12.01.2018

Weekend


Economics

Cutting taxes doesn't necessarily spur an economy and lead to job growth. It failed miserably in Kansas.

















Politics

Stumbling and Mumbling: Against Debate - I have to agree. Televised debates are crappy as hell and favor the showman-car salesman-emotional types more than thoughtful-intelligent types.


People

The Joy of Evil

Taleb recently tweeted..
So our level of evil is near constant but as we progress we open up more avenues for that evil to show itself and technology will always be leveraged to make that same level of evil more destructive?

Related....  Snooker players throwing matches - Chinese pair banned in snooker corruption scandal and Chess players cheating


Why They Hate Us

CNN fires contributor Marc Lamont Hill for criticising Israel - Talk about being politically correct....

Glenn Greenwald on CNN, Hill, and free speech - CNN Submits to Right-Wing Outrage Mob

Juan Cole is pissed about it,  The Bottomless Dishonesty of CNN on Palestine and Marc Lamont Hill Firing
.. "Hill admittedly does not think a two-state solution is any longer plausible. But what he was calling for was for the people living in the Occupied territories to be full citizens, and to have these citizenship rights pertain to everyone living between the river and the sea. He did not say anything about Israelis not having equal rights."
.. "CNN does a criminally negligent job of covering Palestine, giving us little better than Israeli propaganda. For the most part, it shapes the presentation of the story by simply ignoring it. But it also shapes the story with a systematically biased language intended to demonize the Palestinians and exonerate Israeli crimes against humanity."
(read the whole thing)

Medicare for All

Democrats Taking Key Leadership Jobs Have Pocketed Millions From Pharma: Top House Republican also received more than $1 million from drugmakers since 2007.


Bush I - RIP

George H.W. Bush -  RIP - The last R I supported.

George H.W. Bush was arguing against the settlements in 1991. Obama was arguing against the settlements as late as 2015. Trump has given in, Israel and AIPAC won on both the settlement and the Jerusalem issue.  Still, the win may lead to a loss as now the world sees a two state solution is no longer viable making Israels future as a democracy in question. - Haaretz: from Bush to Trump: How the GOP Evolved on Israel
Israel represents a specific foreign policy issue that highlights how much the Republican Party has changed since the days of Bush’s leadership. As president, he was willing to clash with Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington in ways that are impossible to imagine in the current GOP.

In 1991, he fought hard against the request of a right-wing Israeli government, led by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to receive billions in loan guarantees from the United States. Bush demanded an obligation from Shamir that the money would not be used for housing in the settlements in the West Bank. Shamir refused, and Bush urged Congress not to give Israel the guarantees.

At the height of the clash over the issue, Bush went after the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. He held a press conference in the White House and said: “We’re up against very strong and effective groups that go up to Capitol Hill. I hear today there were something like a thousand lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of this question.” Referring to himself, Bush then added that “we’ve only got one lonely little guy down here doing it.”

The only Republican in D.C. who would make such a statement today is the libertarian Sen. Rand Paul, an isolationist who otherwise has nothing in common with the foreign policy views of the 41st president.





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