Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt, someone who belongs to the ‘realist’ school of US foreign policy analysis, writes that the nomination of Chuck Hagel for the post of Defense Secretary does not point to a significant shift in the direction of president Obama’s foreign policy but does represent a widening in the range of such discussions. [Read more…]
Yesterday, I highlighted an important article by Glenn Greenwald about how Chuck Hagel’s 1998 opposition to a gay nominee for US ambassador is one of the tools being used to try and torpedo his nomination for Defense Secretary, even though such views were much more common at that time and were similar to those held by people, like Barack Obama, who are now viewed as liberal icons. Furthermore, Hagel has rightly since apologized for those remarks to the person about whom they were made and other commentators have pointed out that his views on gay issues have progressed considerably since that time, as has been the case for so many of us. [Read more…]
I tend to not get too interested in presidential nominations for cabinet posts, feeling that it is only under extreme circumstances that the president should be denied his choice since after all cabinet members are supposed to be the agents that execute the policies that the president campaigned on. Once a president is elected, he or she should be given considerable freedom in selecting those around him whom he thinks will do just that. [Read more…]
When Muslim congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) was elected in 2006, some people were outraged when he said that he would take his oath of office by swearing on the Koran. Dennis Prager even urged that he should be forbidden from doing so, saying “Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.” Prager then went completely bonkers, saying that allowing Ellison to carry out his intentions would signal the end of America as we know it: “If Keith Ellison is allowed to change that, he will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9-11.” [Read more…]
One has to hand it to the Democrats. They have been fairly successful in masking their allegiance to the oligarchy. The GOP is far more open about whose interests they really care about. As the fiscal cliff Kabuki theater played itself out towards the end of the year. I did not follow the details of the maneuvering that led up to the final agreement but was intrigued by the suggestion put forward by speaker John Boehner of something known as ‘Plan B’ as a stop-gap measure. This came and went fairly quickly and so did receive much scrutiny but its details show the priorities of the GOP. [Read more…]
We tend to think of blasphemy laws and punishments for violations as currently existing only in backward religion-dominated societies, usually in the Islamic world. But it was not that long ago that such laws were almost universal and many of them are still on the books in modern societies though not enforced. So it is always a surprise when some people now try and invoke these relics of medieval times. [Read more…]
My post yesterday on the rise of the ideological think tanks and their pernicious influence on high levels of government policy produced some interesting discussion in the comments, with some wondering if I was implying that academics were somehow smarter, wiser, more experienced, even nobler than the people in think tanks, and that discussion prompted this follow-up post. [Read more…]
Back in 2008 I wrote a 12-part series titled The Propaganda Machine in which I traced the rise of the right-wing echo chamber that we now see in full fruition, with its combination of newspapers and radio and TV painting a steady picture of an alternate reality that has persuaded a significant number of people that things which are factually false are really true. [Read more…]