The deaths of at least 62 Syrian troops and more than 100 injured by a US bombing attack that apparently went awry and struck them instead of an ISIS target has threatened the partial cease-fire that was supposed to be just getting underway. The repeated bombings of wrong targets undermines the constant reassurances we get from the US government of the reliability of their smart weaponry.
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This is what graced the front page of today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer. How absurd is it that this is now considered news?
For some time now there has been a coalition of evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, joining forces to advance conservative causes, especially around opposition to abortion, pornography, and equal rights for the LGBT community. This alliance has provided a reliable voting bloc for the Republican party too.
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He talks with Seth Meyers about why we should get beyond personalities and whether we like or dislike a candidate, why Hillary Clinton’s policies are far superior to those of Donald Trump, where the Democratic party has failed, and what it still needs to do. Elsewhere, Sanders said that Trump’s campaign was based on bigotry and his focus on president Obama’s birth certificate was emblematic of that.
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The Princeton Election Consortium website run by Sam Wang (a Princeton University neuroscientist who has taken on a second interest in statistical analyses of US elections) has been my go-to site for the last few election cycles because I like his down-to-Earth looks at the state of the polling race, free of hyperventilating over the this or that latest poll. He does not post often but his website contains up-to-date information based on poll aggregation and is well worth keeping track of. If you enjoy statistics and its application in politics, this is the site for you.
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Elizabeth Warren continues to doggedly pursue the wealthy banksters who got off scot-free after pretty much destroying the lives of so many people and threatening to wreck the global economy. She has asked the director of the FBI and its inspector general to explain why there was no action taken against the 14 individuals specifically criminally referred to them by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) that was set up to examine the causes of the financial meltdown.
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I mentioned before that Donald Trump’s main personality feature is his desire to be the dominant person in any situation. That can work well in some situations such as in the testosterone-soaked world of business or in Republican primary politics. But it can also work against him in other situations.
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Yesterday was his birthday but I forgot to inform the whole world. To make amends, here he is in a recent photo.
It seems like periodically there occurs some incident that generates a wave of patriotic fervor. The latest is the decision by Colin Kaepernick, a football player for the San Francisco 49ers, who decided to not stand for the national anthem as a protest against the way that people of color are treated in this country. His protest has caught on with athletes around the country at all levels choosing to kneel instead of stand.
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If any one still has any illusions that we are a nation of equals, this long and detailed expose by the Guardian about the way that wealthy individuals and corporations buy influence will help shatter it. (Thanks to reader Jason for the tip.) The looks at how the current campaign rules were exploited by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker at a time when he and some Republican state senators were facing recall elections. The money was laundered through a group known as the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCfG).
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