As with other political labels like conservative and liberal, the word socialism is also ill-defined and allows the person using it wide leeway in what it means. The fact that it is often paired with the word ‘democratic’ to create ‘social democratic’ or ‘democratic socialist’ adds to the ambiguity. In the US, the word socialist has been systematically demonized, though in other countries it is quite commonly used, especially in combination with the word democratic. For example, the official name for Sri Lanka is the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,
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November 3rd is election day in the US. Since I will not be able to vote in person that day, I have already voted by mail. In Cuyahoga County where I live, there is Proposition 8 that seeks a renewal of the so-called ‘sin tax’ that levies an extra tax on cigarettes, with the proceeds going to fund arts and cultural organization in the region. I voted in favor of it.
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Matt Taibbi reflected on Thursday’s umpteenth Congressional hearings on Benghazi led by Republican Trey Gowdy where Hillary Clinton was grilled for about 10 hours, with the verdict being almost unanimous that the Republicans ended up looking really bad, and not just because Gowdy has the misfortune to be a dead ringer for the villainous Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
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Ben Carson claims that his life is in “great danger” from the “secular progressive movement” because they see him as an “existential threat” to them. He is reported to have requested Secret Service protection and it is supposedly under consideration.
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The word terrorist is no longer used to denote any specific action but is used almost always propagandistically, to dehumanize those whom one considers an enemy and manipulate public opinion. Call someone a terrorist and their action terrorism and you have already gone a long way towards winning the propaganda war.
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The Republican party establishment must be having sleepless nights over Donald Trump shooting to the top of the polls in their presidential primary. Pundits have been consoling them by suggesting that at some point Republican voters would tire of him and his numbers would come down and a candidate that is more acceptable to the party, such as Jeb Bush, would gain ascendancy.
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Vice-president Joe Biden announced yesterday that he would not be running for president, thus ending months of pointless speculation by the media. I had strenuously avoided reading the huge number of articles speculating as to whether he would or would not run. As soon as I saw the topic being raised, I stopped reading and moved on.
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The US government has so far not sent a single top executive of the big banks that caused the financial crisis to jail. They did not even threaten them with any prosecutions that might have resulted in jail time. A doctrine has grown up that these banks are ‘too big to fail’ and their executives are ‘too big to jail’, that trying to do so might result in worse outcomes than letting them get off scot-free.
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