The absolutely craven and disgusting former British prime minister Tony Blair has been under fire since new reports have emerged that he strongly promised support for the Bush-Cheney gang’s plans to wage a criminal and illegal war against Iraq long before those plans even became public. Blair’s desperate desire to ingratiate himself with the US government has long been well known and he was called ‘Bush’s poodle’, though that is an insult to a proud, intelligent, and dignified breed of dog. I wonder how the British public feel about their prime minister having been so abjectly servile to US leaders.
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The upcoming election of Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House of Representatives, rather than bringing about unity among congressional Republicans, has exposed the fault lines even more. And what it shows is that even the Freedom Caucus is not considered extreme enough by influential extremists of the party base. Recall that the Freedom Caucus was mainly the reason for John Boehner quitting the position. They gave him a hard time, despite Boehner being one of the most conservative members in Congress, for not being willing to shut down the government over every issue that has its base slavering at the mouth.
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Who would say that a rape victim claiming the right to have an abortion is analogous to a slave owner claiming the right to kill a slave?

Here’s a clue. It is the same person who says that being gay is a choice, the high school AP history curriculum will cause students to sign up for ISIS, that the US now is similar to Nazi Germany, gun control contributed to the Holocaust, Obamacare is like slavery, and that having gun control is more devastating to him than seeing a body riddled with bullets.
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As with other political labels like conservative and liberal, the word socialism is also ill-defined and allows the person using it wide leeway in what it means. The fact that it is often paired with the word ‘democratic’ to create ‘social democratic’ or ‘democratic socialist’ adds to the ambiguity. In the US, the word socialist has been systematically demonized, though in other countries it is quite commonly used, especially in combination with the word democratic. For example, the official name for Sri Lanka is the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,
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November 3rd is election day in the US. Since I will not be able to vote in person that day, I have already voted by mail. In Cuyahoga County where I live, there is Proposition 8 that seeks a renewal of the so-called ‘sin tax’ that levies an extra tax on cigarettes, with the proceeds going to fund arts and cultural organization in the region. I voted in favor of it.
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Matt Taibbi reflected on Thursday’s umpteenth Congressional hearings on Benghazi led by Republican Trey Gowdy where Hillary Clinton was grilled for about 10 hours, with the verdict being almost unanimous that the Republicans ended up looking really bad, and not just because Gowdy has the misfortune to be a dead ringer for the villainous Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
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Ben Carson claims that his life is in “great danger” from the “secular progressive movement” because they see him as an “existential threat” to them. He is reported to have requested Secret Service protection and it is supposedly under consideration.
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The word terrorist is no longer used to denote any specific action but is used almost always propagandistically, to dehumanize those whom one considers an enemy and manipulate public opinion. Call someone a terrorist and their action terrorism and you have already gone a long way towards winning the propaganda war.
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The Republican party establishment must be having sleepless nights over Donald Trump shooting to the top of the polls in their presidential primary. Pundits have been consoling them by suggesting that at some point Republican voters would tire of him and his numbers would come down and a candidate that is more acceptable to the party, such as Jeb Bush, would gain ascendancy.
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