“The week following the 2024 election, President-elect Donald Trump traveled to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden, who offered a simple, cordial greeting: ‘Welcome back’. It was a startling display of respectability for a Democratic administration that repeatedly referred to Trump as a fascist and claimed ‘he’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for’. Throughout Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful challenge, her campaign consistently cast Trump as representing a unique and grave danger to democracy and Americans’ way of life. In its waning days, the campaign warned voters that Trump would ’claim unchecked and extreme power’ if reelected. Trump has indeed promised a regime of retribution on enemies and to suppress dissent.” [editor’s note: Yet another “progressive” who only watched MSDNC for the “news” – SAT] (11/21/24)
“In the waning moments of the 2024 election, Peanut, a squirrel, went viral. A wildlife rescue, Peanut had been unable to go back to being a wild animal after his rehabilitation. His owner, Mark Longo adopted him as a pet. His heart-warming interactions with his human family earned the adorable rodent celebrity status, including nearly one million followers on Instagram. ‘Following anonymous complaints over rabies fears’ Peanut was confiscated and put to death by New York state health officials. The heavy-handed actions by the State prompted a massive backlash from animal lovers. … l’Affaire Peanut recalls the ‘puppycide’ movement of the previous decade. Awareness of the epidemic of police officers shooting dogs rose, peaked in the mid-teens, and has since almost vanished.” (11/20/24)
“In the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, a CIA honcho is criticized by a junior colleague for working with a disreputable character. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ replies the spook. ‘We should just deal with nice people.’ Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk — it’s been a terrific few weeks for Bond villains. Trump is riding high just now. He has been elected president again and did so while winning more votes overall than did his Democratic opponent, whose name escapes me just now, as, indeed, it apparently eluded millions of Democrats on Election Day. … If you believe that [Joe] Scarborough has sullied himself and MSNBC by meeting with the president-elect and then explaining the meeting to his audience, then what do you imagine the preferable alternative to be?” (11/20/24)
“I am as horrified as anyone by Israel’s brutal and criminal war in Gaza and its decades-long regime of occupation. As a writer, my primary solidarity is with the dozens of journalists killed in the conflict in the past year, the majority of whom were Palestinian. But I also have no doubt as to which side of this literary civil war I am on. I’ve never joined a cultural boycott of any country — not Israel, not Russia, and not Iran, my own country of birth. The latter informs my outlook on the issue. … This world is full of walls that divide peoples, and of regimes that impose ideological purity tests on writers. If writers are to use our collective powers, it should not be to add to them.” (11/20/24)
“With each successive national election, the sorting of the parties by higher education proceeds with a force that seems inexorable. Most analysts have focused on the implications of this trend for elections and the coalitions of the two parties — a literature that Matt Grossmann and David Hopkins marry to a broader narrative about cultural change in their excellent book Polarized by Degrees. The deeper cultural divide underlying partisan sorting is what should make education polarization a major concern for those who run universities. A world in which university graduates are disproportionately represented in the Democratic Party is one in which Republican voters have powerful incentives to believe that, in J.D. Vance’s infamous phrase, ‘The universities are the enemy.'” (11/20/24)
“The core of the MAGA base isn’t people who can’t afford enough $2 packs of pasta and $3 jars of tomato sauce to feed their children. I’m not saying that person doesn’t exist, but statistically they’re not representative. MAGA is someone who earns $70,000 a year and is angry that their overpriced Waitrose shop costs a bit more. MAGA is someone who is angry that they might have to shift from buying their goods at a middle-class-coded supermarket to the cheaper, working-class-coded supermarket. The American Republic has been pulled down, possibly past the point of no return, by affluent people. People who have lives their ancestors would have literally killed for. Who on average spend 10% of their pay on groceries, the lowest in the country’s history, not to mention human history. Who are lashing out at others at the slightest inconvenience, because they want to lash out at others. ” (11/20/24)
“After two Jordanian illegal [sic] aliens were charged with trying to ram their truck into Marine Corps Base Quantico this summer, Republican lawmakers and the governor of Virginia fired off six letters to senior Biden cabinet members demanding information about the incident. All that mail went unanswered. Likewise ignored were any requests for information about a major FBI counterterrorism sting that resulted in the arrests of eight Tajik border-crossers on suspicions of bomb-making. These examples of willful suppression are emblematic of a greater pattern in how the Biden administration sought to hide from public view everything it could about the worst mass migration border crisis [sic] in American history, which has flooded [sic] the nation with at least 10 million foreign nationals.” (11/20/24)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Sergio Martinez
“Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (known collectively as ‘AJR’) received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics for their research on how ‘institutions shape and affect prosperity.’ As Alex Tabarrok highlighted in his review of their work, one interesting aspect is that AJR’s ideas are accessible to a wide audience. Their best-known books, such as Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor, are available in bookstores, reflecting an interest in understanding the relationship between institutions and economic development. That institutions matter is not new in Economics.” (11/20/24)
“Back in August, a few weeks after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in a bid for reelection, his critics stirred a global outcry. Opposition leaders posted polling station results on social media suggesting the unpopular autocrat had lost in a drubbing. In cities around the world and within the South American country itself, people marched. They called it the ‘Great Protest for the Truth.’ That push for election integrity received new nudges this week. On Tuesday, the Biden administration recognized Venezuela’s main opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, as ‘president-elect.’ Simultaneously, in neighboring Colombia, President Gustavo Petro called the July 28 election ‘a mistake.’ He had already declared the vote not ‘free.’ Those gestures follow recognition by the European Parliament in September of Mr. Gonzalez as ‘the country’s legitimate and democratically elected president.'” (11/20/24)
