Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 784

Meet the Ayn Rand enthusiast whose private college empire reaps a fortune from the government

Ayn Rand enthusiast Carl Barney says he ethically objects to government-backed loans because they interfere with unbridled free market capitalism. But that has not stopped the private college tycoon from ruthlessly building his fortune on students who take out such loans, only to face horrific debt, high drop-out rates and an educational environment fraught with abuse.

Yet, according to a New York Times profile by Patricia Cohen, Barney sees himself as a principled ideologue, contributing millions of his own dollars to the Ayn Rand institute and forcing employees who seek to advance in the ranks to read “Atlas Shrugged,” as well as his own manifesto.

“This is what Rand taught me,” Barney told the Times, “identify that values are important to you and practices the virtues to achieve that.”

In fact, Barney — who immigrated from Britain to the United States in the 1960s, told Cohen that the “central purpose” Rand infused him with inspired him to go into education in the first place. He described thinking, “Wow…you could actually buy a college? That’s what I want to do.”

Barney did not buy just one college, purchasing or establishing CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager and California College, as well as the online Independence University. These schools in 2012 merged with the free market, non-profit “Center for Excellence in Higher Education,” whose organizational structure allowed Barney’s education empire to attain nonprofit status.

As Huffington Post journalist Robert Shireman pointed out in 2015, the Center declared in a 2012 disclosure form that it aims to advance “the idea that capitalism is not simply about economics, but rather is fundamentally a moral system in which individuals exercise the unalienable right to pursue their own happiness.”

The organization also likely had another purpose. Cohen notes that “a whistle-blower lawsuit brought by two former recruiters in 2014 that charges the merger was done ‘at least in part, to evade certain regulatory requirements that apply to for-profit schools.’”

Barney, who is fond of employing red baiting to dismiss his critics, has faced a host of other accusations. Cohen outlines a few:

The Colorado attorney general’s office, for example, has accused CollegeAmerica in Denver of deceptive advertising and lying about job placements and graduation rates. Former students have said in court papers that they were misled about the transferability of credits, courses and instruction, and employment prospects. Former employees have filed affidavits saying they placed misleading advertisements and were pushed to graduate failing students and lie to independent auditors. The Justice Department has joined one whistle-blower suit that says Stevens-Henager recruiters were illegally awarded bonuses for signing up students.”

Linda Carter, the former dean of the Cheyenne campus in Wyoming, for example, resigned in 2012, saying she was pressured to misrepresent information to school accreditation panels and was disturbed about what she called misleading advertising.

Despite this troubling track record, Barney is unapologetic, telling Cohen, “We’re not perfect, but when we find something that’s wrong, we fix it.”

Meanwhile, Barney is dabbling in projects far beyond private education. He is listed as the sole funder of the Objectivist Venture Fund, whose stated purpose is to “is to financially support worthy projects that will advance Objectivism and Ayn Rand.” The organization has funded projects extolling “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” and “health policy that seeks to raise visibility of free-market and Objectivist ideas.”

 

[This article first appeared on Alternet]

The rape of Lyanna Stark: “Game of Thrones”’ biggest mystery revolves around a woman’s consent

As I wrote in my recap this morning, last night’s episode of “Game Of Thrones,” “Oathbreaker,” was particularly exciting for Westerosi history buffs:

For a book-reading fan like myself, the most thrilling resolution was in Bran’s vision of a battle between a dozen or so knights in the dusty desert at the base of a nondescript tower. That tower is the Tower of Joy, and one of the knights fighting for entrance is Bran’s father Eddard Stark as a young man (played by Robert Aramayo in the flashback). This is an episode that has been described in the books in just the vaguest of terms, but it is a very important site: It’s where Ned witnessed his sister Lyanna’s final words before she died. As Littlefinger told Sansa last season, Lyanna’s abduction by the royal Prince at the time, Rhaegar, plunged Westeros into bloody war and usurped the Targaryen rulers for Robert Baratheon and his wife Cersei Lannister. Robert was originally engaged to Lyanna, and was never able to let go of the memory of her, which is one of the many reasons Cersei hated him (as detailed way back in season one).

The skirmish outside the Tower of Joy leads to Ned’s final conversation with his dying sister; in Bran’s greensight vision, Ned starts walking up the stairs to the top of the tower, where we can hear a woman screaming. To quote again from this morning’s recap, just to make sure we’re all on the same page: Lyanna Stark is almost definitely screaming in pain because she is dying while giving birth to a guy you might know named Jon Snow. Again, from my recap:

There is a prevailing fan theory, all but confirmed, that posits Jon Snow’s parents are not Ned and an unnamed random woman but instead Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. (Rhaegar, in addition to being the former Crown Prince, was Daenerys’ oldest brother.) The evidence in the book is a lot easier to locate—some very heavy foreshadowing, starting all the way back in the first book, when Ned was still alive to narrate from his point of view. In the show, the primary evidence is simply that Ned Stark doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would cheat on his wife, and boy, for an average guy with a bastard son, Sean Bean’s Ned Stark sure seems to be tortured about something.

