February 2016

There were 42 posts published in February 2016 (this is page 2 of 5).

Donald Trump Utilizes Racism, but Hillary Clinton Used Similar Tactics Against Obama in 2008

I vividly recall Hillary Clinton’s racist-tinged campaign against Barack Obama in 2008. It disgusted me and put me firmly in Obama’s camp. I hope my African-American friends remember this, too, come election day.

To say Donald Trump is a racist ideologue might be an understatement, given his overtly xenophobic statements about Muslims, as well as his views on undocumented immigrants. He’s insulted everyone from John McCain and Megyn Kelley to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, so it’s obvious that Trump is either delusional, or simply doing everything possible to stay in the limelight. However, it’s important for all Americans, especially Democrats, to look in the mirror.

Trump is a reflection of our society, as well as a mirror of what we’re willing to tolerate, especially when “our” side is fighting for political power. The truth is that Hillary Clinton utilized race and Islamophobia against Barack Obama in 2008, even though Democrats aren’t supposed to reach into this well of prejudice and ignorance.

Source: Donald Trump Utilizes Racism, but Hillary Clinton Used Similar Tactics Against Obama in 2008

Hold Up, Did We Just Crack Time Travel? – The Daily Beast

I’m still fascinated by the discovery of gravitational waves and the implications on our views of reality.

There’s never been anything like LIGO’s direct detection of strong-field gravity, which comes with a statistical significance of 5.1 sigma, meaning there’s only a one in 6 million chance that the finding is an error.It’s proof.

It’s proof that gravitational waves exist, that black holes exist, and that two of the fat monsters—at 29 and 36 times the mass of our sun—smashed into each other 1.3 billion years ago in a collision so violently it sent out ripples across the universe like a brick thrown into a pool. Most importantly, it’s proof that Einstein’s most radical prediction, which mathematically allows for time travel, was correct in a remarkably precise way.

Source: Hold Up, Did We Just Crack Time Travel? – The Daily Beast

The Race to Lose the White House

The Clinton juggernaut is losing traction. Powered by the full weight of the Democratic Establishment, it was designed to smoothly carry its idol across America and into the White House. It still may get there. But now it must traverse a far more treacherous and uncertain route than Hillary and her entourage ever imagined. The course is lined with the pundits, operatives and analysts who will cover the spectacle with their usual attention to trivia and a faith in their own perspicacity matching that of the heroine herself.

Source: The Race to Lose the White House

The Clintons’ War on Drugs: When Black Lives Didn’t Matter | New Republic

A grainy cell phone video of the incident showed a handful of young BLM protestors confronting Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. After expressing her ardent feminism and pride in meeting a female presidential candidate, BLM’s Daunasia Yancey forcefully confronted Clinton about her shared culpability in America’s destructive War on Drugs: “You and your family have been personally and politically responsible for policies that have caused health and human services disasters in impoverished communities of color through the domestic and international War on Drugs that you championed as First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.” Yancey continued, “And so I just want to know how you feel about your role in that violence, and how you plan to reverse it?”

Source: The Clintons’ War on Drugs: When Black Lives Didn’t Matter | New Republic

I Am A Feminist, So I Will Not Be Voting for Hillary.

When Bush and Cheney were building up the case for war, some of us were actually paying attention. I was horrified at the inevitable blood bath that my children would be growing into. I was horrified for the people in the Middle East who would have to live with the consequences. I was appalled at the lack of discussion on the impact of war on the planet. I remember thinking that surely there are enough smart, educated democrats who will not let this stand.

Much of the case for war showed that the evidence against Iraq was being trumped up by the administration. If Bernie could see that, and WE could see that, why couldn’t Hillary? Was she lazy? Was she stupid? Or did she just not care? To me, there was NO reason in the world that ANY senator would not jump up and SCREAM that absolutely this is all BULLSHIT and I’m not voting for the AUMF 2002 authorizing war against Iraq! Instead, Bernie was one of the few faces on the evening news who was cautioning against the haphazard bomb-fest. You know what I’m talking about: that government-funded-corporate takeover of the oil fields in Iraq while Bush watched the shock-and-awe attacks like a tweener playing video games because we had to get Saddam Hussein who started 9/11 (well, maybe not so much). I was deeply pissed off at the ‘lack of spine’ in the democrats who didn’t want to ‘look weak’ because of their careers.

