Harvard covers itself with shame

The Harvard Kennedy School of government has really made a mess of things. When they invited Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow, it unleashed a storm of protest from members of the intelligence community

Manning’s invitation to address students of the school’s Institute of Politics was denounced by Mike Pompeo, the CIA director who cancelled an appearance at Harvard on Thursday, and by former deputy director of the agency Mike Morell, who resigned his own visiting fellowship in protest at what the two men described as the honoring of a “traitor”.

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The health industry fights back against single-payer

One sign that Bernie Sanders’s single-payer health care plan is more substantial than earlier efforts is the quick and angry response of the parasitic health industry. They seem to be fearful that this movement might gain steam and are seeking to nip it in the bud. The major health insurance companies are already out with strong statements.
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Trump is not an independent

The recent actions by Donald Trump that seemed to indicate a willingness to work with Democratic leaders on funding the government, raising the debt ceiling, restoring the DACA, and backpedalling on the wall program has resulted in some commentators starting to speak of him as an ‘independent’. But we should not dignify the words of and actions of someone who could well reverse himself on any of these things at any moment with a label that suggests that he is acting according to some principled plan.
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The origins of the ‘Blood and Soil’ chant

Those of you who watched the disturbing but gripping Vice News video of the neo-Nazis and white nationalists marching in Charlottesville during that infamous rally in support of confederate statues would recall that one of the chants they used was “Blood and Soil”. The meaning seemed unclear to me but taken in conjunction with their other chant of “Jews will not replace us”, I gathered that it had some kind of anti-Semitic origins but was not sure what. Historian Yoni Anijar explains that it dates back to the 19th century.
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Why are some rich people so cheap?

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and is reportedly extremely wealthy. And yet he seems to be the kind of rich person who is incredibly cheap, the sort who tries to get other people to pick up the check for his own expenses. Maybe that behavior works when he has dinner out with friends but he seems to be trying to do that to taxpayers too.
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What is going on with Trump?

Ok, now I am really confused. I predicted that Donald Trump would use every major issue that came before him to push for funding for his precious wall as part of the deal. But now I have been proven wrong twice. First Trump agreed to a short-term extension of government funding and raising the debt ceiling without getting wall funding. And now just yesterday, after a dinner with the two top Democratic party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump seems to have arrived at some kind of deal with them to restore the DACA program that does not include funding for the wall.
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The missing foreign policy element in Clinton interviews

Glenn Greenwald writes that one notable missing element in Hillary Clinton’s book tour and media appearances has been the ignoring of the role that her disastrous policies of military intervention played in her defeat. He says that many media commentators seem to think that it was only domestic issues that played a role because it was absurd to think of Donald Trump as some kind of peace candidate. But Greenwald says that Trump shrewdly manipulated people’s anger over the state of endless wars that Clinton helped expand and perpetuate.
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Clip from Jordan Klepper’s new show

The Daily Show alum Jordan Klepper has a new daily show where he adopts the persona of a character based on the wild right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The show is called The Opposition and premieres on September 25. Here is a clip that previews it, where he attends the recent Trump rally in Phoenix where people could not tell the difference between a right-wing nutcase and a parody of a right wing nutcase making fun of them.
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Edith Windsor, victor over DOMA, has died

She died at the age of 88. In 2007 Windsor had married her partner Thea Clara Spyer in Canada, where such marriages were legal, after being together for 40 years. They moved to the US later and Spyer died in 2009 but DOMA prevented Windsor from claiming the federal tax exemption for inheritances that are available to spouses. So she sued to overturn DOMA. Her case United States v. Windsor, that she won 5-4 in the US Supreme Court in 2013, helped pave the way for same-sex marriages becoming legalized two years later. The court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that, among other things, denied federal tax benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples, was unconstitutional.
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