Daily Archives: December 31, 2021

The two state-solution in Israel-Palestine is dead, and its erstwhile championsliberal Zionists and foreign diplomats, mainlyare clinging to an obsolete political program, leaving the field wide open to the Israeli right and far right to shape reality as they please.

These forces have already been shaping reality for a while, entrenching the military occupation and inextricably integrating the settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank with the economy and society of Israel proper. Theres no way now to deconstruct the settlement project without sending cracks running throughout Israel within its pre-1967 borders. To this extent, the liberal Zionist vision of partition has been outmaneuvered and defeated by its opponents.

But liberal Zionism has also fallen victim to its own internal contradictions and double standards. Its cardinal flaw and original sin: convincing itself that the cataclysm of 1948, when Israels nation state was entrenched through widespread and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, can be sidestepped by tidying up one of its aftershocks, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, by creating a Palestinian state on a mere 22 percent of historic Palestines territory.

The Israeli right, meanwhile, has always insisted that the Palestinians fundamental contention was with the existence of Israel as established in 1948. While undoing 1948 is unthinkable and compromising merely on 1967 wouldnt solve the problem, successive right-wing governments opted to contain the consequences, doing their utmost to strengthen the Israeli presence and the militarys control between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Such governments have been in power in Israel from 1977 until today, with only minor interludes. The price of this kind of conflict management is there for all to seein more than five decades of harrowing headlines, photographs, and statistics. But worse may be to come: As the postwar liberal world order cracks at the seams and new bars for violence (Syria) and brazen expansionism (Crimea) are set, the tantalizing prospect of finishing the job begun in 1948 by means of formally annexing the occupied territories and expelling all or most of their Palestinian inhabitants is mesmerizing to many on the Israeli right.

Theres little doubt if former U.S. President Donald Trump had won a second term, annexation of at least part of the West Bank would have begun in earnest. Although talk of mass ethnic cleansing (in polite right-wing circles, the preferred Orwellian term is transfer) is still relegated to a relatively small minority of even todays hardened Israeli right, its all too easy to see the practice would be applied if Palestinians offered significant resistance.

The steadily worsening status quo can go one of two ways: either annexation with reduced rights for Palestiniansa formalized apartheidor a rapid descent into horrific violence on a scale not seen since 1967 or even 1948. The only path liberal Zionism has to offer, meanwhile, is a return to the Oslo process of the early 1990sin other words, time travel. If it is to survive, it urgently needs to offer a path forward.

This bleak (but all-too-convincing) reading of todays reality and the vivid (but less convincing) suggestion for a way forward bookend Omri Boehms Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future for Israelnamed after the city that, in Boehms mind, enjoys the kind of Palestinian-Jewish coexistence hed like to see across the land.

Assuming theres any future, or practical value, in resuscitating liberal Zionism after more than two decades of consistent electoral failure in Israel and increased polarization in diaspora communities, this is the most honest and ambitious liberal Zionist text to be published in decades.

It is certainly a world apart from the overrated 2014 opus by Ari Shavit, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, which acknowledges the Nakba while actively endorsing its rewards. (If it wasnt for them, Shavit writes of Israeli troops who ordered and carried out massacres and expulsions, I would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live.).

But despite Boehms best efforts, the policy proposal he presents is a model that disintegrates as soon as one peels away the buzz of spending a day in Haifas pleasantly bilingual city center.

Before getting to Haifa, however, Boehm revisits Oslonot the city but the abortive two-state process of the 1990s, which still frames how many observers view the conflict today. The opening chapters elegantly and swiftly dispense with this tainted prism.

The list of things Boehm gets right is long: He is correct that the two-state solution is well and truly dead and that mass ethnic cleansing is metastasizing from a fever dream to a tangible possibility. He is entirely correct that the peace camp elevated one particular approachtwo statesto a kind of religion and has undermined itself by superstitiously refusing to explore any other resolution, even as the feasibility of the two-state plan withers away.

He is correct that the foundational traumas of both communitiesthe Holocaust and the Nakbaneed to be confronted by Palestinians and Israelis, respectively, not because the two events are symmetrical or identical but because the trauma they engendered in each community is too fundamental to keep stoking, whether deliberately or by ignorance.

He is correct that to make a binational arrangement palatable to Israelis, it would need to be plausibly Zionist in some shape or form, and what would today be recognized as binationalism has a long history in Zionist thought, from Theodor Herzl himself all the way to Menachem Begin, the first revisionist Zionist prime minister and the progenitor of the Israeli right we know todaywho suggested offering Palestinians full citizenship as late as 1980.

Boehm overstates the present-day importance of these roads not taken and, in Begins case, the good faith they were entertained in. But he is largely correct that making the same offer to Palestinians today would be a non-starter because Israel is now defined as the ethnic state of the Jewish people, not a Jewish nation state in the European sense. A Palestinian immigrant to Italy might become Italian, but even a Palestinian with an Israeli passport will never become part of the group for whom the state exists. (This has been made all the more explicit with the 2018 passage of the Jewish Nation-State Law, which openly prioritized one community over another, but in practice, this has always been the case.)

Indeed, as Boehm points out, many people who identify as Jewish are also excluded or discriminated against, beginning with children of mixed marriages and those who convert to Judaism through any avenue other than Orthodox.

The books real troubles commence when Boehm starts to grasp for a solutionbeginning with the rather limited parameters he sets. Without much explanation or consideration of alternatives, he appears to take for granted that liberal Zionism and liberal democracy are each desirable in their own right and should be reconciled. Much of the book is preoccupied with saving liberal Zionism from itself (by offering it a vision compatible with its values and transcending the expired two-state solution) and rescuing liberal democracy from nationalism by creating two overlapping liberal, one-person, one-vote democracies entwined in a confederation.

Unfortunately, the book does not ask if, perhaps, liberal Zionism is such a spent force that it now only has an auxiliary role to play, with the actual compromising and state-building more likely to be carried on by each communitys nationalist advocates, or if, indeed, the ideal of liberal democracy is remotely up to the task of transforming a convoluted ethnonationalist conflictespecially with pragmatic alternatives like consociational power-sharing yet to be seriously explored.

In the service of this project helike others before himsummons the ghosts of binationalists, especially of the pre-state era, from Ahad Haam and Martin Buber to Zeev Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion in their earlier years. Boehm spends some time asserting this Zionism of yore, with its express preference for Jewish self-determination over exclusive Jewish sovereignty, is somehow the true form of Zionism while everything that followed is a regrettable andsomehowreversible deviation. But he spends no time at all explaining why any Israeli today would care about Ahad Haam or pre-premiership Ben-Gurionor indeed choose the Zionism that failed to materialize over the one that triumphed and has shaped the only Israel they have ever known.

There are two more important omissions in the book, both glaring and alarming. The first is a serious exploration of who the communities entangled in the conflict actually are, and what they actually desire. Rather than the monolithic question of what (dwindling) percentage of each community supports a two-state solution, Boehm omits how the different subgroups that compose the two national communities are invested in the various aspects and mechanisms of the status quomaterially, politically, culturally, and even emotionallyas well as how each of those needs can be engaged to forestall further segregation or ethnic cleansing.

