Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks accurately describes Harris’s disingenuous tactic of using extreme hypotheticals to set up scenarios that justify despicable actions targeted at Muslims while at the same time inserting caveats that enable him to respond to critics by accusing them of either misunderstanding him or acting in bad faith.
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Four former operators of US killer drones revealed at a press briefing what really happens in that program. They themselves seem to feel the killings they carry out are actually making the situation worse, in addition to inflicting psychological trauma on themselves. The Guardian has a report on the story.
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When US audiences think of parodies of TV police shows, the first name that comes to mind is Leslie Nielsen in his role as Frank Drebin in the short-lived six-episode 1982 series Police Squad! that later was made into the hit trilogy of Naked Gun films beginning in 1988.
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Today is Thanksgiving day in the US. It is a holiday that has problematic roots in history and now has become associated with the kick-off to an orgy of shopping. But despite all that baggage it is a nice holiday that celebrates wholesome virtues such as getting together with family and friends and we will spend it with some old and dear friends as we always do.
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Abby Martin of Telesur interviews him on the current state of politics. As usual, he paints an accurate picture, that the spectrum of political opinion has become so skewed that it only ranges from the center to the extreme right and that the current Republican party is off the spectrum and that what we have is a plutocracy with democratic forms, with the actual wishes of the public largely ignored.
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The US military has ‘investigated’ itself about the attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz that killed 30 people. The US commander in Afghanistan spoke at a press briefing today with the expected language, saying that ‘mistakes were made, equipment failed, and we will fix them’, so let’s forget about this and move on.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a statistician and risk analyst. He recently sent out a tweet that defended homeopathy as being harmless and even beneficial since after all people were only taking a placebo and that it may prevent them from over-treatment of marginal symptoms. He followed up with another tweet saying that “Superstitions can be rational if 1) harmless, 2) lower your anxiety, 3) prevent you from listening to forecast by economists & BS “experts””
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The idea of screening refugees by religion and allowing only Christians into the US has been suggested by Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and supported by others, based on the notion that these people would be unlikely to be terrorists. Cruz has been quite explicit on this topic, saying, “There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation”.
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Stephen Colbert had a lot of fun a week or so ago with the rules that broadcast television networks use when it comes to nudity, and the problems they encounter when they have to report news involving classical paintings, such as the auction of Modigliani’s Reclining Nude.
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Whatever one might think of the politics of Donald Trump, there is no question that he seems to have an unerring knack for gauging the visceral feelings of the small group of Republican supporters who play a disproportionately large role in the Republican primary process. He seems to know exactly what buttons to push so while the pundit class takes each outrageous statement of his as the sign that this time he really has gone too far and that people will now abandon him, in reality his popularity remains undiminished or even increases.
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