Life is such a precious gift that unless one is a sociopath, killing someone is such a horrific thing that one shies away from it. It takes extraordinary circumstances for someone to lose control of themselves sufficiently to kill another human being. So governments have elaborate methods by which they encourage ordinary people to join their military and then turn them into killers. These involve training them to unquestioningly follow orders and to dehumanize those perceive as the enemy, by portraying them as less than human or so outlandishly evil that they deserve to die, and to shower the killers with medals and honors upon their return in order to make them feel like heroes.
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In Mississippi, a run-off election is scheduled for November 27 since no candidate obtained the required 50% of the vote. The contest will be between incumbent Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy. I wrote before about how Hyde-Smith had already got herself into trouble by saying that “”If [Tupelo cattle rancher, Colin Hutchinson] invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Her opponent Espy is black and given the racist history of public hangings of black people, especially in the deep south, the comment was seen as reprehensible. She dismissed criticisms by saying it was a joke.
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As yet another sign of the blue wave, it looks likely that Orange County in California, long a stronghold of the Republican party, will not be left with even a single Republican congressperson. The latest result called has Democrat Katie Walters Porter defeating Republican incumbent Mimi Walters by running on an unabashedly progressive platform. In the last remaining uncalled Orange County race in the 39th District, Democrat Gil Cisneros has taken the lead over Republican Young Kim and seems likely to eventually win.
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Ohio is becoming notorious not just for producing horrific murder cases, it also leads the way in how gerrymandering produces results that do not come close to reflecting the voting preferences of its citizens and last week’s election results demonstrated this very clearly. Republican officials have abused their power to draw districts such that all the Democratic-leaning voters were crammed into as few seats as possible, leaving few left over in the other areas. The results are stark, with Republicans winning a huge majority in the state houses while actually trailing in the popular vote.

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I have written before about the Byzantine political intrigues in Sri Lanka that has led to political turmoil. A measure of how things have deteriorated can be seen by a fight that broke out in the Sri Lankan parliament when some members rushed at the Speaker.

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I wrote yesterday about how the incumbent Republican for Maine’s 2nd district Bruce Poliquin sued to stop the second and third choice votes of the third and fourth place candidates from being counted and argued that he should be declared the winner based on his plurality of just the first choice votes, where he had a slim 2,000 vote lead over Democratic challenger Jared Golden. He clearly seemed to think that the 23,000 second and third choice votes would go against him.
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Mehdi Hasan shows how in this interview with Steve Rogers, a Trump advisor for his 2020 campaign.

Hey US media folks, here, I would argue immodestly, is how you interview a Trump supporter on Trump's lies:pic.twitter.com/D8qElaic7o

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 14, 2018

But alas, this will not catch on. Why won’t we see mainstream US journalists follow Hasan’s lead? Because they want the same old hacks to appear over and over again on their shows and if they are too hard on them, they won’t pay a return visit. That is the dirty little secret of the US politics-media axis. Each side knows what the other side expects in order to put on a show for the viewers. It’s show biz.

Tom MacArthur is a Republican congressman from New Jersey who tried the familiar two-step of pretending to be a moderate while being a Trumpista. I am very glad to report that it was announced today that he has lost his seat to Democratic challenger Andy Kim, leaving the New Jersey Republican congressional delegation, like the California one, in tatters with just one congressperson from the former five, with some of the lost seats having been held by Republicans for decades. The House is now 229-198 in favor of the Democrats, a swing of 34 seats so far, with eight seats still undecided.
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One of the many adversities that befall those who are poor is that they get tempted to take risks with their own lives and the lives of their families just in order to survive, such as selling their organs and committing crimes. I was shocked to read this report about Anucha Thasako, a 13-year old Thai boy, who died of a brain hemorrhage after a boxing bout. It was bad enough that children are boxing at all but it appears that it is a way for poor people to earn money. Thasako had fought in 170 bouts since the age of eight.
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In this Hanukkah election season for the Democrats, another day brought another gift in that Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner for the Arizona senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Jeff Flake.

Meanwhile, the US senate race in Mississippi will be heading to a runoff vote on November 27 since no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. The Republican incumbent candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith has got herself into trouble by saying that “”If [Tupelo cattle rancher, Colin Hutchinson] invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Her opponent Democrat Mike Espy is black and given the racist history of public hangings especially in the deep south, the comment was seen as reprehensible.
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