In fact, apart from an examination of Palestinian politician and Israeli parliamentarian Ahmad Tibis admittedly landmark speech acknowledging the trauma of the Holocaust, Palestinian voices are entirely absent from the book. Granted, the books subtitle is A Democratic Future for Israel, but this hardly lends gravitas to Boehms consideration of a shared future, certainly a future shared among equals. And there is no exploration of how to win over, or even defeat, the players Boehm identifies as spoilers, be they Palestinian militants or Israeli ultra-nationaliststhe groups that managed to derail the peace process even before they seized power across most of the territory between the river and the sea.

The arrangement Boehm desires will need to be negotiated, it seems, between center-left leaders of a resurgent liberal Zionist camp and something like the Palestine Liberation Organizationin other words, a parity not seen in Israel-Palestine since the 1990s. Ironic, considering Boehms castigation of todays liberal Zionists for clinging to a departed past.

A more serious flaw still is the failure to articulate a compelling reason for Israelis to entertain a departure from the status quo. Israel is currently more secure, more stable, and more prosperous than at any point in its history.

No standing army menaces its borders; Iran, by and large, is successfully contained; Gulf Arab leadership is rapidly abandoning the Palestinian cause altogether; and contrary to warnings that the world will not stand for an unending military occupation, no external pressure has yet been applied or even entertained by a meaningful player. (If anything, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have successfully demonstrated that the international community wont be provoked into action by violations of international law even graver than Israels occupation, of which the Israeli right has duly taken note.)

Palestinian armed movements have been debilitated or wiped out, and even Hamass rocket arsenal is used to jostle for inches around the status quo, not as a strategic game-changer. Nonviolent Palestinian organizationsfrom Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass Palestinian National Authority to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movementhave not managed to put a dent in Israels comfortable hegemony. The same is true of Europe and the United States.

Boehm is asking for this hegemony to be given up but never articulates a way Israel can be coaxed or coerced to do so. The only motivation the book implies for Israelis to fix a machine that, for them, is already working perfectly appears to be a moral onea national crisis of conscience about present injustices or apprehension about worse injustices to come.

Israels ever-growing indifference to Palestinian lives suggests the likelihood of such a moral reckoning is slim. As for the latter, while Boehm is right that a second Nakba may be on the horizon, Israelis collectively recoiling at the prospect is not a given. The first generation of Israelis accepted the Nakba in real time, and then quietly buried it. The present generation exhumed it, inspected it in the light, and is in the processas Shavits book didof re-embedding it even in liberal national narratives as a somewhat regrettable but necessary evil.

Boehms own take on the Nakba is a significant improvement; he stresses the Israeli need to acknowledge the Nakba to defuse its immense emotional charge. But this utilitarian approachthe promise that once Israel duly acknowledges the Nakba and embeds it into the states national narrative, Palestinians can be persuaded to let gois not a call, or even a demand, any Israeli can make. Acknowledging the deed is a start; where to go from there depends, first and foremost (even if not exclusively) on the survivors. More than anywhere else in the book, this is where its unilateralism jars the most.

The book concludes with a back-of-the-napkin solution that, despite lending its title to the book, reads almost as an afterthought. Haifa is quickly sketched as a model of coexistence to aspire to, but little consideration is given to the fact that this coexistence is between a roughly 90 percent majority and a 10 percent minoritya vastly different power dynamic with far lower stakes for Jewish Israelis than the almost 50-50 parity in Israel-Palestine as a whole. Nor does it consider the fact that since 1948 and its expulsions, Haifa never had an Arab mayor and considerable socioeconomic gaps between the two populations (beyond a commendable but thin and fragile middle class) exist.

If one were to take Boehms analogy literally, its quite plausible Israel would tolerate a 10 percent Palestinian minority that can freely move anywhere, provided they are barred access to executive office. But thats barely worth founding a new republic for. Boehm caveats his idealized sketch of Haifa by acknowledging this cohabitation is far from equal; however, without a deeper exploration of what brought about this state of affairs, its political and historical importance is difficult to ascertain.

In fairness to Boehm, this is not at all what he is calling for. His pitch is a confederation of two local governments with separate parliaments ruling over members of their ethnic groups and territorial heartlands while allowing for complete freedom of movement across the space. Unlike groups such as A Land for All, which similarly argues for a confederation, Boehm doesnt grapple with the myriad logistical issues this brings up, from criminal law and taxation, to even loftier questionslike accountability for violence enacted during the conflict.

Theres no elaboration when it comes to why some institutions would need to be doubled (two parliaments) but others kept joint (the Supreme Court), and its unclear how a shared identitywhich he mentionsis supposed to emerge from a tangled model that segregates some of the most important arenas where political identities can be forged, such as the electoral process. He notes that many two-state scenarios are similarly vague, but demolishing the two-state program only to offer an equally half-baked solution is not a satisfyingor practicalconclusion.

Still, Boehms book is worth readingand lending to anyone who believes the two-state solution still lurks just around the corner. It is the most clear-eyed liberal Zionist text in many years, albeit not clear-eyed enough to admit itself a swan song. Perhaps unintentionally, it shows that achieving equality and national sovereignty while trying to straddle both ethnic nationalism and liberal democracy is a fools errand, however whimsically you rearrange the pieces on the board. But its not bold enough to change the game completely.

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The Two-State Solution Is Deadand Liberal Zionists Can't Save It - Foreign Policy

Is liberalism in retreat? Today the term liberal is used to describe so many diverse creeds and movements as to make it almost meaningless. It is used as a term of abuse by its critics and regularly used to discredit all kinds of tendencies which arent liberal at all.

Sometimes, the derision is deserved; in the English-speaking world, the new liberal mania for political and ideological purity is causing ancient liberties to be sacrificed in the name of new rights. And the pursuit of liberal individualism is thought to be in conflict with ideas of community. These apparent failings of the liberal idea are leading some to gather together under the banner of post-liberal.

But the problem is not that liberalism has passed its sell-by date; rather,it has lost its moorings.

These can be traced back to the emergence of British Liberalism with the Glorious Revolution and the 1689 Bill of Rights which enshrined many of the liberties that Parliament and the people had fought for during the previous century.

The Liberalism of 1689 was grounded, in particular, in the Christian (and more specifically) Protestant faith, born of the fight to produce an English translation of the Bible and to defend freedom of conscience. There was much intolerance and more than a few beheadings along the way William Tyndale died for the cause of publishing his translation but the settlement of 1689 required and established a new understanding of tolerance and freedom.

In all the great struggles of the 17th century, the calls for freedom were inseparable from the deep Christian faith of the protagonists, whether we are talking about the Parliamentarians, the Levellers or Oliver Cromwell himself. John Milton, driven and defined by his faith, wrote what is probably thefoundational text in defence of free speech Areopagitica at the peak of the Civil War. It contained an impassioned argument against the introduction of the new Licensing Order (1643), which required government approval for any published work. All these calls were anchored in a shared understanding of meaning, knowledge and virtue. Meaning came from God, knowledge from the Bible and virtue from following the teachings of the Old and New Testaments.

