Had Amtrak come to a screeching halt this week, as it was on the verge of doing, most Americans would not have noticed. Of those workers who still commute to in-person jobs, 76 percent drive their own cars, 10 percent ride a bike, and only 11 percent use public transportation.
Other countries tend to give us a bad rap for our car-loving ways. Most of us — nine in 10 Americans over the age of 16 — drive. And we drive a lot: 59 minutes and 30 miles a day, on average. We’re on the road twice as much as our friends in France, Germany, and Great Britain. So when non-American critics blame climate change on our driving habits, I can’t help but think they’re just plain jealous.
It’s been a “Twilight Zone” of a political week, from James Taylor singing “Fire and Rain” to cheer the Inflation Reduction Act to our Beto O’Rourke in New York looking for money to the Democrats in full “Daydream Believer” mode to pursue their climate change agenda.
Nearly 30 arrests have been made over the past few weeks
Once regarded as the model example of a cohesive hyper-diverse locality in modern-day Britain, the city of Leicester is in danger of collapsing into a Hindutva-Islamist battleground in the East Midlands.
It has been reported by the Leicester Mercury that the recent escalation in community tensions started after the Asia Cup cricket match between India and Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on August 28. Before the weekend, it was reported that a total of twenty-seven people had been arrested. Another fifteen arrests have recently been made after further public disturbances in the Asian-dominant areas of East Leicester such as Belgrave.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke out during his first interview with a Western reporter Sunday, telling 60 Minutes that Israel is a ‘malignant cancerous tumor’ and claiming the ‘Holocaust probably happened’ but it needs to ‘be investigated and researched.’
President Ebrahim Raisi, whose full name is Ebrahīm Raʾīs al-Sādātī, 60, was elected to the presidency in August 2021 and became the country’s eighth president.
When asked if he believed the Holocaust happened, Iranian President Raisi told Lesley Stahl, “There are some signs that it happened. If so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched.” https://t.co/CChTRxBFcrpic.twitter.com/7ZSBEknrh1
The UK still leads the world in magnificent final farewells to its leaders
State funerals say a lot about the country in which they take place — and one of the things in which Britain still indisputably leads the world are the magnificent final farewells that it arranges for its leaders.
How very different are some of the send-offs seen in less fortunate lands. When Stalin died in 1953, hundreds, possibly thousands, were added to the toll of his victims when they were fatally crushed lining up in Moscow to view the dead Soviet dictator. In 1989, after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in revolutionary Iran, the chaotic funeral culminated in the dead Supreme Leader’s body actually falling out of its coffin, while Revolutionary Guards fired into the crowd of more than a million mourners, killing at least eight. In Britain, in stark contrast, the funerary rituals are so meticulously planned and rehearsed that it seems shocking and makes headlines if a lone anti-monarchist shouts a disobliging comment or holds up a blank placard.
I don’t consider myself a Monarchist but as with so many I did admire the steadfast Queen Elizabeth.
Regardless of our personal opinions of the institution there is no question that Elizabeth served her nation and the commonwealth in exemplary fashion.
I am saddened at her passing but history will remember her well.
The world’s most vulnerable countries are preparing to take on the richest economies with a demand for urgent finance – potentially including new taxes on fossil fuels or flying – for the irrecoverable losses they are suffering from the climate crisis, leaked documents show.
Extreme weather is already hitting many developing countries hard and forecast to wreak further catastrophe. Loss and damage – the issue of how to help poor nations suffering from the most extreme impacts of climate breakdown, which countries cannot be protected against – is one of the most contentious problems in climate negotiations.
If politicians and police forces don’t want to see a repeat of this winter’s protest in Ottawa, they would be well-served to take a step back and try to understand why the protests happened rather than obsessively trying to chase down and punish citizens who were found to be supportive of them.
The witch hunt being carried out against Const. Kristina Neilson of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) who allegedly donated to the Freedom Convoy is only entrenching division and mistrust among Canadians.
Related – Hospital executive fired after convoy donation data breach files $650Gs lawsuit
A London long-term care boss fired after a freedom convoy donation data breach has launched a $650,000 wrongful dismissal lawsuit against his former employer, St. Joseph’s Health Care London, an action the hospital is fighting.
With Pierre Poilievre’s landslide leadership win, all the moth-eaten political tropes have been dusted off and the dead horses dragged out to be flogged. Prominent among these is angst around the prospective demise of “progressive,” or moderate, conservatism.
Trans tiktoker admits that doctors will easily agree to do hysterectomies in the name of “gender affirming care” but “cis” women have a much harder time getting approved for it.
In September of 2014, I found myself in a town hall meeting in Lexington, Nebraska — population 10,000. It’s a meat-packing town about three hours west of Omaha, and not what one would call a wealthy town. I was there on a campaign stop with Sen. Ben Sasse, and the people of Lexington were very concerned with one issue in particular: what to do about the 11 Central American kids the federal government had dropped off unannounced in Lexington the month prior, just before the start of school. There had been a rapid influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the border that summer, and the Obama administration just relocated many of them around the country in towns such as Lexington.
The Greek myth of the Augean Stables has rarely been more pertinent than today. In penance for his sins, the Greek hero Hercules (Heracles in original Greek) was ordered to scour the stables in which King Augeas kept 3,000 herd of cattle and which had not been cleaned in 30 years. The Labor was accomplished by diverting the river Alpheus through the structure, in itself no mean feat, even for a mythological hero.
Above, a British police officer works to keep the vibrancy from getting out of hand in Leicester.
One of the frequent themes of this blog is that the news media exist primarily not to report the news, but to manage the Narrative. This from the BBC is a perfect example:
Police and community leaders have called for calm after large numbers of people became involved in disorder in parts of East Leicester.
How historic day will unfold as Britain says farewell to Queen: Her Majesty’s coffin will be taken to Westminster Abbey at 10.44am, arrive at Windsor at 3.06pm before she is laid to rest with her beloved Philip at 7.30pm
Russiagate special counsel John Durham is in the homestretch. His grand jury wrapped up work last week, apparently with no new indictments on the horizon. Attorney General Merrick Garland is said to anticipate receiving his final report by the end of the year. And Durham is gearing up for his last trial: the prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the principal source for the discredited Steele dossier.
That last one should be grabbing our attention. We now know that the so-called dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was a Clinton campaign production. It is one of the great dirty tricks in modern political history: The 2016 Democratic presidential campaign colluded with the incumbent Democratic administration’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus to portray their partisan opposition, Donald Trump, as a Kremlin mole, then made the smear stick to the point of forcing Trump to govern for over two years under the cloud of a special-counsel investigation.
