New York Politicians Are Using Anti-Semitic Attacks to Scare People About Bail Reform
New York Post At the start of the year, New York enacted a set of reforms designed to ensure that fewer people land in jail before trial simply because they don’t have enough money to pay the court bail. Critics immediately pounced. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and state lawmakers are already trying…
How Do You Make Pop Music for the Algorithm Era? Ralph Has An Idea
Mother Jones illustration; Mariah Hamilton Fuck, Ralph remembers thinking, I’m garbage. Before she was Ralph the pop artist, Raffaela Weyman was a Toronto teenager bombing an audition for a performing arts school. For her tryout, she’d decided to go with what she felt most comfortable with—musical theater—and sang songs from My Fair Lady and Sweeney…
5 Reasons We’ve Been Given for the Killing of Qassem Soleimani
US helicopters attacked a convoy carrying Qassim Soleimani Thursday.Abaca via ZUMA Here are the explanations so far for why we had to kill Qassim Soleimani: Story #1: Iran planned an “imminent strike.” Story #2: But we don’t know when or where. Story #3: Wait, they were planning to bomb our embassy in Baghdad. We had…
It Was More Than Just Soleimani
Apparently the “kill Soleimani” option presented to Donald Trump was a little more expansive than we’ve been told: On the day the U.S. military killed a top Iranian commander in Baghdad, U.S. forces carried out another top secret mission against a senior Iranian military official in Yemen, according to U.S. officials. The strike targeting Abdul…
We’re Not Leaving Iraq, No How No Way
Well, so much for “We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure”: The State Department on Friday rebuffed the Iraqi government’s request to begin discussions on pulling out troops, saying that any American officials going to Baghdad during a state of heightened tensions would not discuss a “troop withdrawal,” as the Iraqi prime minister…
Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in December
The American economy gained 145,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 55,000 jobs. That’s not so great. The headline unemployment rate remained steady at 3.5 percent. Hourly earnings of blue-collar workers increased about 1 percent, but inflation…