1. Xenophobia and Nativism – US Style
SouthWest Airlines briefly pulls two passengers off a plane after another passenger overhears them talking in Arabic.
2. Who does Terrorism and does it work?
Sen. Sherrod Brown correctly notes that most of the recent terrorist attacks in the USA came from white US men. This will of course have little impact on the current scare, since it is contrary to the narrative that terrorists are scary people from outside the USA.
Harvard Business review has an article explaining why and how everybody under the sun thinks that responses to terrorism, no matter what they are, are “what the terrorists want”. In the meantime, researchers who have actually studied terrorism in depth have concluded that most of the time, terrorist organizations and groups fail to advance their goals with terrorist activity.
3. The “liberal media”
That shibboleth that the US media is liberal? Based on recent pronouncements by Fox News anchors compared to CNN, like hell it is. CNN suspends Elise Labott after her statement that the Statue Of Liberty hung its head in shame” following the passage of a House bill to suspend refugee processing. In the meantime, Fox News commentators make all sorts of bellicose grandstanding statements about the US needing to “close our borders to any country with anti-Western sentiment.” If Fox News has been suspending their commentators, they have been keeping it very very quiet…
4. Texas Board of Education appears to not like fact-checking
The crackpot-dominated SBOE appears to be terribly non-keen on having experts fact-check textbooks. It’s always good to know that our education stewards value expert opinion
5. Donald Trump deserves his criticism to be reflected back at him
After Donald Trump felt it was necessary to verbally abuse a heckler on the basis of his physical appearance, a journalist decides that maybe it is time for a critique of Trump’s own fashion sense and body. Karma is a wonderful thing.
