... The U.S. economy continues to defy the experts. Even as policymakers hiked interest rates, cooling down many sectors and triggering layoffs across housing, finance and tech, a resilient job market and healthy spending by households and businesses have worked to lift growth beyond what economists had expected at the start of the year.
Americans are far more optimistic, after more than a year of feeling particularly downbeat about inflation and giving the Biden administration low marks for its handling of the economy. Consumer sentiment spiked in July to its highest level in more than a year and a half, according to a closely-watched metric from the University of Michigan.
“Consumers have absolutely noticed that inflation has slowed down,” said Joanne Hsu, director and chief economist of University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. “The labor market is still strong, incomes are high, and that’s helped support robust consumer spending.”
For many Americans, that means bank accounts are more flush than usual. Tony Oxx, a manager at a transportation company in Louisville, has nearly tripled his savings since the pandemic took hold. He’s gotten two raises in that period and his overall pay, including commission and bonuses, has jumped more than 50 percent...
It may be getting harder for nihilist Republicans to use the economy as an issue in 2024, but they'll lie endlessly and try to put sand in the gears to the extent they're able. Of course, they'll continue to have a hold on their misinformed, aggrieved base, who've been primed to believe their way of life is threatened, regardless of how good the economy's going,
The Kremlin says Russia has halted its participation in a deal that allowed war-torn Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger, dealing a blow to global food security after Moscow’s invasion last year sent prices soaring.
The United Nations and Turkey brokered the landmark accord with Ukraine and Russia in July last year, which came with a separate agreement to facilitate shipments of Russian food and fertiliser that Moscow insists has not been applied.
The Black Sea deal has been extended several times and was due to expire on Monday evening as Russia refused any further extension citing its reasons. [snip]
Nana Ndeda, humanitarian policy and advocacy Lead at Save the Children, told Al Jazeera the deal had enabled the stabilisation of global markets and the lowering of food prices in many parts of the world.
“What is likely to happen now is that those food prices will go up again,” she told Al Jazeera from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
“With that, countries will no longer be able to supply food to children and their families will no longer be able to access food and we’ll see an increase in malnutrition and food insecurity.”
Using global food security as a weapon. More state terrorism from desperate war criminal Putin.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who faces charges of human trafficking and rape in Romania, is highlighting an effort on the far-right to redefine traditional values.
Tate sat with Carlson for a two-and-a-half-hour interview published Tuesday on Twitter, where the pair opined on a wide range of topics, including society’s purported push to put “the woman in charge, and the man below with no backbone.”
Tate has garnered millions of followers and sizable influence online for championing what he calls “traditional” masculinity. Those views include that women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted and that “high-value” men have “unlimited options” of women — “a new model every weekend. A string of broken hearts.”
Pasha Dashtgard, director of research at American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL), told The Hill that Tate’s “alpha male” way of life is not conventionally traditional.
“This is not a husband, father, head-of-household and ‘Leave It to Beaver’ vision of masculinity,” Dashtgard said. “This is a new thing.” [snip]
Conservative media have latched onto the trend. At the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA’s annual Young Women’s Leadership Summit, influencers in the online conservative political sphere urged the young women in attendance to go back to their “biblical roots” and be “feminine, not feminist,” the Washington Post reported.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with being a tradwife,” right-wing influencer Benny Johnson told the crowd...
Let's call it what it is: Handmaiden fascism.
