primary process, Mitt Romney is now all but certain to be the Republican nominee to go up against Barack Obama in the Presidential election this year.
With Super Tuesday closing inconclusively in the US Republican Party Presidential Nominee race, here’s a chance to laugh at the contenders…
New Zealand schools achieve excellent results and are very cost effective. The Nats are determined to break this great system via the introduction of national standards. They’re ignoring the advice of their own experts, and all the international evidence. But will they be able to ignore the now self-evident failure of standards based testing in America, as Obama pulls the plug on No Child Left Behind?
Even we political junkies have a hard time figuring out what the heck’s going on in American politics sometimes.
And it’s not like our media are any help.
Queen of Thorns takes a look…
So the war in Iraq is “officially” over. The end of a shameful chapter.
Truth-Out content is licensed for redistribution, so I’m going to repost this excellent piece in its entirety. It’s long, but it’s worth it. Is Obama going to grow a pair at last?
Sometimes when I get depressed about NZ politics, I take a few deep breaths and reassure myself that at least it’s not American politics.
Nationals yapping poodles here were doing it during the election by calling Labour “nasty” in violation of any level of common sense. John Key and teabags. In the US similar supporters are calling Obama nasty for pointing out a lying political ad by Mitt Romney.
Don’t ya know the right are always the poor victims… I just tend to find them to be whining dickheads. But I am actually trying to be nasty.
1980 saw the election of Ronald Regan as US president. On taking office at the start of 1981 he ushered in a package of right wing economic policies that soon picked up the nick-name “Reganomics”. How did that work out for workers and for inequality?
This family budget is in terrible shape. I can’t see any way out, can you?
Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas speaks his mind to some New York police. A bit repetitive, but he gets his point across!
By the time this post appears a showdown will have taken place in New York. Check out the morning media, there should be plenty of coverage of events as they unfold.
After months of playing coy, the latest from the the land of the Tea Party is that Sarah Palin will not be running for president.
The Occupation, now into its third week, seems to be growing. As is the Police response. In the latest development police have arrested more than 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Have you heard of Occupy Wall Street? If you are one of the 99%, you should have…
Ten years after the September 11th 2001 attacks, the world is sitting in a fragile state. The ‘War on Terror’ may have finally got its man but at what cost? The Middle East is more unstable than ever. Democratic revolts are succeeding in some places but brutal regimes are more powerful than ever elsewhere. And the US’s power has been broken.
A recently retired Republican Congressional staffer speaks out on the Party. He doesn’t pull any punches…
The recall elections in Wisconsin over Governor Walker’s attempt to remove collective bargaining for public servants had it all – Republicans running fake Democrats in primaries, massive spending by faceless outside bodies, and two Republican senators losing their seats in the subsequent ballot. Democrats did not succeed in overturning the Wisconsin Senate majority for Walker’s Republicans, but it is down to one and there is one Republican who voted against the anti-union law.
KAL (the cartoonist for The Economist) expresses my feelings about the political process over the last couple of months in the US. Their […]
Cooperation is one of the characteristics that defines humans in evolutionary terms. However true to their intellectually intransigent nature derived more from their enjoyment of a good old randian tantrum, the tea party is holding everyone to ransom. I suspect that the republicans are not going to like the consequences because voters value cooperation more.
The media are reporting the chance of the US defaulting as a ‘debt crisis’, as if the problem is too much debt and people won’t lend to them. It’s not. The US is still borrowing at half the cost we borrow at. The problem is the debt ceiling. A purely political invention that lets lawmakers cut taxes, add spending, and then refuse to allow the resultant borrowing.
The Republicans are playing chicken over the debt ceiling. The idea is to win as much as possible in spending cuts and permanently shrink the government by appearing more willing to go over the edge than the Democrats without actually going over. But does the Tea Party faction understand the game, or will they block the last minute compromise?
Bill Maher on taxes, the deficit, and why 49% of Americans are voting away their future.
The US is embroiled in the most extraordinary of crises. Unique among nations, the US has a legal debt ceiling. This artifice has allowed the Republicans to create the current ‘crisis’. For 30 years, Republicans have cut taxes and upped (defence) spending. Strategic deficits that now allow them to force a crisis by refusing the raise the debt ceiling.
Over the last couple of months two potential crises have been unfolding in two very different countries. Greece and America both looked to be in danger of defaulting on their huge debts and triggering a cascade of disastrous consequences. The situation is still unfolding…
Like the ACC, Pharmac is a Kiwi institution that delivers benefits to everyone at a lower cost than other countries. National has got ACC on the butcher’s block. We must make sure that Pharmac doesn’t follow.
It’s just a pleasure to watch Jon Stewart at work. Here he is deflating another pompous right wing twit.
PM John Key attacked journalist Jon Stephenson, calling him not credible over his claims on SAS links to the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan. Now Stephenson has replied to his critics, in detail.
Watch Obama do Donald Trump like a dinner at the White House Correspondents’ party.
Trump didn’t like it. Crybaby.
Alan Grayson lost his congress seat in the last election after a concerted attack from the right.
His open letter on the death of Bin Laden shows why the US needs him back next time around.
The best US blog is eXiledonline. They’ve done huge work to expose the Tea Party and its shady backers. Their insight into the class issues underlying economic crisis both raw and diamond-sharp. And one of their writers, Gary Brecher aka the War Nerd, covers conflicts with eyes wide open. Here’s his take on Al Qaeda, coincidentally written last week:
