thenatureofmind

For Young Voters, 'Hope and Change' Is Dead

There was remarkably little idealism in the roomful of undecided young voters that convened here on Wednesday.

Asked to find a picture that represents America, the participants in this focus group—eight suburban voters in their 20s, with varying backgrounds—chose negative portraits: a circus, a frightened person, people looking at their phones instead of each other, "Hands Up Don't Shoot." One picked a photo of rapturous Trump supporters at a rally and said it reminded him of Germans welcoming Adolf Hitler.

For Young Voters, 'Hope and Change' Is Dead

Hunter S. Thompson on Richard Nixon

"Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people anyway. For years I've regarded his existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. The Nixon I remembered was absolutely humorless; I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine."

The Cold War That Threatens Democracy

While the first Cold War was fought against communism, a successor Cold War is steadily unfolding against democratic electoral outcomes unfavorable to America's perceived interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal occupation of Crimea has for now revived raging Western memories of Joseph Stalin's top-down incorporation of the former Eastern Europe. Lost in the new anti-Russian narrative, however, is the growing US pattern of ignoring democratic electoral outcomes where they are inconvenient, in the name of "promoting democracy." Ultimately this process of "democracy through intervention" reinforces bureaucratic authoritarian trends in both East and West. The thrust of this US foreign policy mirrors conservatives’ efforts at home to limit and divide the ascending multicultural American political majority. 

The Cold War That Threatens Democracy | The Nation.

Credibility of the Ruling Elite is Being Shredded

Russell Brand May Have Started a Revolution Last Night

Hypocrisy: So Soon We Forget

A World Without Nuclear Weapons

Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan laid out a vision for a world without nuclear weapons, and in his first term President Obama boldly picked up that mantle - most famously in his 2009 speech in Prague, where he announced America's commitment to eliminate all nuclear weapons globally. There is now a unique opportunity for President Obama, in his second term, to follow through on that commitment and set the world's course to global zero. He can do this by pursuing further reductions to the United States' and Russia's massive Cold War arsenals and bringing other key countries to the table for the first multilateral nuclear arms negotiations in history.

A World Without Nuclear Weapons

The Sequester Is President Obama's Fault

Now that we are counting up the days of the sequester instead of counting down, it would be a good time to cast blame. And my candidate is President Obama.

I'm not blaming Obama for the reasons that Bob Woodward came up with in his fantasyland. I am blaming President Obama and his administration for trying to be cute and clever rather than telling the public the truth about the economic crisis. The result is that the vast majority of the public, and virtually all of the reporters and pundits who deal with budget issues, do not have any clue about where the deficit came from and why it is a virtue rather than a problem.

The Sequester Is President Obama's Fault

EPL Presents Chris Hedges

Sperling: Obama Wanted Sequester to Force Democrats to Accept Entitlement Cuts

The way Obama has handled basically every manufactured crisis from the debt ceiling, to the Bush tax cuts expiration, to the sequester has been about trying to force both Democrats and Republicans to embrace his version of a “grand bargain.” While it is clear this has been the driving force behind Obama’s decisions, if you pay close attention to his actions is is rare than an administration official will directly admit this. This is actually what I think it most interesting about the recently leaked email exchange between Bob Woodward and Gene Sperling up on Politico. Sperling wrote:

Sperling: Obama Wanted Sequester to Force Democrats to Accept Entitlement Cuts.