The US president is not the commander-in-chief of all Americans

A segment on the radio recently discussed Donald Trump’s decision to invite people this year to celebrate iftar, the name given to the breaking of the daily fast by Muslims during Ramadan. This was an annual practice started some years ago but Trump did not have one last year when he was at the height of his anti-Muslim rhetoric and actions. During an interview on the program The World, the question was asked as to who might be invited and what Muslims would agree to go. The person being interviewed, who worked for president George W. Bush on Muslim outreach, repeatedly kept referring to Trump as the “commander in chief for all Americans”, as if this means that we were obliged to accept an invitation from him to come to the White House.
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Why would North Korea believe US assurances?

Much attention is being paid to the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. The one-on-one meeting with just translators present begins at 9:00am Tuesday morning Singapore time which is 9:00pm ET Monday night. Aides and national security advisors will join them later. We know for certain that whatever the outcome, the summit will be a great success. Why? Because Trump will tell everyone that it was. He will tell us that it was the biggest and greatest summit meeting ever, even if the final deal is that the US agrees to give Alaska and Manhattan to North Korea and the meeting ends with Kim mooning Trump.
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How progressive challengers help change politics even if they don’t win

The case of Cynthia Nixon, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo for the governorship of the state of New York, provides a good window on two different ways of viewing primary elections in the US. The party establishment would prefer to have uncontested primaries so that their chosen candidates can focus on the general election, even if the candidates are like Cuomo who are Wall Street friendly and ideologically center-right. In fact, that is precisely the type of candidate that the Democratic party wants. They also worry that a tightly fought primary race will damage their chances of winning in the general election and so they throw their weight against the challengers, even if the challengers are more representative of the constituencies that party claims to represent.
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The flagrant abuse of the bail system

I have railed about the injustices perpetrated by the bail system in the US that allows wealthy and well-connected people to stay out of jail even when they have committed serious crimes, while poor people who have committed minor crimes or even no crimes at all and do not have the resources to flee are set bail amounts that they cannot afford and thus are jailed. Peter Maass says that the recent cases of accused rapist Harvey Weinstein and political influence peddler Paul Manafort are good examples of the differential treatment that is meted out to the rich and poor. (Crip Dyke has already discussed how badly accused whistleblower Reality Winner is being treated.)
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“We have a world to run”

Donald Trump has called for Russia to be reinstated as a regular member of what is now known as the G7 group consisting of the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada. It used to be the G8 until Russia was expelled in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea.

“Why are we having the meeting without Russia being in the meeting?” Trump asked reporters on his way to the G7.

“Russia should be in the meeting, it should be a part of it. You know, whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run and the G7, which used to be the G8 – they threw Russia out – they should let Russia come back in because we should have Russia at the negotiating table.”

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Excellent critique of Sam Harris

I came across this excellent and thoughtful critique of Sam Harris (and in passing the members of the so-called ‘intellectual dark web’ that he belongs to) by someone who identifies himself as T1J. The title of the video is Why I Stopped Idolizing Sam Harris and, as the author explains, “While I don’t hate Sam Harris like some other progressives, he has stopped being the intellectual hero that he once was in my eyes.” The video explains the reasons for that disenchantment. The video is 23 minutes long but is so well done that I did not notice the time passing.
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The cruelty and inhumanity of the US

It is absolutely disgusting that the children of undocumented immigrants are separated from their parents for weeks on end with no contact. I would like to think that one day we will look back on this shameful episode and as a nation feel deeply embarrassed and try to make amends. But given how people manage to avoid doing so for past shameful acts (genocide of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow, internment of Japanese-Americans, massacres in other countries, and many more), I am not hopeful. Americans are absolutely convinced that they are a fundamentally decent, even exemplary, nation and people who hold such views can never be persuaded that they are just as capable of cruelty as anyone else.
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Noam Chomsky on anarcho-syndicalism and libertarianism

The famous linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky describes his own political stance as that of anarcho-syndicalism and he is no fan of libertarianism. In an interview with Chomsky, Michael S. Wilson says that in the US, anarchists are largely seen as consisting of “disenfranchised punks throwing rocks at store windows, or masked men tossing ball-shaped bombs at fat industrialists”. Wilson asks Chomsky what he thinks the two positions represent and why he favors the former and dislikes the latter.
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The wild Californian primary system

Yesterday was primary election day in California. David Dayen and Ryan Grim analyze the results and argue that progressives had a good outcome, despite fears that the unusual system in that state might lead to a disaster.

With all precincts reporting, [Katie] Porter, a Sen. Elizabeth Warren protégé invested with the hopes of the progressive movement, ended with 19,453 votes. It was enough, putting her roughly 2,600 ahead of her main Democratic challenger David Min.
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Min, a former Sen. Chuck Schumer staffer, Center for American Progress fellow, and assistant professor at Porter’s school, UC Irvine, had the backing of the state party and the New Democrats, a Wall Street-friendly bloc that supplied 27 of the 33 House Democratic votes in favor of the recent bank deregulation bill. Porter was the only House candidate endorsed by Warren, her former teacher and co-author.

Min, meanwhile, was hesitant to embrace “Medicare for All” and ran a slashing race attacking Porter’s credentials. Porter ran on battling big banks, expanding Social Security, reversing the Trump tax cuts, and establishing “Medicare for All” — and she won.
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THE NEW DEMOCRATS suffered another defeat in a race that pitted the two camps of the party against each other in San Diego’s 50th District. Ammar Campa-Najjar, who ran as a progressive with the backing of Justice Democrats, PCCC, and DFA, beat Josh Butner, endorsed by the New Democrats and backed by the Wall Street-friendly Rep. Joe Crowley, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, who is facing his own challenge from the left back home in the Bronx and Queens from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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