The origins of the ‘Blood and Soil’ chant

Those of you who watched the disturbing but gripping Vice News video of the neo-Nazis and white nationalists marching in Charlottesville during that infamous rally in support of confederate statues would recall that one of the chants they used was “Blood and Soil”. The meaning seemed unclear to me but taken in conjunction with their other chant of “Jews will not replace us”, I gathered that it had some kind of anti-Semitic origins but was not sure what. Historian Yoni Anijar explains that it dates back to the 19th century.
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Here we go again, trying to prove god’s existence

One of the paradoxical signs that god does not exist is how religious apologists keep trying to prove that s/he does exist. After all, no one tries to prove that the Earth exists or that the Sun exists. Surely the existence of gods should be at least as manifest. As I wrote before, attempts to prove god’s existence may actually weaken belief. But we periodically encounter people who claim that they have a killer argument in support of god’s existence and an exuberant press release touts a new book by Edward Feser that once again claims to do so.
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Why are some rich people so cheap?

Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and is reportedly extremely wealthy. And yet he seems to be the kind of rich person who is incredibly cheap, the sort who tries to get other people to pick up the check for his own expenses. Maybe that behavior works when he has dinner out with friends but he seems to be trying to do that to taxpayers too.
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What is going on with Trump?

Ok, now I am really confused. I predicted that Donald Trump would use every major issue that came before him to push for funding for his precious wall as part of the deal. But now I have been proven wrong twice. First Trump agreed to a short-term extension of government funding and raising the debt ceiling without getting wall funding. And now just yesterday, after a dinner with the two top Democratic party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Trump seems to have arrived at some kind of deal with them to restore the DACA program that does not include funding for the wall.
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The missing foreign policy element in Clinton interviews

Glenn Greenwald writes that one notable missing element in Hillary Clinton’s book tour and media appearances has been the ignoring of the role that her disastrous policies of military intervention played in her defeat. He says that many media commentators seem to think that it was only domestic issues that played a role because it was absurd to think of Donald Trump as some kind of peace candidate. But Greenwald says that Trump shrewdly manipulated people’s anger over the state of endless wars that Clinton helped expand and perpetuate.
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Clip from Jordan Klepper’s new show

The Daily Show alum Jordan Klepper has a new daily show where he adopts the persona of a character based on the wild right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The show is called The Opposition and premieres on September 25. Here is a clip that previews it, where he attends the recent Trump rally in Phoenix where people could not tell the difference between a right-wing nutcase and a parody of a right wing nutcase making fun of them.
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There goes another stereotype

The new iPhone announced yesterday apparently uses some aspects of facial recognition technology, and Edward Snowden says that it is almost certainly going to be abused. China is forging ahead with facial recognition with estimates of up to a billion people’s faces being entered into databases that enable them to be instantly recognized. The applications made possible by this are vast but the privacy implications are also disturbing.
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Edith Windsor, victor over DOMA, has died

She died at the age of 88. In 2007 Windsor had married her partner Thea Clara Spyer in Canada, where such marriages were legal, after being together for 40 years. They moved to the US later and Spyer died in 2009 but DOMA prevented Windsor from claiming the federal tax exemption for inheritances that are available to spouses. So she sued to overturn DOMA. Her case United States v. Windsor, that she won 5-4 in the US Supreme Court in 2013, helped pave the way for same-sex marriages becoming legalized two years later. The court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that, among other things, denied federal tax benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples, was unconstitutional.
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Bernie Sanders introduces ‘Medicare For All’ bill

Today at a press conference Bernie Sanders will present his plan for a universal single-payer health plan. It will be based on a gradual expansion of the Medicare program over four years to eventually cover everyone, not just those currently over 65 years or those who are younger but have disabilities and a few illnesses. People zero to 18 would be eligible for the coverage in the first year. In following year, the eligibility age would be lowered to 45. The next year, it would drop again to 35. In year four, everyone else would be included. The advantage of expanding Medicare instead of creating a new system is that it does not require a new bureaucracy and those who are on Medicare like what they have.
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