Checks on the president’s ability to fire nuclear weapons

According to the US constitution, the president is the commander in chief of the military forces and thus has the power to order them to do anything without anybody being able to challenge that decision. That power extends to the use of nuclear weapons. A new book by two Washington Post reporters says that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, the head of the US military, was so concerned that Trump had become unhinged by his election loss and the events of January 6th that he feared he might ‘go rogue’ and do something dangerously irrational such as start a war, perhaps with nuclear weapons. Milley reportedly convened a meeting of the officers who would be involved in the process to tell them that they had to promise to make sure that any order to start a war or use nuclear weapons also involved him. Milley also called his Chinese counterpart to reassure him.
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Calling a woman a ‘young lady’ is an obvious put down

Democratic senator Joe Manchin has been using the influence he has achieved as a result of a 50-50 tie in the US senate to advance the agenda of his corporate backers by thwarting efforts to pass the infrastructure bill in its present form and demanding huge cuts. When Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez pointed out his ties to lobbyists, he responded by referring to her as ‘young lady’ and she immediately called him out on it.
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The Costa Rican health care system

In the August 30, 2021 issue of the New Yorker, Atul Gawande takes a close look at the health care system in Costa Rica that, within a few decades, improved so rapidly that now its people have a higher life expectancy than the US and at a much lower cost. The numbers alone tell the story.

In 1950, around ten per cent of children died before their first birthday, most often from diarrheal illnesses, respiratory infections, and birth complications. Many youths and young adults died as well. The country’s average life expectancy was fifty-five years, thirteen years shorter than that in the United States at the time.

Life expectancy tends to track national income closely. Costa Rica has emerged as an exception… Across all age cohorts, the country’s increase in health has far outpaced its increase in wealth. Although Costa Rica’s per-capita income is a sixth that of the United States—and its per-capita health-care costs are a fraction of ours—life expectancy there is approaching eighty-one years. In the United States, life expectancy peaked at just under seventy-nine years, in 2014, and has declined since.

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Civil resistance versus revolution

Sometimes people who get frustrated by deep injustices in democratic societies seem to give up on their governments doing the right thing and start to consider the possibility of violent revolution as the only way to get any meaningful change. Andrew Marantz writes about an empirical study by Erica Chenoweth, the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, to try and address empirically the question of which kind of effort, mass civil rights struggle or revolution, is more likely to produce the results sought.
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Delegitimizing government as a means to avoid progressive measures

It has long been clear that the Republican party in Congress, aided by some in the Democratic party, has a straightforward strategy: Block everything that does not provide benefits to the ruling class. By creating gridlock and impasses at every turn, they have sought to give the impression that government is useless. This is part of their greater strategy of creating a sense of voter apathy among the less affluent so that they will wash their hands of government and thus be less likely to vote.

In the August 16, 2021 issue of the New Yorker, Louis Menand writes that given the chance, government can do many things that are of great benefit to many people and he points to a two-year window that demonstrates this.
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How do pandemics end?

In an effort to curb the rise in infections and deaths due to the spread of the Delta variant of covid-19, Joe Biden has announced sweeping measures to try and turn the tide. He has mandated that all federal workers and contractors be vaccinated and that all businesses with over 100 employees do the same. He has greatly reduced the options available for not getting vaccinated, especially for federal workers.

In his most forceful pandemic actions and words, President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans — private-sector employees as well as health care workers and federal contractors — in an all-out effort to curb the surging COVID-19 delta variant.

Speaking at the White House, Biden sharply criticized the tens of millions of Americans who are not yet vaccinated, despite months of availability and incentives.facilities receiving federal benefits will also face the same requirements, he said.
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The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.

Biden is also requiring vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government — with no option to test out. That covers several million more workers.

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Robert E. Lee statue goes out with a whimper

The massive statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee that existed in the former confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia has come to an ignominious end, removed from its pedestal on a prominent part of the city, cut up into pieces, and hauled away and placed in a storage unit.

A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee that towered over Richmond for generations was taken down, cut into pieces and hauled away Wednesday, as the former capital of the Confederacy erased the last of the Civil War figures that once defined its most prominent thoroughfare.

Hundreds of onlookers erupted in cheers and song as the 21-foot-tall bronze figure was lifted off a pedestal and lowered to the ground. The removal marked a major victory for civil rights activists, whose previous calls to dismantle the statues had been steadfastly rebuked by city and state officials alike.
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The origins of the lizard people theory

I must admit that hearing that some people believe in the existence of ‘lizard people’ took me by surprise, even though you would think that by now I would have become accustomed to hearing that people believe in all manner of fantastical ideas. So what is this theory and how did it originate? Cultural historian Lynn Stuart Parramore walks us through this strange world that has anti-Semitic roots. She says that while the theory is undoubtedly bonkers, it is definitely not harmless.

The world-ruled-by-lizard-people fantasy shot to prominence in recent years in part through the ramblings of David Icke, a popular British sports reporter-turned-conspiracy theorist known for his eccentric ideas.

Icke would have you believe that a race of reptilian beings not only invaded Earth, but that it also created a genetically modified lizard-human hybrid race called the “Babylonian Brotherhood,” which, he maintains, is busy plotting a worldwide fascist state. This sinister cabal of global reptilian elites boasts a membership list including former President Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Mick Jagger.

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