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Why Hillary Clinton Should Thank God for Donald Trump by Nick Gillespie

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Editor in Chief at Reason, Nick Gillespie, just penned a very important and very timely piece over at the Daily Beast, titled: Why Hillary Clinton Should Thank God for Donald Trump. I completely agree with his analysis, which is that Trump’s rise benefits Hillary Clinton more than anyone else. While everyone is focused on Trump’s buffoonery, the likely next President of these United States is being given a huge pass. You can almost hear the internal mental dialogue of millions of Bernie Sanders supporters out there. It goes something like this:

“Hillary really is an untrustworthy, corrupt, authoritarian crony, but imagine Trump in the White House. I’ll have to hold my nose and vote Hillary.”

Indeed, there’s probably no person out there who could galvanize more disenfranchised, apathetic voters to unenthusiastically vote for Hillary, and that’s a very bad thing.

What follows are some excerpts from Nick’s article:

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Has NYC Real Estate Peaked? Manhattan Vacancies Hit 9-Year High

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Recently, we’ve seen numerous signs that the housing market in one of the world’s biggest bubbles, London, has likely popped. It appears New York City isn’t too far behind.

From Bloomberg:

Manhattan apartment vacancies reached their highest level in more than nine years, a sign that the post-recession run-up in rents may begin to cool.

The vacancy rate in November was 2.87 percent, up from 2.31 percent a year earlier and the highest since August 2006, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Landlords eager to fill empty units lured tenants with the most concessions since 2011.

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Paul Ryan is Aggressively Lobbying to Pass “Frankenstein” CISA Spy Bill Through Congress

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So who could possibly be worse than John Boehner? Paul Ryan, of course, which is precisely why he was chosen to lead the RINOs in the stinking cesspool known as the U.S. House of Representatives.

So what is Paul Ryan up to now? Well, he’s trying as hard as possible to pass a grotesque spy bill known as CISA, which stands for the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. Congress has been relentlessly trying to pass similar legislation for years, under constantly changing names.

Now here’s the latest attempt,  with Paul Ryan leading the charge. The Guardian reports:

US librarians have joined with a host of civil liberties groups to condemn a cybersecurity bill now passing through Congress they claim will be both “unhelpful” and “dangerous to Americans’ civil liberties”.

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Liberty Links – 12/10/15

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

This post will be updated with new links throughout the day.

Bald Eagle Named “Uncle Sam” Attacks Trump During Photo Shoot (YouTube Video)

Bernie Sanders Continues to Lead Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire (CNN)

David Cameron: Migrant Crisis Could Force Brexit as Voters Say ‘Get Me Out of Here’ (The Telegraph)

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Two U.S. Military Servicemen Claim the Doctors Without Borders Hospital Was Intentionally Targeted

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Over the last month or so, there’s been a bit of a flurry of U.S. military members with conscience coming forward to tell the truth about incidents or practices they deem unethical.

For example, just last month, four former drone operators came forward to denounce the program publicly, coupled with a letter addressed to President Obama. As noted in the post, Drone Whistleblower Claim – Pilots Often High on Drugs; Refer to Children as “Fun Size Terrorists”:

The killings, part of the Obama administration’s targeted assassination program, are aiding terrorist recruitment and thus undermining the program’s goal of eliminating such fighters, the veterans added. Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force. Haas also described widespread drug and alcohol abuse, further stating that some operators had flown missions while impaired.

Haas also described widespread alcohol and drug abuse among drone pilots. Drone operators, he said, would frequently get intoxicated using bath salts and synthetic marijuana to avoid possible drug testing and in an effort to “bend that reality and try to picture yourself not being there.” Haas said that he knew at least a half-dozen people in his unit who were using bath salts and that drug use had “impaired” them during missions.

Moving along to today’s piece, two U.S. servicemen have come forward to claim that, as opposed to the Pentagon’s official story, the military intentionally targeted the Afghan Doctors without Borders hospital, in an attack that killed 31 civilians.

