The dead-enders who are stifling the Democratic party

Ryan Grim and Lee Fang write that while the actions and words of Donald Trump and his Republican enablers have angered and energized progressives across the country to run for office, they are being blocked by Democratic party dead-enders in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and their allies like Emily’s List who are backing the same losing candidates and polices of the past, based on their ability to raise money rather than gain votes. The DSCC keeps pursuing the tired strategy of trying to win over Republican voters, which means backing more conservative candidates and policies, rather than attract those voters who have opted out of politics because they feel that the Democrats are just Republican-lite.
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Hugh Masekela (1939-2018)

The South African jazz composer and trumpeter died today at the age of 78. He was not only an accomplished jazz musician, he was also an anti-apartheid activist who lived in exile because to return to his native country during the apartheid era would be to court immediate arrest. His talent immediately made him recognized and befriended by other great politically conscious musicians such as Harry Belafonte and Yehudi Menuhin. He returned to South Africa in the early 1990s, after the end of apartheid. I had not known that he had been briefly married to Miriam Makeba for two years.
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Haitians respond to Trump

After Donald Trump’s insulted Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa, Conan O’Brien thought that he should visit Haiti.

“I have no idea what the president has against the people of Haiti, but if the president doesn’t like them, they must be lovely people,” the TBS host added on his show last Monday. On Thursday, he landed in Port-au-Prince, where he spent the weekend taping his special, which aims to show the president and those like him how much Haitian immigrants have to offer the United States.

Now we have our first look at the hour-long show, which will air this coming Saturday night. “President Trump insulted Haiti, so I thought it was only fair to Haitians the chance to return the favor,” O’Brien says in the new clip.

Surprising result

Suppose that you, law-abiding driver that you are, are going along the highway at the posted speed limit of 70 mph. You see in your rear-view mirror a car traveling at high speed in the lane next to yours. Suppose that car is traveling at 100 mph. At the instant that the other car is right next to you, you both see an obstruction ahead, say a tree lying across the road. You both slam on your brakes to the maximum and you come to rest just before you hit the barrier. What would be the speed with which the other car hits the tree?
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Film review: Death of a Gentleman (2015) and corruption in cricket

While I have been following cricket matches, I have not paid much attention to the politics of the game. I stumbled upon the documentary Death of a Gentleman quite by accident and it was quite an eye-opener. The film looks at the way that international cricket is run. The documentary started out as a project by two sports journalists Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins who are ardent fans of cricket at the highest level, which consist of the five-day Test matches played between national teams. They were concerned that this form of the game (that purists like me like the most) was in danger of extinction because of the rise of the abomination called T20 which reduces the game to about three hours but in the process eliminates many of the features that had made this game into the second most popular sport in the world after soccer. The long form of Test matches has many subtleties that the short form T20 lacks. I personally find the short-form boring, requiring as it does a very limited range of batting and bowling skills.
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Gloria Allred’s story

If you follow US political news at all, you have undoubtedly heard of Gloria Allred, the attorney who has represented many female clients in high-profile gender-related cases and who is currently taking on Donald Trump on behalf of Summer Zervos who says that she was defamed by Donald Trump when he publicly called her a liar for saying that he sexually assaulted her in 2007. Allred has been portrayed negatively by her opponents as a publicity-seeker whose expertise mostly lies in getting attention for her press conferences with the victims of abuse.
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When you meet a Trump supporter up close

For most of us, because we associate with others largely by choice, the people in our social circle tend to be those who share our worldview in general, especially when it comes to political and social issues. Thus political discussions usually take place upon generally agreed principles and within common frameworks, and such discussions tend to be more analytical and less emotional and confrontational. This is not the case when it comes to family members who can be all over the map and problems can also arise when the two groups overlap. Thus the advice to avoid topics like politics and religion at social gatherings where people might have widely differing views is quite sound.
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How the shutdown is viewed in China

Politicians in the US love to prate on and on about how the US is the world’s greatest system of government. The US senate is routinely referred to, by its own members of course, as the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’, despite all evidence to the contrary. But things like having periodic government shutdowns must surely make such boasts ring hollow. How can any government fail at its most basic task of keeping the lights on? I myself am aghast that such a thing could happen at all in any country, let alone one with the largest economy and military, and yet we have had a shut down in 2013, almost another one in 2015, and yet another one going on right now. It is becoming routine.
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