Gallup recently released the results of a poll that suggest that Americans are becoming more liberal in their social views and, for the first time since 1999, the numbers who self-identify as liberal has matched the number who self-identify as conservative.
[Read more…]
Jon Stewart brings us up to date on the latest entrants on the Republican side, from the crazy to the racist. It is quite incredible to me that people like Carly Fiorina and Lindsey Graham can be so casual about being condescending and bigoted towards entire nations of large populations.
[Read more…]
Cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall asks a good question.
This is for you older readers: when did news conferences become long-winded acceptance speeches?
I’m too young to remember for sure, but there must have been a time when, after a train derailment or a tornado or a flood or a race riot or whatever, public officials stepped up to the microphones to deliver a status update (“as soon as we learn more, we’ll let you know”), and perhaps some advice to the public (“avoid downed live wires, especially the ones that are sparking, like in that movie The Ice Storm”), answered reporters’ questions and left the stage.
Today’s news conferences are a dreary, undignified mélange of pro forma acknowledgements and sentimental pabulum.
I am in Washington, DC for a conference and so read the hard-copy version of the local paper the Washington Post. One thing about reading the hard copy is that one tends to go through the entire paper rather than zeroing in on the main topics you are interested in when you read it online. The big story today was the indictment of the former speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, who retired from Congress in 2007 and (surprise!) became a high-paid lobbyist.
[Read more…]
The US and Israel repeatedly use the threat of nuclear weapons being developed by other countries as the basis for going to war. They used that fear of an ‘imminent’ nuclear threat in the case of Iraq even though that was known to be false. And now they are using that same argument against Iran. So you would think that they would welcome a move towards nuclear non-proliferation in that region, right?
[Read more…]
Whatever happens to the lead actresses in action films, whatever turmoil they go through, they somehow manage to emerge looking good. The secret about how they achieve that is now revealed by these outtakes from such films. It is because these films are written by men.
[Read more…]
Following an emotion-filled debate with spectators and legislative aides watching closely, the Nebraska legislature voted 30-19 to override the state governor’s veto of their bill to abolish the death penalty in the state. Note that Nebraska is a very conservative state so this move is quite astonishing.
[Read more…]
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept interviewed the ACLU’s Deputy Legal Director, Jameel Jaffer about the maneuvering behind the USA Patriot Act whose provisions under section 215 will expire because of sunset provisions on June 1 unless Congress acts to pass something. The House has passed something known as the USA Freedom Act that revised some key provisions of section but that failed to pass in the Senate.
[Read more…]
For many people of my generation, the Vietnam war was a turning point that radicalized us. For the first in our lives, we saw a cruel war waged by a massive military power that used chemical and biological weapons on a massive scale against a much weaker nation and a defenseless population and whose effects will be felt for generations to come. But we also saw how that military could be defeated by a determined population that was fighting to repel foreign invaders and their local puppets. We saw first hand how the US government and its allies lied shamelessly in the effort to advance its imperialist ambitions, cloaking its real goals behind the rhetoric of democracy. That undoubtedly colored our view of geopolitics and is maybe why we saw so clearly the lies that led to the Iraq war and can also see the same dynamic trying to be resurrected against Iran.
[Read more…]
In this nice cartoon, Sarah Glidden looks at all the ways that people in different cultures greet each other, from the handshake to the hug to the kiss on the cheek or to the kisses on both cheeks to the namaste sign and so on, and the awkwardness that can arise when one person expects one thing and the other expects something else.
[Read more…]