The importance of liberalisms moorings were not lost on the American Founding Fathers, who shared the same inheritance. In First Principles, Thomas Ricks describes how dedicated they were to assessing the problem of virtue of determining that theirnew Republic would be anchored in a shared understanding of morality so that civil society and freedom would be able to flourish. Adams and Jefferson looked as much to Ancient Rome for these virtues as they did to the Christian faith, but in practice American society was grounded overwhelmingly in the shared values of Christianity.

De Tocqueville understood this better than most. In Democracy in America, he plants the character of Anglo-American civilisation firmly in two elements: the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty. For him, religion and liberty were kindred spirits. In America, they wereindeed kindred, arriving together with the pilgrims. But in England, religion was the parent of liberty rather than sibling. And in both cases, the flourishing of liberty would depend on the stability and strength of her Christian moorings.

In 19th-century Britain, Classical Liberalism carried all before it in the pursuit of great causes widening the democratic franchise, opening the economy to free trade, educational reform, laying the foundations of the welfare state, eradicating the global slave trade. But just as it seemed to be all-conquering, its roots were being poisoned.

That poison stemmed from the Enlightenment itself. A new, anthropocentric way of thinking arrived in the 18th century, bringing with it an alternative understanding of human nature, a new theory of human knowledge and a new calculus of virtue.While Enlightenment Liberalism was aligned with the Christian worldview on certain principles of freedom, the two traditions diverge in key ways and it is this divergence that is now proving toxic to liberalism as we know it.

Traditional British liberalism rests on the Judaeo-Christian understanding that we are all, in moral terms, fallen creatures. The writings and speeches of the great heroes of liberty in the 16th and 17th centuries came with a deep sense of humility, of mankinds brokenness and of the Fall.

Somewhere amid the arrogance of the Enlightenment, we lost this sense of fallenness. Ayn Rand embodies the new way of thinking with her theories of rational egoism and the virtue of selfishness. Encouraged, no doubt, by evidence of technological progress, she assumed moral progress would move in lockstep with technology. She has many modern disciples, wittingly or unwittingly, especially in California, with its strapline of move fast and break things. Her Libertarianism is very different from traditional British Liberalism, despite the tendency of many to confuse the two, because of her different assumptions about human fallibility (or lack of, in her case), and about virtue.

Allied to the Enlightenment sense of human perfectibility and rationality is the belief in Progress. The origins of this go all the way back to Thomas Macaulay and the Whig interpretation of history. But Macaulay saw progress essentially in political terms in the extension of the franchise and other associatedpolitical freedoms such as freedom of conscience and freedom of the press. Sadly, the creed of Progress has now been pushed into every walk of life, ignoring the lessons of history and defying any biblical understanding of human nature. For Progressives, humankinds moral progress is on a perpetual upward curve in parallel with technological progress. The history of the 20th century does not give much support to this conceit it would be fairer to say that technology simply amplifies the expression of our moral fallibility.

Enlightenment liberals also builttheir own theories of morality, independent of a god, starting with Benthamite Utilitarianism, and extending all the way to John Rawls. Morality became a mathematical calculus, shorn of compassion or community, let alone repentance and forgiveness.According to Jeremy Bentham, nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. No reference to morality here, just pain and pleasure. One of Benthams disciples, William Jevons, even went as far as to develop a felicific calculus whereby all pain and pleasure could be quantified.

Enlightenment thinkers also developed their own theories of knowledge. One built on the empiricism of Hume and Adam Smith, the other built on the Rationalism of Descartes and Rousseau. The former, with its inherent modesty, is compatible with the Christian understanding of human fallibility, the latter is not.

Hayek describes the two schools of epistemology in The Constitution of Liberty. He warned that the latter, which he called the French tradition of liberty, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason could lead to totalitarian democracy. His warnings were all too well-founded andit is the Rationalist version of epistemology which has taken particular hold with todays cult of science.

Belief in the power of science has never been stronger. It has climaxed amid Covid, with politicians increasingly wrapping themselves in the science to justify ever more stringent intrusions on our freedom.Scientism, in the wrong hands, can become dangerous. And the worst hands are those of politicians and civil servants too easily tempted to use the authority of experts to infringe on our liberties.

This type of politician, Matt Hancock being the best example, fails to understand the limitations of science, fails to understand the nature of risk and uncertainty and fails to understand the difference between observable historical evidenceand predictions of an uncertain and hypotheticalfuture.

These different understandings of the theory of knowledge, of meaning and of virtue have led to a corruption of liberalism at its source.

What we are seeing today being enacted in the name of liberalism is not liberal at all. Instead, lets call it by the name which its proponents are prepared to use progressivism. This is the creed which unites Tony Blair, Nick Clegg, most of the US Democratic Party, most of the British Labour Party and the New York Times. These are not traditional Liberals in any understanding of the term. They are Progressives. They believe humankind is on a permanent upward path of progress. They believe in the rule of experts and in the authority of the science.

So where do genuine classical liberals go, faced with the corruption of the creed? Ironically, the attacks on our most ancient freedoms such as freedom of speech, conscience and assembly, make it more important than ever to assert the foundational understanding of liberty. Classical liberals need to unite and stand up for their tradition. It has never been so relevant.

Meanwhile, to those who do embrace the term post-liberal, and believe it applies to our new era, I would just say this: be careful what you wish for.

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Progressives have sacrificed liberalism - UnHerd

Its hard to imagine a more outlandish origin story than Rosebud Bakers accidental debut as a stand-up comedian. It happened during a White House dinner and, as Baker recalls, it was a disaster. The granddaughter of Secretary of State James Addison Baker III, she was barely seven years old when her parents stood her on a chair so she could charm the assembled VIPs, including the then-president, George H.W. Bush, with a cute-as-a-button oration.

I remember trying to congratulate the president for something and calling him by his first name, Baker says while nursing a half-and-half-infused cup of joe at a jam-packed coffee emporium in Manhattans Gramercy Park neighborhood. She is blonde, pretty, and five-foot-three, but possessed of a brawny voice (deepened no doubt by constant vaping) and a magnetic intensity that belie her petite frame.

It was this big dinner. And I remember being like, George! she says. I got this huge laugh. And I found it so embarrassing. The feeling of getting a laugh without knowing why, I was like, This is humiliating, I never want to come back here, Ive embarrassed myself, I dont belong here.

But now, she adds, I love it.

Three decades later with the benefit of life experiences more typical of comedian biographies, such as family dysfunction, alcoholism, explosive rage, years of therapy, and profound grief, not necessarily in that order Baker is coming into her own as a gifted writer and performer whose dark, close-to-the-bone comic sensibility is tickling audiences and peers alike.

