Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Bitcoin ‘still in early innings’ at $100K — ARK’s Cathie Wood
Trump nominates cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins as SEC chair
Yeah. Not gonna happen: FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Almost a third of preteens, teens with long COVID still not recovered at 2 years, study shows
Politics:
Appeasement in the New Age of Trump
It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said on air.
No-Confidence Vote Topples French Government
A no-confidence vote in the French parliament on Wednesday has triggered the collapse of the government, plunging the country into political chaos and stoking anxiety about the euro zone’s second biggest economy.
Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s administration becomes the shortest-serving government in the modern French republic and the first in six decades to be toppled by a no-confidence vote. Although the motion was put forward by a leftwing alliance, the swing votes of Marine Le Pen and her far-right lawmakers, wielding unprecedented influence, were key to its passage.
The trouble is, there’s no obvious cast of characters who could form a stable government.
Move along folks; nothing to see here: German ministry cannot confirm reports on Baltic Sea incident with Russia
America’s nightmare is two feral parties
Had Kamala Harris won the U.S. election last month — and it was close, remember, despite the tone of the coverage since then — would Donald Trump have conceded defeat within 24 brisk hours? Would Republicans in Congress be preparing to certify the result in the new year? Would the party’s voters accept her as the legitimate president when asked in polls? On all three counts, there is enough doubt that posing the questions doesn’t seem exotic.
Without quite acknowledging it, American politics has arrived at an understanding. One side can ignore the rules of the game — to the point of challenging election outcomes without proof of fraud — and the other can’t, or at least doesn’t. In the language of the street, but also of game theory, the Democratic party is the sucker. If it were one of the two detainees in the prisoner’s dilemma, it would confess to a crime, the accomplice wouldn’t, and jail would beckon for the former. The prisoner at least has the excuse of ignorance. Democrats are aware of being diddled.
This isn’t tenable. The ultimate risk to the American republic is that Democrats give up their unilateral observance of basic norms. The system can survive, just about, one of the two main parties going feral. It can’t survive both.
Understanding the Roots of Far-Right Politics
Richard Seymour, author of Disaster Nationalism, argues that the roots of far-right politics lie not just in economics but in people's feelings about the world.
We can probably assume that this will be overturned in January: Biden bars new ‘forever chemicals’ from expedited approval
Americans Have Little Sympathy for Murdered Health Insurance Exec
Across social media, the response to the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO was contemptuous of the industry he represented
Putin Decides That Stalin’s Victims Were Guilty After All
Authorities in Moscow once exonerated people who were tortured, imprisoned, and killed during the Soviet era. The current president wants to undo that.
…his government is methodically reviving criminal charges against thousands of previously exonerated victims of the Soviet regime. “Who controls the past, controls the future,” George Orwell wrote in 1984. “Who controls the present, controls the past.” Putin’s historical revisionism has become an indispensable feature of his regime. And as long as he controls the present, his war on memory will only broaden and deepen.
