News you can use
News you can use
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In the last few weeks the most boring presidential contest in history suddenly became entertaining. First, in what would prove to be their last debate, candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump engaged in a a shambling race for the worst golfer title. Next came a gunshot, and a blood streaked Trump ascended triumphantly from the Secret Service pile up shouting, “Fight!” just before Joe Biden threw in the towel. Now, a moment later, replacement lead Kamala Harris is catching up...
Hilary Clinton warned us in advance against Tucker Carlson’s Vladimir Putin interview. Deploying one of her favorite disparaging epithets, “useful idiot,” against the journalist, Clinton told us he was going to be manipulated by the wily autocrat. Sure enough, as soon as the interview actually posted, every media personality worth a Fox or MSNBC moment chimed in to let us know Carlson had merely channeled the Russian president’s Russian talking points. Next came days of satiri...
As if Americans didn't have enough to worry about, our closest ally, Israel, has been dragged into the International Court of Justice on a charge of genocide against the people of Gaza. Ominously for our friend's defense, not only has South Africa been able to document plenty of criminal action, as specified by the genocide convention, such as “killing members of the group” (as opposed to combatants) and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calcu...
The opening of Psalm 137 is haunting: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” In a few lines, the poem evokes the sorrow of a people defeated, and taken in slavery from their homeland by an enemy who slaughtered their loved ones, and now mocks the survivors. “For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ Still the wish of...
Inaugurating a new era in American politics, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to star in the 2024 presidential election show. In an exclusive interview with the Havre Daily News, Committee to Preserve Democratic/Republican Rule Forever Co-Chairs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Lauren Boebert stressed that leaders from both parties had agreed on the rematch in an effort to temper unrealistic voter expectations. “One thing about old Joe, you know he’s never going to rock the boa...
Recently, American environmentalists envied the people of Ecuador. In Ecuador, a country where the murder rate is soaring, the economy stagnant and the national government often on the brink, a majority had just voted through a referendum to stop wrecking the Amazon basin for oil profits. For just a moment, it was hard not to fantasize, what if Americans could have a direct say on the big issues — oil drilling in the Alaska wilds, for example? Of course, that’s not the way...
The Bill of Rights has become controversial. Some think we need a disinformation board to save us from an excess of First Amendment’s free speech. Not that long ago, a retired Supreme Court justice opined we’d be better off without the Second Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment has been optional ever since we got the Patriot Act 20 years ago. But nobody has anything to say about the Third. The Third Amendment is brief. “No Soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any h...
The No Labels Party thinks the country needs a centrist option for the 2024 presidential contest — maybe something like a West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin/former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan unity ticket. But do the two big parties really have that much trouble uniting when it counts? The recent debt ceiling drama answers the question. Whatever the partisan uproar might be about who gets to say what on Twitter and what books kids get to read in school (...
Did you hear the story about Pramila Jayapal and Matt Rosendale, in the U.S. House, and Elizabeth Warren and Steve Daines, in the Senate, joining forces to get their congressional colleagues to give up insider trading on the stock market? At the beginning of September, Jayapal, a House Democrat from Washington, and Montana's Rep. Rosendale announced their Bipartisan Ban Stock Ownership Act, which would require members of Congress, along with their spouses, to sell any...
U.S. House races are boring. It's a Democratic district or it's a Republican district, that's all you need to know. That was definitely the look of Montana's new eastern congressional district at the beginning of the year where recent voting history heavily favored the Republican incumbent. That's until independent Gary Buchanan got into the race with backers from left, right and center. If approval across the political spectrum were the key to electoral success, the...
Argument is a way for people with differing perspectives on an issue, abortion, for example, to test and reshape each other's ideas and, sometimes, even reason out a new idea together. Unfortunately, not much reasoning together happens when everybody insists on the kind of high minded principles that inspire Facebook memes and protest signs, such as Life Begins at Conception versus My Body, My Choice. Arguments on the order of--Abortion is always wrong-- based on grand...
It is several weeks since the Department of Homeland Security’s admonishment, “If You See Something, Say Something” reached me on Facebook. I don’t remember the accompanying video, I probably didn’t watch it. I do remember the numerous outraged comments about government asking us to spy on each other. The outrage cheered me up: maybe the neighbors aren’t totally paranoid. Then came Homeland Security’s Disinformation Board scheme. The Disinformation Board idea sparked the s...
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., recently quipped that it is amazing the Congressional approval rating ever rises to the height of 19 percent. It is not good when only 19 percent of American voters trust Congress to do what needs doing. When people lose faith in government, they are likely to turn to some demagogue who promises to fix everything those weaklings in government are messing up. Unfortunately, authoritarian leaders (aka demagogues) have a history of making things even...
Lately, everybody is mad at the Big Four beef packers. Last December, the Biden administration reported that, since the outset of the pandemic, a period when it could be hard to find a steak, cattle prices fell, and beef processing workers were dropping from COVID, the industry had pulled off a 300 percent increase in profits. When JBS settled its piece of a price-fixing lawsuit from a group of grocers against Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef and JBS in February, cattlemen...
Thanks to the Supreme Court and the Department of Homeland Security, the partisan bonfire should burn hotter than ever for this year's congressional contests. Not long after the first news of that Supreme Court leak on Roe v. Wade, the Democratic National Committee was running an "Abortion is Healthcare" ad on Facebook with a "chip in to elect Democrats at every level" plea to protect abortion rights, because with a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees, rights are...