The first time I saw Rosebud Baker was onstage at [the New York comedy club] The Stand. And within the first 15 seconds, I was like, Who is this? says comedy superstar Bill Burr, whose podcast network, All Things Comedy, hosts Bakers Devils Advocate show and recently co-produced her breakout special, Whiskey Fists, for Comedy Centrals YouTube Channel. (The latter title is an homage of sorts to a long-ago ex-boyfriend, a physically abusive drunk who was often so inebriated during his attempts to beat her up that his punches didnt land.) I loved her fearlessness, the self-deprecation, the vulnerability. As an old comic, I always get excited when I see someone new that I know is going to be great.

Ditto comedian and talk-radio jock Jim Norton: Shes very dark, and I like darker comedians. I like people who are not afraid to tell a punchline that might make the audience sad while still being legitimately funny.

Bakers comedic persona honed over the past eight years since she first stepped in front of an open mic at a comedy club outside Austin, in the middle of what she describes as a Thelma & Louise cross-country trip with a childhood friend ranges from merciless self-excavation to slashing social satire, graced by intelligence and nuance. Its punctuated by a self-aware chuckle that somehow makes her likable even when shes at her most challenging and offensive.

Her jokes frequently feature a sinister twist, as when she waylays a premise that Jerry Seinfeld might have been comfortable with say, the moral superiority of dogs to cats by recounting how she had to euthanize her dog a year after putting down her cat: I would have snapped my cats neck to save my dog. And if youre a cat person and think Im a monster, just know I would have snapped your cats neck to save my dog.

Lampooning white peoples propensity for cultural thievery, she recounts a conversation with a Puerto Rican friend who complained about white women wearing hoop earrings: I was like, Cool. I get it. Your people came up with this shit. But if you want me to get my own identity, my people came up with appropriation.

About an ex-boyfriend she was desperate to marry, Baker moves seamlessly from raunchy to diabolical: I was just jerking him off like I was banging on a vending machine trying to shake a ring outTo be honest, I should have blown him more. Thats what my grandma says. Shes a huge whore, my grandma. Im just kidding, shes dead.

She also doesnt avoid mocking her illustrious upbringing, crafting jokes about the first time she brought a Black boyfriend home to meet her ultraconservative dad, and about her complicated relationship with being a liberal: I feel like a hypocrite Because my sisters will be online, and theyre like, If you dont vote, youre being complicit. And Im like, Yeah thats true, but Saudi oil money put us through college.

Baker grew up the eldest of five sisters in Alexandria, Virginia, and later nearby McLean, both gilded suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the third-wealthiest county in the United States. Her famous and powerful grandfather was the presidents best friend, so Rosebud who was born Rosemary but nicknamed Bud due to her tomboy ways, such as refusing to wear dresses or fancy shoes (I still wear formal clothes like a toddler whos been forced to dress up for church) was continually thrown together with the Bush grandkids, who were accompanied by a Secret Service detail that took up sentry duty in the Baker family home.

When people ask me What was that like? Im like, Well, it just was what it was, Baker says. I didnt think of it as anything special. We would go to the White House and I was told it was a special thing. But because it wasnt separate from who we were as a family, it didnt really knock my socks off. I remember being a kid in the White House and being, like, Wait. So the president has a rental? This isnt even his?

She recalls that her dad James Jamie Baker IV a recently retired senior partner at the Washington offices of Baker, Botts, the massive Houston-based law firm built by her great-great-great grandfather in 1872 was a largely absent workaholic. His emotional distance was the result of growing up in a family that valued competitiveness and accomplishment above all as the currency of love. Needless to say, there was zero precedent for stand-up comedy in two centuries of Baker family history.

I did try for a long time to keep it hidden from them, just because I didnt want their input, says Rosebud, who recently searched New York Times reporter Peter Bakers (no relation) magisterial biography of her granddad, The Man Who Ran Washington, for clues to her fathers psyche and the astringent family dynamic. Because its a precious thing, and your family will fuck up anything thats precious to you. I tried to keep them as far away from it as possible for a long time, with the exception of my sisters, who Im really close to. But now theyve all kind of seen it, Im assuming, and Ive gotten mixed reviews. Generally speaking they love it until they hear something they dont like. And then its not comedy anymore, Im just saying blasphemous things.

But if they dont like it, I couldnt care less, honestly, she adds. If a painter makes a shitty painting, their family doesnt call them up and say, We didnt raise you to be this much of a piece of shit. My family wont say it like that. Theyll just say things like That was inappropriate, Thats selfish of you, I cant believe you would tarnish the memory of so-and-so or whatever.

As for James Baker III, the 91-year-old former secretary of state known as The Chief among his progeny? He has not lost his touch for either politics or diplomacy. Bud is the first of our 19 grandchildren, he says by email regarding his irreverent granddaughter, and we love her very much, just as we do each and every one of the others.

Rosebuds mother Nancy, the Texas-born daughter of a Connecticut insurance executive, is a talented landscape, portrait, and still-life painter, but struggled with the alcoholism that ran through her kinfolk. Rosebud recalls an afternoon growing up when her mom who has been sober for many years and these days lives in Maine got into a car accident and was hauled off to jail in a police car after attempting while intoxicated to ferry her middle-school-age daughter to ballet class. Rosebud herself suffered from an eating disorder as a kid, unable to stop obsessing over the food that shed hidden under her bed, relishing the moment when she could leave her school friends to consume it alone in secret.

Ive always had a drug addicts mindset, she says. Im always looking for the next thrill although she says shes now able to talk down that self-destructive impulse.

Early on, she demonstrated an aptitude for performing, writing skits, and marshaling neighborhood kids to stage them. She has always been hysterically funny, says her six-years-younger sister Mary Stuart Baker, an editor in the digital media department of a New York art gallery. Shes always been the person in our family who, when things were uncomfortable, which they often were, she would make a joke about it. To be brought up in a WASP family, thats something that not everybody gets, but I think thats largely the reason me and my sisters are as well-adjusted as we are that we had someone there, growing up, to point out the ridiculousness of what was playing out in front of us.

At Langley High School, Rosebud excelled mainly at rebelling against authority figures. She was suspended from the cheerleading squad and received, by her own account, lousy grades. And by the time she graduated, her parents marriage was in ruins.

Then a freak accident at a backyard graduation party, on June 15, 2002, shattered the family forever. Rosebuds seven-year-old sister, Graeme, drowned in a hot tub, sucked underwater by a powerful drain while several adults, including Nancy, tried in vain to free her. Rosebud had dropped off her kid sister, a twin, at the party, and departed for what she hoped would be a better party, when she was suddenly summoned home with the vague explanation that somethings happened. The tragedy ended up escalating Rosebuds burgeoning drinking problem.

I cant speak for everyone else, because grief is a lot like Covid in terms of how its experienced, she tells me. But for me, it felt science-fictiony, like getting very old very quickly. I woke up one day and before I went to bed, I had lost my understanding of people, relationships, and reality. When youre a teenager you have a feeling of being invincible, you think your family will always be there and certain things will never change. Generally speaking those assumptions tend to fade over time. I just lost them, lets say more efficiently? Does that sound optimistic or cold blooded? Im always mixing those up.