If this is the case, it was kept secret for some powerful reasons—ones that have something to do with that skirmish at the base of the Tower of Joy and something more to do with Jon Snow’s current ability to be resurrected from the dead.

The theory that Jon Snow is in fact Lyanna’s son with Rhaegar is one that has floated around ever since the very first book of “A Song Of Ice And Fire.” And when “Game Of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss first met George R.R. Martin, they guessed, correctly, at Jon Snow’s true parentage. The skirmish outside the Tower Of Joy has some of Rhaegar’s best knights guarding a random little tower in the middle of nowhere. It is not too difficult to put together the pieces.

But what is still almost entirely unknown is how, exactly, Lyanna Stark ended up giving birth to Jon Snow at the top of that tower. We have a few scraps of stories. We know that Rhaegar abducted Lyanna, as described above. We also know of one other incident before the kidnapping, which took place at a jousting tournament at Harrenhall. In the grand tradition of Westerosi chivalry, when a knight won a tournament, he was given the right to crown any woman present the Queen of Love and Beauty. It was a grand gesture of attraction or love, a knight dedicating his victory to a peerless example of female beauty. But at Harrenhall, Prince Rhaegar—married to Elia of Dorne, Prince Doran and Oberyn Martell’s sister—gave the crown of roses he won not to his wife, but to Lyanna Stark, who was already engaged at the time to Robert Baratheon.

According to Robert and the Starks, this was just the first indignity Lyanna suffered; then Rhaegar kidnapped Lyanna and repeatedly raped her before leaving her for dead in a tower in Dorne. Lyanna Stark’s kidnapping is just another one of “Game Of Thrones”’ many canonical rapes, the world of violence that the women in it, especially, are subject to.

Or is it?

It’s ironic, given how controversial the depiction of rape is on “Game Of Thrones,” that one of the book’s most stubborn mysteries rests on question of how Lyanna Stark felt about what was happening to her. Because the exact same narrative that was used to overthrow the Targaryens could be interpreted in a different way—if Lyanna was in love with Rhaegar and didn’t want to marry Robert, then an abduction turns into an elopement. To complicate matters, over the course of the series we learn that women of the North, especially the Free Folk, expect to be kidnapped when a man wants to marry them. (If the wilding woman doesn’t like the man, she can always slit his throat—so Ygritte explains to Jon, in the books.)

Lyanna is described as a spirited girl much like her niece, Arya; and Arya, more than her sister Sansa, identifies with the Free Folk and their libertarian spirit. (The split between the Free Folk or the people of the North and the “Southron” Westerosi is usually represented by which gods they worship. Most of Westeros worships the Seven, but the weirwoods are kept for the old gods, and are sacred to the Stark family.) In all likelihood, she would have known of the wilding tradition of abduction, and maybe even thrilled to its romance, even if the guy making the offer was married with two kids already. She was, after all, just 16 years old.

To be sure, for some observers, 16 might seem too young for a woman to consent to sex with a man six to eight years older than her. In Westeros, it might not be. Sansa is just 12 years old, in the books, when she’s married to Tyrion; Daenerys is just 13 when married to Khal Drogo. Both men are much older than the pre-teen girls they are wedding in socially and religiously sanctioned ceremonies. Furthermore, characters like Robb Stark, Tommen, Joffrey, and Margaery Tyrell are all between the ages of 12 to 15 when they get hitched. (They’re aged up in the show, but that would suggest Lyanna would be aged up, too.) The evidence would suggest that Westeros seems to think 16 is old enough.

So if Lyanna Stark could have been fled her home and her engagement of her own choosing, to live with a man who she loved and who loved her, then the narrative of Robert’s Rebellion isn’t of a man raping a woman but a woman’s family preventing her from living her life. Perhaps the Starks and Baratheons, in going after Lyanna, were seeking the restoration of their property and reputation—i.e., Lyanna’s virginity—more than they were seeking her safety.

It is, of course, totally still possible that Rhaegar did kidnap and rape Lyanna. But the most intriguing part of this whole mess—the mess that basically spawned the entirety of the storytelling of “A Song Of Ice And Fire”—is that no one appears to have bothered to ask Lyanna how she felt about the whole thing. It’s ultimately her word that matters—not Rhaegar’s intentions, or the Starks’ desire to protect her, or Robert’s prior “claim” on her.

And throughout “A Song Of Ice And Fire” and “Game Of Thrones,” that is the one thing we still don’t know. We even know more about Rhaegar’s weird obsession with bringing back dragons and his harp than anything about Lyanna once she matured past being a little girl who loved to ride horses.

With this season of “Game Of Thrones,” Lyanna Stark, that screaming woman at the top of the tower, might get a chance to say a few words; to tell her side of the story. It will be intriguing to see how such a simple thing as a woman’s voice can have a profound affect on the history of an entire nation.

