opinion

An increasingly unhinged President Donald Trump started the week by suggesting that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is guilty of treason and should be arrested. While that is, of course, completely nuts, what Schiff did was so dumb that you would have thought he headed the House Stupidity Committee, and not the Intelligence panel.

The post Who Has the Most to Gain From Blowing the Whistle on Trump? appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

As the Ukraine scandal unfolds, President Donald Trump and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani are frequently compared to a Mafia boss and his lawyer. We should be so lucky, because that would certainly mean the end of the mob.

It’s difficult to put into words how inept Giuliani is. But we’ll try… by making him a character in one of the most iconic mob movies in history: The Godfather.

Omar Salem was frantic with worry. What should have been the happiest time of his life had become his worst nightmare. The birth of his daughter seven days earlier had turned into a medical emergency and she was hospitalized. Worse, the ward where she was battling for life was seriously understaffed, her father believed.

Everybody knows Aesop’s fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” — the story of a young shepherd who repeatedly pretends his flock is being attacked by wolves to play a prank on his neighbors. Then, when a wolf actually does show up, nobody believes him — and his sheep are eaten.

Many people are accusing the US government of doing nothing on climate change. That could not be more wrong. Every day, this administration is taking new steps to muffle scientists, shirk responsibility, deny evidence, shut down research, and undermine international efforts to fight this problem. 

So it’s simply incorrect to accuse the US of doing nothing. In reality, it is much worse. 

Chennai, India’s sixth-largest city, is running out of water. The parched Chembarambakkam reservoir, plus three others supplying the city, are all nearly empty. Currently, water is being trucked into the city’s neighborhoods; and standing in line is becoming part of each resident’s daily routine.

The post Donald Trump Has Found a Solution to Global Warming appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

When little kids don’t want to eat something, they often throw a temper tantrum and loudly proclaim that the food on their plate is “yucky.” In politics, when the rich don’t like something, they have their puppets throw a tantrum and loudly proclaim that the policy they object to is “socialism.”

Reading Time: 1minute In order to punish the children of undocumented immigrants, President Donald Trump wants to end birthright citizenship, which makes anyone born on US soil an American. But once we start holding people accountable for the sins of their fathers and mothers, where does it stop?

The post The Sins of the Father, Mother, and President appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

Labor Day is a national holiday, but probably not one that generates much celebration in the Trump White House, which is moving to add regulatory insult to the existing injury of policies that depress the wages of low-income workers.

With Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) moving up in the polls for the Democratic presidential nomination, the talking heads of the corporate media are trying to identify her greatest vulnerability. That suspected Achilles heel is quickly found: How will Warren respond when President Donald Trump hurls an ethnic slur at her that belongs on a grade school playground and not a presidential campaign?

Reading Time: 1minute A poll this week showed the Democratic presidential campaign evolving into a three-way race between Joe Biden and progressive Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). What are they thinking?

The post That Awkward Three-Way-Race Feeling appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

It’s perhaps fortunate timing that a federal appeals court has just decided that the 538 people who actually elect a president are not bound by the popular votes of their respective states.

When news broke of Jeffrey Epstein’s death in prison, some corporate media were quick to assure the public — as they so often do — that whatever that was about, it should not be viewed as involving any sort of conspiratorial behavior.

They did question why Epstein was taken off suicide watch, especially since he allegedly attempted to kill himself in July, but few considered foul play.

Dear Mr. President,

You claim to be the smartest person in the room, perhaps in the entire country. Yet you’ve let your aide Stephen Miller essentially become your brain.

The attention to Miller is bad for your brand.

The post Nobody Will Bail Out Ordinary People When the Next Recession Hits appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

Financial crises tend to strike with all the subtlety of a Kansas tornado — out of the blue and with utter indifference to the mayhem they wreak. But the crisis itself — the moment when asset prices plunge, lending collapses, and the economy starts to contract — is not the moment when things go wrong; that’s just the moment when you notice. Things go awry long before, when few are looking.

When Stacey Abrams “lost” Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election, a lot of Republicans were probably breathing sighs of relief. While the result was close, their strategy of rigging the state’s election laws to keep minorities from voting had paid off once again.

After pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell, news reports said that his guards falsified their logs to show that they had checked on him when, in fact, they had been sleeping.

Earlier this month, we wrote an editorial that apparently didn’t sit so well with the higher-ups at Fox News, so they got in touch with us over it. Here is an account of what happened.

