Republicans Got Nothing…, Tom Levenson, Balloon Juice, August 13th, 2014
The Republican party has a deep, long term problem. The GOP is wrong on every major policy question. Economics and recession? Wrong. Environment, climate change, public health? Wrong. Health care? Wrong. Income inequality? Wrong. Tax policy? A joke. Foreign policy? Explosively wrong. Infrastructure investment? Wrong. Border security and immigration? Comically (if there weren’t so often tragic consequences) wrong. Race in America? Viciously wrong. Industrial safety? Wrong. Regulation? Ask the phosphate loving folks of Toledo. Scientific research? Wrong….and so on. No links for now because I’m in the middle of day-job urgency, but they’re all there. For now, the take-away is that the major policy options that are the central pillars of the Republican party’s approach to governance have a track record, and to a startling degree (not to folks here, I know) those options have failed
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One last note: the basic GOP approach to elections: to deny the franchise; to construct the mechanics of elections to achieve near-certainty of result; and to create a fictional simulacrum of the media to make reality harder and harder to distinguish — all these are the tools of authoritarians, of one-party states, of dictators. Which is to say, this is the work of an organization committing treason against the ideal of American democracy.
Families of Afghan Civilians Killed by US/NATO Cannot get Justice, Bruce Pannier, Informed Comment, August 14, 2014
“Thousands of civilians have been killed or injured since 2001,” Griffiths said, “but they have no access to the military justice system of the countries — and we’re talking specifically about the U.S. in our report — and so they have nowhere to turn. In nine out of the 10 cases that Amnesty International investigated…[the families or victims] said that they had not been interviewed by any military investigators at any stage.”
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“There was a harrowing case in September 2012,” Griffiths said. “A large group of women were collecting firewood in the mountains in Noorlam Valley in Laghman Province and they were hit by an air strike. Seven women were killed and seven were seriously injured…. Immediately after the attack, there was no acknowledgement that civilians had been killed and so villagers had to resort to taking the bodies of these women and girls to the provincial governor’s office to show them, to give them proof of what had happened.
“And while the U.S. and ISAF reportedly investigated the case and gave an apology,” Griffiths continued, “there was no thorough investigation. They did not make an effort to meet with the victims and their families.”
Once again, Roy at alicublog has identified the stupid, Helmut Monotreme, I Have Strong Opinions, August 8, 2014
Today, David French of the National Review says:”Why can’t so many liberals understand the pure evil of Islamic jihad?”
Why am I not worried about Islamic Jihad? Because I’m not surprised by it. Because it didn’t come fully formed out of nowhere. Because western foreign policy has been all about imperialism and oil in the middle east and fuck everything else, especially the welfare of the people that live there for nearly a century now. Because what the fuck did they think would happen when they redrew the map time and time again for imperial dick waving, and propped up the leaders in the middle east that that gave the west the best access to oil and overthrew anyone who even thought about taking a bigger share of the oil money for themselves or the people whose ground it was being pumped out of? Because the only thing the west has been happier to do than buy oil from religious fundamentalists in the middle east is to sell them advanced weapons. Because the west seems have been using “Heart of Darkness” as a how-to manual for foreign policy since the days of Columbus.
Anne Manne and the “Asshole Effect”, Sarah Burnside, The Baffler, August 13, 2014
In a recent article in Aeon, Eric Schwitzgebel suggests that in order to fully understand the problem of “moral ignorance,” we need “a theory of jerks.” In her new book The Life of I, Australian writer Anne Manne gives us one: late capitalism breeds jerks, rewards jerkism, and fosters contempt for the non-jerkish.
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Manne’s core argument is compelling, though: she contends that “free-market fundamentalism” plays a largely unacknowledged role in the phenomenon of modern narcissism. This trait is not maladaptive, then, but rather “a quality required for survival in the hyper-competitive paradise of the new capitalism.” Manne names Ayn Rand’s Objectivism as an “ideology of narcissism” and posits that the “neoliberal ideal,” an unencumbered individual with a desire for consumer goods, a drive to earn, and a disregard for the needs of others, looks not unlike a classic narcissist.
