The vice-president is a notorious homophobe and that is just one of his many awful qualities as John Oliver points out. But after documenting how awful Pence is, Oliver reveals that Pence is releasing a children’s book about their pet bunny named Marlon Bundo and then springs a surprise.
That the Donald Trump administration is corrupt is old news. What is incredible is how far down the corruption extends and how even low-level grifters seem to have been able to find a home in its various niches. Ben Carson has already been in trouble because of his willingness to cut programs that benefit those who lack adequate housing while spending money on expensive furniture for himself. Now comes reports that one of his advisors Naved Jafry has resigned under a cloud.
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Last week saw students in schools around the nation stage a walkout to protest the lack of action by the government to the easy availability of high-powered guns that have been used in so many mass killings. In general, school authorities and local communities have been supportive of these actions, or at least tolerated it and did not punish students for the walkouts. Some universities have even said that a suspension for such an action would not adversely affect a student’s application for college admission.
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Some time ago I wrote that the neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, white supremacists and the various assorted fascistic-minded types were using ‘lulz’ i.e., mocking humor and irony, to draw in new recruits, forgoing the old skinhead, tattooed, tough look for the clean cut boy next door image. And it seemed to be working. But then they encountered the antifa movement and Natasha Lennard writes that now some are discovering that there is a tangible cost to spreading messages of hate .
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Robert Wright writes that the lack of cognitive empathy is one of the major drivers that leads Americans to support one disastrous war after another. He distinguishes cognitive empathy from the more familiar emotional empathy and says that some so-called ‘think tanks’ in the US and major media like the New York Times are undermining whatever minimal cognitive empathetic impulses people might have and are thus making wars more likely
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I have written many times before about one of the greatest atrocities of the Vietnam war, a war that was itself a monstrous atrocity at every level. The My Lai massacre was notable because the appalling facts eventually came out (although more than a year after the event) and were undeniable and yet president Nixon excused the actions of the murderous soldiers and the officers who ordered the attack in which the people in a hamlet were ordered into a ditch and then were ruthlessly gunned down.
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That Donald Trump lies incessantly is now an unquestioned fact. But we are now witnessing lying taken to the next level where he proudly boasts that he lies. In private remarks, Trump told a group of people at a fundraising dinner that at a meeting with Canada’s prime minister he had knowingly lied to him about the trade deficit. The only lying level left is the dreaded Lying Singularity where the lies feed upon themselves so much that they collapse into a black hole.
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The so-called Nuremberg defense, that one’s war crimes can be excused if one were following orders, was advanced during the trial of Nazis after World War II and was rejected. But as Jon Schwarz writes, the US is now advancing that same argument in defense of the people in the government who not only authorized and presided over ghastly torture practices that are undoubtedly war crimes, they showed every indication of having enjoyed doing so.
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There has been a news story out of Austin, Texas that has received remarkably little mainstream news coverage. Parcel bombs have exploded at various residences killing two people.
Sean Philips had just woken up and was sitting on his couch when he heard the blast that would take his neighbor’s life.
The explosion, police now say, came from a package that Anthony Stephan House encountered on his front porch in north Austin on the morning of March 2.
Police say it was the first of three mysterious package bombings in 10 days in Texas’ capital — explosions that have killed two people, including House, injured two others and left city residents on edge and highly suspicious of packages delivered to their homes.
…This package, and two more that exploded at other Austin residences 10 days later, were placed in front of houses, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. All were average-sized delivery boxes, and they weren’t delivered by the US Postal Service or delivery services such as UPS or FedEx, police said.