Group items tagged

In earlier movements there needed to be an overall theme, even a phrase, that could rally people of highly divergent political and intellectual backgrounds. The idea of a “nuclear freeze” mobilized millions of people with the simple and clear demand

With both the nuclear and climate threats, the swerve in awareness has had a crucial ethical component. People came to feel that it was deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to engage in nuclear war, and are coming to an awareness that it is deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to destroy our habitat and create a legacy of suffering for our children and grandchildren.

AMERICANS appear to be undergoing a significant psychological shift in our relation to global warming. I call this shift a climate “swerve,” borrowing the term used recently by the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly.

But, in the second stage, Fox’s most prominent figures had a quick change of heart after Trump declared a state of emergency on March 13, acknowledging that the pandemic could have devastating health and economic consequences.

A third message seems to have germinated on Sunday with Hilton’s monologue.

On his program Monday, Tucker Carlson, who previously had warned of the virus’s severity, agreed with Trump’s new, less-restrictive view. “You can’t just let epidemiologists run a country of more than 320 million people,” Carlson said, arguing that it was important to find a balance between fighting the virus and keeping the economy going.

The message was reinforced Tuesday morning on “F0x & Friends,” during which Fox medical correspondent Marc Siegel, a medical doctor, suggested there were “moderate” ways of handling the crisis.

“What if there are no cases in certain states?” he asked, although every state is now handling infections. “What if it’s very low? Maybe there is a way to test, to target, to isolate and then to have more-moderate ways of approaching it in areas that aren’t yet affected. And then, of course, restrict travel from one area that has a lot of it to one that doesn’t. I think that’s a more practical approach, because otherwise the economy gets in worse and worse shape.”

Co-host Brian Kilmeade replied that the issue had divided experts. “You have economists on one side, health officials on the other,” he said. “Maybe the right thing is in the middle.”

We don’t even really know what a conscience is, but somebody’s going to have to program one nonetheless.

Pakistan now says the alliance is over—and good riddance. Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif complained that “This is not how allies behave.” He is absolutely correct: U.S. allies do not take its lower and middle-class taxpayers’ hard-earned money and hand it over to enemies such as the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba.Asif went on to offer the usual protestations that Pakistan’s military operations have cleared Pakistan of sanctuaries for these groups to hide in. But if there were such scoundrels on Pakistan’s territory, he said that if Pakistan went after them, “then the war will again be fought on our soil, which will suit the Americans.”

Still, Pakistan likely suspects it has the upper hand, and for good reason: It has cultivated a global fear that it is too dangerous to fail. This is why many Americans have been afraid to break ties with Pakistan and have never encouraged the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations to cut off the country and let Pakistan wallow in its own mess. Pakistan believes it has effectively bribed the international community with the specter that any instability could result in terrorists getting their hands on Pakistani nuclear technology, fissile materials, or a weapon. In fact, Pakistan has stoked these fears by having the world’s fastest-growing nuclear program, including of battlefield nuclear weapons. It is conceivable that Pakistan could use funds from a future IMF bailout to service its burgeoning Chinese debt.

Still, one positive side effect of having an erratic head of state is that the United States now has a genuine and credible threat to act against Pakistan. America has not been in such a position since 9/11, when it used its position of leverage to coerce Pakistan to facilitate the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Whereas Pakistan had long comforted itself that neither Presidents Bush nor Obama would seriously alter course, due to the petting zoo of Islamist militants that Pakistan cultivated as crucial tools of foreign policy, and to its nuclear weapons, Pakistan will have to seriously consider that Trump means what he says. Since the early months of the war on terror that began in October 2001, the United States has ultimately swerved when confronted with Pakistani brinkmanship. Pakistan can’t count on that this time.

The group included children and one protester in a wheelchair, Anthony said. Before the truck could get through to the parking lot, though, protesters gathered on the other side of the gate, shouting “Shame!” Moments later, other guards from the prison rushed across the street to surround the protesters and then fired pepper spray.

After the demonstrators fled the pepper spray, the driver parked in the lot and then walked into the prison, Anthony said. Although Central Falls police were on the scene, they did not get involved, Anthony said, and officers later refused to take statements from protesters. Organizers are discussing what legal recourse they might have now.

Anthony said the incident hardened her group’s resolve to continue protesting ICE and prisons that work with the federal agency. “If this is the way this correctional officer is behaving in public when people are recording, it’s not hard to imagine the behavior is much worse behind the walls in the facility where no one can see what is happening,” she said.

From supply failures of essential equipment to the summer exams debacle to the care homes scandal, another pattern of the crisis has been attempts to swerve culpability for all the things that have gone wrong by blaming anyone else but ministers.

One former Tory cabinet minister remarks: “There’s bound to be a public inquiry. We will be held to account for the fact that our deaths are higher and our recession is deeper.”

The pattern is one of resisting taking the necessary steps at the time when they would have been most effective and then being compelled to implement them late and with more damaging effect

Given his lack of dedication to detail and the hard grind of delivering competent government, he needed a capable cabinet. Feebly fearful of having any substantial figures around the top table who might challenge him, he instead surrounded himself with a cabinet characterised by Tory MPs as “lightweight”, “talentless”, “loyalist duds” and “nodding dogs”.

Another persistent pattern during this plague year has been to over-promise and under-deliver. We were going to have a “fantastic” this and a “world-beating” that and a “moon-shot” the other. We would have settled for a test, trace and isolate programme that worked.

Optimism can be a positive trait in a politician, but wishful thinking is a fatal characteristic in an epidemic. So is deceptive messaging to the public.

That misjudgment, like all the other ones, flows from his personality. Just below the surface of his performative face lurks an insecure character who trusts no one and yearns to be loved by everyone. He hates being the bearer of bad news and tough choices.

It’s sad that voters feel like they only have a choice between democratic socialism and white supremacy.

Ms. Witzke’s ascent in Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s home state may be the nadir of the Delaware Republican Party’s rapid swerve from patrician moderation to the far-right fringe

Republicans running statewide are facing a choice: Appeal to the vocal extreme or find some way to assemble a more centrist coalition that could actually elect them.

That was an easy case to make not long ago in tiny Delaware, population 974,000, where “the Delaware way” was a model of centrist political accommodation.

The F.B.I. has warned that QAnon poses a potential domestic terrorism threat.

“People are so tired of George Bush-era politics. Nationalist populism is the future,” Ms. Witzke said. “America First is the future. And that is what I am.”

The Republican Party has to be open-minded about the people who live in this country and get back on some sort of track that makes sense to the average voter,

You can’t just have ideological beliefs that don’t appeal to a majority of people in a state — or the country.

Ms. Witzke’s message to moderates, she said: “It’s me or Antifa.”

On Wednesday, a day after Mr. Trump’s Proud Boys remarks during the first presidential debate, Ms. Witzke took to Twitter to create more headaches for her party. “The Proud Boys showed up to one of my rallies to provide free security for me when #BLM and ANTIFA were protesting my candidacy,” she wrote, neglecting to mention that the Proud Boys outnumbered the McDole family protesters at the event.

“We are sick and tired of pandering and people electing government officials who will cave to the mob,”

Gathered with her in the parking lot of the Republican Party headquarters here was a self-appointed security guard with a gun on his hip, a political adviser whose losing clients include candidates accused of racism and anti-Semitism, and a smattering of Proud Boys, the far-right brawlers whom President Trump told to “stand back and stand by.”