Saudi Arabia lays the groundwork for war with Iran

Vijay Prashad writes that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) of Saudi Arabia has decided to take the country into uncharted waters with his internal crackdown on corruption, that has resulted in 11 princes and about 200 businessmen that include people who control sources of power (such as the National Guard) that might challenge him, arrested and detained in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, and his military adventurism in the region. He has also challenged the power of the clerical class in that country by decreeing that women can drive.
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Yet another episode of “What was he thinking?”

US congressman Joe Barton of Texas is a member of the Republican Freedom Caucus which means that he has notoriously reactionary views on pretty much everything, all wrapped up in smug religious piety. He is a strong advocate for the oil and coal industries and a vehement climate change denier, using the Bible to argue against the science and even suggesting that wind energy is not a renewable resource.
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“But the drawing looked fine!”

Blackfriars Priory school, a Catholic boys school in Adelaide, Australia commissioned a statue of a saint Martin de Porres that was supposed to showed him giving a loaf of bread to a child. While the commission was granted on the basis of a drawing of the statue, when the final statue was unveiled, it suggested something completely different, though one that is consistent with what we have learned about the Catholic church.
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What the Republican tax plan will do

The Tax Policy Center has analyzed the tax proposal and who pays less and who pays more. Spoiler alert! The rich pay less and the rest pay more. While everyone would pay less in the first year (enabling the Republicans to claim that everyone gets a tax cut), the rich will pay a lot less and there is a time delay in the bill that results in tax increases for lower income people down the road.
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Behold, the world’s greatest democracy …

… where people can be denied the right to vote if they happen to be too poor to pay court costs and fines.

Randi Lynn Williams assumes she will never be able to afford to vote again.

The 38-year-old Dothan resident lost her right to vote in 2008, when she was convicted of fraudulent use of a credit card.

She was on probation for over two years, then served a few months behind bars ending in early 2011, at which point she would have been eligible to vote in most states. In Maine and Vermont, she would have never lost that right in the first place.
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‘Presuppositonalism’ seems like just a fancy name for shutting your ears

As we have seen, many evangelical Christians have closed ranks behind Roy Moore’s candidacy for the US senate despite the many credible reports that he repeatedly hit on teenage girls when he was an assistant county district attorney in his thirties and his creepy behavior was so well known that some girls at the local mall set up an informal alert system to warn others when he was on the prowl and his presence was monitored by security. There was even a security watch to see that he did not harass high school cheerleaders.
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