The Alex Jones phenomenon

I am of course aware of Alex Jones and the loony and even vicious ideas he promotes, such as that the Sandy Hook massacre of elementary school children and their teachers was an elaborate hoax. What is more incredible than what he says is that so many people seem to believe him. But I do not watch or listen to his show because life’s too short. So I was grateful to John Oliver for providing an in-depth look at the Jones phenomenon, perhaps telling us more about him that we may have wanted to know. Make sure you wait for the ‘infomercial’ that begins at around the 19:30 mark.
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McCain’s successor as the fake maverick

It looks like the state of Arizona has become the breeding ground of the fake Maverick Republican. Now that John McCain has been diagnosed with brain cancer, he is unlikely to run again and senator Jeff Flake is staking his claim to becoming the Republican that the media fawn over for being willing to issue statements and quotes that seem to go against his party’s dogmas while voting almost entirely along party lines. Flake has come out with a new book that seems to say some things that deviate from Republican orthodoxy and is making the rounds of the media.
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National Review on the New Atheists

The neoconservative magazine National Review has used the recent decision by San Francisco radio station KPFA to disinvite Richard Dawkins from an interview to publish an article by Elliot Kaufman that takes aim at atheists. It consists essentially of two points. Firstly it argues that ‘the left’ has ‘expelled’ the New Atheists like Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens because of their “insufficient deference to Islam” and secondly that their arguments against god’s existence are wrong. Kaufman even goes on to say that ‘the left’s’ dislike of Islamophobia has morphed into a defense of Islamic radicalism and thus have joined “a long line of left-wing apologists for murderous anti-Western regimes”. (Thanks to reader Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write for alerting me to this article.)
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Trump’s imaginary phone calls

Donald Trump is such a pathological liar that he lies even when he doesn’t have to or can be easily found out. We have shifted our ideas of normalcy in the president so low that almost none of the outrageous things that he does or says surprises us anymore. But there are some things that make me wonder if he is really unhinged. Take for example these two recent statements by him. They follow the predictable pattern where when he boasts about himself, he ‘quotes’ as ‘evidence’ somebody saying nice things about him. That person has to be someone notable, either named or usually anonymous (“This very successful businessman/farmer/executive… told me …”)
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Lindsey Graham is a sociopath

I have mentioned many times before how political leaders in the US constantly and publicly debate attacking, invading, bombing, and even using nuclear weapons against other countries, and our media not only does not react with shock, they encourage this behavior by having them appear again and again. The latest example is Lindsey Graham whose folksy manner provides a thin veneer over the mentality of a mass murderer. Here he is, calmly discussing with the hosts of an NBC news show why he thinks Donald Trump is going to take military action against North Korea.
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China’s soft power strategy

Commenter Dunc made the astute observation in response to an earlier post about North Korea that we tend to overlook the importance of commercial shipping routes when discussing geopolitical strategy. He says that the only reason the US cares about either Korea is because of the nearby shipping routes and he linked to a map (below) that describes the core and secondary maritime routes and the primary and secondary choke points. He says that much of the maneuvering of nations can be understood by seeing its relationship to shipping.
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How long will Kelly last?

The political establishment is swooning over the choice of Department of Homeland secretary John Kelly to be chief of staff to Donald Trump as a sign that finally, finally, there might be an adult near the top to whip things into shape. Trump, like many in the establishment media and political class, seems to be in awe of high-level military officers, a telling indicator of his own weakness and insecurity, and they think that thus Kelly will be able to stand up to Trump and bring order to the chaos in the administration.
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The rapid rise and even faster fall of the Mooch

So Anthony (‘the Mooch’) Scaramucci has been fired after just ten days on the job as White House communications director, apparently before he had even been sworn in. While he has revealed himself to be a connoisseur of colorful sexual imagery, he has also shown himself to be somewhat less than a tactical genius. Consider the facts. He comes in and then immediately sets about getting the firing of the chief of staff Reince Priebus who officially should have more power than him but in reality has less. He succeeds. But Priebus is replaced by someone who actually has more clout than the Mooch, and that person promptly gets him fired because his boss Donald Trump does not show loyalty to anyone. If the Mooch had let a weak Priebus keep his job, he could have kept his own job plus have more influnce. Bad-mouthing Trump’s close confidante Steve Bannon was also not a smart move since it left him without any powerful allies.
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How and why reporters self-censor when it comes to Israel

We have seen how the Israel lobby dominates the US government. The lobby is aided in this by the way that it can also intimidate journalists. Philip Weiss writes about how reporters from the major western press admit that they self-censor reports from Israel so as not to be ‘savagely targeted’ by both the Israeli government and the Israel lobby that exists not just in the US but in other countries like the UK and Australia a well.
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