I am tardy with this cuz I was up late watching the returns. But in light of the outcome, I think this is a good essay.

The Balance of Power

No Jump today!

So how you doin’?  😀

I’ve got 3 articles for ya this morning from my weekend reading.

First up, an excellent speech on the Middle East that is right on target:

The Collapse of Order in the Middle East

So many great paragraphs in it, but here’s a couple:

“U.S. policy should encourage the nations of the Middle East to develop effective political, economic, and military strategies to defend and advance their own interests, not rush to assume responsibility for doing this for them. Part of such a policy adjustment toward emphasizing the primary responsibility of the countries of the region for their own security would involve weighing the opinions of our partners in the region much more heavily in our decisions than they have in since 9/11. Had we listened to our Gulf Arab friends, we would not have invaded Iraq in 2003. Iraq would still be balancing Iran. It would not be in chaos and it would still have a border with Syria. The United States needs to return to respecting the views of regional powers about the appropriate response to regional threats, resisting the impulse to substitute military campaign plans made in Washington for strategies conceived by those with the greatest stake in their success.

The need for restraint extends to refraining from expansive rhetoric about our values or attempting to compel others to conform to them. In practice, we have insisted on democratization only in countries we have invaded or that were otherwise falling apart, as Egypt was during the first of the two “non coups” it suffered. When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failure but catastrophic failure. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.”

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I have 3 articles for your perusal this morning.

First, an accurate treatise on the state of ‘we the people’ in this country:

So Long, Liberty: 10 Ways Americans Have Lost Their Rights

Our most fundamental rights-to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-are under assault. But the adversary is Big Wealth, not Big Government, as conservatives like to claim…

(snip)

These changes didn’t just happen. Wealthy individuals and corporations made it happen – and they’re still at it. Meanwhile, Corporate America’s wholesale theft of your individual liberties has been rebranded as a fight for … the corporation’s individual liberty.

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Well, I had drain issues so I spent most of my time on that, but I do have one article for y’all. It’s a long one, but it’s a good one.

Apocalypse Now: Seriously, It’s Time for a Major Rethink About Liberal and Progressive Politics

So I am sorry to share my deep-seated opinion, which should jibe with anyone who is paying attention. After decades of engagement in progressive politics and media, it is very clear to me: we progressives, liberals, common-sense people, are losing badly to the conservative business state, the tyranny of massively expanding tech companies, theocratic right-wing forces and pervasive militarism, home and abroad. By virtually every measure, things are getting worse. And things are trending much, much worse in ways we can easily measure, like inequality, climate, militarization of police forces, etc., and in ways that are more psychological and emotional.

No jumping today. Just one good read.

So how you doin’?  😀

Well, I have only one article for you to ponder this morning, and I feel pretty vindicated in light of it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone among liberals.

Obama Is a Republican

They were not wrong. In my opinion, Obama has governed as a moderate conservative-essentially as what used to be called a liberal Republican before all such people disappeared from the GOP. He has been conservative to exactly the same degree that Richard Nixon basically governed as a moderate liberal, something no conservative would deny today. (Ultra-leftist Noam Chomsky recently called Nixon “the last liberal president.”)

No jumping this morning! So how you doin’?  😀

I have 3 things for you all this morning.

First, this should be a great interview, and it will be live streamed. See the link for more info:

Lawrence Lessig interviews Edward Snowden

Institutional corruption and the NSA: Edward Snowden will be interviewed (via videoconference) by Lawrence Lessig about the NSA in a time of war, and whether and how the agency has lost its way.

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I have 3 articles for your perusal today.

The first, just lovely:

California Aquifers Poisoned by Fracking While State’s Water Shortage Becomes Grim

In the midst of the worst drought in California’s history comes news that hydrofracking operations are polluting the state’s dwindling water supplies.

In July, during the height of the drought, state regulators halted operations at 11 injection wells used to dispose of wastewater used in hydraulic fracturing. The state found that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation. The Environmental Protection agency had ordered the state to send them a report regarding the situation within 60 days.

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Today I have 2 articles for your perusal.

First up is an interview with Noam Chomsky. It covers a variety of issues and is long but well worth the read:

Chomsky: U.S. Spawned a Fundamentalist Frankenstein in the Mideast

For decades now, Noam Chomsky has been widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive (linguist, philosopher, social and political critic) and the leading US dissident since the Vietnam War. Chomsky has published over 100 books and thousands of articles and essays, and is the recipient of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees by some of the world’s greatest academic institutions. His latest book, Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013, has just been published by Haymarket Books. On the occasion of the release of his last book, Chomsky gave an exclusive and wide-ranging interview to C.J. Polychroniou for Truthout, parts of which will also appear in The Sunday Eleftherotypia, a major national Greek newspaper.

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For this Monday, I give you a few articles that I read over the weekend.

First, an excellent Op-Ed call out of the Catholic Church and their rampant hypocrisy:

The Church’s Gay Obsession

Their moralizing is selective, bigoted and very sad. It’s also self-defeating, because it’s souring many American Catholics, a majority of whom approve of same-sex marriage, and because the workers who’ve been exiled were often exemplars of charity, mercy and other virtues as central to Catholicism as any guidelines for sex. But their hearts didn’t matter. It was all about their loins. Will the church ever get away from that?

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I read this last weekend and it was an interesting article, but it was also a piece of beautiful writing. Enjoy!

Intelligent People All Have One Thing In Common: They Stay Up Later Than You

There’s an electricity in the moon. A pulse, a magic, an energy. A bewitching entrancement unlike that of the sun.

The moon is for things unseen, things done in the shadows and beneath the fog. Under bridges and beneath bed sheets – it’s for wild hearts and unconcerned minds. It’s where plans are made in dark alleyways and secrets revealed under the soft haze of light coming through the cracks of closed shutters.

It’s when fugitives escape and kids run away. It’s when girls lose their virginities on torn leather seats and boys get into trouble. It’s when the suffering take their lives and the lonely seek comfort.

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So, I posted this short rant on my Facebook wall yesterday and I thought it might be a decent discussion piece:

only humans could be arrogant enough to think that we could destroy or damage large parts of earth’s ecosystems and natural defenses and not manage to change the earth detrimentally. we have paved over, removed, and added things to the land, air, and water, which, even when naturally occurring, do not occur at the rates and levels we have contributed to them.

the earth may have had natural rhythms and periods of warming and cooling, but that’s when left alone with what earth had on its own. what we’ve done to it over the past couple centuries in the name of making our lives easier and some of us richer, cannot – absolutely cannot – have not had any effect. i don’t need any friggin graphs, charts, or studies to tell me that. i just need to not be stupid to know it.

only humans could be arrogant and stupid enough to believe that all we’ve done to it would not make a detrimental difference in the earth’s well being. arrogant and stupid, that about sums us up.

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Ok, I’m sick right now, so I’m going pretty light on this one. I can’t believe I missed it when it was written some 13 odd years ago, but it’s well worth the read as it’s still pertinent. Yeah yeah, I know it’s the Onion, but it’s right on the mark!

God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

NEW YORK-Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

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