Embrace “The Good Wife”’s final slap: A happily-ever-after ending would have been the show’s biggest betrayal

For many viewers, “The Good Wife” finale was a literal slap in the face. In recent weeks, the acclaimed CBS procedural teased the resolution of its core love triangle: Would Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) wind up with Jason (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the sexy investigator with whom she is having an affair, or Peter (Chris Noth), her unfaithful husband? Her marriage is, at this point, one of convenience; Alicia and Peter need each other for political gain. Peter recently mounted a failed attempt at the presidency, while his estranged wife made up with her mentor-cum-rival Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) to start Chicago’s first all-female firm. The undertaking was a longtime wish of Diane’s, one repeatedly teased in earlier seasons.

But “The Good Wife” is not a show about dreams fulfilled. In its final moments, creators Robert and Michelle King exploded these reveries, as well as any conventional resolution for its characters. The show frequently reminds us there are no easy answers. After a fantasy where Alicia consults the advice of Will (Josh Charles), her now deceased lover, she goes to Jason and asks him to wait for her. The closing scene is another dreamlike sequence in which Alicia chases a darkened figure down a hallway, believing the shadow to be the man with whom she hopes to start a new life. Like many things in “The Good Wife,” he is not who he appears to be.

In a show that was no stranger to controversy (especially in regards to rumors of a behind-the-scenes feud between Margulies and former co-star Archie Panjabi), what happened next may prove to be its most divisive scene. Alicia turns around to face Diane. The two women share an extraordinary amount of history, a past littered with double-crossings. The program’s final season opened with Alicia, now working for herself, giving legal advice to Howard Lyman (Jerry Adler), an aging partner hoping to bring a suit against Lockhart-Gardner. Diane discovers this and confronts Alicia at her home. “It’s not what it looks like,” her former colleague assures her. Diane reminds her that sometimes, it is exactly what it looks like.

During “End,” these repeated slights build up to a moment of ecstatic violence. In order to keep her husband out of jail, Alicia again double-crosses Diane by revealing her husband’s infidelity in court. Diane’s husband, Kurt McVeigh (Gary Cole), is a ballistics expert whose testimony will undercut the defense in Peter’s corruption trial. In order to destroy his credibility, Alicia and her co-chair, Lucca (Cush Jumbo), question him about his affair with a colleague, Holly Westfall (Megan Hilty). The moment humiliates Diane, who has lost both a husband and a friend. After Peter accepts a plea deal, she shows up to his public address. Rather than voicing her frustration with the woman that Alicia Florrick has become in the past seven years, Diane strikes her associate across the face. The blow is so shocking that Alicia immediately tears up.

The long-simmering confrontation between the two was the slap heard around the Internet, with many lamenting that one of television’s most explicitly feminist shows devolved into a catfight between two women. At Variety, the great Maureen Ryan craved romantic closure for its flawed heroine. “ The Good Wife’ can’t give me that swoon-y Alicia-Jason romance and then expect me to not want her to smooch Jason one more time,” Ryan wrote. “Am I made of stone?” The fan outcry was so massive that the Kings issued what may be the swiftest mea culpa in TV history. “We’re sorry if anybody’s thrown,” Robert King told Variety.

As King reveals in the Variety interview, the writers hashed out a number of different scenarios for the finale. In one version, Alicia finally embraces her happiness as she races into the arms of a lover—although Robert King neglects to say whom. He calls this the “usual running to the airport scene.” “We just thought that would be happy-making in the moment but it didn’t feel a wrap up to the seven seasons,” King said. “And that seemed more important.” According to the Kings, the finale was designed to answer a more important question: Alicia Florrick has survived her husband’s humiliating infidelity scandal, his later imprisonment, the death of her lover, and a forced resignation for the race of State’s Attorney after allegations of voter fraud. How have these events changed her?

To illustrate that theme, the Kings engage in a clever bit of parallel construction: “End” is a distorted mirror image of the show’s pilot. Seven seasons ago, Alicia “stood by her man” as so many political wives—including Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton—had before her. During Peter’s final address, when he steps down from the governorship, she is not the ruined woman she used to be. Alicia stands apart from him. The series’ opening shot was the couple’s clasped hands, united in a gesture of support. When Peter grabs for once more, she rejects him and walks away. It was previously Alicia who struck her husband, after his affair with a call girl made their family a constant fixture in the news cycle. This time it’s Alicia who is the agent of betrayal.

The finale might feel like a bait and switch for those who hoped that “The Good Wife,” after putting Alicia through the ringer for so long, was finally allowing her that most elusive of emotions: happiness. The Kings, however, make it explicit that was never in the cards. During her chat with Will, her old flame reminds her of something she used to tell him about their thwarted liaison: “It was romantic because it didn’t happen.” “End” further acknowledges the fictiveness of romantic resolution when Alicia tells Will that she doesn’t believe Jason is the one; that opportunity has already passed her by. “Jason’s not you,” she sighs. The program itself was a series of constant near-misses—calls never returned, friendships that never quite materialized, and partnerships that fizzled as soon as they materialized.

To focus on the show’s central romance is to ignore the fact that its romance was never all that central; finding love often appeared at odds with the show’s core themes. More than anything, “The Good Wife” was about human frailty. If the show was set in the world of Chicago politics, the people at its center were just as corruptible as their surrounding environment. The program’s most recent seasons, in fact, have pushed the boundaries of its title: How much could Alicia become tainted by everything that she had seen and still think of herself as fundamentally moral and just? In order to escape Peter’s shadow, she had to become like him.

