Wednesday in the Age of Reason-Munchausen (1988)

https://www.nationofchange.org/2018/08/29/air-pollution-shortens-human-life-by-one-year-on-average/

Breathe deep while you sleep.

http://www.bionity.com/en/news/163377/this-tiny-particle-might-change-millions-of-lives.html?WT.mc_id=ca0265

Social scientists call it the curse of knowledge. As the psychologist Sian Beilock, now the president of Barnard College, writes, “As you get better and better at what you do, your ability to communicate your understanding or to help others learn that skill often gets worse and worse.”

http://crookedtimber.org/2018/08/26/the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations/

A bullshitter: A bulshitter is not the same as a liar. A liar knows he is lying; a bullshitter does not In fact he is not even aware that a difference between truth and falsehood exists. The question is not what is true, but what works for him (and for her). Examples: Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump.

“America first:” A clear, perhaps even panicky, symptom of decline.

Conscience: An uncommon word, meaning that which prevents us from stealing a wallet even though there is no chance of getting caught.

A conspiracy: Often, what people imagine when they do not understand what is going on.

Courage: That which is shown by anyone who, having heard a joke being told about him, does not immediately expire of grief but demands compensation instead.

Creationism: Should be regarded as a particularly vicious form of stupidity, but unfortunately isn’t always.

http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/more-definitions/

If enacted, Warren’s ambitious measure would:

• Completely ban foreign lobbying;
• Bar members of Congress and congressional candidates from accepting campaign donations from lobbyists;
• Require the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) release the tax returns for federal candidates, including the president and vice president;
• “Padlock the revolving door” by imposing a lifetime ban on lobbying by former presidents, members of congress, and agency chiefs;
• Ban members of Congress from owning and trading individual stock; and
• Establish an “independent anti-corruption agency dedicated to enforcing federal ethics laws.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/21/functional-democracy-would-be-no-brainer-warren-unveils-bold-anti-corruption?cd-origin=rss&utm_term=%27In%20a%20Functional%20Democracy%2C%20This%20Would%20Be%20a%20No-Brainer%27%3A%20Warren%20Unveils%20Bold%20Anti-Corruption%20Legislation&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Newsletter%20-%20During%20Fundraiser%20-%20With%20Fundraising%20Message&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email&cm_mmc=Act-On%20Software-_-email-_-Mourn%20the%20Children.%20Trounce%20the%20Billionaires.%20Impeach%20the%20President.%20Save%20the%20Earth.%20%7C%20Your%20Week%20In%20Review%20-_-%27In%20a%20Functional%20Democracy%2C%20This%20Would%20Be%20a%20No-Brainer%27%3A%20Warren%20Unveils%20Bold%20Anti-Corruption%20Legislation

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/trump-impeachment-the-endgame-comes-into-view.html

https://boingboing.net/2018/08/24/siege-of-londongrad.html

https://boingboing.net/2018/08/24/sweaty-trumpkin-congressman-an.html

Our Political Tasks, in which he described Lenin as “head of the reactionary wing of our Party” and the “dull caricature of the tragic intransigence of Jacobinism.” Leninist methods, said Trotsky, would lead to a situation in which “the organisation of the Party takes the place of the Party itself, the Central Committee takes the place of the organisation, and finally the dictator takes the place of the Central Committee.”

Lenin had never abandoned his uncompromising democracy. In 1904 he wrote: “We are prepared to support even a bourgeois democrat in the degree that he conforms to democracy; we are prepared to expose any democrat, even a Social-Revolutionary, who abandons democracy.” One reads in his pamphlet, Two Tactics, which was dated 1905: “Anyone who attempts to achieve socialism by any other route than that of political democracy, will inevitably arrive at the most absurd and reactionary deductions, both political and economic.” In the same year he defined his conception thus: “Everyone is free to say and to write what he believes without the slightest restriction…. Liberty of speech and of the press should be complete.” Even the Mensheviks could not have gone further; but the divergence over ways and means was stronger than the agreement on principles.

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/souvar/works/stalin/ch03.htm