In the years that followed, everything reached a fever pitch, Baker says. She self-medicated with mass quantities of liquor. At Bostons Emerson College (whose famous alumni include, among many others, Jay Leno and Bill Burr), she majored in acting and minored, it seemed, in blackout drunkenness, one-night stands, suicidal ideation, and blind rage that occasionally manifested itself in drawing blood from whichever boyfriend she had just socked in the face.

The grief was so overwhelming and I didnt have the tools to know that you could just feel your grief, and that it would pass, and that it would be OK, she says. The drinking, my sisters death, leaving for college and being on my own all of that combined to create this perfect storm.

Following the time-honored WASP playbook, her family suppressed their grief in the wake of Graemes death and pretended that life could go on as usual. You cant put grief in the middle of a country club, you know? It doesnt belong there, Rosebud noted during a recent installment of Marc Marons WTF podcast. She recalled that much to the Baker girls shock, their father showed up at their sisters funeral with a new woman on his arm.

Yet Rosebud credits her dad for, among other things, pointing out that she was genuinely hilarious and encouraging her to pursue stand-up comedy instead of her initial, even dicier, career choice of acting, which had required her to make ends meet by working as a nanny and a waitress, and, much later, taking a gig writing horoscopes (as Rosey Baker) for the Elite Daily website. I definitely inherited my sense of humor from him, she says. Also, he is the person in my family I have the most contentious relationship with, and if your humor is dry and biting and sarcastic, youre gonna draw inspiration from the people who get that out of you.

After graduating from college with a B.A. in acting, Rosebud and the sister closest to her in age, Hallie, these days a pediatric nurse, went on a grand tour of Europe, which Rosebud spent in an alcoholic haze. The time that I spent in Europe is pretty much a blackout, she tells me. It was supposed to be a trip that my sister had planned for the two of us, but it had gotten to a point with my drinking where she was, like, Im getting out of here. And she left.

Rosebud stayed on, but it was just an exercise in futility, she recalls, and when her family stopped wiring money, she agreed to come home and enter a rehab facility. But instead of returning to Washington, as her plane ticket indicated, she got off at JFK and took a cab to Brooklyn, where a then-boyfriend was living with a heavy metal band across the street from a sewage plant. Rosebud moved in.

She eventually joined group therapy, although she lied lavishly during those sessions, even to the point of claiming to have four living sisters. She finally took it seriously after finding a shrink she trusted in Brooklyn who helped her confront and process her grief. (Baker is now able to joke onstage about her dead sister, telling audiences that Graeme is the sister she gets along with best: Shes a good listener.) With the help of AA meetings, meanwhile, she can credit herself with more than 14 years of sobriety.

At some point, she says, the adult took over and Ive learned how to kind of parent myself. She added that watching her mom get sober after her DUI was a major influence on how I ended up getting clean myself. She never pushed me to quit drinking, but she was the first person I told after I got through a week without drinking. Seeing how much better her life became and how authentically she started living it, I wanted that for myself. She just became so comfortable in her own skin as this zany, joyful, artistic weirdo. I loved it.

In retrospect, Bakers journey to the comedy world seems inevitable. Though she had been working sporadically as an actor Off-Broadway, in independent films, and at one point appearing on a Sundance Channel reality series titled Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys she felt most at home in New Yorks comedy clubs where a number of stand-up comics had become her pals. Indeed, she had even begun trying her hand at writing not jokes, exactly, but funny ideas.

During that cross-country drive with her friend eight years ago, they had been listening nonstop to comedy routines on Pandora. When the open-mic opportunity presented itself as they passed through Austin, Rosebud was game.

I decided to try it, and I think I got, like, one laugh and just got the fuck off the stage, she recalls. I didnt get greedy. But I needed to do well and know that I had the courage to do it.

When she returned to New York, Baker ventured onstage at the Metropolitan Room in Manhattans Chelsea neighborhood, got a few more laughs, and quickly became an open-mic regular, doing as many as three spots a night at various clubs around the city. (On her way to her first open mic in New York, she tried to calm her nerves by walking all the way downtown from her Upper East Side nanny job to Chelsea, and took it as a good omen that she crossed paths with Joan Rivers and exchanged hellos with her as the comedy icon was getting into a cab.)

I had no idea how to write a joke, even after about six months of doing open mics, she says. So I thought, I gotta learn how to write a joke. So I watched peoples specials Dave Attell, Amy Schumer, Dave Chapelle and transcribed the jokes by pressing the pause button after the setup, writing it down, and then pressing play, and writing down the punchline. And I was literally showing myself the anatomy of a joke.

Bakers husband of 15 months, fellow stand-up comedian Andy Haynes, notes that her achievements can be traced back directly to her steely determination and intimidating work ethic. Rosebud has just been able to know what shes wanted to do and stay focused, and its pretty impressive, says Haynes, who proposed in early 2020 as they quarantined together during the height of the Covid pandemic in a borrowed house in East Los Angeles. They were married in Washington Square Park in September 2020 and live in Manhattan.

She works so hard, and she doesnt seem to have any other concerns as far as her own well-being, says Haynes, who, like his wife, is a recovering alcoholic. Ive seen her come back from being on tour after a week of writing, and shes like, Oh, I have four spots tonight, and Im like, You got four hours of sleep last night. But for her, its a non-negotiable. And Im like, All right, go to your four spots, psycho!

Since early last year, Haynes and Baker have been appearing together in Find Your Beach, their twice-a-week podcast in which they laugh, bicker, make fun of each other and, usually with a smile, point out each others character flaws. Sometimes it gets very raw.

Its probably been a little bit of our marriage counseling and also our catharsis, says Haynes. We like to air our grievances and take it to the court of popular opinion. But its also kind of our love language. We like to roast each other.

Haynes says that out of around 250 episodes so far half available for free and half for paying Patreon subscribers they have only had to scrap one because it wasnt fit for public consumption. We got in a real fight on it, he explains.

Bakers career not only as a comedian, but as a writer and actress has been hitting its stride in the past few years. Her performances have been featured regularly by Comedy Central, she wrote jokes for the channels Roast of Alec Baldwin, she had a star turn in the Amazon documentary series Inside Jokes about young stand-ups competing in Montreals prestigious Just For Laughs comedy festival (in which she was named a New Face of comedy), and this year she has been toiling in the writers room for the HBO Max sketch series That Damn Michael Che. Baker also joined the cast of the upcoming Hulu series Life & Beth, starring Michael Cera and Amy Schumer (who has been a close friend and comedy mentor).

Something that popped for me with Rosebud is, I think its pretty rare to come on our radar as someone fully formed in their voice, says Ryan Moran, Comedy Centrals senior talent and development executive. Shes wildly comfortable onstage, and shes comfortable making people uncomfortable. The first time I saw her do stand-up, she was making incredibly dark, sad, tragic topics so funny and relatable. Its a very high degree of difficulty. The tightrope that she walks is so impressive, and thats the thing that really drew us to her. It was just very obvious that she was going to go somewhere super special.

