Katie Halper had a show just about a month ago that had three separate interview sections. The first was with Chris Hedges and Gerald Horne; the second with David Sirota (writer for Jacobin); the third was with Arun Gupta.

This show is separate from her Useless Idiots weekly show with Matt Taibbi, of which I am a regular listener. I only learned of her from that show and am impressed with the nuance and balance and insight she brings to all of her shows.

Chris Hedges & Gerald Horne + David Sirota on Amy Coney Barrett + Arun Gupta Live in Portland by Katie Halper (YouTube)

Hedges and Horne: A Class Act

The... [More]

The article The Assange Extradition Case is an Unprecedented Attack on Press Freedom, So Why’s the Media Largely Ignoring It? by Patrick Cockburn (CounterPunch) describes what is happening to Julian Assange.

“In an Old Bailey courtroom in London over the past four weeks, lawyers for the US government have sought the extradition of Assange to the US to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and one charge of computer misuse. At the heart of... [More]”

The video below is a 30-minute analysis of Obama’s short speech at the DNC that provides context from how Obama actually ruled when he was president.

OBAMA Says 'Nobody Is Above the Law'! by Jimmy Dore (YouTube)

I laughed out loud at Dore’s riff on Obama’s continued characterization of America’s torture as “enhanced”, starting at about 4:30,

“That’s my favorite: enhanced interrogation technique. Enhanced? That sounds like it’s nice. Are you going to turn on some mood music and some track lighting?

“No. We’re going to hook your balls up to a car battery... [More]”

The article The First Rule of Court Packing is you do not talk about Court Packing by Josh Blackman (Reason) discusses the recent presidential debate.

When Biden was asked about ending the filibuster or packing the court (two highly relevant election issues), he responded,

“Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. You’re voting now. Vote and let your Senators know strongly how you feel.”

What the hell does that even mean? I... [More]

The article The Death of Debate by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) describes what makes Trump tick in what I think is a far more accurate and reasoned manner than most people seem to be able to muster.

I would like to preface (and will re-address in the summary), that it’s pretty clear that Trump is not alone in his motivations. He is just a very extreme example. While there are many U.S. politicians who are interested in doing what they perceive as good for others, many of the most powerful are very clearly in the business... [More]

This video from 2015 takes only five minutes to present the results of a Princeton University study of 20 years of data to determine the amount of influence an American had on which laws were enacted. Regardless of whether Americans were completely against or completely for a policy, there was a 30% chance of it being enacted. From the study:

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. ”

It seems... [More]

The article If Biden Wins by Ted Rall is a succinct list of what to expect from a Biden presidency. I’ve cited most of it and added some extra notes of my own.

• Supreme Court: “[…] he’ll pick a conservative corporatist […] to placate the Republicans in the Senate.”
• Immigration: “Kids will remain in cages at the border […because] he won’t want to appear weak on immigration.”
• Medicare for all: “No change on healthcare.”
• Debt relief: “No student loan forgiveness.”
• Environment: “No Green New Deal.”
• Foreign... [More]

The following interview is excellent. I like the discussion between Taibbi and Halper at the beginning (I find them to be entertaining, insightful, and informative, but YMMV), but if you want to skip it, the interview starts at about 31 minutes or so. Or you can watch just the interview as a separate video.

Dr. Cornel West on Protests, Bernie's Campaign, His New Podcast, and Much More | Useful Idiots (YouTube)

Dr. Cornel West is absolutely on fire in this interview. Here he is offering a nuanced and absolutely correct take on voting for the lesser evil. Emphasis is mine.

“Cornel West: I was not... [More]”

A Messaging Failure

The phrase “defund the police” is spectacularly terrible optics and messaging. It’s muddled, can be interpreted six ways from Sunday, and can be easily weaponized by an almost overwhelmingly powerful opposition that is utterly uninterested in a generous, or even honest, interpretation.

The phrase “Living Wage” also seems quite innocuous and obvious, but has suffered from decades of picking nits. What does a person really need? What’s the bare minimum someone needs to live?... [More]

A good part of America is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore and a good part of America couldn’t care less.

That’s not accurate; let me rephrase. The other part of America is mad at hell at the part of America that thinks that America isn’t perfect like it is.

They think protesters are, at best, annoying snowflake leeches and, at worst, criminals who should be executed on the spot in the streets for stealing.

Then vs. Now

It’s amazing to think what the echo chamber of the Internet... [More]

John Oliver has put together 33:32 that are 100% worth watching. The video is linked below and it is titled, simply, “Police”.

Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (YouTube)

He mixes some humor—mostly dark, with very little of his usual wackiness or memes—with an exceedingly well-researched and -written video essay on racism and policing in the U.S.

He starts with a quick run-down of the peaceful protests and the violent reaction of the state against it. He plays, in full, a 30-second message delivered by a pissed-off citizen to LA... [More]

A man named George Floyd was murdered by four police officers in Minneapolis last week. One kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes, while two others kneeled on his torso and one stood by and watched. They seemed more-or-less unperturbed that they were being filmed by witnesses. The video picked up George’s pathetic pleas to let him up.

The police had been called by a shopkeeper who suspected Floyd of having passed a counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd was in his car nearby when the officers... [More]

Introspection is not easy. To really examine one’s own drives and implicit assumptions takes patience and, above all, humility. The first time you dive down, you may not like what you see. Who you think you are may be only a surface representation—something you’ve plastered over a bundle of atavistic core principles that you’ve never bothered to evaluate, question, or correct.

So it is with American hegemony, which has never not thought itself noble. People of all nations have a jingoistic... [More]

“If voting could bring change, they wouldn’t let us vote”

—Mark Twain

In an interview of Noam Chomsky by Mehdi Hasan, Noam pleads his case for “holding your nose” and voting for Biden.

Mehdi Hasan and Noam Chomsky on Biden vs. Trump by The intercept (YouTube)

Noam’s done this for decades. We could be generous and perhaps appreciate his optimism about presidential elections—he never gives up and tells us that there’s no-one worth voting for. Instead, Noam always sees a lesser evil and votes for it—and tells everyone else to vote for it, as well.

Noam goes for the jugular

... [More]

Ignoring so-called other experts

One friend sent me this article 8 MORE Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic (Off-Guardian), which includes varied citations from varied experts. The site is for people who’ve been kicked off of the comments section of the Guardian (hence “Off-Guardian”). The formatting and flow are terrible, but some of the information is OK (e.g. “He suggested that the real figure for the number of cases could be 10 to 20 times higher than the official figure. If he’s right, the... [More]”

Wondermark: Gaping at the VapidSo here we are, six weeks in to a lockdown of society and slowdown of the economy, due to a particularly nasty virus. We knew it was coming, just like Japan and California know that an earthquake is in the offing. Unlike for earthquakes, we didn’t really prepare too well for pandemics. How could you? Until one happens, you just look like Cassandra. Why waste all of that money and restrict all of those freedoms for something that might happen? We don’t know when, we don’t know how severe, so... [More]

I titled and started writing this article on March 6th.

A lot has changed since then.

Bernie’s lead evaporates

I wrote the following at the end of March.

Bernie is now almost mathematically unable to win the Democratic nomination.

Then this article got away from me again.

A lot has changed since then.

The Democrats were always going to nominate Biden.

The country needs Bernie right now.

In light of the massive changing of the facts on the ground engendered by COVID-19, Bernie should... [More]

The article An Open Letter to the Green Party About 2020 Election Strategy by Noam Chomsky, Bill Fletcher, Barbara Ehrenreich, Kathy Kelly, Ron Daniels, Leslie Cagan, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters, and Michael Albert (LA Progressive) gets to its point relatively quickly.

“If Clinton got Jill Stein’s Green votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Clinton would have won the election. Thus, the Green Party’s decision to run in those states, saying even that there was little or no difference between Trump and Clinton, seems to us to be a factor worthy of being removed from contested state dynamics, just like the Electoral College is a factor... [More]”

A few days ago, I read the article America Will Struggle After Coronavirus. These Charts Show Why. by David Leonhardt and Yaryna Serkez (NY Times), which has very nice charts showing a gaping inequality chasm in the United States. It’s really nicely done and drives the point home in a way not often discussed so openly in the mainstream media.

420% income increase for the 0.1%I was honestly wondering what to make of it, simply because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the NY Times to blame Trump and/or Russia for the whole debacle, even though their charts... [More]

An American, originally from New York City and now living in Vermont, mused in the blog post Why Has Germany Been Effective at Limiting Covid-19 Deaths? by Jason Kottke,

“I can’t be the only American whose response to the pandemic is to think seriously about moving to a country with a functioning government, good healthcare for everyone, and a real social safety net.”

No, thank you.