The editorial, which ran on August 4, began like this:

Traffic fatalities in Sweden are off the charts compared to other western countries.

Those who defend the rights of regular Americans to own weapons of war often say that this is necessary to defend the US against tyranny or a foreign enemy. They conveniently leave out the fact that they would still be hopelessly outgunned if such an authoritarian regime ever were in charge.

Mass shootings happen all over the world. But their frequency in the US is a uniquely American problem. And their frequency in this particular period in our history is no accident.

We have a president who demonizes groups of people, even cities. He uses words as weapons, warning of an “invasion” of immigrants — a surge at the border that his hostile policies created.

A little over 20 years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes concocted a profitable way to tap into the white supremacist ideology still bubbling below America’s surface. 

Trying to pander to African Americans, President Donald Trump recently criticized Sweden for not releasing rapper A$AP Rocky, who has been charged with assault. It’s curious that he never called out Saudi Arabia for torturing and killing Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi.

Trump also vetoed legislation preventing certain weapons to be sold to the Saudis. All of this is further proof that Trump is much more comfortable with repressive regimes than the rule of law.

The UK is going through a “political nervous breakdown” over Brexit, the tortuous process of Britain leaving the European Union, declared Britain’s former chief of foreign intelligence Sir John Sawers this month. This week, Boris Johnson became the new prime minister and in a parallel realm Nurse Ratched sent for the strait-jacket.

Reading Time: 1minute Guess who paid for the Mueller hearing, including all the showmanship on both sides and the more than 100 non-answers, only to be left with a still partially redacted report and lots of questions!

The post Mueller Spectacle: Dazed, Not Dazzled appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

There is angst among many Americans right now that President Donald Trump might win a second term. But maybe they should be more worried about what would happen if he loses by a narrow margin.

The post A Soft Landing for the Conflict Between the Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

When she was five months pregnant, Marshae Jones, a black woman living in Alabama, got in a fight with another woman. Jones was shot in the stomach. Her fetus died.

The shooter was not charged; she was acting in self-defense, a grand jury believed. But Jones was indicted for starting a fight while pregnant. The charge? Manslaughter.

This country has an addiction problem. No, we’re not referring to the dependence of millions of Americans on opioids.

The “addict” in this case is the president of the United States. He is addicted to public attention. (We  will not refer to the president by name here, hoping to set a virtuous example.)

The “enablers” are journalists and the rest of us, who reward his inappropriate behavior with ever more headlines, just feeding and enlarging his insatiable cravings.

President Donald Trump’s grandiose vision for the 2019 Fourth of July celebration in Washington, DC, included tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as a flyover by military jets, in what the president ordered would be a “Salute to America.”

Before the event, there were concerns raised by the DC Council that the massive 60-ton M1  Abrams battle tanks would shred the lawns, recently relaid at the cost of $40 million, on the National Mall.

Imagine somebody getting pulled over for driving erratically.

A Tunis, on dit que le pays ne dit jamais ce qu'il vit mais vit de ce qui se dit. On opine, on copine puis on expose son  opinion dans une vitrine jusqu'à ce que tous les malentendants l'entérinent.

Le raconté y a plus de d'impact que le vécu. En vertu du principe selon lequel un drame n'a de sens que pour celui qui a le sens du drame. Il y a toujours eu deux clans qui s'affrontent: ceux qui dramatisent, les gouvernés et ceux qui dédramatisent, les gouvernants.

It seems as though the media has not learned a single lesson from 2016, because it is on track to screw up another presidential election.

Back then, corporate news outlets, driven by a desire to maximize revenue, basically picked both candidates in the primary, and then allowed themselves to become pawns in the scheme of a foreign power to get Donald Trump elected.

If there were such a thing as “Russia’s Employee of the Month,” then it would be a neck-and-neck race between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for the trophy these days.

“Britain’s warming to Trump,” tweeted Piers Morgan, daytime TV host and one of US President Donald Trump’s super fanboys in the UK.

When President Donald Trump made up some testimony that never happened and a letter that did not exist to attack Robert Mueller on Thursday, he could be certain of one thing: The former special counsel was not going to retaliate. And that’s part of the problem when people with even a shred of integrity have to deal with this president.

Various states are considering — or have taken initial steps toward — compelling presidential candidates to make their tax returns public if they want to be on the ballot next November.

