Cuba responds to US lecture with lecture of its own

I mentioned before that US government officials have the practice when visiting countries that it does not consider allies to give them public lectures on what they must do to improve. While this sounds condescending, it is only so if done selectively. I think it is a practice that should be expanded and every time there is a state visit, the visiting dignitary should take the opportunity to point out all the faults of the host country. Unfortunately, many countries do not seem to want to risk angering the world’s only superpower and thus the US has got used to being the only one giving such lectures.
[Read more…]

The hurt looker

One of the inexplicable things is the relative popularity of Ben Carson among the Republican presidential candidates. He says the most outrageous things in a calm voice and then when he is questioned about it, he takes on a hurt tone and implies that it is so unfair to focus on his words when you should be admiring him for his surgical skills.
[Read more…]

Matt Taibbi on the crazy Republican race that is getting even crazier

The always-entertaining journalist for Rolling Stone has a long and hilarious piece where he visits many of the Republican candidates’ campaign events in Iowa and provides thumbnail sketches on their attempts to survive the Donald Trump tornado that has hit the Republican party by trying to outdo him in making outrageous comments in order to get any kind of attention.
[Read more…]

Punishing Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison term for essentially being a whistleblower and revealing US atrocities in its war in Iraq. She can be excused for feeling that it is grossly unfair that she has received such a stiff punishment while those who authorized this shameful war that has caused such immense death and misery, using lies and other deceptions to persuade the public to support them, are walking around free.
[Read more…]

Barbarians at the gate

As I have noted before, Republican voters are a remarkably loyal bunch. Once they have picked someone to support for whatever reason, pretty much everything else is shrugged off. This loyalty manifested itself with Sarah Palin and now we see it again with Donald Trump. It seems like his derogatory comments about Mexicans, John McCain, and women have done nothing to shake the loyalty of his fans. It is, I suppose, possible that each of those comments alienated a considerable segment of his people but at the same time attracted new supporters so that the net number of supporters remained stable while the people changed. But that series of coincidences seems unlikely. It seems more plausible to assume that the same supporters are sticking with Trump whatever the party and media establishment say about him.

That raises the question: Who the hell are these people?
[Read more…]

Thinking the unthinkable

Just a few weeks ago, there was a jocular comment that was circulating along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be funny if the 2016 presidential race ended up being between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? Yuk! Yuk!” The reason it was so funny of course was because the very idea was absurd. On the one hand you had someone widely seen as a buffoon (a very rich buffoon but a buffoon nonetheless) and on the other someone who called himself a democratic socialist, seen as the kiss of death in a political climate where even the label of liberal was seen as an epithet. It was felt that the Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton machines would easily crush these upstarts once the going got serious.
[Read more…]

The troubling war on marijuana

While measures to legalize, or at least decriminalize, the use of marijuana are spreading all over the country, we should look at the heavy toll that the war on drugs, and marijuana specifically, is taking on everyone. Because so many people think marijuana is safe to use and do so recreationally, it leads to repeated police-public confrontations by over-zealous police, who can use the excuse that they smelled something to launch highly intrusive searches.
[Read more…]

Iran sanctions already crumbling

The 60-day deadline for Congress to vote its disapproval of the deal arrived at between Iran and the P5+1 nations is September 17, giving them roughly two weeks to do so after they return from their August recess. If a vote of disapproval does pass, president Obama has guaranteed a veto and so much attention is focused on whether the two chambers can muster the 2/3 majority to override the veto.
[Read more…]