Current Affairs
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Moral Parity
The former president recognized that the fact of an investigation was far more important than the results. It worked with the Benghazi investigation, about which House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was accidentally honest, and in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, which didn’t produce charges but did hobble her presidential campaign. By the time Trump
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Of Groupthinks & Cognitive Moments
All of us to a certain extent have slid into groupthink at one time or another. We all had to go through middle school, didn't we? We've all felt the pressure to conform our thinking to whatever were the group norms then or at other times in our life. So what is doing the thinking
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Thoughts on the Kavanagh Affair
When he was first nominated, I saw Kavanagh much as I saw Gorsuch: an establishment figure who leans conservative, and thought that's what you're going to get because clueless establishment Democrats allowed Donald Trump to win the election. But better someone like him than someone like Harriet Myers or Clarence Thomas, or someone else who's
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What’s the Difference between Mandela and Che?
Various notable individuals have lauded Guevara as a hero; for example, Nelson Mandela referred to him as "an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom",while Jean-Paul Sartre described him as "not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age". Others who have expressed their admiration include authors Graham Greene, who remarked that Guevara "represented the idea
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Verax: Loners Telling Truths
My two cents on the Snowden leak: Of course, I'm among those who admire his courage, and I am temperamentally inclined to side with whoever takes it upon himself to subvert the technocracy. But it seems a quixotic gesture, and one that is not likely to change anything. It's too bad that the Tea Party
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Quote of the Day: David Graeber
What the 1% are is, effectively, a ruling class, they represent the point where concentrated wealth can be turned into political power. National politics in the US has been reduced to battles between different factions of that 1%. This is not just a traditional Marxist bourgeoisie though—and this is where I think it dovetails with
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Outside Game, Inside Game
From "Will Wall Steet Be Punished?" by Andrew Leonard: But let’s not get too excited. What’s money to Wall Street? The $400 million or so spent by Wall Street in support of Romney is a rounding error for the financial sector. If anything, the amount Wall Street spends on lobbying is likely to rise in
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The Sacred Polity
"Was anybody else offended by…can you put your hand on your heart?" Beck said. "It's the national anthem!" He said he had shushed his son and told him to put his hand on his heart when Christina Aguilera was singing the song. "I was really offended by the sports players that were just hanging on
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The Human Future
I bring up the subject of the singularity from time to time, and it usually gets ignored. But when you look ahead twenty years the challenges it poses to the idea of the 'human' dwarf everything else. Outside of science fiction that most people see as mere entertainment, not much is said or written about