Trump to America Today: Democracy is for Suckers and Losers

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I gotta tell you: I watched Trump's appearance today in the White House press room with enough burning schadenfreude to power a small city. As much as I wanted to be appalled and saddened and enraged, mostly what I thought was "Suffer, motherfucker." If Biden ends up winning, as almost everyone seems to believe he will, this excruciating ballot count will have been worth it because Donald Fucking Trump was dragged down into the shit he created, Continue Reading...

Film Review: My Psychedelic Love Story

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Flashback: Timothy Leary’s Trip Down Movie Memory Lane The 34th annual AFI Fest is arguably Los Angeles’ biggest and best film festival and this year it is taking place virtually through October 22 (see: https://fest.afi.com/). The closing world premiere of the American Film Institute’s yearly fete is the Showtime documentary My Psychedelic Love Story, wherein Timothy Leary - the High Priest of LSD – meets Errol Morris, the High Priest of Continue Reading...

Sudan’s Revolutionaries insist Israel Deal must be ratified by Future Parliament, as Trump’s Strong-Arm Tactics threaten its Democracy

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Donald Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on speaker phone in which he breathlessly announced that Sudan had agreed to normalize relations with Israel, following on Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year. Egypt and Jordan had signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago. Except that as usual, Trump got over his skis. Here’s the wrinkle. The whole Sudanese government Continue Reading...

Film Review: Totally Under Control

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Totalitarian Totally Out of Control: New Doc Chronicles Covid “Response,” AKA Trump’s Genocidal Negligent Homicide of the American People The cutting edge nonfiction film Totally Under Control co-directed by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger documents the Trump regime’s tragedy of errors and terrors in its catastrophic reactionary reaction to the coronavirus. Indeed, Control is a veritable cinematic Nuremberg Continue Reading...

MAGA Cretins Worship at the Church of the Manly Grifter

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One weird thing that burbled up through the miasma of the coverage of a virus-shedding President Donald Trump releasing himself from Walter Reed Medical Center to go forth and infect others is a literal - as in what the word "literal" means - desire by some of Trump's most fervid fanatics that they be healed by his blood. As fucked up as this sounds, it's not hyperbole. It's not interpretation. It's what they fucking said. Truculent doom gnome Continue Reading...

Coronavirus Exposes the Value of Human Capital

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COVID-19’s multi-pronged attack Not only is the coronavirus assaulting our bodies, killing thousands, which is bad enough. It is also attacking our social and economic structures. Scientists have found that once it enters the body, COVID-19 is capable of attacking almost any organ, with devastating consequences.  It is doing something very similar to our economic systems. Your money or your life During the spring and summer of 2020, Continue Reading...

Film Review: The Hunt

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The Day of the Hunters: Must We Burn Blumhouse? On August 9, 2019 the commander-in-tweet attacked “Liberal Hollywood” for having “great Anger and Hate! …The movie coming out [which] is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence and then try to blame others." The movie in question was The Hunt and the day following Trump’s Twitter tantrum Universal Pictures pulled the Blumhouse Production from its scheduled Continue Reading...

9/11 Unity Is a Fond Remembrance from the Past That Never Happened

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Look, far be it from me to shit all over your 9/11 unity circle jerk, but let's stop fucking pretending that we all held hands and sang, "Give Peace a Chance" after the terrorist attacks of that day. At best, most of us on the left held our breath and waited to see if George W. Bush would fuck up the response. We were not optimistic that the dumb motherfucker who had spent a good chunk of his first 8 months in office praying about whether or Continue Reading...

On Labor Day, Trump’s Mismanagement of Pandemic has left 27 Million Unemployed and Turning to Food Banks

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It is a sad Labor Day, in the shadow of the Trump Pandemic. Over a fourth of workers are afraid of losing their jobs because of the pandemic, up from 15% last year this time, according to Gallup. That is, the anxiety over joblessness as almost doubled. Many are much more worried, as well, about having their wages cut. Workers are more anxious than at any time since the Great Recession began to taper off nine years ago. Some 27 million US workers Continue Reading...

Trump and Netanyahu’s Celebration of Failure

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The announcement of normalized relations between the UAE and Israel comes as no surprise for Palestinians. The normalization by several Gulf States, led by the Emirates, and Israel has been ongoing for a long period of time, under the table in a way, and this brings it to the surface. In analyzing, I would say it was brought to the surface at this specific time for a very concrete reason. And that’s Trump-Netanyahu’s failure to move forward on Continue Reading...

Book Review: The Chequered Brilliance by Jairam Ramesh

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I read Jairam Ramesh’s The Chequered Brilliance practically non-stop, despite its intimidating length, mainly because of its lucid style, impressive logic and sound chapterisation. As I finished reading, I was reminded of Thomas Carlyle’s (1795-1881) words: “No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” Of course, this view of history is not cent per cent right. One is reminded of Pierre Goubert’s Louis Continue Reading...

The Real Trick Behind Trump’s Executive Actions: Pass the Buck

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If there is one thing that is consistent about President Donald Trump, who is really just a brain-damaged hog whose squeals can only be understood by other brain-damaged pigs, it's that he refuses to take blame whenever he's wrong. It's not that he never apologizes, like the world's shittiest tween, but he also works mightily to make sure someone else is to blame for his transgressions, his crimes, and his evil (yet dumb) schemes. And his most Continue Reading...

Will Trump’s Maximum Pressure on UNSC against Lifting Iran Arms Embargo Backfire Big Time?

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Peter Hutchison at AFP reports that the Trump administration may be set to shoot itself in the foot at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) next week by pressing for an over-ambitious resolution against lifting the arms embargo on Iran. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by the US and the other permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany involved a set of bargains. Iran had to give up 80 percent of its civilian nuclear Continue Reading...

After Beinart – What American Progressive Jews Can Do Now

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Reaction to the essay and op-ed by Peter Beinart has been predictable. The usual suspects who support a so-called "two-state solution" -- in other words, any two-stater who doesn't believe in an equitable division of Israel/Palestine's geography and resources into two sovereign states, each with a strong military capacity-- are gnashing their gums (after spending decades gnashing their teeth). Those on the center-right and right have accused Continue Reading...

Playing It Safe: So Far, MSNBC’s The Reid Out is the Same Old, Same Old

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So far, MSNBC’s “new” program presented by Joy Reid is arguably to the public discourse what the 1950’s The Donna Reed Show was to housewifery: nice, middle of the road, safe, conventional television. Of course, one was a TV sitcom and the other is a news-oriented program, but the main difference between the two eponymous performers is in form, not content. While Reed was lily white, Reid is Black, and as such at this time of urban uprisings she Continue Reading...