|
FOCUS | Attention Gary Johnson Hipsters: He Is Nuts |
 |
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
|
|
Friday, 23 September 2016 11:41 |
|
Pierce writes: "I have a problem with the fact that Gary Johnson can look at the existential problem of our time and paraphrase J.M. Keynes, saying, essentially, 'In the long run, we're all living on a cinder anyway.'"
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. (photo: George Frey/Getty)
Attention Gary Johnson Hipsters: He Is Nuts
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
23 September 16
Let's ignore climate change because the sun will swallow the earth anyway.
 ey, you know what? I know a lot of people who enjoy/enjoyed smoking weed, myself among them. There isn't a single one of them that I'd trust with the launch codes. So my problems with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson are familiar ones to me and they go beyond the fact that the Libertarian ticket should be turned on its head anyway. I also have a problem with the fact that Gary Johnson can look at the existential problem of our time and paraphrase J.M. Keynes, saying, essentially, "In the long run, we're all living on a cinder anyway."
Mother Jones brings us to happy fun time.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, takes what he calls the "long-term view" of climate change. "In billions of years," he said in 2011, "the sun is going to actually grow and encompass the Earth, right? So global warming is in our future." The former New Mexico governor did acknowledge that humans are making the world warmer in the near term, too—but he doesn't think the government should do much about it. In the same speech, he denounced "cap-and-trade taxation," said we "should be building new coal-fired plants," and argued that the "trillions" of dollars it would cost to combat climate change would be better spent on other priorities.
Between Johnson on climate change, and Jill Stein's conviction that a Republican congress will obstruct a Republican president, the argument for more political parties in this country is not faring well.
 |
|
FOCUS: Trump Is So Scared That He Wants Us to Dismantle the Constitution |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36573"><span class="small">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Washington Post</span></a>
|
|
Friday, 23 September 2016 10:48 |
|
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "Americans have always prided themselves on our no-person-left-behind ethic. We show willingness to sacrifice selfish needs to uphold a greater principle of community. In the face of adversity, real Americans choose courage over cowardliness. For them, compassion conquers fear. I miss that America."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (photo: Mercatus Center)
Trump Is So Scared That He Wants Us to Dismantle the Constitution
By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Washington Post
23 September 16
Cowards abandon principles at the first sign of danger.
 mericans have always prided themselves on our no-person-left-behind ethic. We show willingness to sacrifice selfish needs to uphold a greater principle of community. In the face of adversity, real Americans choose courage over cowardliness. For them, compassion conquers fear.
I miss that America.
Donald Trump’s xenophobic, paranoid nativist rhetoric was already alarming by now, a few weeks before the presidential election. But the way he and his campaign reacted after a bomb plot and explosion in New York City and New Jersey this past weekend represented an attempt to make a fearful retreat from core American values, like someone tossing children and the elderly off the lifeboat to have more food and water for himself and his cringing cronies.
Trump’s method for convincing people to go along with doing what they know is fundamentally anti-American — and just plain evil — involves scaring voters with a constant barrage of lies and exaggerations. The fact that this propaganda is so effective is especially sad, because the nation that once stood up to bullies like Hitler, Castro and Khrushchev is now falling into goose-step behind a home-grown bully who seems afraid of everything that isn’t part of his entitled life, who responds to his irrational fears the way a child does.
Trump’s remarks the past few days — using the suspected bomber to illustrate the need for restricting Muslims’ rights — demonstrate his inability to offer any evidence to support his rhetoric of fear. “This isn’t only a matter of terrorism, but also a matter of quality of life,” Trump said Wednesday in Toledo. “We want to make sure we’re only admitting those into our country who support our values and love — and I mean love — our people.” After the bombing, he said that “you’re going to profile people that maybe look suspicious” and that “we have no choice,” though he claims, implausibly, that doesn’t mean racial profiling.
Let’s just look at the logic. Suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami was a child when he came to the United States from Afghanistan; he has been a U.S. citizen since 2011. Trump’s “extreme vetting” would not have kept him out. His father, who professed anti-Taliban sentiments, contacted the FBI two years ago, naming his son as a possible terrorist, and authorities found nothing to arrest him for then. The really disturbing question we don’t want to ask is how someone raised in the United States for 16 years, who graduated from high school and attended community college here, can turn against all our values. But the answer will probably have nothing to do with Islam. “Lone wolf” terrorists of any religion usually turn out to be motivated by isolation or — as in the case of Dylann Roof, the accused mass murderer in last year’s church shooting in Charleston, S.C. — mental illness. Too often, we blame Islam when people of color are accused of a crime, and look for other excuses when whites are.
This fear-based thinking was echoed by Donald Trump Jr., who on Monday tweeted a photograph of a bowl of Skittles and the caption: “If I had a bowl of skittles and told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”
The tweet left me more worried about our educational problem than our refugee problem. Trump Jr. failed to capitalize Skittles, a brand name — surprising for someone whose whole career involves maintaining the Trump brand (or is that the “trump” brand?). The punctuation is wrong, leaving the message to start with a sentence fragment of the kind corrected in elementary school grammar classes. The photo of the Skittles was taken by a former refugee from Cyprus and used by Trump without payment, even though it was copyrighted. So Trump Jr. condemns refugees while exploiting them — and his math is as bad as his grammar. According to a report last week from the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, the odds of an American being killed in a terrorist attack by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion in any given year. That means you’d have to eat 68.7 million handfuls of Skittles before you found Trump Jr.’s poisoned one.
But his father wants us to cower under the beds based on those odds. And to protect us, he advocates exactly what the terrorists advocate: dismantling the Constitution. A few days after the New York and New Jersey bombings, Trump grumbled that freedom of expression and freedom of the press contributed to the spread of terrorism in the United States. He claims he supports freedom of the press, but he also stated that we should not allow certain people to sell magazines: “Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech,’” Trump complained. “These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
Trump continued his attack on the Constitution by announcing Wednesday that he’d like to see a return of the “stop and frisk” policing policy to end violence in black communities. “They see somebody that’s suspicious, they will profile,” Trump said. “Look what’s going on: Do we really have a choice? We’re trying to be so politically correct in our country, and this is only going to get worse.” In other words, he endorses unreasonable searches without probable cause based on the color of one’s skin. The theory seems to be, “If you’re black, you’re probably guilty of something.” Justifying his stance, he cited his ally Rudy Giuliani’s policy as New York mayor: “In New York City, it was so incredible, the way it worked.” But the New York Civil Liberties Union found that 12 years of stop-and-frisk had little effect on crime, managing only to anger black residents, who were disproportionately targeted. Even more to the point, a federal judge found the policy unconstitutional.
All of this hateful talk from one of the two people with a realistic chance of becoming the next president has an effect. According to a report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, there were about 260 hate crimes against Muslims last year — the most since 2001, and a 78 percent increase from 2014. Researches have concluded that there might be a “Trump effect” in which his anti-Muslim rhetoric encourages hate crimes against Muslims. In the days immediately after Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entry to the United States, they found an overall 87.5 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims.
Most Americans are familiar with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous 1933 “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” inaugural address. But the full quote was an even starker warning: “Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Fear, Roosevelt said, causes us to retreat from our duty rather than advance our causes.
This year, we are in danger of retreating from building the America we’re all supposed to be proud of, one that protects all and offers equal opportunity to all. The fact that the fear that sends some of us scuttling away is “unreasoning” and “unjustified” makes us cowards. Cowards abandon principles at the first sign of danger and look for witches to burn — or foreigners to blame. The common wisdom is that we are at our most divisive time since the Civil War, divided by differences in starkly contrasting political beliefs. That’s not true. We aren’t divided by political ideology as much as split between those blindly hoping for a savior and those rationally selecting a leader.
Compassion and courage are what makes America great, not hate and fear.
|
|
|
It's Actually Much Worse Than Kaepernick Says It Is |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
|
|
Friday, 23 September 2016 08:40 |
|
Ash writes: "The onslaught of police violence in America is actually far worse than Colin Kaepernick and his growing group of player supporters may realize."
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick greets fans. His recent protests have garnered accolades from community leaders. (photo: NinersLive Web)
It's Actually Much Worse Than Kaepernick Says It Is
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
23 September 16
 he onslaught of police violence in America is actually far worse than Colin Kaepernick and his growing group of player supporters may realize.
Kaepernick and, before him, NBA stars like Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Michael Jordan – in addition to, more recently, the entire WNBA Indiana Fever women's basketball team and countless other WNBA players on several teams – have done a remarkable and historic job of forcing public debate on the issue of police violence.
Far from overstating the scope of the problem, these young men and women often struggle to put into perspective how big and pervasive the problem really is.
