Music: Max Marsillo — ‘Chicken or The Egg’
With the prospect of Zohran Mamdani becoming their mayor, the plutocrats are panicking
The New York Times reports: August in the Hamptons: Ocean breezes. Oversubscribed Tracy Anderson classes. Parking woes. And this year, with a New York City mayoral election looming in the fall, a freakout that the most sumptuous of summer staples hasn’t soothed. “Even overpriced lobster salad can’t seem to make people out here feel better,” said Robert Zimmerman, a veteran political fund-raiser who has yet to back anyone in the race. “Everyone’s talking about it all the time,” said the…
RFK Jr says he’ll ‘fix’ a vaccine program — by canceling compensation for people with vaccine injuries
The Guardian reports: While unrest and new vaccine restrictions have kept US health agencies in headlines, there’s one vaccine program in particular that Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently vowed to “fix”, which experts say could further upend the vaccine industry and prevent people experiencing rare side effects from vaccines from getting financial help. While some changes to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people who suffer…
Members of Congress demand answers after firefighter arrests in Washington State
The Seattle Times reports: Fifty members of Congress, including several Washington Democrats, are calling on the Department of Homeland Security for answers after two crew members fighting the Bear Gulch fire were arrested by immigration officials. Two people fighting the fire on the Olympic Peninsula were arrested by federal law enforcement Wednesday, as depicted in photos and videos. The two firefighters entered the U.S. illegally, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday in a news release. The 9,200-acre wildfire is…
As Trump rattles the world, China reaps the rewards
The Wall Street Journal reports: The leaders of three of the world’s four most powerful nations will meet in China this weekend to discuss how to react to the upending of the international order wrought by the fourth: the U.S. under President Trump. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently being wooed by Washington, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country—long cultivated by the U.S. as a centerpiece of its aspirations…
A decades long effort to forge closer ties with India got blown up by Trump in a few months
Kapil Komireddi writes: For three decades, successive American presidents have invested enormous diplomatic capital to cultivate a friendship with India. Bill Clinton, who laid the foundations of the modern U.S.-India partnership, called the two democracies “natural allies.” George W. Bush described them as “brothers in the cause of human liberty.” Barack Obama and Joe Biden both cast the relationship as one of the defining global compacts of this century. To Washington, India was a vast emerging market, a potential counterweight…
U.S.-Israeli Gaza plan calls for ‘voluntary’ exodus with remaining Palestinians placed in concentration camps
The Cradle reports: A postwar plan for Gaza circulating within President Donald Trump’s White House envisions demolishing the strip, confiscating all public land within it, paying small amounts to remove the entire population of more than 2 million Palestinians, and building “a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” on its ruins, The Washington Post reported on 31 August. A 38-page prospectus seen by The Post envisions placing Gaza in a trust controlled by Israeli and American investors….
Music-induced emotion affects what we remember and how clearly
PsyPost reports: Music can stir emotion, spark memories, and bring people together—but does it also change what we remember? A new study published in The Journal of Neuroscience suggests that the emotional arousal elicited by music after learning can shape whether people remember the gist of an experience or its finer details. The research indicates that increases or decreases in emotional arousal after listening to music influence the balance between general and specific memory in different ways, with potential implications…
Music: Pino Palladino & Blake Mills — ‘That Was A Dream’
Trump risks losing a ‘pillar’ of his trade strategy and having to refund a big chunk of $159 billion from tariff revenues
The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump has audaciously claimed virtually unlimited power to bypass Congress and impose sweeping taxes on foreign products. Now a federal appeals court has thrown a roadblock in his path. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday that Trump went too far when he declared national emergencies to justify imposing sweeping import taxes on almost every country on earth. The ruling largely upheld a May decision by a specialized federal trade…
Former CDC scientist warns: RFK Jr. appears to believe in eugenics. ‘Wake up… This is where fascism lives’
The Daily Beast reports: A scientist who resigned from the CDC this week is warning that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has shown signs he believes in “eugenics.” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, told MSNBC Saturday morning that America needs to “wake up” to the secretary’s rhetoric. “I really hear the echoes of the word, ‘superior genetics,’” Daskalakis said. “He referred to very high members…
Trump drives scientists, spies and soldiers out of government
Axios reports: Centuries’ worth of experience walked out of key government agencies this summer, including high-level departures from the CDC, Pentagon and intelligence community just in the past week. Why it matters: President Trump and his allies believe the “Deep State,” scientific establishment and federal bureaucracy were overdue for a purge. They’re ushering in a government in which the officials maintaining nuclear weapons, monitoring medical trials or guarding state secrets have shorter resumes and smaller staffs — likely for many years to come. Driving…
Ali Velshi: ‘America has been badly let down by the leadership of the Democratic Party’
Even in easy times, this democracy needs care. And right now it is in dire need of defense. And it needs defenders who are willing to do whatever it takes. Americans are begging for more. Begging for Democrats to get off the mat and back into the fight. If political leaders in this country are not prepared to fight with both hands, and are not prepared to make “good trouble”, then perhaps they should step aside and make space…
Undisguised racism: Trump’s cabinet is almost all white, and he keeps firing Black officials
The Guardian reports: A day after Donald Trump announced that he was firing Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, the White House proudly released a photo. It showed Trump, his cabinet and other officials giving a thumbs-up. Of the 24 people in the Oval Office, only one was Black. For those who have studied the US president’s long and troubling history of racism, the two events were more than…
Israel’s only language is force
Abed Abou Shhadeh writes: Historian Yuval Noah Harari has described this moment as a spiritual turning point for Jews – perhaps the most significant since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Jews, he argued, have survived catastrophe after catastrophe, but never faced a spiritual threat of this magnitude. Israel’s current path, Harari warned, risks dismantling 2,000 years of Jewish thought and culture. In his view, Israel could end up ethnically cleansing Palestinians, dismantling democratic structures, and replacing…
Life on Earth probably needed supplies from space
University of Bern: Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which all the planets in the solar system formed was rich in volatile elements essential for life, such as hydrogen, carbon and sulfur. However, in the inner solar system—the part closest to the sun, where the four rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars…