I am seeing plenty of handwringing articles by journalists wondering what happened to Lindsey Graham, a US senator from South Carolina, to make him become one of Donald Trump most obsequious and groveling supporters, willing to support any insanity that his dear leader says or does.

I have always considered Graham to be an unprincipled hack and a notorious warmonger. His only skill seemed to be his ability to find the right things to say that would get him on TV. Hence the fact that while he harshly criticized Trump before he won the presidential nomination of the Republican party, he has since become one of the toadiest of toadies to Donald Trump after he became president, did not surprise me in the least. What surprised me is why the media took him so seriously in the first place.
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At times like this when people are being wound up to go to war, I wish the media would reprint this Mark Twain piece.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
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I speculated that the acquittal of Scott Warren for giving aid to the people crossing the desert regions on the US southern border was possibly a case of jury nullification, the process by which juries acquit someone who is guilty on the facts because they feel that the law is unjust or should not have been applied in that case. Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept says that what happened with Warren was not jury nullification but the government being unable to make the case.

To put this another way: there is no indication that this was a case of jury nullification. The government lost all on its own by putting on a case that was unconvincing to the jurors.

— Ryan Devereaux (@rdevro) November 21, 2019

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In reading and listening to the commentary in US media about the killing of Qassem Suleimani by the US government, even those who disapprove of the action do so largely on strategic and tactical grounds and claim that the US was morally right to do what it did. The argument they give is that Suleimani was the operational head of the Iranian government’s elite Quds force who oversaw a terrorist network in many countries that the US has invaded or otherwise has troops in and thus deserved to die because he was behind the deaths of many Americans. (Murtaza Hussain provides some background on Suleimani and how he was viewed in both Iran and Iraq.)

Whenever I hear people saying these things, my reaction is “Really?” Suleimani was small potatoes compared to what the US government and the CIA have been doing around the globe for decades.
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Companies often try to gouge tax breaks and other incentives from local governments by creating a bidding war among them, by promising to build a large new facilities that would create many high-paying jobs, even though the company has likely already decided on the best site even before the process starts. These promises by the company are rarely realized in practice and the net result is that the companies get the tax breaks they were promised while not upholding their end of the bargain, creating fewer jobs and lower paying ones at that. The latest glaring example of this is Foxconn in Wisconsin, a company that richly deserves the ‘con’ in its name.
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There is no question that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has excited the base of the Democratic party, especially the younger generation. She, along with Bernie Sanders and others, are working hard to expand the base of voters by attracting the many people who have been disillusioned with the party and with politics in general because their interests and needs were ignored.

This of course is upsetting to the party establishment that seeks to maintain their control because these new voters are less likely to go along with the tired old policies. The party establishment, as represented by people like Joe Biden, still cling to the myth that they can attract back white working class voters who have defected to Donald Trump. Biden keeps talking about building bridges with the Republican party (he even talks of possibly having a Republican vice president!) despite the fact that they treat him with utter scorn.

These people hate AOC because she threatens the establishment but she is also very popular with her constituents. So what to do? They think they see an importunity because it is predicted that after the next census, the state of New York will lose one congressional seat. This means that the boundaries will have to be drawn. So party leaders are salivating at the prospect of redrawing her seat so that she will be running in a district that is less favorable to her.

AOC is a savvy politicians and knows this and is already taking steps to counter this move. But it is very revealing that a priority of party leaders is to seek to get rid of a person who has so excited the party base. It shows their true colors.