According to The Guardian UK’s ongoing count, U.S. police have already killed 790 people this year alone, as of this writing. Last year the total number exceeded 1200. Yes, absolutely, African Americans are killed in disproportionate numbers. But the killing is by no means limited to blacks. Native Americans are in fact the hardest hit proportionally, according to the Guardian’s analysis. Blacks are second, based on a per capita breakdown. In terms of total numbers, the largest category is whites: 387 so far this year.
However, the statistics do little to convey the historic magnitude of the killing. These numbers are totally unprecedented. Nothing like this is happening anywhere else in the world.
The video depicting police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stalking and killing unarmed Terence Crutcher has been called shocking, disturbing, unacceptable, and many other things. It is also a stark illustration of how police training creates the conditions for often-unjustified use of lethal force.
Watching half a dozen police officers with guns drawn and aimed stalk an unarmed man with his hands raised across a parking lot, ultimately shooting and killing him, the rational mind screams, “Why?!” It’s the training, you see.
Right now the spotlight of public attention in the Crutcher killing is focused on Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby. But Tulsa police trainers and policy makers should be under scrutiny as well. Shelby, a white, former convenience store clerk and the other officers with her as they confronted Terence Crutcher were acting largely on their training.
The military-inspired, lethal-weapons-at-the-forefront, physically confrontational way of interacting with their subject was all scripted by senior training officials. The trainers are just as guilty as the shooters, in Tulsa as in most of the police-involved use of lethal force incidents across the country. Yes, the police officers see this as acceptable conduct. It’s what they are trained to do.
In effect, Terence Crutcher was killed for not following commands to the satisfaction of the police officers confronting him. That is a common thread in many of the shooting incidents cited in the Guardian study. In the minds of police officers, police trainers, departments, and government officials all the way up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court, this has become an acceptable rationale for what amounts to extrajudicial summary execution. The problem is huge and systemic.
For their part, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Loretta Lynch continues to launch federal investigations but has yet to file charges in any U.S. police killing. There is no indication at this point that the Justice Department will ever act on a police killing on President Obama’s watch. Regardless of the circumstances.
Don’t be convinced for a moment that the young athletes now “standing up by kneeling down” are making too much of this. It’s not as bad as they say it is, it’s much worse.
The next time you watch a major sporting event, remember to cheer for the players with renewed respect. They’ve earned it.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
|
|
The Chelsea Bombing Shows That Americans Are Getting a Better Perspective on Terrorism |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
|
|
Thursday, 22 September 2016 13:57 |
|
Rich writes: "Cable news covers terrorist brush fires ... the same way it covers the weather, crime, shootings, and just about everything else: Every potential cataclysm is a 9/11, a Katrina, a Sandy Hook until proven otherwise."
Police at scene of Chelsea bombing. (photo: Getty)
The Chelsea Bombing Shows That Americans Are Getting a Better Perspective on Terrorism
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
22 September 16
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: the reaction to the New York and New Jersey bombings, the presidential polls, and Jimmy Fallon’s softball Trump interview.
 riting in the wake of this weekend’s bomb attack in Manhattan, the media critic Jack Shafer argued that alarmist coverage of the story turned a “brush fire” into “a mighty conflagration,” and is part of what’s helped make Americans unable “to place pressure-cooker bombs of the type that [Ahmad] Rahami is alleged to have built in their proper perspective.” Is he right?
Of course Shafer is right. Cable news covers terrorist brush fires, as he calls them, the same way it covers the weather, crime, shootings, and just about everything else: Every potential cataclysm is a 9/11, a Katrina, a Sandy Hook until proven otherwise. It is, of course, serious news that lone wolves with seemingly jihadist aspirations savaged victims in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota over the weekend. But it is not necessarily the apocalypse, or certain evidence that America is under terrorist attack. In these latest instances, we may be dealing instead with unhinged assailants looking for ideological rationales for their violent sprees. If only all terrorists were as stupid as Rahami, who left so many clues to his identity that he could be rounded-up with remarkable dispatch.
Where I part with Shafer is in his conviction that Americans are unable to put Rahami’s small-time infliction of violence into a proper perspective. Maybe more and more Americans are gaining that perspective. The news of the bombing did not cause widespread panic in New York, and the story faded fairly fast from center stage nationwide. Part of this was that no one was killed, good news for humanity but bad news for cable news, which doesn’t know how to keep exploiting a crime scene when there are no lost lives to be milked for sentimental effect, no surviving relatives to be interviewed on camera. The quick fade may also be because the public is simply inured to most violence at this point. Nothing short of an Orlando or San Bernardino can grab the attention of a citizenry numbed by the daily overload of shootings in a nation where there are more guns than people.
Another reason for the story’s short half-life was the predictable responses of both presidential candidates. Donald Trump says that the Rahamis at loose in America can be stopped if we overcome political correctness, legalize ethnic profiling, and stamp out ISIS through magical means yet to be specified. Clinton talks about gathering the facts before lashing out indiscriminately at Muslims. We’ve heard it all before from both of them, and we are as numb to their pat responses to terrorist brush fires as we are to the latest bulletin of a mad gunman at the mall.
Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls has dropped considerably over the past month or so, both nationally and in some battleground states. Is it too early to panic?
It is never too early to panic, and I panic about a Trump victory all the time. It was inevitable we’d get to that post–Labor Day point when the Times would run a story about all the Zabar’s shoppers, a.k.a. Times readers, in full stereotypical dread about the election. Instead of kvetching to reporters, these Democrats might be better advised to urge any lackadaisical millennials in their families to vote — or bribe them to do so — and not for Gary Johnson.
I have a theory about the election that is probably as wrong as every other theory, but here it is: At this late date, there isn’t a single Clinton voter who can be persuaded to vote for Trump, and there isn’t a single Trump voter who can be persuaded to vote for Clinton. I also have another theory that is not a theory but a fact: People don’t change, especially as they hit 70. Trump is going to continue to be a bigot and a bully with no qualifications to be president or even any intellectual curiosity about the issues at play in a presidency. Clinton is going to continue to be an earnest, plodding representative of the status quo, presiding over an incompetent campaign that can’t even come clean in a timely fashion about her bout with the eminently treatable ailment of mild pneumonia.
The voters know these candidates, two of the most overfamiliar personalities in American life, all too well. The only question is whose voters will show up on November 8. Demographics and poll numbers suggest there are more Clinton voters than Trump voters. But are there more Clinton voters than Trump voters who are motivated to get to the polls? Or if not, does it really matter, given that the Democrats have (we keep being reassured) a crackerjack, well-financed get-out-the-vote operation and the Trump campaign has almost no ground game whatsoever? All the smart money, all the savviest poll analysts, almost all the political pros (including those of the Republican persuasion) say that Clinton will win. They also said that Trump couldn’t win the GOP primary. If you are a Clinton supporter sleeping soundly at night, you know something I don’t.
Watching Jimmy Fallon’s softball Donald Trump interview, one viewer noted that Fallon seems to have created a show aiming only “to make wacky celebrity clips go viral online.” Fallon, seemingly in agreement, has responded to criticism by asking simply, “Have you seen my show?” Was Jimmy Fallon just doing his job?
Fallon was doing his job as a late-night talk-show host as he sees it — to generate lighthearted, late-night comedic fun. This did not stop him from looking like a fool toadying before a racist thug. Which raises the larger question: Can entertainers engage in business as usual when someone like Trump, who threatens the Constitution and national security, has a real chance of securing the White House?
Samantha Bee is now arguing that not just Fallon but Saturday Night Live, which enlisted Trump as a host, have contributed to his rise. Further complicating the matter is that both Fallon’s Tonight Show and SNL are on NBC, which promoted Trump for years on The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice. NBC is also the network that fielded the notoriously unbalanced prime-time forum on national security where the Today show host Matt Lauer roughed up Clinton but not Trump, and it’s the network that allowed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to promote Trump shamelessly during the crucial early primary campaign. (The MSNBC breakfast-show hosts turned on Trump later, but, according to a report by Dylan Byers of CNN this week, are cozying up to him again.) In all of these cases, it was lightweight entertainers or talking heads, not journalists, who allowed Trump to preen in the best light. It’s not in their job description to do otherwise. Can we hold them responsible?
To a small extent, sure. And we can also blame cable-news networks that have lavished airtime on Trump when he doesn’t merit it (while at times neglecting Clinton when she does), and we can blame journalists who were slow to challenge Trump’s incessant lying (though most major news organizations have been crying foul from the start). But what we don’t want to face is the fact that there are millions of Americans who know exactly who Trump is and want to vote for him regardless. Few, if any, of them likely watch Fallon or SNL or Morning Joe. The media didn’t create these voters, and they are not going to deter them now.
|
|
