The ‘Russian hacking’ story gets curiouser and curiouser

The perpetual ‘Red Scare’ mentality that has sustained the high levels of US military spending for a century has taken a curious turn. The basic charge is that the Russian government materially involved itself in the US presidential election by hacking into the websites of the Democratic party, and especially the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, and released those emails through WikiLeaks in order to hurt her campaign and aid in the election of Donald Trump, and that the Russian government was actively in communication with the Trump campaign. An additional charge against the Russians is that they doctored some of the documents leaked through WikiLeaks to make them look worse than the originals and that they also helped in the dissemination of fake news.
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Goldman Sachs wins, again

For a long time now, it has been clear to any thinking person that the transnational global financial elite runs the world for its own benefit and that seems to be still true, despite all the railing against them during the last election, For all his populist talk of taking on the Wall Street bankers and criticisms of Hillary Clinton for being so cozy with them, Donald Trump has now appointed people from Goldman Sachs, the firm at the heart of American financial excess and greed, that Matt Taibbi memorably described as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”, to top posts in his administration.
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The burden of proof when making charges

There was an interesting discussion in the comments about my dismissal as an ‘absurd’ claim the story that Hillary Clinton and key members of her Democratic party campaign were running some sort of child prostitution and sex trafficking ring out of a pizza shop, triggered by one commenter suggesting that I was dismissing the charge because I “liked” her, a claim that will cause some raised eyebrows among regular readers, some of whom have vigorously defended her from my attacks on her history and her qualities to be a president.
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Trying to find a silver lining in today’s political climate

While the immediate results of the presidential election have ominous implications in the near term in the US, especially for the poor, minorities, women, and the LGBT community, and can make people feel depressed, it sometimes helps to take the long view and see that the pendulum swings back and forth and that in general, we are much better off now than we were in the past and that we can help swing that pendulum again away from the likes of Trump and what he represents.
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President Obama’s belated attempt at limiting executive abuse

President Obama, after running one of the least transparent administrations despite promising during his first presidential campaign to run the most transparent, seems to have realized that it may not be wise to place all the executive power he has taken up and used, especially those of ubiquitous surveillance, the use of drones for the murder of people, relentlessly undermining the rights of courts to review its actions, and of people to seek judicial relief, in the hands of Donald Trump. He has now issued a 61-page document with the title REPORT ON THE LEGAL AND POLICY FRAMEWORKS GUIDING THE UNITED STATES’ USE OF MILITARY FORCE AND RELATED NATIONAL SECURITY OPERATIONS that insists that the executive powers he used are limited, presumably to prevent Trump from going wild with them.
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Living in a post-truth society

The so-called ‘pizzagate’ story gets weirder the more one delves into it. It has become a symbol of how social media has enabled fake new gets circulated widely. For those not familiar with it, the story was that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party were running a child porn/sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, DC pizza shop. Just stating this will raise the eyebrows of even a marginally rational person, because it seems such an absurd claim on its face that it would require a high level of evidence to substantiate it. But apparently no evidence at all was necessary for the Clinton-haters, especially one person who went to the shop with a rifle to shut down this operation and shot up the place before being arrested. Fortunately there were no injuries.
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What having an extreme narcissist as president is going to entail

Alfie Kohn* is a writer whom I have long admired for his passionate advocacy for public schools and for providing good and meaningful education for students and his condemnation of rampant standardized testing and the grade-driven, fact-driven, dehumanizing system that passes for much of schooling in the US. His background is in psychology and he has a post titled Narcissist-in-Chief: A Psychological Take on a Political Reality where he looks at what the consequences for the nation of having a person like Trump as president.
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Fidel Castro forbade any memorials to him

I have strong dislike for the practice of naming buildings and creating monuments in honor of politicians, especially when these things are done soon after their deaths. The most contemptible are those who have these things done while they are still alive and even attend the opening ceremonies. The US seems to be particularly prone to this practice. At one time I thought that every public building in the Washington, DC would be named after Ronald Reagan who has been elevated by Republicans to the level of sainthood.
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