Recent episodes have emphasized just how little the calculated, cynical Alicia Florrick of today resembles the woman we met in the pilot. During the series’ penultimate episode, “Verdict,” Louis Canning (Michael J. Fox), a crooked man Alicia frequently refers to as “the devil,” presents her with evidence that her husband may have had even more affairs than she knows about—including with a coworker, Geneva Pine. She has no reaction to the news, and Canning is confused by this. “You heard what I just said?” he asks. Alicia is unmoved. “Were you wanting me to cry, Mr. Canning?” she responds. Alicia begins to pantomime a teary-eyed breakdown: “Oh my god, I thought my husband no longer cheated.” Canning, a professional manipulator, recognizes a kindred spirit blossoming before him. “God, I love you,” he says.

If the touch-and-go friendship between Alicia and Canning highlights her moral miseducation, there’s a terrific moment earlier in “Verdict” that perfectly underscores that theme. “It’s a terrible thing when someone loses their moral compass,” the prosecuting attorney (Matthew Morrison) states during his opening argument in Peter’s trial. “It starts with a small infraction, something insignificant. Then it’s followed by two more infractions, because the first one has long been accepted as justified. Then, like a pyramid scheme of moral laxity, the lies become misdemeanors, the misdemeanors become felonies, and the felonies become a way of life.” The speech is directed at Peter, but the same could be said about Alicia.

If “The Good Wife” ended on a note befitting “Breaking Bad,” some of its instrumentation was more than a little off-key. As Ryan—and many others—have pointed out, the discovery of Kurt’s infidelity is a plot hole for which the show never accounts. “How did anyone know about that affair?” she asks. “When did Alicia or Lucca find out?” Usually the show employed its leather-clad investigator Kalinda Sharma (Archie Panjabi) to answer for these reveals; the fans called this trope the “deus ex Kalinda.” Panjabi, however, infamously left at the end of last season following the aforementioned bad blood. In the final season of “The Good Wife,” the program is not only lacking its moral center—especially after so many of the characters that kept Alicia grounded have passed on—but it’s also missing its “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

The show’s messily unromantic finale, however, was a reminder of everything the show was really about. Maybe she will run away with Jason or decide to stay with Peter. As Jason reminds her, Alicia does like to be needed. Perhaps she will accept Eli Gold’s (Alan Cumming) plan to launch her own foray into politics or even go back to the office and mend fences with Diane, who must be used to that sort of thing by now. But as “The Good Wife” made its closing arguments Sunday night, it did so with courage and conviction. Alicia finally did something was still finding the strength to do so long ago: She took a beating and mustered forward, prepared to move onto the next phase of her life. Whatever comes next, Alicia Florrick has had seven years to get ready.

What it means to be brown: Cheap labor, scapegoated Muslims and exploited immigrants, from Canada to Qatar

Toronto-based writer Kamal Al-Solaylee’s first book, “Intolerable” (2012), recounted his harrowing youth as a gay Yemeni coming of age in the Middle East. In the book, the author — once a theatre critic for the Globe and Mail and now a journalism professor at Ryerson University — artfully melded the personal and political into a powerful memoir.

Al-Solaylee takes this approach even further in his follow-up, “Brown: What Being Brown Means in the World Today (To Everyone)” (HarperCollins Canada, May 10). The book is a far-reaching analysis of what it means to have brown skin in the world, beginning with the author’s own realization of his skin color. In an agonizing childhood moment of self-hatred, he realizes he is brown-skinned when faced with the blinding whiteness of the child actor playing the lead role in the British musical “Oliver!”

Al-Solaylee then takes us on a global tour, where being brown means a variety of things. He interviews service workers in the Philippines, surveys the Arab diaspora in Britain, chronicles the struggles of undocumented Latino workers in America, and finds that Canada has its own flaws. (An analysis of the October federal election, in which former Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted to leverage fear of Muslims as an election wedge issue, is included.)

It speaks to Al-Solaylee’s talent as a writer that “Brown” pulls us into its multiple worlds of multiple identities, providing a unique portrait of a group of people who often provide vital labour but are just as often invisible. It’s a masterful fusion of Al-Solaylee’s own observations, anecdotes from his interview subjects and analysis of data and statistics. Indeed, “Brown” reads almost like an identity-politics thriller, as vivid as it is informative; about a third of the way through it, you realize you’re reading one of those important books that will stay with you long after you’ve put it down.

Al-Solaylee spoke to Salon about his inspiration for the book and the process of writing “Brown.”

“Brown”  is full of big ideas and really quite epic in scope. What inspired it?

