Trump, racism, and sports

Donald Trump has suddenly started waging a war on sports figures, taking aim at those who have started the practice of kneeling instead of standing for the national anthem before games to draw attention to police brutality. (The question of why the national anthem is played at all before such events is a topic that I discussed earlier and argued that it should be abandoned but that is a digression.) When Donald Trump suddenly goes on a tear against what seems like a randomly selected target, one has to always ask oneself whether this is genuine grievance or whether he is using the issue to distract from some other issue. There have been suggestions that Trump, or at least his advisors, to distract people’s attention from failures or other setbacks. If that is the case here, what could that be?
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Revisiting the question of proving god’s existence

Edward Feser has responded to my critique of the press release about his new book that I used as the basis for pouring cold water on the idea of trying to prove the existence of gods by arguments alone. Not surprisingly, he does not like what I said and says that if I had only read his book, I would see that my criticisms were either invalid or had been addressed by him. Probably as a result of Feser’s post, a couple of new commenters have come here to defend Feser (see comment #23 and later) and some of them have also taken me to task for not having read his book
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Trump’s final push to undermine health care for tens of millions

In his 80-minute speech last night at the rally in support of Luther Strange in the Alabama US senate primary race, Donald Trump railed at those senators who were balking at supporting the Graham-Cassidy bill, the latest Republican push in their attempt to undermine health care for many Americans. There was one item that stuck out at me, though, and that was when he said:
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The North Koreans have Trump sized up

In the war of words between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, we have to declare that Kim (or at least his translator) is the clear winner when it comes to trading insults. While Trump has called Kim ‘rocket man’ and a ‘madman’, the first sounds childish and the second is unoriginal. Kim, on the other hand, called Trump a ‘dotard’ and that had people scrambling for their dictionaries. Liz Posner says that the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile”, meaning someone in his ‘dotage’ I guess.
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The health care debate heats up

There will be a town hall style debate on the new health care bill on Monday at 9:00pm on CNN. It will feature Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy on one side and Bernie Sanders and Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar on the other. It should be a good debate since I doubt that any senator has studied the issue of health care more than Sanders. But unfortunately I don’t get cable TV and will have to read about it later.
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Strange doings in Alabama

There are weird goings on in the state of Alabama. When Jeff Sessions was picked by Donald Trump to be attorney general, his senate seat fell vacant. Governor Robert Bentley picked the state attorney general Luther Strange (whom Trump keeps referring to as ‘big Luther Strange’) to replace him with a special election to be held along with the 2018 elections in November. But then Bentley had to resign in April because of a tawdry sex scandal (of course) and his successor Kay Ivey brought the special election forward to December 12 of this year, with the primary to be held on August 15 and in the event that no candidate got mote than 50% of the vote, a run-off to be held next Tuesday on September 26.
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Bernie Sanders lets loose

In an interview with The Intercept, Bernie Sanders delivers some much needed perspective into the US foreign policy debates.

“I consider [Saudi Arabia] to be an undemocratic country that has supported terrorism around the world, it has funded terrorism. … They are not an ally of the United States.”

The Vermont senator accused the “incredibly anti-democratic” Saudis of “continuing to fund madrasas” and spreading “an extremely radical Wahhabi doctrine in many countries around the world.”
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