“Excellent analysis of how we end up with leaders who are not able to lead. I was a career military officer and a health professional. Both areas require compliance and hoop jumping. The military has made hoop-jumping the primary means of career advancement. If you don’t advance on schedule, your career ends. Thus, officers become professional hoop jumpers and their actual duties are secondary. The consequence is that my the time an officer becomes field grade, they are often devoid of any real skills but have perfect promotion folders. Hard workers, loyal, but unable to deal with failure or stand up for principle. They can’t and won’t rock a boat that needs rocking.”
CAPITALIST SICKNESS
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Museums: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
5 minutes readJohn Oliver discusses some of the world’s most prestigious museums, why they contain so many stolen goods, the market that continues to illegally trade antiquities, and a pretty solid blueprint for revenge.
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Leftists Disappointed By Lula Win In Brazil Election?
7 minutes readContrary to polls, the recent presidential election in Brazil was quite close, with incumbent Jair Bolsonaro beating expectations to force his opponent, Lula, into a runoff election later this month. What explains these surprising results, and what are the odds that Bolsonaro will defeat Lula in the runoff? Jimmy and his panel of America’s Comedian Kurt Metzger and The Convo Couch’s Craig Jardula and Fiorella Isabel discuss the Brazilian electorate and the unique circumstances of this particular election.
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JAMES DiEUGENIO—Broder was so much of an insider that he began collecting hefty lecture fees from industry groups and then lobbied Congress on behalf of at least one of those groups, even though this was a clear violation of the Post’s editorial policy. He then appears to have lied about it by saying it was cleared in advance. (Harper’s, June 12, 2008). By hiring Broder and then maintaining the columnist as a fixture at the Post for over four decades, Bradlee not only showed what kind of protect-the-Establishment journalism he valued but that he was blind to the media future that was just over the horizon.
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PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Strong, and the Merely Powerful
24 minutes readPATRICK LAWRENCE—The rampant, perverse corporatization of every aspect of life in unduly powerful nations represents the institutionalization of these characteristics. When everything is measured according to its potential to turn profit, we have to say that Margaret Thatcher was horribly right when she asserted, “There is no society. There are only individuals.” This is a key feature of nations that are merely powerful. They are gatherings of survivors in constant struggle against one another.