Browsed by
Author: From elsewhere

Hannah Arendt saw totalitarianism rooted in loneliness

Hannah Arendt saw totalitarianism rooted in loneliness

Samantha Rose Hill writes: What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience … – From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt ‘Please write regularly, or otherwise I am going to die out here.’ Hannah Arendt didn’t usually begin letters to her husband this way, but in the spring of 1955 she found…

Read More Read More

Fastest-ever growth in global coronavirus cases as U.S. tops 8 million

Fastest-ever growth in global coronavirus cases as U.S. tops 8 million

AFP reports: Coronavirus cases in the United States topped eight million Friday as the world saw the highest-ever number reported in a single day, while European countries tightened measures to control the pandemic’s spread. The running US case tally from Johns Hopkins University is the highest in the world, followed by India at 7.4 million cases and Brazil with 5.1 million. America has also suffered the most coronavirus deaths of any country, at over 218,000. Worldwide, more than 400,000 new…

Read More Read More

279,700 extra deaths in the U.S. so far in this pandemic year

279,700 extra deaths in the U.S. so far in this pandemic year

A girl views the body of her father, who died of COVID-19, while mourners who can’t visit in person are onscreen. Joe Raedle/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Ronald D. Fricker Jr., Virginia Tech The Conversation, CC BY-ND The number of deaths in the United States through September 2020 is at least 10% and likely 13% higher than it would have been if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Conservatively,…

Read More Read More

$421 million in debt: Trump calls it ‘a peanut,’ but challenges lie ahead

$421 million in debt: Trump calls it ‘a peanut,’ but challenges lie ahead

The New York Times reports: President Trump painted a rosy picture of his financial condition during a televised town hall on Thursday night, calling his hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due “a peanut” and saying he had borrowed it as a favor to lenders eager to take advantage of his financial strength. In fact, the loans, and the unusual requirement he had to accept to receive them, illustrate the financial challenges he faces and the longstanding reluctance…

Read More Read More

Rudy Giuliani: Only ‘50/50’ chance I worked with a ‘Russian spy’ to dig dirt on Bidens

Rudy Giuliani: Only ‘50/50’ chance I worked with a ‘Russian spy’ to dig dirt on Bidens

The Daily Beast reports: Rudy Giuliani thinks it’s hilarious. He says the questions mounting around him—including those about whether his efforts to dump Hunter Biden’s documents and photos are part of some foreign election-interference operation—are “a bunch of bullshit.” He’s unconcerned about intelligence assessments that one of his former associates was a Russian agent, a proposition that he gave more or less even odds. In fact, Giuliani said, he has been “laughing my head off” about the whole affair. Instead,…

Read More Read More

‘Please like me,’ Trump begged. For many women, it’s way too late

‘Please like me,’ Trump begged. For many women, it’s way too late

The New York Times reports: Kate Rabinovitch doesn’t call herself an activist. A few weeks ago, the 29-year-old real estate agent wrote personalized messages to voters in her home state of Ohio on behalf of Joseph R. Biden Jr. She texts with undecided friends during the debates, arguing for the Democratic nominee. And she is helping to organize voter drives in her suburban Cleveland neighborhood. But a political activist? No way. “It’s just not something that I ever would have…

Read More Read More

Trump starts to articulate a reality painful for him to acknowledge: He could lose in 2020

Trump starts to articulate a reality painful for him to acknowledge: He could lose in 2020

Politico reports: He’s mused out loud about an embarrassing 2020 defeat. He’s acknowledged his severe deficit in key polls. And he’s made naked appeals to the critical voting blocs of suburban women and older adults — two demographics he has struggled to win over. Just weeks from Election Day, President Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud about his own campaign. The president is crisscrossing the country with a packed schedule, flying to some states he won handily…

Read More Read More

‘White supremacy’ once meant David Duke and the KKK. Now it refers to much more

‘White supremacy’ once meant David Duke and the KKK. Now it refers to much more

The New York Times reports: As July 4 and its barbecues arrived this year, the activist and former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick declared, “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.” The movie star Mark Ruffalo said in February that Hollywood had been swimming for a century in “a homogeneous culture of white supremacy.” The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of New York City’s most prestigious museums, acknowledged this summer that his institution was grounded in white supremacy,…

Read More Read More

‘On the brink of disaster’: Europe’s Covid-19 fight takes a turn for the worse

‘On the brink of disaster’: Europe’s Covid-19 fight takes a turn for the worse

The Guardian reports: “It’s not a word I’ve heard in a long, long time,” an elderly Paris resident said, leaving her apartment in mask and gloves for an early expedition to the shops. “A curfew. That’s for wartime, isn’t it? But in a way I suppose that’s what this is.” Europe’s second coronavirus wave took a dramatic turn for the worse this week, forcing governments across the continent to make tough choices as more than a dozen countries reported their…

Read More Read More

Republican senators ‘on the precipice of what could be a historic loss’ are distancing themselves from Trump

Republican senators ‘on the precipice of what could be a historic loss’ are distancing themselves from Trump

The New York Times reports: For nearly four years, congressional Republicans have ducked and dodged an unending cascade of offensive statements and norm-shattering behavior from President Trump, ignoring his caustic and scattershot Twitter feed and penchant for flouting party orthodoxy, and standing quietly by as he abandoned military allies, attacked American institutions and stirred up racist and nativist fears. But now, facing grim polling numbers and a flood of Democratic money and enthusiasm that has imperiled their majority in the…

Read More Read More

Sen. Susan Collins backs QAnon believers for Maine legislature

Sen. Susan Collins backs QAnon believers for Maine legislature

Mainer reports: Sen. Susan Collins is financially supporting the state legislative campaigns of two fellow Maine Republicans who fervently believe in QAnon, the perverse conspiracy theory whose adherents are considered a domestic terror threat by the FBI. In recent days, Facebook and YouTube have announced actions to curb the spread of QAnon content due to mounting fears that its followers — who deify President Trump and believe his enemies are a global cabal of pedophilic Satanists — will engage in…

Read More Read More

Which Constitution is Amy Coney Barrett talking about?

Which Constitution is Amy Coney Barrett talking about?

Jamelle Bouie writes: On Tuesday, Judge Amy Coney Barrett took a few minutes during her confirmation hearing to discuss her judicial philosophy, best known as originalism. It means, she explained, “that I interpret the Constitution as a law, I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. That meaning doesn’t change over time and it is not up to me to update it or infuse my policy views into it.” Now, originalism is…

Read More Read More

Feds examining whether alleged Hunter Biden emails are linked to a foreign intel operation

Feds examining whether alleged Hunter Biden emails are linked to a foreign intel operation

NBC News reports: Federal investigators are examining whether the emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News. The FBI seized the laptop and a hard drive through a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena was later published by the New York Post. The bureau has declined to comment. The Post, a conservative…

Read More Read More

Trump ignored U.S. intelligence warnings that Giuliani ‘has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine’

Trump ignored U.S. intelligence warnings that Giuliani ‘has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine’

The Washington Post reports: U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter. The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts…

Read More Read More