Now that the immediate shock of the massacres by ISIS in Paris and Beirut, plus the bringing down of the Russian airliner, is easing somewhat, it may be possible to step back and ask oneself: Why now? Why were these horrific attacks unleashed at this point in time?
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Saturday Night Live premiered a new TV series titled The Adventures of Young Ben Carson based on his autobiographical stories that looks like it will never run out of material since they emerge from one of the most fertile and imaginative brains of our time.
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With all the depressing stories about the brutal attacks on people in Paris and Beirut by ISIS dominating the news, I wanted to pass on a bit of good news that might have got buried and that is that same-sex marriage is legal as of today in Ireland. This was a consequence of the referendum that was passed in May.
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In elections, in addition to hoping that your party ends up with the candidate whom you think has the best ideas and also the best chance of winning, you also hope that the other side ends up with the candidate with the best chance of losing. Hence each side has an incentive to boost the other side’s weaker candidate and cheer on the decline of the candidate that may be the strongest. Some people go beyond that and actually try to bring about the worst result for the opponents. But is such negative strategizing wise?
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This would be a good time to show clips making fun of the Republican debate that took place earlier in the week to see the huge contrast between that and yesterday’s Democratic debate.
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The second Democratic debate yesterday, this time involving only Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Martin O’Malley, was once again spirited and substantive. Given that it occurred in the immediate aftermath of the horrendous events in Paris, it was not surprising that the first quarter or so was devoted to the whole issue of ISIS and terrorism. To their credit, none of the candidates used the occasion to indulge in excessive saber rattling or xenophobia against Muslims or call for the shutting down of moves to take in refugees fleeing the chaos in the Middle East. One can only shudder at what the Republican candidates would have said if it had been their debate last night. We would have seen a competition to see who could take the most extreme anti-Muslim position and they would have tied it to anti-Mexican immigrant bashing.
We have seen in the current Republican presidential race that there seems to be nothing that can bring a candidate down once they have captured the allegiance of a significant portion of the party’s large and nutty base. Donald Trump and Ben Carson exemplify this. They can flat out lie, make the most idiotic and unrealistic policy proposals, exhibit xenophobia and race-baiting, and their poll numbers stay up month after month despite predictions from the pundits that this time, they have gone too far and their numbers will come down.
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He had a hilarious send up of the last debate.
The US government still continues to defy calls for an independent investigation into the attacks on the MSF hospital in Kunduz that destroyed the main facility and killed so many, and the US media are not putting any pressure on them to do so. What is worse, as Glenn Greenwald points out, some in the media are pre-emptively exonerating the government by declaring that the attack was an ‘accident’ or ‘mistake’ when there are many indications that the attack on the hospital was deliberate.
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He will hold his rally at 7:00 pm on Monday, November 16th at Cleveland State University. Unfortunately, I cannot go to it, much as I would have liked to. More information is here.
Meanwhile the US postal workers union has decided to endorse Sanders.
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