As I listen to MAGAts raving on against immigrants I look at these employment numbers and think almost everyone in America who wants to be is employed. But I also keep reading there is a need for 11 million more employees to keep the economy thriving. So where are those 11 million going to come from if not immigrants?
Nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for April, beating Wall Street estimates for growth of 180,000.
The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.5% for the month and increased 4.4% from a year ago, both higher than expected.
Job growth fared better than expected in April despite bank turmoil and a decelerating economy, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969. A more encompassing number that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons edged lower to 6.6%.
Average hourly earnings, a key inflation barometer, rose 0.5% for the month, more than the 0.3% estimate and the biggest monthly gain in a year. On an annual basis, wages increased 4.4%, higher than the expectation for a 4.2% gain. Both numbers raise the chances that the […]
David Badash, Staff Writer - The New Civil Rights Movement
Stephan:
Today we have two new corruption stories about Clarence Thomas, but that’s just the beginning. Here is yet another story of the corruption of Supreme Court Justices. To really understand the corruption context is important. Start with what these people are paid. It’s a great gig. The 8 Associate Justices, as of January 2023, get paid an annual salary of $285,400, and the Chief Justice gets $298,500. They also get an extraordinarily generous health package and a very generous retirement program. Plus you get great status, great deference, great staff support, and all kinds of perks. Once you understand that and you read these stories coming out week after week, you can also see how corrupt the Supreme Court has become, particularly the Rightwing ideologues.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has revealed the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also accepted and did not disclose dozens of trips paid for by special interest advocates, in a similar fashion to the decades-worth of undisclosed luxury travel, vacations, and trips Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took.
In video that has gone viral on social media – over 1.6 million views in less than 24 hours – Senator Whitehouse says Scalia took “more than seven dozen” of these undisclosed vacations.
“The personal hospitality problems I’ve been pursuing began with Justice Scalia, who took more than seven dozen undisclosed hunting vacations. Most people know of two, the one where he was on the Air Force Two manifest with Dick Cheney and the one where he died,” Sen. Whitehouse said in his remarks during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing on Supreme Court ethics.
I have been looking for months for some report based on solid data explaining why the simplistic MAGAt view of sexuality and gender is a kind of bumper sticker presentation of the issue. Here is the best one I have found.
The gender spectrum is an understanding that gender is not binary, but rather a spectrum of biological, mental and emotional traits that exist along a continuum.
In contrast, the gender binary—also called gender binarism or genderism—is a belief that gender is composed of two distinct and opposite genders (women/men) in which there is not overlap.
Unfortunately for those who believe in a gender binary, it is not scientifically or medically correct. Gender can’t be binary, because it is a personal identity and is socially constructed.
Sex, which refers to one’s biological characteristics, also exists as a spectrum, because intersex people exist. A person’s sex can be female, male, or intersex—which can present as an infinite number of biological combinations.
Today, numerous scientific fields, including biology, endocrinology, physiology, genetics, neuroscience, and reproductive science, have confirmed that both sex and gender exist as a spectrum.
Yet more evidence about what happens when one eats a highly processed food diet. This research reports the negative effects of such a diet on cognitive ability and emotional state. It occurred to me as I read this that people in Red states, particularly in the South, where people tend to eat more processed foods might have become MAGAts because of such a diet.
Illustration: The New York Times
Roughly 60 percent of the calories in the average American diet come from highly processed foods. We’ve known for decades that eating such packaged products — like some breakfast cereals, snack bars, frozen meals and virtually all packaged sweets, among many other things — is linked to unwelcome health outcomes, like an increased risk of diabetes, obesity and even cancer. But more recent studies point to another major downside to these often delicious, always convenient foods: They appear to have a significant impact on our minds, too.
Research from the past ten or so years has shown that the more ultraprocessed foods a person eats, the higher the chances that they feel depressed and anxious. A few studies have suggested a link between eating UPFs and increased risk of cognitive decline.
What’s so insidious about these foods, and how can you avoid the mental fallout? Scientists are still working on answers, but here’s what we know so far.
I hope the people of the 9th Congressional District in Arizona are proud of themselves for electing MAGAt Republican and Neo-Nazis, Paul Gosar, an appalling human being, to represent them.
Arizona Neo-Nazis MAGAt Republican Representative Paul Gosar
Rep. Paul Gosar (R) this week will share a stage with members of a European political party founded by former Nazis, The Forward reports.
The far-right congressman is scheduled to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual Hungary gathering, where he’ll be joined by the nation’s authoritarian leader Victor Orbán, who himself has trafficked in antisemitic tropes and glorified Nazi collaborators.
The conference, which starts Thursday, was organized by U.S. and European allies of the American Conservative Union, a group with GOP ties.
Others expected to attend include Freedom Party of Austria Chairman Herbert Kickl, whose party was founded by former Nazis in 1956, and Jack Posobiec, an alt-right conspiracy theorist who has promoted white nationalist and antisemitic views.
Several former Trump administration officials are also expected to attend.
The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh writes that Orbán, the Hungarian leader, at a CPAC conference in Dallas last year “invoked the Holocaust and assailed Jewish billionaire George Soros in an unleashed attack on progressive Democrats and the mainstream media. Gosar has […]