The AP reports:

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The New Crypto Wars – FBI Director James Comey Threatens Silicon Valley

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I’ve covered in detail how the U.S. establishment has been aggressively pushing against the American public’s right to private communications, i.e. encryption, ever since the terror attacks in Paris. This push continues unabated, with the latest shots fired earlier today by FBI chief James Comey at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

We learn the following from the Intercept:

FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday called for tech companies currently offering end-to-end encryption to reconsider their business model, and instead adopt encryption techniques that allow them to intercept and turn over communications to law enforcement when necessary.

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Liberty Links – 12/9/15

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Below are links to some of the more interesting and important reads I came across today, but will not be publishing on in detail.

This post will be updated with new links throughout the day.

More Evidence that ISIS is a “Saudi Army in Disguise” (Excellent read by F. William Engdahl)

Distrust Fuels Outrage at House Financial Services Committee (Regulators are Unimaginably Corrupt, Wall Street on Parade)

The IMF Changes Its Rules….for Ukraine (Hugely Important, Naked Capitalism)

The Financial Relationship Between Joe Biden’s Son and a Ukrainian Oligarch (New York Times)

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College Cry Bullies in Pennsylvania Demand “Racist” Lynch Memorial Hall Be Renamed

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In a recent post, Not a Safe Space – Canadian University Suspends Yoga Class After Students Become Offended, I explained how those most responsible for the almost inconceivable authoritarian idiocy spreading across college campuses are not the students themselves, but their spineless and inept administrators.

These kids are more or less acting like Wall Street financiers after the bailouts. After the bankers were provided with trillions of dollars in backstops and no one went to jail for destroying the economy, they immediately paid themselves record bonuses a year after the worst of the crisis, and are now once again thieving and pillaging at will.

Why? Because when no one is held accountable, the incentives are in place to steal. Similarly, no adults are holding these out of control child-fascists accountable for their despicable behavior. As such, these tyrants-in-training are getting more out of control every day, and getting away with it. Thank you college administrators.

– From the piece: Protesters at Smith College Demand Journalists Swear Loyalty Oath Before Reporting on Them

You’ve got Trump supporters on one side, college cry bullies on the other. One group consists of self-described conservatives, the other self-described liberals. Both have authoritarian tendencies and would throw out the rule of law, civil liberties, and rationality in a heartbeat if it meant advancing their own agendas. Both are equally dangerous, and both movements appear to be growing. The depressing thing is, rather than Americans uniting under Constitutional principles, the trend seems to be two camps diverging into their own unique brands of totalitarianism. The future does not look bright should this continue.

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America’s Road to Serfdom – 51% of Home Renters Are Over 40 Years Old

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Today’s story from the Associated Press perfectly illustrates how millions of Americans were reduced to neo-feudal serfs by the financial crisis, and how those who ruined the economy profited handsomely from the process.

While popular perception holds that debt-ridden, broke millennials are the ones driving the rental market, the truth is far more nuanced. As the AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The majority of U.S. renters are now older than 40, a fundamental shift over the past decade that reflects the lasting damage of the housing crash and an aging population.

This finding in a report released Wednesday by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies overturns the assumption that the rental boom is only the result of twenty-somethings flocking to hip urban centers. Single-family houses are a growing share of rentals. And affordability problems are mounting as rents rise faster than wages, while apartment construction increasingly targets tenants with six-figure incomes.

Nearly 51 percent of renters have celebrated their 40th birthday, according to the report’s analysis of Census Bureau data. That amounts to 22.4 million households. 

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Head of the European Parliament Warns – EU at Risk of Falling Apart

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Martin Schulz is the head of the European Parliament, and he’s very worried about the future of the EU. Indeed, he’s so concerned he told a German magazine that the project was at risk of falling apart. But don’t take my word for it.

From Reuters:

The European Union is at risk of falling apart and supporters must fight to keep it, the head of the European Parliament said in a German newspaper interview.

Martin Schulz told Die Welt’s Tuesday edition that the EU was in danger and that there were forces trying to pull it apart.

He was responding to a recent warning from Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign affairs and migration minister, that the EU might break apart, 

“No one can say whether the EU will still exist in this form in 10 years’ time. If we want that then we need to fight very hard for it,” Schulz said.

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