Is Trump a racist?

The answer is of course yes. So why are we even bothering to debate a question to which we know the answer? Because his defenders try to deny it. Here Mehdi Hasan corners Trump campaign advisor J. D. Gordon on this question and nicely skewers him at the end.

Losing plutonium

Plutonium is a major component of nuclear weapons. You would think that the US government would be very careful about monitoring the supply. According to this report from the Center for Public Integrity, you would be wrong.

Two security experts from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there.

Their task, according to documents and interviews, was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others.

To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically, a plastic-covered disk of plutonium, a material that can be used to fuel nuclear weapons, and another of cesium, a highly radioactive isotope that could potentially be used in a so-called “dirty” radioactive bomb.

But when they stopped at a Marriott hotel just off Highway 410, in a high-crime neighborhood filled with temp agencies and ranch homes, they left those sensors on the back seat of their rented Ford Expedition. When they awoke the next morning, the window had been smashed and the special valises holding these sensors and nuclear materials had vanished.

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Begin the countdown to the genital identification

Kimberly Guilfoyle is a Fox News personality who has abruptly left the network. She has also revealed that she is dating Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. who is in the process of divorcing his wife. Although she implied that she was leaving voluntarily because of the relationship and that she might be working for the White House in some capacity, there are now reports that she was forced out for misconduct.
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The strange desire for ostentatious wealth

When I first read news headlines that a yacht belonging to secretary of education Betsy DeVos had been deliberately unmoored by someone and had drifted away causing thousands of dollars in damage, I did not bother to go into the story because I simply do not care about the lifestyles of the wealthy, though the idea that this was a small act of vigilante retaliation against rapacious elites was noteworthy.
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The problem with liberals

Classical liberalism, as articulated by one of its key proponents John Stuart Mill, was based on general principles that prioritized the freedom of the individual over state and social control. But modern-day liberalism seems to be based more on a set of attitudes on certain issues rather than grounded in deeper principles. This is especially true in the US. Liberals in the US are in general supportive of LGBTQ and women’s rights, affirmative action, and so on but they tend to not be consistent on their attitude towards the national security state and wars and human rights in general.
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Former cricketer Imran Khan set to become Pakistan’s next prime minister

Early indications from the elections held in Pakistan yesterday indicate that Imran Khan’s party Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI, translated as Movement for Justice) will win a majority and he will be the next prime minister. He has claimed victory but it looks like the outgoing ruling party that has been in power for so long is not going quietly, promising to fight the result, and there could be a continuation of the violence that has plagued this election.
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Ending the menace of money bail

The American ‘justice system’ is a scandal, laying a heavy hand on the poor and otherwise marginalized communities while allowing the big criminals who create misery on a massive scale to walk free. I have written many times about one of the abuses and that is the bail system that is used punitively, setting bail amounts that defendants clearly cannot afford. This harshly and adversely affects poor people who often languish in jail for long times for even minor offenses even before their trials, simply because they cannot come up with the money to make bail. Spending time in jail, apart from being a traumatic experience for most people, often leads to a whole sequence of other adverse effects such as losing jobs, being evicted from one’s home, and losing custody of their children. All because they do not have a few hundred dollars in cash readily available.
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How airports make money

I had not realized that London’s Heathrow airport was a fully privately owned, profit-seeking enterprise. This video explains what it costs to run the airport, how the company covers the costs, and how the need to make a profit changes the way that the airport is structured and the kinds of flights and destinations that are available, compared to airports that are run by governments.

The US has not privatized its major airports and efforts to do so with smaller ones have not been a success.