The book came at me from so many different directions. Its starting point was very personal: being a brown man in the post-9/11 world where my skin tones and Arabic name make me guilty by association of terrorism or people who might be terrorists. But I also recall thinking that everywhere I go the service and low-paid jobs are increasingly performed by brown migrant workers. I was in Hong Kong in 2011 when I saw for the first time thousands of Filipino domestic workers enjoying picnics on Sundays, their only day off. And a few years earlier, I remember being on the bus that travels through Rosedale, one of Toronto’s loftiest neighborhoods, and the only passengers with me were also domestic workers and nannies. I got the idea that brown is the color of cheap and exploited labor. I thought there might be a premise to explore in a book there.

How did you decide which places to explore?

That came down to a combination of what stories I wanted to tell; how many contacts, if any, I had in each destination; and who got back to my email or phone inquiries with a genuine offer to help. It was vital to have contacts in each country before arriving. I didn’t have a huge budget to travel or as much time as I would have liked, so I had to do a lot of pre-planning and pre-book as many interviews each day as humanly possible. That said, I was let down more than once by contacts who promised to help but avoided me once I arrived. For Doha, Qatar, my contact never returned any of my emails after I booked my ticket. I had to improvise.

Was it difficult to secure interview subjects?

It varied from place to place. I was disappointed but not surprised at how many people in the U.K. and Canada were reluctant to talk about the scapegoating of Muslims in their respective contexts. I do think the politics of David Cameron and Stephen Harper have forced many Arabs and Muslims to be suspicious of fellow brown people who ask too many questions. It’s a form of self-censorship or of internalizing years of being cast as the enemy of western values. I found workers from Sri Lanka, the Philippines or Indonesia more willing to talk openly. They want someone to tell their stories, take up their cases. I was aware that I couldn’t include every story I heard and felt the usual pangs of guilt at the possibility of taking advantage of sources to write my book. I think I manage it but others may disagree.

Amid all the research, what was the most painful revelation for you?

On one level, the book confirmed what I always suspected­ — and heard on the cast album of “Avenue Q”: Everyone IS “a little bit racist.” Black people, brown people, East Asians, whites — there’s no monopoly on race-based prejudice. But perhaps I wasn’t prepared for the specific hatred and antagonism that immigrants and long-term residents of North African descent experience in France. I visited Paris a few months after the Charlie Hebdo murders — but before the November 13 attacks — and could feel the tension between white and brown France in the air.

The word intersectional is gaining a lot of traction in academic and activist circles lately. Your book makes these connections in such a clear, lucid way.

I have to be honest and say that I didn’t know what intersectionality meant exactly until a student brought it up in class after I finished the first draft. I Googled it right away. I wasn’t conscious of doing it, but the connections between race and economics, gender division of labour, migration and sexuality and desire just forced their way into everything I was researching or reporting on. How do you separate the situation of domestic workers from the Philippines in a place like Hong Kong without tracing the economic development of the latter from a manufacturing into a service economy in the 1970s? That helped local women enter the workforce in the thousands and gave them the option to “outsource” child and elderly care to brown workers from poorer countries.

Your first book was very much about coming of age as a gay man. Did your known gay identity pose any problems while conducting your research?

I’m good at going back into the closet in countries or situations where my safety or my life might be in danger – as I do when I go back to the Middle East, for example. It’s a survival mechanism. I was apprehensive about travelling to Qatar, not because of my sexuality but because of the government’s record of harassing or silencing journalists who write about the terrible conditions of migrant workers. But, thanks to my brown skin, I managed to blend in with the masses of brown workers around the Industrial Area. With one exception, no one stopped me or made feel like I didn’t belong. If I were a journalist of white, European background, I would have stood out. Advantage brown, I guess.

You conclude by discussing how the Harper government tried to use fear of the brown other as a wedge issue in the Canadian election, but failed. Did the outcome of the election — in which the Liberals won by a landslide — leave you feeling more confident?

To be clear, the brown other in Canada was always the Muslim, and never any other Eastern religion. Hindus or Sikhs didn’t get targeted the way Muslims did. I do feel more confident now that the Liberals are in charge, but I also know that Party’s more conservative, hawkish wing needs to be watched. Although I doubt that anything will be as hateful as the Harper years. At least I hope not.

This is a book full of valuable research, but also a deeply personal book. What do you hope people will take away from reading “Brown?”

I really want them to think about the immigrant serving them coffee at their local Tim Hortons, driving their home in a cab or cleaning their office late at night. What’s their story? What kind of economic or political catastrophe has forced them out of their homeland and who have they left behind? No doubt, each story will be as unique as the person telling it, but collectively the different stories paint a bigger picture of failures in the Global South and tensions in the Industrialized North that’s the world in which we live. That’s not a lot to ask, is it?

After noted Hillary supporter “forgets” his Iraq position, Twitter comedian creates the best timeline of pundits’ reactions to the war

Some pundits have a fuzzy memory when it comes to one of the most consequential — and destructive — foreign policy decisions of the 21st century.

Liberal blogger John Aravosis tweeted on Sunday night that he forgot whether or not he supported the U.S.’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Aravosis, the executive editor of liberal website AMERICAblog, is a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, who supported the war, and an outspoken critic of Bernie Sanders, who opposed it. His former employer, the United Nations, explicitly said the U.S. invasion was illegal.