Source: I Am A Feminist, So I Will Not Be Voting for Hillary.

The Sexual Misery of the Arab World – The New York Times

A friend recently told me about a former Special Forces soldier who served in Iraq and frequently encountered captured militia leaders. According to him, the laptops of these warlords would inevitably be cram-full of gay pornography. I’ve long heard that the Middle East are some of the biggest consumers of pornography. Google now confirms it.

I’ve heard it said before that the Arab world’s sexual repression is the main fuel of its radicalism. The author points out that the West’s radicalism has the same roots. Seems to me that any religion that damns one for being oneself is not a healthy religion. It’s hard to serve such contradictory masters.

The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.

Source: The Sexual Misery of the Arab World – The New York Times

Half my life in Raleigh

Downtown_Raleigh_at_night_Jan_2012-NCDOT-1800x1072
According to a geeky tool known as www.timeanddate.com, Friday was the date when I officially spent half of my life in Raleigh. I arrived on Sunday, 2 August 1992 to attend N.C. State and somehow never left. Prior to Raleigh, the longest I’d ever lived somewhere was 7 years in Columbia, SC, where I finished elementary school and started middle school.

August 2nd wasn’t my first look at Raleigh that year. I originally drove up from Columbia for the Jimmy Buffett concerts on 12-13 June 1992, staying at the Barton Place condo being rented by my high school buddy, Mike. My very first look at Raleigh was driving up for the State-Carolina game on 17 Oct 1987. I crashed at my friend Chris’s dorm room in Bragaw Hall. He gave me a tour of Raleigh’s then-desolate downtown.

Back then I never thought Raleigh would ever hold my interest. Fortunately, it has grown to suit me. I don’t know if my kids will decide to stay here, though. My daughter seems set on new horizons but one can never say never. For me, though, Raleigh’s been a wonderful place to live, work, and play and it gets a little better every day.

New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

If this is true, and so far there is no independent confirmation, it would not be the first time that Republicans have tried to convince Iranians to continue holding our hostages for partisan reasons.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s top security official Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani disclosed on Thursday that the US Republicans had demanded Tehran to suspend the January prisoners’ swap deal with Washington until the presidential elections in the US.

“The US Republicans sent a message to Tehran, demanding us not to release the American spies until the presidential race starts in the US,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said on Thursday.

“However, we did release the US prisoners in an independent decision,” he continued.

Source: New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

In the midst of questioning the United States’ history of overthrowing and meddling in other countries’ governments, Bernie Sanders denounced Hillary Clinton for befriending and taking advice from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Numerous media commentators reacted by mocking the Sanders campaign, believing millennials could not possibly know anything about Kissinger. They suggested millennials did not care about what Kissinger did either.

It was typical of an establishment media class, which eschews serious reflection on the record of any current or former official’s role in war crimes or atrocities. But Kissinger is someone who Clinton has mentioned multiple times during debates and at campaign events. She said during the last debate in New Hampshire, “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time.”

Source: Why Not Being Friends With Henry Kissinger Matters

Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News

I am isolated by a culture that is as inscrutable to me as any in the mountains of Afghanistan. For loving wilderness and empty lands and birdsong rather than teeming cities, I risk being called a xenophobe, a noxious nativist. For viewing guns as constitutionally protected, essential tools of self-defense and, if need be, liberation, I’m told that I defend the massacres of innocents in mass shootings. When I came to Montana at age twenty-five, I found in this vast landscape, especially in the public lands where I hunted and camped and worked, the freedom that was evaporating in the South, where I grew up. I got happily lost in the space and the history. For a nature-obsessed, gun-soaked malcontent like me, it was home, and when Ammon Bundy and his men took over the Malheur refuge, on a cold night in January, I thought I should go visit my neighbors.

Source: Can we make sense of the Malheur mess? — High Country News