— Chris Hayes on the “Decision Points Theater” at the Bush library
(via janf)
Posts tagged with chris hayes
This does not sound like the kind of thing that’s going to make everyone realize what a great president George W. Bush was. In fact, it sounds to me like the world’s easiest video game. Invade a country for no reason or don’t invade a country for no reason? Don’t invade a country for no reason. Celebrate John McCain’s birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans or don’t celebrate John McCain’s birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans? Don’t celebrate John McCain’s birthday while a deadly storm hits New Orleans. I could do this all day. Torture people or don’t torture people? Don’t torture people. Deregulate and tax cut the country into financial ruin or don’t deregulate and tax cut the country into financial ruin?
There is no reason, people, to overthink the Bush presidency. It was just as bad as you thought. As Bush himself might advise, when you’re considering his legacy, go with your gut.
Comparing the Budgets: Chris Hayes compared the three budget plans we’ve seen so far this year: Paul Ryan’s monstrosity that guts women’s health programs, Murray’s (neoliberal) Democratic Senate plan, and the Progressive Caucus’ proposal. Percentages projected over ten years. Here’s the segment where this graph came from.
Yesterday, during a cable news discussion of gun violence and the Newtown school shooting, I dared mention a taboo truism. During a conversation on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes,” I said that because most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men, there would likely be political opposition to initiatives that propose to use those facts to profile the demographic group to which these killers belong. I suggested that’s the case because as opposed to people of color or, say, Muslims, white men as a subgroup are in such a privileged position in our society that they are the one group that our political system avoids demographically profiling or analytically aggregating in any real way. Indeed, unlike other demographic, white guys as a group are never thought to be an acceptable topic for any kind of critical discussion whatsoever, even when there is ample reason to open up such a discussion.
David Sirota, at Salon (via thesmithian)
Are We Incentivizing Terrorism?
by Chris Hayes. (Video of this monologue and subsequent discussion HERE.)
“As head of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas has renounced violence, even used the security forces of the PA to go after militants; he accepts and recognized Israel and its right to exist; and he’s even gone so far in recent interviews to, more or less, admit that Palestinians would concede their right to return to the land they, or their families, held before 1948 inside what is now Israel. In return for this, he has seen… basically nothing. Except for the continued settlement growth.
When Abbas took over the PA there were little more than 250,000 settlers established in settlements in the West Bank. Today, there are 350,000.
Assume for the sake of argument for a moment that Hamas targets Israelian civilians not solely because of some unalterable ‘cult of death’ but that it also adopts this as a tactic - however morally abhorrent - to achieve certain aims.
…The question is: what message is the Israeli government and the U.S. government, that supports it, sending when it makes choices that result in Hamas being able to point to its many victories and leaves Mahmoud Abbas and his government totally impotent, and humiliated; roundly viewed as feckless and failed.
Here’s the lesson as far as I can tell: If you recognize Israel, if you are credibly committed to non-violence you will get rolled, marginalized, undercut and left looking like a loser. But if you fire rockets into the heart of Israel, if you kidnap their soldiers…well than they’ll negotiate and adjust their policies. How perverse is that?
And believe me, everyone I’ve talked to on the Palestinian side sees this disparity.
…In allowing this to continue, in refusing to pressure the Israeli government to take concrete steps towards piece in the West Bank such as stopping all settlement growth, they’re turning a blind eye. They’re turning a blind eye while unarmed protesters in towns like Budrus and Nabi Salih are imprisoned, tear-gassed, and in some cases shot and killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers away from the eyes of American cameras with no condemnation from our government. We in the U.S. are creating the conditions in which terrorism - the great evil we have pledged ourselves to vanquish - bring strategic benefits, while the path of nonviolence leads to a dead end.
What a sorry legacy for everyone involved in helping this come to pass.”
Watch This: The Real Scandal of the Patreaus Affair
Chris Hayes - Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
I just finished this book. I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone.
As Thomas Frank of Harper’s said of Twilight of the Elites: “If you want to understand the world you’re living in, you will have to read this book.” Twilight of the Elites illuminates the current zeitgeist of the times; at the same time, completely deconstructs our way of life - this meritocracy - that underpins our society and asks the question: How can we get closer to a real egalitarian society?
5/5
It’s not simply that that rich are getting richer, though that’s certainly true. It’s that a smaller and smaller group of uber-rich are able to capture a larger and larger share of the fruits of the American economy. America now features more inequality than any other industrialized democracy. In its peer group are countries like Argentina and other Latin American nations that once stood as iconic examples of the ways in which the absence of a large middle class presented a roadblock to development and good governance.
Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites [p.60]
The insurrectionists not only think there is something fundamentally broken about our current institutions and the social order they hold up, but they believe the only way to hold our present elites accountable is to force them to forfeit their authority. Insurrectionists see the plummeting of trust in public institutions as a good thing if it can act as a spur for needed upheaval and change. The insurrectionists want a rethinking of some of our major institutions - our government, our corporations, our civil society.
Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites [p.18]
- Hayes argues that those aware of elite failure go beyond left/right and usually have one of two mindsets - the Insurrectionists (which he described here) and the Institutionalists - those who ultimately think that distrust in our institutions is a greater threat than the actual corruption and wrongdoing of our pillar institutions.
- Hayes argues that those aware of elite failure go beyond left/right and usually have one of two mindsets - the Insurrectionists (which he described here) and the Institutionalists - those who ultimately think that distrust in our institutions is a greater threat than the actual corruption and wrongdoing of our pillar institutions.