Serious question: Does everyone remember if they were for or against the Iraq war in 2003 AT THE TIME. I honestly don’t.

— John Aravosis (@aravosis) May 9, 2016

An array of Twitter users criticized the blogger for allegedly forgetting what his position was on the critical historical moment.

“I joke that pundits have suffered brain damage,” comedian @Trillburne said, but Aravosis should “see a doctor.”

I joke that pundits have suffered brain damage, but not being able to remember a seminal national event- see a Dr. pic.twitter.com/bePsFxU4w2

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

Trillburne followed up writing a “timeline of Proper and Serious opinions about the Iraq War,” a satirical chronology depicting how the commentariat whitewashed the U.S.’s illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country, destroying Iraq’s government, leading to the deaths of at least 1 million people, destabilizing the Middle East and creating a sectarian civil war that gave rise to extremist groups like al-Qaeda and eventually ISIS.

timeline of Proper and Serious opinions about the Iraq War:
'03: anyone who opposes it is a degenerate traitor
'04: good idea, bad execution

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

’05: the Iraqis weren’t ready for democracy, the chaos is their fault

’06: liberals are undermining the war by questioning it

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

’07: civil war is less than ideal, but the surge will fix everything

’08: the surge made the war good again, so let’s stop talking about it

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

’09-’12: maybe it was a mistake, but pobody’s nerfect! let’s give pro-war politicians & pundits a mulligan on this one

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

’13-’15: seems obvious the Iraq War created ISIS. maybe the anti-interventionists were right. on the other hand, let’s stop talking about it

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

’16: the Iraq War was ages ago. the constant cognitive dissonance in my thought processes has made me block it out, so let’s all forget it

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

Fellow Twitter comic Matt Christman followed up with a satirical prediction of pundits’ responses in 2018 and 2020.

@Trillburne
'18: Nuking Mosul may have negative repercussions, but we must act.
'20: Something must be done about radioactive refugees!

— Matt Christman (@cushbomb) May 9, 2016

“Jokes aside, the Iraq War was a disgusting, sleazy crime,” Trillburne wrote later, calling it “probably the formative moment for me politically.”

jokes aside, the Iraq War was a disgusting, sleazy crime. I was 16 & obsessed with it. was probably the formative moment for me politically

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

I’m not gonna forget it. the votes I cast & opinions I hold 50 years from now (if I’m so lucky) will probably still be shaped by it

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) May 9, 2016

“I’m not gonna forget it,” he added.

AG Loretta Lynch slams North Carolina bathroom bill, likening it to Jim Crow Laws

Following North Carolina’s announcement that it would file a lawsuit against the Department of Justice for the controversial “bathroom bill,” the DOJ filed a counter-suit against the state. Attorney General Loretta Lynch spoke out before a news conference likening the discriminatory objection to civil rights liberties in the past.

“We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation,” Lynch said. “We saw it in the fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education.”

She continued, “bill after bill in state after state [is] taking aim at the LGBT community,” which she said is borne out of “fear of the unknown” and a discomfort for change.

North Carolina says the so-called bathroom bill is a “common sense bodily privacy law.” The act bans individuals from using public bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex, as dictated by their birth certificates.

In a letter last week, the Justice Department declared that  “access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment. Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from their gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates Title VII.”

The letter demanded the state affirm today it won’t implement the law. Instead, North Carolina filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice.

Lynch honed in on North Carolina and said states should not be in the business of “legislating identity” and force transgender people to not be who they are.

Hard-line right-wing war hawk Max Boot applauds Hillary Clinton in op-ed

A have joined Wall Street in supporting Hillary Clinton for president.

Max Boot, a hard-line war hawk and self-declared “American imperialist,” lauded the Democratic presidential front-runner in an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, citing her as a much better alternative to presumed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“If I’m not for Trump, who am I for?” wrote Boot, a lifelong Reagan Republican, in the article.

“Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is more hawkish than President Obama and far more principled and knowledgeable about foreign affairs than Trump, who is too unstable and erratic,” he answered.

“For all her shortcomings (and there are many), Clinton would be far preferable to Trump,” he added.

Boot however stressed that, while he is a fan of Clinton, he is “not prepared to join the” Democratic Party, “because so much of it appears to be well to her left.”

It would be difficult to find someone more hawkish than Max Boot.

Boot has openly expressed support for “American imperialism.” He insists that there is no need to run away from the label “imperialism,” arguing the “greatest danger is that we won’t use all of our power for fear of the ‘I’ word.”

A senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Boot worked as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Marco Rubio this year.

He has previously publicly declared that Clinton would be “vastly preferable” to Trump.

In his Los Angeles Times op-ed, Boot took his statements a step further and accused Trump of “killing” the Republican Party he so loved.

“I have been a Republican as long as I can remember,” Boot wrote. “My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House.”

Reagan “shaped my worldview,” with his “pro-free trade and pro-immigration” views, and his belief in “limited government at home and American leadership abroad,” Boot explained.

“For the time being, at least,” he said, Reagan’s “Republican Party is dead.” The Tea Party “wounded” it, and Trump “killed” it.