Moran predicts that Baker is going to be a huge stand-up comedian. She also has got such life experience that she has a narrative scripted television show in her, and I know shes working on stuff. Shes going to be one of those people whos got books and movies and TV shows. Shes next.

But even if that were not the case, it wouldnt have stopped Baker from chasing her dream.

The first five years that I was in comedy, no one knew anything about what I was doing, she says. I was just doing it because I loved it. It made me so happy, and I just thought, well, Ill just keep doing this, because it makes me happy.

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Her Grandfather Is a Conservative Icon. Her Comedy Is Liberal AF - Rolling Stone

In the past election, the Liberals sent only seven MPPs to Queens Park. Despite the loss, Steven Del Duca said he is feeling good about his partys chances next year.Chris Young/The Canadian Press

Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca sees a silver lining in the recent onslaught of political advertising pointedly targeting him. Both the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats released a series of negative ads this fall linking Mr. Del Duca to former premier Kathleen Wynne.

But for Mr. Del Duca a former cabinet minister in Ms. Wynnes government who won the party leadership in March, 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was taking off every little bit of exposure counts.

I think thats actually helped with my name recognition, he said. I have more people whove come up to me, whether its Sudbury or [the Greater Toronto Area] or London or elsewhere, and say, Hey, arent you Steven Del Duca? So I think that the haircut and the advertising kind of make it a bit easier to be recognizable. The Liberal Leader wears distinctive black-rimmed glasses and, for the record, is completely bald.

Ontarios provincial election is in June, but its already campaign season

Ontario opposition parties pitch policies about minimum wage, development as they gear up for election

There are some people who still ask, you know, Whats different about you? How would you lead differently?

The answers to those questions will be top of mind for voters in next Junes Ontario election.

His plan is to harness the support of those who are disillusioned with Premier Doug Fords government, in particular its pandemic response. And in order to win over progressive voters, hell argue that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath who has held her job since 2009 is not a realistic alternative.

Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP proved they didnt have what it takes to stop Doug Ford from winning a majority government, he said.

But first, Mr. Del Duca who doesnt have a seat in the legislature will have to reintroduce himself. On his own terms.

Hardly a household name, Mr. Del Duca spent four years in Ms. Wynnes cabinet, most notably as transportation minister. A former political staffer first elected in 2012, the 48-year-old father of two girls lost his seat in Vaughan-Woodbridge, north of Toronto, in 2018 to Michael Tibollo, now Mr. Fords associate minister of mental health.

In the past election, the Liberals sent only seven MPPs to Queens Park a historic defeat. Despite the crushing loss, Mr. Del Duca said he is feeling good about his partys chances next year, but even he acknowledges there is a lot of work left to do.

The fact of the matter is 2018 was a tough moment, obviously, for our party and for me personally, Mr. Del Duca, who speaks in a talk-radio-like voice, said recently over coffee at a Second Cup in Etobicoke, in west Toronto, near where he grew up and the area that Mr. Ford represents.

I think theres more openness amongst Ontarians right now to the Ontario Liberal Party and to me as a leader and to our team that were building. But they still, rightly so, want me to earn it.

As the June 2 election approaches, Mr. Del Duca knows hell have to defend his time as transportation minister. He set off controversy after approving a GO train station near his Vaughan riding, contrary to expert opinion. His response is simply that, we need more public transit across the Greater Toronto Area, not just in his area.

He will also be forced to explain his decision to build a backyard pool in 2020 without the necessary permits, a situation he said has now been resolved. My mistake triggered embarrassment for me and my family. Doug Fords mistakes have cost us all so much more during this pandemic, he said.

He talks of lessons learned as part of the Wynne government, including a sense that the party had lost touch with the average voter. In particular, he said hes realized that ones time in politics is finite, and change must be achieved quickly.

We were not a perfect government. But Ontarians had their chance to judge our performance back in 2018. And I dont think most Ontarians live their lives by looking in the rear-view mirror, he said.

His strategy so far has been to attack Mr. Fords competency while portraying himself as the reasonable voice on a number of policy issues. He was the first party leader to call for vaccine mandates and certificates, and has pitched ideas such as a four-day work week and electric-vehicle rebates. He promises more proposals for economic dignity in the new year.

Mr. Del Duca has come out strongly against Highway 413 a proposed 59-kilometre corridor that would arc around Toronto through its western suburbs one of the Ford governments signature proposals.

When Doug Ford talks in the abstract about what its like to commute in the 905, its my life. Its not his life, he said. I know theres a better way to resolve it and to give real relief to commuters right away, as opposed to 10 years from now.

Part of his strategy is also to highlight his Liberal team. Hes received criticism, however, for running women-only ridings, which some in the party view as reverse discrimination. Close to 60 per cent of the partys nominated candidates are now women. I heard the concerns, but my take on it is that I wasnt shy about this commitment, he said.

As for the past, Mr. Del Duca said people dont talk to him about Ms. Wynne as much as they did back in 2018 even if recent advertising serves to remind them. The former premier has remained a Liberal MPP, and will be retiring from politics next year.

I think Kathleen demonstrated a great deal of dignity and a great deal of class, Mr. Del Duca said.

It would have been very easy for her to say, Im out and youre on your own. She, I think, did the admirable and honorable thing, which is Im going to see it through.

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Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca looks to claw his party back in next year's provincial election - The Globe and Mail

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As the bad news surges and throbs again about the coronavirus, you can easily sense the lack of political vitriol for this president. Joe Biden gets a free pass.

On CBS's "Face the Nation" on Dec. 19, reporter Mark Strassmann solemnly marked "another milestone in mourning." "Bells tolled Thursday for 800,000 Americans dead from the virus. That is almost the population of San Francisco. Roughly 1,200 Americans still die daily from the virus." Nobody blamed Biden.

CRITICS SLAM 'HYPOCRITE' BIDEN FOR CLAIMING 'NO FEDERAL SOLUTION' TO PANDEMIC AFTER VOW TO 'SHUT DOWN' COVID

Instead, CBS preceded this dirge with a Biden lecture: "For the unvaccinated, we're looking at a winter of severe illness and death, unvaccinated, for themselves, their families, and the hospital they'll soon overwhelm." Blame them, not me, he insists.

Some journalists explicitly held Biden blameless. On MSNBC, John Heilemann proclaimed, "We know the president is not responsible for this ... We know presidents get blamed for things that they don't deserve to get blamed for."

But early in 2020, Heilemann said the exact opposite on the same channel: "I don't think it's actually an overstatement to say that Donald Trump has -- there are tens of thousands of people who will die in the country, or some of them have already died more are still going to die because of Donald Trump's incompetence and lack of leadership."

The Comcast boys jumped to blame Trump for every death as the toll began. On March 12, 2020, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell announced: "More people are sick in America tonight because Donald Trump is president. More people are dead and dying in America tonight because Donald Trump is president."

BIDEN SAYS HE AGREES WITH GOP GOVERNORS: THERE'S NO FEDERAL SOLUTION TO PANDEMIC

They threw this assumption at Biden. On March 29, NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd asked, "Do you think there is blood on the president's hands, considering the slow response?"

