Donald Trump suddenly called off the June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. This will no doubt please the hardliners in his administration and the foreign policy establishment who for some reason seemed to view the prospect of a summit that was not loaded with preconditions for disarmament as a bad idea.
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She celebrates the Democratic primary victory of Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who on Tuesday became the first black woman of either party to become the nominee for governor of a state.
Ayn Rand’s paean to capitalism as expounded in this book has commanded a loyal following from many of the worst people in public life, such as former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and current speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. Its basic message that wealth equates with virtue is targeted at those who are already wealthy by appealing to their vanity, that they are successful not because of family or luck but because they are smarter and more industrious than everyone else, something that we know is not true.
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I think anyone who is ‘successful’ in life (however one defines that word) and is at least mildly thoughtful will have an appreciation of the important role that luck played in them getting where they are. Show me a person who thinks that they achieved their success purely because of their own talent and abilities, and I will show you an arrogant jerk. Where you were born and the circumstances of the family you were born into are two major luck factors but as one grows up, there are so many others such as the friends you happen to make, the teachers you encountered, purely random encounters and events that impinge on your life, and so on. Without much effort I can write down a long list of lucky breaks in my life that have enabled me to be ‘successful’, not in terms of great wealth or fame, but just simply in avoiding disaster or great hardship.
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The writer died yesterday at the age of 85. I have not read most of the works of this prolific author but I did enjoy the ones that I read, such as Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint, Our Gang, The Plot Against America, and The Breast. For some reason, I never got around to reading the series of novels that featured the protagonist Nathan Zuckerman, an omission that I should rectify.
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Jon Schwarz goes into all the terrible positions that Chuck Schumer, whom the Democrats chose as their leader in the US Senate, has taken over the years. Schumer has been an uncritical supporter of Israel and advocated for much of the neoconservative agenda that has brought so much ruin and suffering in the Middle East.
Schumer’s positions on domestic policy leave much to be desired, but not on every issue. By contrast, his views on foreign policy are largely indistinguishable from the Republican Party in general and Trump specifically.
…So taken together, it’s obvious that Schumer does not and never will offer voters an alternative to Trump and Republicans in general on the most important questions of national security. That’s because Schumer truly, deeply and sincerely agrees with them.
As long as Schumer is the leader of the Democrats in the US Senate, we will have a terrible foreign policy.
The James Bond series has really got to be treated as straight-up comedies. In the Roger Moore era, the campy humor was more explicit with Moore’s wisecracks letting the audience know that it was all utterly ridiculous. In the Daniel Craig era there seemed to be an attempt to revive the original Sean Connery darker vibe of the hero being more ruthless and cold-blooded, willing to use more freely his license to kill. But despite Bond’s somber expression throughout, this film is a real hoot that had me laughing at its unintended humor.
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Dealing with addiction to drugs and alcohol is extremely hard on the addicts and their loved ones who are willing to go to extreme lengths to try and wean them off it. In his latest close analysis, John Oliver says that there is no formal definition of what constitutes addiction rehabilitation, no standards for what constitutes proper treatment, and no proper measures of whether these organizations are succeeding. So it should not be surprising that a rehabilitation industry has sprung up that promises to cure addiction for a stiff fee with little or no evidence that what they do actually works.
I wrote about Aaron Schlossberg, the lawyer who was captured on video when he went on a racist tirade against workers at a fast food restaurant in New York City who were speaking Spanish and said that he would call ICE on them and that he was paying for their welfare. He was quickly identified and received a great deal of notoriety, with public shaming that consisted of mixtures of condemnations and ridicule, one element of the latter being a Spanish-themed street party in front of his apartment, complete with tacos and a mariachi band.
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The current uncertainty over whether the meeting between North Korean president Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump will actually take place on June 12 in Singapore should not detract from how important getting just an agreement to meet is. In one of the best articles I have seen so far, John Feffer argues that the foreign policy establishment in the US is correct that Donald Trump got manipulated into agreeing to a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un but that this was good thing.
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