Boot correctly identified Trump as “an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs,” but his biggest reservations were with the GOP front-runner’s foreign policy.

Trump has criticized the hyper-militarist U.S. foreign policy that has dominated in this country for decades. Boot embraces it.

The extreme war hawk Boot blasted Trump for threatening to “break up the most successful alliance in history — NATO” and for “champion[ing] protectionism and isolationism.”

Hillary Clinton used very similar words in the Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn in April. “NATO has been the most successful military alliance in probably human history,” she declared, while applauding it for opposing “Russian aggression” (after the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO promised not to expand eastward, but later did so anyway).

Clinton is one of the most hawkish presidential candidates in years. Even the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton for president, called her “the last true hawk left in the race,” acknowledging that “neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.”

In his op-ed, Boot went so far as to call the risk of a Trump victory “the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”

He also condemned grassroots progressives who support Clinton’s opponent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist whom Boot characterized as just as much of a threat as Trump.

“I don’t ‘feel the Bern’ and I can’t make common cause with those who do,” Boot wrote. “Nor do I support Obama and his ‘lead from behind’ foreign policy.”

Boot expressed hope that a right-wing third party will arise to challenge Trump.

“I won’t vote for Trump. My hope is that he will lose by a landslide, and the Republican Party will come to its senses, rejecting both his ugly, nativist populism and the extreme, holier-than-thou conservatism represented by Ted Cruz,” he wrote.

As the November presidential election creeps closer, it becomes more and more apparent that Hillary Clinton is the preferred candidate of not just Wall Street, but also of unabashed warmongers like Max Boot.

Jon Stewart breaks his silence on Donald Trump: “He has the physical countenance of a man and a baby’s temperament and hands”

Not to worry, Jon Stewart has finally made his triumphant return to political comedy and satire just as reality television star Donald Trump has unbelievably managed to convince a major American political party to select him as their presidential nominee. Just in time or too little too late?

The iconic former Comedy Central host called Trump an “unrepentant narcissistic a–hole” during a taping of David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast on Monday, according to Politico. Stewart told Axelrod that he wasn’t sure if Trump is even eligible for the presidential nomination.

“I’m not a constitutional scholar, so I can’t necessarily say, but are you eligible to run if you are a man-baby, or a baby-man?” Stewart said at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. “He has the physical countenance of a man and a baby’s temperament and hands.”

“When was America great? What is this time that he speaks of?” Stewart asked, referring to Trump’s lazy “Make America Great Again” slogan. “’81 to ’82? Like what are we talking about? And who took your country away from you?” he joked.

Stewart later added that “at this point, I would vote for Mr. T over Donald Trump.”

The former “Daily Show” host, who signed a four-year production deal with HBO to make “a few minutes of content now and again” back in November 2015, recently previewed his coming return to political commentary at a USO event with fellow semi-retired comedian David Letterman.

“Don’t worry,” Stewart told service members on Thursday, “Trump’s going to keep you busy! You’re going to have to repaint all the planes with ‘TRUMP’ in big gold letters.”

During Axelrod’s weekly forum on Monday, Stewart delved deeper into the bizzaro world that is an American political landscape that centers around Trump, although he did flatly state that “I’m not going to be on television anymore.”

“I feel like I’m engaged now,” Stewart told Alexrod, according to People.  “When you’re not on television, you’re still alive and you’re still engaged in the world. And I feel more engaged now in the real world than I ever did sitting on television interviewing politicians.”

“The October surprise in this election is not going to be a two-minute cartoon that I’m going to release,” Stewart added. The comedian told Axelrod, “we’re working on technology and animation to try and do interesting and little small bits” beginning in September.

 

Audio of the entire “The Axe Files” episode featuring Stewart is expected to be released later this week.

The “militant complacency” of the Democratic establishment: Why Bernie & his supporters must continue to pressure Hillary Clinton

Now that Donald Trump has more or less locked up the Republican nomination, Hillary Clinton has begun to focus more attention on the New York billionaire, who doesn’t appear at all ready to tone down his inflammatory rhetoric, as his chief strategist had indicated he would a few weeks earlier. As many on the left have anticipated, Clinton now seems to be shifting back rightwards after many months of promoting herself as a bona fide progressive. (Excuse me, a “progressive who like’s to get things done.”)

As the New York Times reports:

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign is trying to seize on the turmoil Donald J. Trump’s ascent has caused within the Republican Party, hoping to gain the support of Republican voters and party leaders including former elected officials and retired generals disillusioned by their party’s standard-bearer…Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is repositioning itself, after a year of emphasizing liberal positions and focusing largely on minority voters, to also appeal to independent and Republican-leaning white voters turned off by Mr. Trump.”

Clinton is anything but unpredictable. Rather than trying to court those disillusioned Sanders supporters and left-wing malcontents, Hillary seems to believe that she has a better shot with the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” country club Republicans (who like their foreign policy hawks).

