When US presidents get on their high horse at places like the United Nations and start moralizing and criticizing whichever nation happens to be the current enemy, it provides perfect examples of ‘psychological projection‘, the practice where people “defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others.”
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Jimmy Kimmel excoriates the senator from Louisiana who is the co-author of the so-called Graham-Cassidy health care bill that the Republicans are trying to jam through Congress with minimal debate before the September 30the deadline. Cassidy had earlier promised Kimmel and millions of others that any bill that he proposed would provide a list of protections for people but what he is actually proposing has none of them. Kimmel delivers a righteous rant on the topic, explaining clearly why this bill is so bad and why it must be defeated.
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Matt Taibbi attended Donald Trump’s rally last month in Phoenix and said the occasion was one in which Trump’s descent into what looks like madness became quite marked. He noticed that unlike before, Trump seemed to struggle to hold on to the audience’s attention, unlike the way he had been able to do before during the campaign, largely because he seemed to be unable to read the crowd and respond accordingly.
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Here are two ads that if I had not been told otherwise I would have thought were parodies. The first was put out as a public service ad by Ventura County, CA about what you should do if there is a nuclear explosion nearby.
Whenever it comes to spending money on programs that actually benefit people, such as health care or education or housing, there are endless debates about how to fund it and how the country cannot afford it because it will increase the deficit and the debt and so on. But there is one area where there is never any problem finding money and that is when it comes to spending on the military. If there is one government program that is massively bloated with over-funding that produces little benefit to society other than providing employment, that is the US military, and yet it is the one where Congress falls over itself to give it more.
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There has been a bit of flap about Donald Trump’s former press secretary Sean Spicer being given a cameo appearance as part of the Emmys ceremony on Sunday, with critics saying that someone associated so closely with Trump should not be welcomed. But it is pretty much a given now that if you are a member of the elite in the financial-political world, you are immune from any long-term consequences for your actions, however appalling. Whatever you do while working in government, even advocating war crimes, you will be welcomed with open arms by the establishment when you leave.
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Wiley, creator of the daily strip Non Sequitur is one of the best cartoonists around and someone I read every day. Last Saturday (September 18, 2017) he had the strip below. I thought that he was making a point about the way our judicial system is a slave to stereotypical thinking and is all too willing to treat harshly and without due process anyone who looks different enough to be considered the ‘other’.
One of Donald Trump’s most potent messages in the last election was his vision, given in almost apocalyptic language, about how important the election was for the soul of America, as expressed on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.
Trump put the choice starkly for the channel’s conservative Christian viewers: “If we don’t win this election, you’ll never see another Republican and you’ll have a whole different church structure.” Asked to elaborate, Trump continued, “I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalized and they’re going to be able to vote, and once that all happens you can forget it.”
Seth Meyers reviews the state of the Mueller investigation into the Trump White House, Trump’s incoherent tax plan that is matched only by Trump’s verbal incoherence, and the Alex Jones theory that not only is Trump being slowly drugged, but that all presidents are routinely drugged with small doses of sedatives that they are secretly given.
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We can expect to see a flurry of activity concerning health care within the next two weeks. The reason is that according to the arcane rules of the US Senate, changes to Obamacare that need only 50 votes to pass must not only be within certain parameters but must also be passed by September 30. After that, any changes must go through the normal process and will require 60 votes to break a filibuster and the Republicans have only 52 votes.
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