A xenophobic flyer was distributed during school board elections in the town of Edison, New Jersey. Under the header “Make Edison Great Again”, it pictured ethnic Chinese and an ethnic Indian candidates with their photos having the stamp “DEPORT” on them followed by the statement “Stop Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel From taking over our School Board”
Zaid Jilani and Ryan Grim looked at election results across the nation and say that there were many good things that happened and so my own somewhat downbeat assessment based largely on results in Virginia, New Jersey, and Ohio may have been a little off.
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Democrats are crowing over yesterday’s elections where they won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, portraying them as repudiations of Donald Trump and all that he represents. While the results were good for Democrats, they should not be oversold. What is true is that it would have been devastating if they had lost either race and so at least they avoided that. After all, the outgoing Virginia governor is a Democrat and Hillary Clinton won the state last year. New Jersey is a reliably Democratic state and how the obnoxious Chris Christie won two terms is the anomaly. It may have been because his predecessor in that office Jon Corzine was an unpopular Goldman Sachs CEO who somehow managed to avoid going to jail for shady business practices at his firm MF Global after losing his re-election bid in 2009, something that wealthy, well-connected bankers seem to be able to do easily.
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This video, taken in a submarine on the ocean floor bed 750m underwater near the carcass of a dead whale, shows the ferocity of giant sharks as they attack each other and the submarine in order to get at the food.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of the more obscure members of Donald Trump’s cabinet, has suddenly come into the news since being named in the Paradise Papers as having dealings with companies that shield the profits of the wealthy oligarchy from taxes by passing them through off-shore companies set up in various small island nations. Normally, people might be embarrassed by such a disclosure but in Ross’s case he might actually welcome this news that links him with other wealthy tax avoiders since he has been fighting a different battle, to try and convince people, and especially Forbes magazine, that he is wealthier than he is.
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There is something very strange about the way that the senator from Kentucky was attacked by his neighbor while he was cutting the grass using his riding mower. First reports had Paul’s spokespersons downplaying the scale of the attack, saying that the injuries were very minor, suggesting mere bruises, and that the senator would be back at work soon. But that story changed later and it was revealed that Paul had five broken ribs suggesting a quite brutal attack.
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Later this week there will be the release of the second remake of the film Murder on the Orient Express with a star-studded cast. The first version was in 1974 and also had an even more stellar cast with the biggest names of that era, and there was a made-for-TV version in 2001. All these films are based on an Agatha Christie novel with the same title.
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I have never been a fan of Donna Brazile, seeing her as a career political hack who was comfortably well-ensconced in the Democratic neoliberal party establishment (as represented by the Democratic National Committee) and a spokesperson for those policies in the media. She was the very definition of a party apparatchik. Hence I was surprised at the furor that her book has generated and the way that the party establishment has turned against her.
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The US seems to be joined at the hip with the nation of Saudi Arabia, even as that country takes a much more vigorous and deleterious international role and spreads its poisonous brand of Islam around the world. Hence the dramatic events of Saturday, where there were mass arrests of nearly fifty people that included high-ranking businessmen, media figures, and even members of the royal family, bear some scrutiny
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A new leak of a massive trove of documents being called the Paradise Papers (this post edited to add this link) reveals how the global wealthy used offshore accounts to hide their money, their financial entanglements with shady figures, and avoid paying taxes. This video explains what these documents are about and what to expect from them in the coming weeks.
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