Two days later, disgraced MSNBC anchor Brian Williams repeated: "What is President Trump's level of culpability, what's his level of responsibility, say, toward the illness and fatalities we're witnessing every few minutes these days?"

Biden deferred but did not critique the questioners for this super-softball, with its echo of, "Can't you do better than this disastrous dolt?"

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Jonathan Alter offered this extravagant Trump take on MSNBC: "He's a public health menace, and he has rivers of blood on his hands."

Joe Scarborough was especially rabid: "Nobody's ever done so much to kill so many people." Just a few weeks ago, as the death toll passed 750,000, Smeary Scarborough was still blaming Trump for everything.

Even just a few weeks ago, MSNBC regular Steve Schmidt was still blaming Republicans alone: "They have killed hundreds of thousands of people with the lies about a pandemic, about a disease that can be controlled."

If it's so controlled, then why hasn't it stopped? At the final presidential debate on Oct. 22, 2020, Biden said the death toll stood at 220,000, and, "Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president." By that standard, shouldn't he resign? He boasted, "I will end this."

But his enablers in the press (including the "fact-checkers") only evade, elide and excuse. In September, PolitiFact ranked his promise to end COVID as "In The Works"! PolitiFact rolled out Dr. Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association, who gave Biden "a healthy B-plus" on getting COVID under control.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

That is not a factual judgment. That is pure spin. Benjamin has routinely donated to Democrats, including Barack Obama and Martin O'Malley.

Leftist media outlets such as MSNBC spent 2020 treating COVID like it was easily fixable -- if voters simply put Democrats in charge. Their complete lack of humility demonstrates that this was always politics first, science later.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TIM GRAHAM

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Biden still blameless on COVID in the eyes of our liberal media - Fox News

During the holidays, families are gathering to reconnect and talk about their pasts, presents and futures. As often happens, those at the table who are in or about to enter college will be asked which studies they are pursuing. And if tradition holds, there will be no misers at the table when it comes to doling out opinions and advice.

So when Uncle Harry asks you, What on earth are you going to do with a history degree? Who needs the liberal arts? Be ready with this answer: We all do.

As someone who goes to work every day with the incredibly talented professionals at Connecticut Public Television and Radio the home of Media for the Curious take it from me: Society needs all the critical thinking, curiosity and creativity that degrees in the liberal arts can muster, from sociology to history, the classics, art history, philosophy, theology, political science, theater, economics, psychology, mathematics and physics. Yes, math and physics are liberal arts, too.

Connecticut is a shining beacon of educational institutions that prize the liberal arts, yet the cost is high so high that for many, its almost out of reach. As a result, the value of traditional liberal arts degrees is being derided, with some colleges and universities feeling pressure to focus on so-called practical degrees that will supposedly render their graduates immediately employable. This is a false choice.

Connecticuts high-technology, insurance, financial and manufacturing companies need hard skills to thrive, and many hiring managers seek people with the critical thinking skills honed by the liberal arts. After all, no challenge can stand against the examination, analysis, curiosity and sharpness of a mind whose gaze is lifted and view is broadened by a liberal arts education.

Albert Einstein put it best, The value of an education in liberal arts is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned in textbooks. The solution, therefore, is not to drive first-generation college students away from the liberal arts, but toward them.

I come at this question from an extremely pragmatic point of view.

On any given day at Connecticut Public, we create stories about some our worlds seemingly intractable problems: climate change, democracy under stress, continued income inequality, unresolved struggles with racial divides, unequal access to housing and bile-filled politics that encourages the narrowing of the mind, not an expansion of it.

Think about it: In a world of alternative facts, where a social media post can spark an angry mob, we should be producing people whose minds and perspectives are trained to be broad, perpetually curious and equal to the task of analyzing and solving these problems.

People who have changed the course of history often developed and sharpened their minds through a liberal arts education. A few of these are Alexander Hamilton, who studied literature and law; Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, economics and sociology; Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, history; and Jawaharlal Nehru, natural sciences.

Martin Luther King Jr. studied sociology; Justice Sonia Sotomayor, history; Harriet Beecher Stowe, classics, languages, mathematics; Booker T. Washington, agriculture; Harvey Milk, mathematics; Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi and Frances Perkins, physics.

Oprah Winfrey studied communication; Reed Hastings, mathematics; Audre Lorde, library science; David Brooks, history; and Diane Sawyer, English.

While a liberal arts degree wont guarantee that youll change the world the same way others have, the world needs more problem solvers who dare to think, engage, observe, analyze, understand and express themselves.

As the leader of an organization that provides media for the curious, there are few better ways to support curious people than advocating for the expansion of the liberal arts in our state.

Hoping that your holidays have been full of joy and particularly this coming year curiosity.

Mark G. Contreras is president and CEO of Connecticut Public.

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Opinion: In defense of the liberal arts - CT Post

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa.-- Successful businessman turned Westminster College professorBrian Petrusis also an alumnus of Mother Fair. He graduated in 2010 and quickly put his degree in Business Administration and Management to work.

Petrus added an MBA in 2011 From Youngstown University and is also a Certified Professional in Human Resources. But it's what he learned through the liberal arts that continues to serve him every day.

He is also a president of an online human resources firm,PHRST & Company, Inc.

First-year students turned podcast hosts Taron Wilson and Joshua Carr discover the value of the liberals in their interview with Professor Petrus.

Some of the classes Professor Petrus teaches at Westminster include:

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Podcast! 2 first-year students explore the liberal arts benefits for a professor succeeding with an online enterprise - WCN (WestminsterCollege...

On the final episode of Liberal Dan Radio of 2021, we talk about the dumpster fire of a year that 2021 was, including some high points. Taking your calls as well.

Listening live? You can also watch on YouTube! If you are listening after the live broadcast you can leave comments on the show thread at liberaldan.com, on the Liberal Dan Facebook page, and @liberaldanradio on Twitter.

Want more Liberal Dan? Check out the Liberal Dan Radio Minicast.

And remember, you can become a Liberal Dan Radio Patreon. Support the podcast or the minicast. If you dont feel like a subscription, you can always Buy Me A Cider.