Politico reported on Thursday that the Clinton camp has even started reaching out to top Bush family donors, “to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump.” Considering that both former president’s George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have already announced that they won’t be endorsing Trump or attending the Republican convention, it seems likely that Bush family donors are also wary of the billionaire. Jeb Bush’s failed campaign was funded by extremely wealthy individuals — by July of last year, his super-PAC had received 23 individual donations of $1 million or more.

And so it begins. The new Clinton slogan may as well be: “You may not like me, but I’m better than Trump.” It’s not inspiring, but given the sheer divisiveness of Trump, it could be sufficient. And if the past few elections are anything to go by, 2016 will be a record-breaking year for campaign spending, which means that Clinton doesn’t want to alienate her donors on K Street and Wall Street with too much economic populism. (Don’t be surprised if Trump begins to sound like more of an economic populist than Clinton — he has already flip-flopped on taxes, saying that he would be willing to raise them on the wealthy.) It looks like Clinton will be running on a platform of what can be called “militant complacency,” as Tom Frank amusingly puts it in a recent article.

The Democratic party has already released a brand new hat with a brand new slogan for 2016, and it perfectly captures this self-satisfied complacency: “America Is Already Great.”

Of course, this is mocking Trump’s own slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which could just as well be “Make America White Again”; but it does seem quite fitting for Clinton and other partisan Democrats, ironically enough.

These are the kind of Democrats who think soaring wealth and income inequality is not as big a problem as Bernie Sanders makes it out to be, as long as everyone has a chance to realize their “God-given potential,” or as long as the political and economic elite are sufficiently diverse. They’re the kind of Democrats who worship the cult of meritocracy, and believe industry insiders have a kind of superhuman understanding of their industries, and are therefore best suited to regulate those industry. They’re the kind of Democrats who only seem concerned with big money in American politics when it’s the Republicans taking checks from the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson. (This was exemplified by Clinton’s defense of her ties to Wall Street, arguing that no one could prove a quid pro quo — the very same reasoning conservative Supreme Court justices used when throwing out campaign finance laws.)

For these partisan Democrats, the Obama years have been an unequivocal success, and the many grievances that you commonly hear from progressives can be attributed solely to obstructionist Republicans, not the president’s of trying or the fact that he was entirely uninterested in confronting powerful D.C. institutions and special interests — what Mike Lofgren has called the “Deep State” — from the very beginning.

“Wear it with pride,” reads the hat description, “when you’re telling your friends about more than 73 straight months of private-sector job growth under President Obama [and] historically low uninsured rates.” There is no doubt that Obama’s economic legacy will be held in much higher regard than his predecessor’s (at least by economists), and the Affordable Care Act has indeed lowered uninsured rates, while limiting the abuses of insurance companies. But is this kind of complacency really warranted? Economic inequality is at historic levels and the majority of wage-earners have seen their compensation stagnate or decline since the recession; America has the largest prison population in the world (which is disproportionately African American and Hispanic) while most criminal Wall Street executives remain free; healthcare and drug costs have continued steadily rising — far outpacing inflation and wage growth — and Washington is almost completely controlled by monied interests. How great is America again?

Even while playing the role of progressive during the primaries, Clinton has been adamant that she doesn’t want to get into “contentious” fights with Republicans, even though Republicans have time and again proven that they have no interest in working with Democrats. (Of course, if she can manage to court GOP donors, maybe the Clinton administration will compromise on some more reactionary legislation with Republicans, as the previous Clinton administration so famously did.)

When you’re complacent and self-satisfied, contentious fights may seem undesirable; but for people who have lost their homes, college graduates who are crippled in debt, Americans who can’t afford their medicine, or workers who are making subsistence wages, fighting Republicans — and, more importantly, special interests — is exactly what is this country needs. Which is why Senator Sanders should continue pressing on until the convention, and why the popular movement that has formed around him should remain mobilized long after 2016. Only a sustained grassroots movement on the left can combat the militant complacency of the liberal elite and usher in a new progressive era.

New glimpse of 9/11’s aftermath: George W. Bush Presidential Library releases 60 new photos

The George W. Bush Presidential Library Monday released a 60 never-before-seen photos of former-President George W. Bush, taken by his personal photographer in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

The photographs reveal candid moments in the week or so following the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Below is a sampling:

Deputy Assistant Dan Bartlett points to news footage of the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush gathers information about the attack Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, from a classroom at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. Also pictured are Director of White House Situation Room Deborah Loewer, directly behind the President, and Senior Advisor Karl Rove, far right.

Working with his senior staff, President George W. Bush goes over the speech that he will deliver to the nation the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, from the Oval Office. Pictured with the President from left are: White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Counselor Karen Hughes, National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Chief of Staff Andy Card.

President George W. Bush grasps the hand of his father, former President George H. W. Bush, Friday, Sept. 14, 2001, after speaking at the service for America’s National Day of Prayer and Remembrance at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

President George W. Bush tours the World Trade Center disaster site aboard Marine One Friday, Sept. 14, 2001, with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, left, and New York Governor George Pataki.

President George W. Bush talks with shortstop Derek Jeter Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2001, before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Game Three of the World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in New York.

Find the full gallery over at The Library’s website.