The Alleged News®

This fortnight began with terrible news about the climate. It went downhill from there. The Guardian reported on July 27th—too late for us to deal with properly in our paper of July 30th, too important to leave out now—“many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.” “Overall, the study* found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records. “‘There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond …

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On July 12th, Judi Hershman posted an extraordinary 2,600-word document on Medium. In it, the self-described “former professional partisan” laments what she accurately calls, “our country’s biggest existential crisis since the Civil War.” It has come about, she writes, because “too many people like me stuck our heads in the sand, swallowed our doubts, [and] let the unacceptable slide, [having] convinced ourselves it was in the interest of the greater good….” Hershman attained this perspective, she says, through a long and close association with one of the most influential unelected figures in the Republican power structure. That emminent personage was Kenneth Starr: Grand Inquisitor during …

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The Fourth of July weekend started early in Los Angeles this year. On Wednesday, June 30th, the L.A. Police Department blew up two blocks in the middle of Historic South Central. Unfortunately, this was not a controlled fireworks display, intended to entertain the local residents and thereby create lasting bonds of amity and goodwill. It was more like the opposite of that. Seventeen people were hurt in the 7:30 p.m. blast; none had life-threatening injuries. Fifty residents were displaced from their homes for a week. What’s truly strange about this story is that it could have been a whole lot worse. Apparently responding to a …

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by Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams The growing concentration of wealth in fewer hands—including among corporate robber barons’ descendants who continue, after multiple generations, to wield the “financial, political, and philanthropic clout” afforded by enormous inheritances to “advance their dynasty-building agenda”—intensifies working-class suffering in the U.S. and poses a threat to society and democracy. That’s according to Silver Spoon Oligarchs: How America’s 50 Largest Inherited-Wealth Dynasties Accelerate Inequality, a new report out June 16th from the Institute for Policy Studies. Analyzing data from Forbes, IPS tracked the assets of the country’s 50 wealthiest families—“including the Waltons, the Kochs, the Mars family, and many others, some well-known …

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by Mike Lofgren America’s love affair with lunacy continues undimmed. Along with flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and fans of perpetual motion, according to a May 21 Ipsos poll, 53 percent of Republicans now assert that Donald Trump is the current President of the United States. There is a tendency in the reality-based community to regard these folks as obscure lunatics who yell at their TVs in trailer parks when they’re not ruining a relative’s Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, this epidemic of delusional belief embraces a more exalted layer of the social spectrum, a group on which the maintenance of our democracy—deeply flawed as it is—may hinge. This May, …

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Just a week into the Biden administration, a familiar old bugbear reared its ugly head: would the U.S. go to war with China in defense of Taiwan? Should it? Speaking of “should,” we know we ought to be concerned about the geostrategic implications behind this issue, not to mention the serious humanitarian concerns, but—and you can sue us for this if you like—remembering, as we do, all the hot air generated on this topic back when Ike was in office, we’re just going to yield to temptation. Herewith: a few spitballs from the back of the class. The right wing in those days was made …

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