Hypocrite of the Week Music: If I Had a Chicken Kevin MacLeod

Evil Plan by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100234

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

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2021 Year in Review: Highlights, Lowlights, and Lowlifes 12/29 by Liberal Dan Radio | Politics Progressive - BlogTalkRadio

An estimated 580 homes, a hotel and a shopping centre have burned and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in wind-fuelled wildfires outside Denver, officials say. At least one first responder and six others were injured, though Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle acknowledged there could be more injuries and deaths could be possible due to the intensity of fires that quickly swept across the region as winds gusted up to 169km/h. The first fire erupted just before 10.30am on Thursday and was "attacked pretty quickly and laid down later in the day and is currently being monitored" with no structures lost, Pelle said. A second wildfire, reported just after 11am, "ballooned and spread rapidly east", Pelle said. The blaze spans 6.5 square kilometres and has engulfed parts of the area in smoky, orange-hued skies and sent residents scrambling to get to safety. The activity of the fires, which are burning unusually late into the winter season, will depend on how the winds behave overnight and could determine when crews are able to go in and begin assessing the damage and searching for any victims. "This is the kind of fire we can't fight head on," Pelle said. "We actually had deputy sheriffs and firefighters in areas that had to pull out because they just got overrun," he added. Evacuations have been ordered for the city of Louisville, home to about 21,000 people, and Superior, which has another 13,000 residents. The neighbouring towns are roughly 32 kilometres northwest of Denver in an area filled with middle and upper-middle class subdivisions surrounded by shopping centres, parks and schools. The area is in between Denver and Boulder, a foothills college town home to the University of Colorado. Residents evacuated fairly calmly and orderly, but the winding streets in the suburban subdivisions quickly became clogged as people tried to get out. It sometimes took cars as long as 45 minutes to advance less than a kilometre. Small fires cropped up here and there in surprising places -- on the grass in a median or in a dumpster in the middle of a parking lot -- as wind gusts caused the fire to jump and spread. Shifting winds caused the skies to turn from clear to smoky and then back again as emergency sirens blared nearby. Some of the several blazes in the area on Thursday were sparked by downed power lines. Six people who were injured in the fires were being treated at UCHealth Broomfield Hospital, spokesperson Kelli Christensen said. A nearby portion of US Highway 36 also was shut down. Colorado's Front Range, where most of the state's population lives, had an extremely dry and mild fall, and winter so far has continued to be mostly dry. Denver set a record for most consecutive days without snow before it got a small storm on December 10. It hasn't snowed since, though snow was expected in the region Friday. The fires prompted Governor Jared Polis to declare a state of a emergency, allowing the state to access disaster emergency funds. The evacuations come as climate change is making weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, scientists say. A historic drought and heat waves have made wildfires harder to fight in the US West. Ninety per cent of Boulder County is in severe or extreme drought, and hasn't seen substantial rainfall since mid-summer. The National Weather Service predicts up to a foot of snow could fall tomorrow in Boulder, and that moisture would bring substantial relief, Musselman said. Australian Associated Press

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/c41b4408-ebed-4c14-9672-dad5559a7bde.jpg/r0_74_800_526_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

December 31 2021 - 3:38PM

An estimated 580 homes, a hotel and a shopping centre have burned and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in wind-fuelled wildfires outside Denver, officials say.

At least one first responder and six others were injured, though Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle acknowledged there could be more injuries and deaths could be possible due to the intensity of fires that quickly swept across the region as winds gusted up to 169km/h.

The first fire erupted just before 10.30am on Thursday and was "attacked pretty quickly and laid down later in the day and is currently being monitored" with no structures lost, Pelle said.

A second wildfire, reported just after 11am, "ballooned and spread rapidly east", Pelle said. The blaze spans 6.5 square kilometres and has engulfed parts of the area in smoky, orange-hued skies and sent residents scrambling to get to safety.

The activity of the fires, which are burning unusually late into the winter season, will depend on how the winds behave overnight and could determine when crews are able to go in and begin assessing the damage and searching for any victims.

"This is the kind of fire we can't fight head on," Pelle said. "We actually had deputy sheriffs and firefighters in areas that had to pull out because they just got overrun," he added.

Evacuations have been ordered for the city of Louisville, home to about 21,000 people, and Superior, which has another 13,000 residents.

The neighbouring towns are roughly 32 kilometres northwest of Denver in an area filled with middle and upper-middle class subdivisions surrounded by shopping centres, parks and schools.

The area is in between Denver and Boulder, a foothills college town home to the University of Colorado.

Residents evacuated fairly calmly and orderly, but the winding streets in the suburban subdivisions quickly became clogged as people tried to get out. It sometimes took cars as long as 45 minutes to advance less than a kilometre.

Small fires cropped up here and there in surprising places -- on the grass in a median or in a dumpster in the middle of a parking lot -- as wind gusts caused the fire to jump and spread.

Shifting winds caused the skies to turn from clear to smoky and then back again as emergency sirens blared nearby.

Some of the several blazes in the area on Thursday were sparked by downed power lines.

Six people who were injured in the fires were being treated at UCHealth Broomfield Hospital, spokesperson Kelli Christensen said. A nearby portion of US Highway 36 also was shut down.

Colorado's Front Range, where most of the state's population lives, had an extremely dry and mild fall, and winter so far has continued to be mostly dry.

Denver set a record for most consecutive days without snow before it got a small storm on December 10. It hasn't snowed since, though snow was expected in the region Friday.

The fires prompted Governor Jared Polis to declare a state of a emergency, allowing the state to access disaster emergency funds.

The evacuations come as climate change is making weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive, scientists say. A historic drought and heat waves have made wildfires harder to fight in the US West.

Ninety per cent of Boulder County is in severe or extreme drought, and hasn't seen substantial rainfall since mid-summer.

The National Weather Service predicts up to a foot of snow could fall tomorrow in Boulder, and that moisture would bring substantial relief, Musselman said.

Australian Associated Press

Originally posted here:

Hundreds of homes burn in US wildfires - Daily Liberal

news, national

A decision to stop boxer Mike Tyson entering Australia in 2001 went all the way to the top, previously private cabinet documents reveal. The papers from John Howard's cabinet in 2001, made public on Saturday, noted Tyson would fail the character test set for travellers entering Australia. Tyson was convicted in 1992 of raping an 18-year-old woman. The cabinet decided it was appropriate to deny Tyson a visa, but noted the final decision rested with the immigration minister. The newly declassified trove of documents also reveal cabinet weighed in on the visa application of high-profile rapper, Eminem, on character grounds. Marshall Mathers III, who uses the stage name Eminem, was sentenced to two years' probation in the US months earlier for carrying a concealed weapon. Then-immigration minister Philip Ruddock took into consideration the views of other cabinet members and ultimately decided to rubberstamp his visa, allowing the performer's two-day tour. 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) Lifeline 13 11 14 Australian Associated Press

/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/51e5e403-5582-4c3e-bbab-5b718d1d030e.jpg/r0_74_800_526_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

A decision to stop boxer Mike Tyson entering Australia in 2001 went all the way to the top, previously private cabinet documents reveal.

The papers from John Howard's cabinet in 2001, made public on Saturday, noted Tyson would fail the character test set for travellers entering Australia.

Tyson was convicted in 1992 of raping an 18-year-old woman.

The cabinet decided it was appropriate to deny Tyson a visa, but noted the final decision rested with the immigration minister.

The newly declassified trove of documents also reveal cabinet weighed in on the visa application of high-profile rapper, Eminem, on character grounds.

Marshall Mathers III, who uses the stage name Eminem, was sentenced to two years' probation in the US months earlier for carrying a concealed weapon.

Then-immigration minister Philip Ruddock took into consideration the views of other cabinet members and ultimately decided to rubberstamp his visa, allowing the performer's two-day tour.

1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)

Australian Associated Press

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Mike Tyson Australia ban went to the top - Daily Liberal