Zeke Miller writes that the Republican party faces an even worse debate problem than they had back in 2012 when the huge number of debates they held seemed to turn voters off as it gave their candidates many more opportunities to stumble and to attack each other.
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Thanks to PZ Myers, I learned about an email exchange that Sam Harris had initiated with Noam Chomsky about morality as applied to the actions of governments and other political entities. Myers gives an entertaining round-by-round account but I want to focus on a couple of points from that exchange that particularly struck me as key to their differences in content and style of argument.
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This cartoon is from Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine (2002) that looked at America’s obsession with guns. Given the recent spate of killings in the US and the rise of heavily-armed militias that seem to be seeking to confront the government, this may be a good time to re-release the film.
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US imperialistic power is overtly demonstrated by its massive military that can be used to easily overpower most nations, though we have seen that controlling the aftermath is much more problematic. But a major source of US power is exerted more covertly, by controlling the financial centers of the world. Note how it uses that power to annex the assets of countries it has conflicts with and prevents them from having access to international capital or denying them the lines of credit and insurance that are necessary for trade.
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How do I know? Because I heard it from one of the people who is closest to god, and that is Rick Santorum, the once and future and forever candidate for the US presidency. What happened is that when he was asked by Buzzfeed about Bruce Jenner’s announcement that he was transitioning to a woman, this is how his reaction was reported:
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Ramzy Baroud writes that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s naked personal ambition for power has resulted in him ripping off the veil that covered the ugly realities of Israeli policies that enabled the leaders of Israel and the US to claim that they shared common values and allowed them to stall indefinitely on giving Palestinians their rights.
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She has left The Daily Show and gone on to other ventures. Here are some of her field pieces for the show. Here is her first piece for the show from back in 2003. She was good from the get-go and I will miss her.
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When Bernie Sanders appeared on ABC News yesterday, it became clear that the interviewer wanted to goad him into attacking Hillary Clinton directly and then get her to respond in kind because that will enable them to create the kind of narrative they are most familiar with, that of a mud-slinging race and the effect of those attacks on poll numbers. But Sanders is smart enough not to fall for that. Instead, by focusing his attacks on the billionaire class that dominates US politics, Clinton is affected only to the extent that she is part of that class. It will be interesting to see how she reacts.
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The Israeli group Breaking the Silence has released a new report of testimonies given by some Israeli soldiers that reveals the depth of the atrocities inflicted by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza during its assault last year. In that operation known as Protective Edge 1,462 civilians, among them 495 children and 253 women were killed. Some may recall the infamous video of four boys being massacred as they played on a beach.
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