The world neither wants nor needs American refugees.[1]

They would almost certainly be the most entitled refugees the world has... [More]

I found this truly excellent comment by Remember-The-Future (Reddit) on /r/bestof—and it truly is one of the best things I’ve read on Reddit.

The entire comment is well-worth reading, but I’ve liberally selected the bits I liked the most.

A democracy cannot function without actual citizens.

“I think most people would be very unhappy if Sanders supporters put the blame where it truly belonged. Because the real problem with America is, and always has been, the quality of its people.

“[…] the truth is that there is no... [More]”

The article Why the Developing World Cannot Flatten the Curve with Coronavirus (COVID-19) and Beyond by J.P. Linstroth (CounterPunch) addresses the global inequality—not just that between classes/strata in first-world societies—that will doom many to the worst effects of COVID.

“when we speak of epidemics, and even pandemics like the Coronavirus (COVID-19), we must understand that medical care is unequal in our world today. We must understand that “power structures” control who gets medical care and who does not. We... [More]”

The excellent article The Art of the Phony Peace Deal by Nicky Reid (CounterPunch) expresses strong suspicions that the co-called peace deal with Afghanistan that should see the removal of US troops is instead chock-full of the standard caveats and conditions that US loads upon its vassal states. The only real fix for America’s hyper-militarism begins at home, with its people no longer supporting it.

“Look, dearest motherfuckers, I don’t like to be the killjoy here, I really don’t. But when you cut deals with an empire... [More]”

Much of the world is in an unprecedented lockdown that has completely changed the face of the global economy. The gossamer castle of globalization has been put on ice—perhaps temporarily, but hopefully for good. We can at least hope that the extremely unequal and cruel form that it had doesn’t return.

An unprepared populace

This is a particularly trying crisis for a world full of people who don’t even understand the minimal basics of how their world even works. The world works smoothly... [More]

The essay Hillary, Donald & Bernie: Three Who Would Make a Catastrophe by Nicky Reid (CounterPunch) is an extremely lucid and accurate summary of the 2016 and upcoming 2020 U.S. Presidential elections. Reid is an excellent and entertaining writer.[1]

The overall thrust is to present what she terms “conspiracy-theory-like” histories of the 2016 election, extrapolating to the 2020 election, which stars many of the same characters (e.g. Bernie and Trump). She starts with a warning that history isn’t fact and that entertaining... [More]

The 1-hour podcast episode The politics of nativism by Daniel Denvir (This is Hell!) is well-worth a listen[1]. Both Chuck Mertz (the host) and Daniel express themselves well. Here’s one thought from Daniel about the pervasiveness of both overt and implicit racism, from about 50 minutes into the podcast:

“I think it’s a typical failing of liberal analyses to define racism as bad thoughts in people’s heads. This is why liberal elites in wealthy suburbs whose entire lives are organized around providing segregated, wealthy, white... [More]”

The article Risking Lives in Endless Wars is Morally Wrong and a Strategic Failure by Jesse Jackson (CounterPunch) makes good points that are summarized in the title.

It also cites very specific numbers for war dead on the U.S. side in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.

“VA data reveals that almost two Afghan and Iraq veterans die by suicide each day on average. That adds to an estimated 7,300 veterans who have killed themselves since just 2009, after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, a number greater than the 7,012... [More]”

The article Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder’s ‘Facebook rival’ (BBC) briefly outlines Jimmy Wales’s new social network for sharing news, which “[…] will empower you to make your own choices about what content you are served, and to directly edit misleading headlines, or flag problem posts.” The article doesn’t contain nearly enough information to determine whether it has a hope of succeeding—or how it differs from RSS newsfeeds—though it mentions that it’s a subscription model.

At the end,... [More]

They are killing him on purpose. They are killing him either actively or through neglect. They are not concerned that he be able to stand trial in compos mentis. They are not concerned that whatever the hell they are doing to him in prison is destroying his mind and body even faster than having been locked in the Ecuadoran embassy for over 7 years did.

From Assange in Court: What I Saw by Craig Murray (Antiwar.com):

“Everybody in that court yesterday saw that one of the greatest journalists and most important dissidents of... [More]”

From the article The Defense Crack by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“We defend anyone accused of a crime. We do not refuse representation because the defendant is too wealthy, his crime too awful, his skin color too pale or his genitals too stiff. We couldn’t care less that the woke have deemed him too guilty to be worthy. We do not judge. That’s for the jury to do. We defend.

“The notion that criminal defense lawyers should become the advanced guard of morality and justice is one that appeals to those for whom such... [More]”