The incomparable Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs advises us on "How to Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda." I hope by now it'll all be reminder more than revelation, but reminders sure ain't useless, and I'm glad we're getting this particular reminder before we get too engrossed in yet another Middle East quagmire. I can't resist highlighting the part where Ben Shapiro says TEH OBAMA DRONED TEH TERRURIZTZ TOO!!!! and Mr. Robinson reminds us that such statements "prove() exactly nothing about whether (our President)’s actions were legitimate." Always they talk about what great debaters they are, and then they resort to personal attacks when they're on their heels, which means they're not great debaters.
The incomparable Dean Baker tells us -- because apparently our "liberal" media, at least, needs telling! -- that maybe "College Presidents Aren’t Who We Should Consult About Free Higher Education," since, you know, they all stand to lose money from taxpayer-funded higher ed. They may not have been (as Mr. Baker says) the worst people to ask about it, though -- I bet the worst people to ask about it would be the Vice-Presidents and Deans and Vice-Deans who don't do any useful work and whose mere existence is a major driver of the high cost of education.
Ho hum, another provocative act against a foreign power by our government, another litany of TV and radio "pundits" who all work for defense contractors without proper disclosure of their conflicts of interest. You can contact NPR's public editor about Mr. Keane's appearance on Morning Edition without disclosing his past defense contractor employment here, but as for the rest of them, this is yet another reason we need, and deserve, a la carte cable packaging -- we may not watch this rubbish, but we still pay for it if we have cable, which most of us do. (Don't believe the excuse that disclosure would scare "knowledgeable people" off of television and there'd be dead air all the time -- I mean, this is America we're talking about, full of folks who actually have something to say and hungry to get it heard.)
At last, someone (namely Noah Feldman at Bloomberg) shows skepticism that John Bolton's statement expressing willingness to testify at our President's impeachment trial means a damn thing. Why is saying you'll testify if subpoenaed some gift to America? And if Senate Republicans don't even want witnesses, why would they subpoena him? And have no Congressional Democrats considered the possibility that the Mustache of Evil is running a con game on them? And why can't Democratic politicians stop hoping for some Great Republican Savior? (Also, too, as Mr. Feldman points out, Mr. Bolton's reasoning is not exactly cogent.)
HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that while a mere 43% of Americans supported our President's decision to kill Gen. Soleimani, 30% of Americans "strongly supported" the decision, and this finding, for once, does not map that well onto my long-held belief that 25% of the electorate is bat-guano insane -- and suggests that maybe poking Iran more will get our President more votes on Election Day. It is all about the margins with this guy, after all. I suppose it's possible the poll came out too quickly after the assassination to tell us very much of anything, but I guess time will tell, or at least suggest.
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