The real Louis C. K. reveals himself

After the blizzard of revelations about sexual harassment and abuse by a whole slew of famous people, it was only a matter of time before many of them started to plan their comebacks into the public’s favor by various levels of statements and acts of contrition. One of those is comedian Louis C. K. who has used the mechanism of turning up unannounced at the Comedy Cellar venue for stand-up comics to try out new material as part of his road back, though the reaction has been mixed to say the least.
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Just get lost, John Kelly

As is almost always the case with those who served as enablers for Donald Trump, once they leave the administration they try to distance themselves from him and his actions in order to regain some of the credibility, integrity, and self-respect that they shredded by their association with him. The latest to do so is former chief of staff John Kelly who now says in an interview that he should be judged not by the actions that Trump took while he served him but by what he did not do.
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The old two-step being danced again

It is the same old script. The Republicans give out tax cuts like candy that mostly benefit the wealthy and then when the budget deficit increases, they express surprise at this development and claim that salary and services for everyone else must be cut in the name of fiscal discipline because there is no other solution. I’ve lost count of how many times this stunt has been pulled and am amazed that people haven’t revolted in anger at being treated as if they were too stupid to know what is going on. Donald Trump has followed the pattern and used that same reasoning to cancel salary increases for nearly 2 million federal workers.
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Abominable treatment of detained migrant children

The news that yet another Guatemalan child has died has once again focused attention on the utterly cruel treatment that is meted out to the child migrants who are in the custody of the Customs and Border Protection agency. Felipe González Morales, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, had already called for a full investigation of the first child’s death.
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Please, please don’t let it be of Donald Trump

According to a court filing, special counsel Robert Mueller is said to have obtained a ‘nude selfie’ during the course of his investigations into possible Russian interference in US elections. No one knows who is in the selfie but I don’t think that the nation can survive the collective psychological trauma if the photo is released and we find out that it is of Donald Trump.

I think that this is one of those situations when invoking national security to keep such a selfie secret would be justified.

Bernie Sanders and women and people of color

One of the most common criticisms of Bernie Sanders by liberals and even by some people on the left is that his supporters are predominantly white and male (derisively referred to as ‘Bernie bros’) and that is because Sanders is locked into a white privilege mode and has not addressed issues of importance to women and people of color. This view is promoted by the Democratic party establishment and its media supporters, who backed Clinton during the last campaign and are backing Joe Biden now. It is true that Hillary Clinton seemed to have more support from women and people of color during the campaign for the 2016 nomination but the reasons for why that was so are not clear. Katie Halper writes that the current media narrative that Sanders lacks support fro those groups is false and deserves to be countered.
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Live by the stock market, die by the stock market

During all the fiascos that have been happening one after the other during the Donald Trump presidency, there was one thing that he could boast about and that was the stock market. During his first year of office, it rose by a whopping 25%, greatly pleasing the wealthy class that are the ones who have most of their assets in the stock market. Ordinary people with retirement plans also have a stake in the stock market because those funds are invested in it but I suspect that most are like me and have little idea of what is happening because we do not actively buy and sell stocks ourselves.
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A small but significant shift against US involvement in the war in Yemen

Clio Chang and Ryan Grim describe the delicate maneuvering that went into the Senate vote against US involvement in the war in Yemen and what happened in the House. In both cases we saw people like Bernie Sanders and progressive forces in the Democratic party push a reluctant party leadership to support the moves, while liberal groups for various reasons tended to sit on the sidelines or provide only lukewarm support.
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The tightly knit but strangely solitary world of QAnon cult members

Sometime ago, I wrote about the mercurial rise within about a year of the QAnon phenomenon, one of the more bizarre political developments of the internet age, that says that Donald Trump is a genius who is cleverly drawing his enemies out into the open before he and his allies in the military suddenly swoop and arrest all of them. The evildoers include “the global banking elite, death squads operating on orders from Hillary Clinton, deep-state intelligence operatives, and Pizzagate-style pedophile rings.”
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