IMPORTANT READS

CIVIL RIGHTS--This past week saw some weaknesses in American life. First, our inability to deal with a mentally ill President and second, our inability to deal with the results of Group Rights. Unfortunately, the two collided. 

THE COHEN COLUMN--The Nuts with Nukes has a new member. Now North Korea doesn't feel so alone.

CRIME POLITICS-In January 2016, bemoaning that "the more people talk about improving the use of forensic science in the courtroom, the more things stay the same," I blogged in bold in The Huffington Post: 

UNION BUSTING-Since Election Day, unions have lived on borrowed time. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has exclusive authority over many key questions of labor law, is still controlled by Democrats   —  thus shielding workers and their unions from attacks that became far likelier the moment Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 election. 

LIES MATTER--Identifying it as part of the "slippery slope to dictatorship," critics are pointing to a new poll as evidence that Trump's base would likely support him even if he were to propose postponing the 2020 elections.

HEALTH CARE POLITICS--I've heard it all, whether it's from the social justice warriors (who don't know a thing about economics and medicine, although they sure think they know it all) to the capitalist overlords of medicine (who think they have all the power, although they're in for some very rude awakenings):  the cost of health care is going up, and the front-line doctors/providers are really not being talked to on this issue. 

GUEST WORDS--Until Nov. 9, 2016, the night of the presidential election, Black Lives Matter (BLM) was a force that not only demonstrated in the streets, disrupted business as usual and organized in black communities.

REDRESSING RACISM-Since the founding of this country there has been what we might accurately call an affirmative action program that has given exclusive advantages to whites, while denying them to minorities. Be it initially de jure or now only de facto, what remains ensconced in this country is our still segregated political, economic, and social system that functions as a white affirmative action and entitlement program. 

THE CLUE: RICHARD NIXON, 1968--Almost a year into his presidency in 1969 Richard Nixon looked like he would not finish his first term. Nothing was working, abroad or at home.

CORPORATE MEDIA CALLED OUT-Last night I spent an unexpectedly insightful evening with filmmaker Oliver Stone who was being interviewed by Truth Dig's own Robert Scheer. The occasion was a fundraising event at Immanuel Presbyterian Church for the progressive and perpetually under financial siege radio station KPFK, to celebrate the station's 58th anniversary. The audience seemed pleasantly surprised by an increasingly rare phenomenon: real journalism, documented with primary sources, as opposed to the all too pervasive spin and general obfuscation of truth practiced by corporate-dominated public commercial media.

THE COHEN PAPERS--And to think, we could have had Lyin' Ted instead.

But according to Donald Trump, "Oh dear, mercy me, Cruz might not have been entirely truthful about something, sometime, can't vote for him."

HEALTH POLITICS--For decades, Democrats and liberal Americans campaigned on universal health coverage ... and after the taking of the Presidency and Congress, they passed it--and lost power in both Congress and the Presidency.  

THE WALL--United States Customs and Border Protection will begin constructing the first segment of President Donald Trump's border wall in November through a national wildlife refuge, using money it's already received from Congress.

NEW GEOGRAPHY-Perhaps no economic issue — even trade — is as divisive as the energy industry. Once a standard driver of economic progress, the conventional energy industry has become increasingly vilified by the national media, sued by blue state attorneys general and denounced throughout academia. Some suggest that the industry should be demonized and hounded much as occurred in the case of tobacco. 

GUEST WORDS--We have been living with nuclear weapons for 72 years, so that must make them safe and sustainable, right?

EDUCATION POLITICS--Going to college is a good thing, right? That’s at least what I was told as a kid, and what led me to get a college degree. I was the first one in my family to do so.

VOICES--On July 25, the highlight of the Senate discussion and vote to study and repeal/replace Obamacare or do something, anything, to form a new healthcare bill (probably building on the punitive Congressional bill) was the brave Senator John McCain. Even while facing a diagnosis of gioblastoma brain cancer, he made a statement directed at how the Senate should behave, recalling a history of cooperation on both sides of the aisle. It was a welcomed theme and there was raucous applause for some of his strongly enunciated comments. His most important statement seemed to stun this august body, yet it was clearly vital – a remark that was the bravest and most truthful of any that have been made during the disaster of the Donald Trump presidency. 

BRANDING THE TRUMPSTER--I don’t blame the Boy Scouts for President Donald Trump’s bizarre speech at the National Jamboree in West Virginia on Monday.

REPLACING SESSIONS--President Donald Trump is considering appointing Rudolph Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions as head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), White House officials told Axios.

URBAN PERSPECTIVE-I have heard all the arguments about why the slaying of Justine Damond is not the same as the slaying of Michael Brown and police slayings of countless other unarmed blacks. They all come down to race. 

LABOR WATCH--Working families in the U.S. are facing a new set of threats from right-wing corporate interests that are more harmful than anything we have seen in generations. A key part of this very deliberate strategy is the weakening of unions through the passage of so-called Right to Work laws. These laws limit the ability of unions to fund themselves by making it more difficult to collect union dues from members, which are used to fight for fair working conditions, elect progressive candidates, and push for policies that benefit working people.