With young people overwhelmingly rejecting their ideology, Republicans across the US seem hell-bent on making one final push to take the country back to some misogynist Eden.

At a time when the American public seems to be more ignorant than ever, the tools of deception have become more sophisticated.

I covered healthcare in Washington, DC, for a few years at the start of my journalism career. Back then, it was all about abstract policy for me, because, fortunately, I had not had any real experiences with the US healthcare system.

More recently — earlier this year to be precise — I got a much more intimate look at healthcare in action. Following open heart surgery and various complications, I was forced to spend nearly two months in a hospital — a large portion of that in the ICU.

Jared Kushner’s suggestion that Russian interference was limited to “buying some Facebook ads” is akin to claiming that all the US did in Vietnam was send some military equipment.

Even if it weren’t a blatant, easily disprovable lie, it would still not change the fact that a foreign power, using illegal means, sought to interfere in a US election on behalf of the candidate it felt would be more pliant to its strategic goals.

It is simply impossible to read the Mueller report and not come away with the certainty that this administration is the most (morally) corrupt and dysfunctional in US history, and that it is headed by a president who was only saved from prosecution because the people working for him routinely had the good sense to disregard his orders.

With House Democrats making a push to get their hands on Donald Trump’s tax returns, there is an expectation among those wanting to see the president get toppled that these documents might constitute the smoking gun that will bring him down.

But instead of a silver bullet, it’s more likely that the tax returns will be a relative dud, and here is why: There is simply no way that they are complete and accurate.

The Mueller report on the investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election is completed, and while US Attorney General William Barr summarizes that it clears President Donald Trump of collusion, confusion remains around the issue of obstruction of justice.

At this stage, I can finally say something I haven’t felt comfortable saying since November 2016: I think we’ve largely been asking the wrong questions.

Anybody who has spent time on social media has come across the heartwarming tales of people — many of them strangers — pitching in to help somebody in need. Often these stories involve medical problems, and the donations may make the difference between life and death.

There is no doubt that these anecdotes represent the best of humanity — but they also illustrate the widening rift between the haves and have-nots, as well as the abject failure of the US to fix an atrocious healthcare system.

When Donald Trump promised that he would only hire the “best people,” maybe he should have been pressed on what, exactly, they would be good at. Because it’s clearly not running the US government. Over the past two years, it has become clear that liars, grifters, conmen, opportunists, and crooks seem to be drawn to the president like flies to … well, you know.

Now, however, a situation is arising for which one of Trump’s “best people” seems ideally suited for forcing regime change somewhere in the Americas.

In the final week of 2018, Michael Bloomberg — the former mayor of New York, a Republican turned Democrat, and a possible future presidential candidate — went on television to issue a remarkable challenge to fellow politicians: He would insist that every candidate in 2020 lay out a comprehensive plan to combat climate change.

It is truly ironic that the world’s “elite” who gathered in Davos this week claim to be puzzled that people across the globe — frustrated by stagnating standards of living — are falling prey to nationalists and populists. To find the answer to this riddle, many of them could have saved the trip to Switzerland on their private jets and taken a long, hard look in the mirror instead — because they are the problem.

This Saturday, January 26, will be the first national day of action for Extinction Rebellion in America. This grassroots social movement, which began last fall in the UK, believes that climate breakdown poses an imminent and existential threat to what Noam Chomsky calls “organized human life” on Earth.

I’ve been getting text messages and emails on the passing of the more famous version of myself: the columnist Russell Baker.

Russell Baker had a knack for getting at the essence of human nature — a keen eye and winning voice, a sense of humor and irony we could certainly use in today’s messed-up world. He will be missed by many, and certainly by me.

Which do you agree with: America has too much online hate speech? Or, America has too much online free speech? Both complaints can apply to the same words.

The difference depends on no more than whether you are the speaker or the listener. What comes from my mouth is free speech that deserves legal protection. You protest that what enters your ears is hate speech that must be prohibited.

Hate speech is a byproduct of free speech. Lose one and you lose the other.

President Donald Trump, who hates being constrained by pesky things like laws, the separation of powers, or the Constitution, seems poised to invoke a national emergency to get his taxpayer-funded wall built along the southern border.  

To save face after triggering a government shutdown over this issue, it is believed that Trump would use this move to seize land along the border and reallocate funds designated for real emergencies to deal with this made-up crisis.

