while RFK Jr is dining out on an undeserved reputation and a lot of lofty rhetoric about big corporations and chemicals and protecting people, the administration is handing the reins of chemical safety over to chemical manfucaturers
"there’s a bank run taking place behind the velvet ropes, in the VIP section."
www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security...
"We are close to a point when, regardless of who is elected, the government will function like a hammer and every problem will look like a nail."
New: Bowser's budget, once again, proposes big cuts to environmental programs.
DOEE stands to lose $70m, mostly targeted at clean energy programs. A key funding source for home retrofits/Green Bank loses $20m. And she's pushing off energy standards for buildings by a year:
wamu.org/story/26/04/...
America's oil execs have pocketed $1.4 billion selling stock during the Iran war, the WSJ reports
This cash windfall won’t go primarily toward yachts and private jets, but toward political campaigns and lobbying orgs dedicated to blocking climate policy and fueling authoritarianism
JD Vance just said: “Stopping funding for Ukraine is one of the things I’m proudest we’ve done in this administration.”
What a disgusting statement. I was just in Kharkiv and saw the damage that Russian missiles and drones inflict. If Ukraine received more US interceptors, it could save more lives.
This is an incredible report from PBS Frontline that just dropped last night. Very intense and potentially triggering for many folks, but very, very good work.
Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.
I think it's possible to defend/platform the Pope, just war theory, and the Pope's remarks on just war theory
without reposting/defending/platforming a dogmatic view of the papacy; i.e., that considered remarks have the same status as speaking ex cathedra.
The Orbán defeat was multifaceted.
There are at least two more important reasons:
1. Time: no leader remains popular for 16 years.
2. Credible alternative: Orbán had always faced a divided and weak opposition.
Hungary was already done with Orbán in 2022, but had no credible alternative.
A major problem we have is that too many powerful and influential people believe (at least subconsciously) that America is somehow magically insulated from decline and collapse. But whatever our Greatness it was achieved through policy choices and can be undone by other choices. It's happening now!
"The people we identified as resisting attempts to overturn the 2020 results have been replaced by roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections."
www.propublica.org/article/trum...
“Amid a policy debate among Democrats worried that they can no longer ‘build things,’ proponents of conservative state-building host job fairs overrun with applicants and sponsor a detention-industrial complex unmatched in the developed world.” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security...
"It is time to diagnose what ails us—not describe symptoms, but the disease itself: a security state-building project that dictates political realities for its citizens, as opposed to the reverse, the governing reality of a functioning republic."
text from article "the Security Leviathan"
www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security...
"Security state-building is reviewed according to its routine activities, or policy 'outputs,' allowing them to function and be funded without having to prove much at all." www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security...
"We are close to a point when, regardless of who is elected, the government will function like a hammer and every problem will look like a nail."
This piece is part of this week's edition of the Best of Journalism: buff.ly/cjTLHYF
“Following decades of unprecedented expansion in security, detention, and surveillance, the United States government’s competence in militancy and punishment is now so dominant that it threatens to eclipse its other activities and ambitions.” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-security...
The AP is calling Israel’s military actions in southern Lebanon an invasion.
Israel moved thousands of troops across the border into Lebanon, and Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants have been fighting on the ground for at least three weeks.
Denmark didn’t “transition” its grid—it replaced it.
~15% → 92% renewable electricity in 25 years.
Wind did the heavy lifting. Solar is scaling. Interconnection balanced. Flexibility solved variability.
Wind built it. Solar is scaling. Fossil lost it.
This IS system replacement. ⚡#Bettrification
“Whooping cough surged in Mississippi last year, ultimately claiming the life of a baby – the first whooping cough death in the state in 13 years… Kindergarten vaccination rates this year dropped to the lowest level in years.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social
Image of older man coughing with one hand over his chest.
According to a new study, influenza vaccination may help protect against heart attack and stroke even when it does not prevent people from getting the flu.
Read more: ow.ly/8fmv50YGL7R
If you'd like to learn more about how corporations have benefited from modern social movements...
in order to fend off regulatory demands,
and at the expense of those movements themselves...
then please join for a virtual book talk this Thursday afternoon.
From a social welfare history perspective, there were numerous areas (both geographically and bureaucratically speaking) where the Church *preceded* the state in providing social welfare services. So much so that (particularly in urban areas) first-wave liberalism was *forced* to accommodate —>
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com
“As A.I. transforms anything touching a keyboard, it will land first and hardest on the income ladder’s middle and lower rungs,” Jennifer Harris writes.
I've used that tool to evaluate supplements, especially interactions
The Hungarian election is about Russian oligarchy and its support of the international far right. That’s why Vance is there. He is a node in that network.
...Something I highly doubt in the abstract...
But an assertion that gains force if the administration is willing to hold hostage the first wave Catholic contracts with the government
The "Avignon" threat is more than an attempt to cow the Church from its many first wave commitments, a tension we've already seen surface re immigrants.
It reads more like an assertion that the US Conference of Bishops is more committed to second wave backlash than papal jurisdiction.