An overconfident Joe Crowley opted against using negative ammunition against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because he believed that he had the Democratic primary locked up and didn’t want to look weak in a race he was expected to walk away with. Crowley, a longtime political power broker from Queens, was widely considered to be perfectly situated to …
Author Archives: Richard Fernandez
UK plan steps up global crackdown on social media
The British plans would create a statutory “duty of care” for social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to protect people who use their sites. The plan, which includes an independent regulator funded by a levy on internet companies, will be open for public comment for three months before the government publishes draft legislation. …
Continue reading “UK plan steps up global crackdown on social media”
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
This is obvious but it is blasphemy. NYT
Baroness Bryan interview: Brexit gives us a chance to make Britain a truly federal country | Scotland | The Times
The Marxist baroness of Partick is a mild-mannered woman with an immodest aim. She seeks the dismantling of the British state and a socialist reordering of the constitution. You may scoff, but if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister she will be midwife to a new United Kingdom. Times
Brexit countdown
As it stands, if the EU refuses to grant the U.K. an extension to June 30 (or counter-propose a longer extension) the U.K. could be faced with a stark choice on Friday April 12 — leave the EU without a deal in place or revoke the whole departure process (known as Article 50) entirely. CNBC …
Obama warns against obsession with progressive purity
“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States —maybe it’s true here as well — is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,’ and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad,’ where you …
Continue reading “Obama warns against obsession with progressive purity”
Big oil to create CO2 removal machines
Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and the Australian mining giant BHP this year have invested in Carbon Engineering, a small Canadian company that claims to be on the verge of a breakthrough in solving a critical climate change puzzle: removing carbon already in the atmosphere. At its pilot project in Squamish, an old lumber town about 30 …
O’Rourke on Netanyahu
Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke on Sunday described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “racist” whose outreach to far-right interests as he seeks to hang onto political power has seriously damaged the chances of peace in the Middle East. … His comments came one day after President Trump played up his pro-Israel agenda in …
Chinese investment into Australia plunges
as China’s Government limited both developers and individuals from getting money out of the country for this purpose ABC Australia
Vegan activists block busy Melbourne intersection, disrupting 11 tram lines – ABC News
If they were protesting abortion they would be a hate group
Lamar Alexander calls for “New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy” to Counter Green New Deal
Who writes the new Einstein-Szilard letter? Legal Insurrection Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has …
Secret epidemic
With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs. Star Tribune
New at the Belmont Club: our political obsession with controlling the future
Our expectations of the future are set by the past. When Stephen Hawking died in 2018 his final warning to humanity was to beware artificial intelligence, climate change and a meteor strike from outer space. Although these are now familiar terms no newspaper editor before 1970 would have heard of them. Until the early 1980s …
Continue reading “New at the Belmont Club: our political obsession with controlling the future”
Netanyahu may annex West Bank settlements
“I am going to extend [Israeli] sovereignty and I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements.” A spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Reuters: “Any measures and any announcements will not change the facts. Settlements are illegal and they will be removed.” BBC What may have killed the Palestinian cause was the …
Continue reading “Netanyahu may annex West Bank settlements”
Saving the lifeboat
Murder in Honduras is nothing new. But the newly sadistic ways women are being killed — shot in the vagina, strangled in front of their children, skinned alive — have people running for the border … President Trump calls immigrants “criminals” — drug dealers and rapists intent on plundering America. But the truth, as I …
Ex Labor MP temporarily released from jail to cast key Brexit vote
Daily Mail
U.S. targets Cuba’s oil supply from Venezuela
Is the target bigger than Venezuela?
The Pointlessness, The Pointlessness
After an exhaustive 22-month investigation, Mueller found that there was no criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. National Review
You can work
Arizona is one signature away from becoming the first state in the country to recognize out-of-state occupational licenses. That means licensed workers will be able to move to Arizona and immediately find work without going through the expensive, time-consuming, and redundant process of getting re-licensed Reason
When “bath” is spelled “national park”
Every day, hundreds of people without running water hike up from the city on Avila’s winding trails to bathe, wash clothes and collect water to carry home. To the dismay of environmental activists who fear the damage will be irreversible, people are littering its slopes and creeks with shampoo and water bottles, food wrappers, cardboard …