Speaking truth to power is important — but it matters little if the words aren’t backed up by action. And there may not be a more apparent truth than the moral bankruptcy of the country’s most powerful person, President Donald Trump.

The outstanding work of our Images Department, which is headed by an artist who goes by the nom de guerre “DonkeyHotey,” is the main reason WhoWhatWhy has such a unique look.

We are proud of our daily panoramas and other images, which add an engaging visual dimension to our stories. In order to provide another outlet for the unbound creativity of that department and its editor, we run a weekly cartoon and supplement it with sharp-tongued yet light-footed text.

Un peu d’humour aujourd’hui….

Source : Agar, 19-11-2018

Vendu à plus de 13 millions d’exemplaires dans 38 pays, La Méthode simple pour arrêter d’avoir une opinion, d’Alain Care, plus qu’un succès de librairie, est un véritable phénomène de société.

When LeBron James criticized President Donald Trump in February, Fox News host and frequent Trump apologist Laura Ingraham told the basketball star to “shut up and dribble.”

Fortunately for hundreds of kids in James’s hometown of Akron, OH, he did not follow her advice. Earlier this week, James opened the I Promise School, a public elementary school that he co-founded. Through his foundation, and based on his personal struggles at that age, he wanted to create a unique learning environment for kids at risk of falling behind.

When the effects of the Trump administration’s family separation policy became big news, a lot of people commented that “this is not who we are” or that “America is better than that.” Sadly, they are mistaken, because ripping (brown) children away from their parents is exactly in line with the US’s long history of deep-seated racism.

Soit, je viens d'être désignée à la tête de cette C.A.T., de cette cellule anti-terroristes pour vous apprendre à dépister, à chercher et à trouver de nouvelles pistes.

J'appelle un chat, un chat... je suis réaliste mais ça ne m'empêche pas de faire œuvre d'analyste et de me demander si derrière le chat, il y a ou il n'y a pas un rat.

Celui-là, il ne faut surtout pas le rater, si vous ne voulez pas passer à côté.

A version of this article was previously published December 2017.

We had been watching a puppet skit about an angry kid who shoots his entire family at dinner. It was hilarious, and we were still laughing when the dean stepped onto the stage and announced that a gunman was on campus and that at least one person was dead.

We all know the story. On Valentine’s Day, an expelled 19-year-old returned to his old school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, and, armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, killed three teachers and 14 students.

Many Stoneman students found politicians’ offers of “thoughts and prayers” wholly inadequate, and vowed to lobby and organize to get meaningful gun control laws passed at both the state and federal levels.

In response to the Florida school massacre, the White House had President Donald Trump participate in an unusual, media-filmed “listening” session with mourning parents and students.

Trump listened — how could he not? He is being pressured to do something about gun violence in America. This most recent slaughter, and the remarkable public response to it, led by young people, is creating a potentially inexorable emotional wave.

So he proposed a solution.

More guns.

Editor’s note: Pot is back in the news following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announcement that federal prosecutors will once again pursue marijuana cases in states where the drug has been legalized. That doesn’t sit well with the affected states, which hope to amass additional tax revenue from the pot businesses now legal under state laws.

That leads one WhoWhatWhy contributor to ask: “Are they all high?”

The uproar over the ban of a list of words that has roiled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and now the rest of the country, is understandable. The list, which a Health and Human Services official advised be omitted from the CDC’s budget documents, would make any scientist weep.

“You’re kidding yourself if you think cutting taxes is really cutting taxes. We’re simply deferring massive taxes unfairly and immorally putting huge debt burdens on future generations and that is just wrong.”

David Stockman

How does that old saying go?

“Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.”

President Donald Trump has called on Congress to quickly pass sweeping “tax reform” legislation this year. While his entire plan remains something of a mystery, one element stands out: Trump has insisted on reducing the corporate tax rate to 15%.

Any debate on tax policy is fraught with confusing terms, doublespeak and a whole lot of obfuscation.

As the GOP’s efforts to fundamentally alter the tax code are about to kick into high gear, WhoWhatWhy has prepared this primer to cut through the rhetoric and pull back the curtain on this “reform.”

N’ayons pas peur de le dire : nous sélectionnons lors d’élections une poignée d’oligarques qui nous volent le pouvoir. Sous le masque de la démocratie notre République prospère d’oligarchie en oligarchie (oligoi : petit nombre, arkhê : gouvernement), où « les hommes au pouvoir écrivent les règles de leur propre pouvoir. »