So: Trump appoints his son’s wedding planner to head NYC’s massive federal housing agency. She has no experience in housing; she falsely claims to have a law degree; she falsely claims to have gone to Yale. This is very much in line with most of Trump’s appointments. People look at the series of gormless courtiers and fox-in-henhouse given important posts and say, “What’s going on?” I think two things are happening. First, Trump is trying to turn the US into a thuggish authoritarian state run by a corrupt family (such as Kazakhstan), with incompetent kinfolk and sleazy cronies taking over

The “historic” appearances of James Comey Chameleon and Jefferson Davis Andersonville Sessions before a Senate committee have come and gone, leaving us … pretty much where we were before. Trump was made to look stupid and thuggish (not exactly front-page news); his GOP apologists and enablers employed even more ludicrous justifications for said stupidity and thuggery (“Hey, the kid is still green, he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong — not that he did do anything wrong, mind you.”); media outlets reaped tons of ad revenue; twittery was rampant on every side. We all had a jolly good time.

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Like many others, I rejoiced through the night at the astounding UK election results, which seemed to presage a much needed, much longed-for paradigm shift in the poisonous bipartisan neoliberal consensus that has imprisoned the politics of the UK (and US) for so many years. But this morning finds us in what might be an even worse situation, as a wounded — and woefully incompetent — Theresa May limps to the palace to form a government that will be utterly at the mercy of the right-wing sectarian cranks of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist

As a father concerned about the impact of the daily dose of dreadful news that my children must contend with, I am in full sympathy with Donald Trump Jr. as he frets about his children seeing a disturbing picture of their Grandpa made by a comedian. As he put it: Donald Trump Jr. And I’m counting down having to explain it to my 8 and 10 year olds who I’m sure will see/hear about it at school. Seeing this tweet, I hastened to commune with Mr. Trump’s concern about his children’s feelings, and the upsetting things they must see and

I think anyone who takes an objective view of the abysmal record of failure on the part of the official who as Home Secretary and Prime Minister has been in charge of UK counterterrorism policy for many years must agree with the declaration of Theresa May following the London attacks: “enough is enough.” Well said, Mrs. May. We must repudiate these failed policies and all those who have pushed them, of whatever party or ideological stripe. On both the micro level of singular acts of terrorism by individuals and the macro level of geopolitical strategy — such as the close

Right after the Paris attacks in November 2015, I wrote two articles about the historical context and the continuing policies that led to the nightmare. (One of articles was denounced in Parliament by the prime minister and others.) Unfortunately, the articles are still entirely applicable today, with only small amendment: substituting “Manchester” for “Paris.” I very much fear they will be applicable for a long time to come. I’ve put them together below. I. Age of Despair: Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence We, the West, overthrew Saddam by violence. We overthrew Gadafy by violence. We are

Here’s a true story. Many years ago, in the mid-1990s, I was involved in a tech start-up company. The founder brought in a venture capital guy to seek funding. Mr. Venture Cap once spent a long afternoon regaling us with the story of how he & his pals secretly laundered millions of dollars in foreign money, through Liechtenstein, for the 1992 Bush campaign. (Yes, money from foreign states and companies flowing in covertly to influence a US election; imagine that!) He made it clear this was just routine procedure; he wasn’t bragging about the act of smuggling foreign cash into

Whatever else you can say about Trump (don’t get me started), he’s a first-class troll: citing Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe in the last days of the campaign as his reason for firing him! The very action Trump had long praised as a “gutsy” move by Comey, one which redeemed him in Trump’s eyes. That’s some high-grade mendacity there, transparently false, yet told with a straight face, and pretending it was on advice of the Attorney General.  People will say it’s a bad move by Trump, drawing even more attention to the Russian probe the FBI was carrying

A Facebook friend posted a link to a story about a 94-year-old Jewish WWII hero being investigated for killing a Nazi collaborator in Ukraine decades ago. Someone responded to his post with a defense of Ukrainian nationalists, including this phrase: “the memory of the mass executions and starvation inflicted upon the Ukrainian People by the Soviets (largely led by Jews) is not forgotten.” I responded to the comment — with admirable self-restraint, I like to think — thusly: The Soviets were “largely led by Jews”? This is a historically erroneous statement, although it certainly echoes a fertile line of propaganda

From NBC: Weaponized Drones: Connecticut Bill Would Allow Police to Use Lethal Force From Above It’s odd that we are sleepwalking into a world where our skies will soon be filled with swarms of giant metal bugs — delivery drones, commercial drones, surveillance drones, police drones (and criminal drones) — buzzing over us day and night. There’s very little debate over whether this is a good thing or not as a general development for our human community, whether the particular advantages provided by this technology will justify its effect on the quality of life in the world it will create.