U.S. Government Reaffirms Total Support for Saudi War Crimes in Yemen

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Samuel Oakford just penned a powerful and important Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, Saudi Arabia Kills Civilians, the U.S. Looks the Other Way.

Here are a few key excerpts:

In the span of four days earlier this month, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen bombed a Doctors Without Borders-supported hospital, killing 19 people; a school, where 10 children, some as young as 8, died; and a vital bridge over which United Nations food supplies traveled, punishing millions.

In a war that has seen reports of human rights violations committed by every side, these three attacks stand out. But the Obama administration says these strikes, like previous ones that killed thousands of civilians since last March, will have no effect on the American support that is crucial for Saudi Arabia’s air war.

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Obamacare is Rapidly Becoming the Poster Child for American Inequality

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An architect of the federal healthcare law said last year that a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” helped Congress approve ObamaCare.

He suggested that many lawmakers and voters didn’t know what was in the law or how its financing worked, and that this helped it win approval. 

– From the post: Video of the Day – Obamacare Architect Credits “Lack of Transparency” and “Stupidity of the American People” for Passage of Healthcare Law

The best thing about Obama (from an oligarch’s perspective), is his uncanny ability to push through upward redistributive wealth policies while still maintaining a phony aura of caring about the little guy amongst so many of his apparently lobotomized supporters.

Countless examples of his shameless plutocrat-pandering have been covered ad nauseam here on these pages, but what’s most embarrassing for the President’s legacy, is the fact that Obamacare itself is rapidly becoming the poster child for the dramatic wealth and income inequality that has so characterized his entire administration.

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FBI Discovered 15,000 Additional Undisclosed Hillary Clinton Emails

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This seems like a pretty big deal.

The Washington Post reports:

The FBI’s year-long investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.

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Liberty Links 8/21/16

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25 links today. Enjoy. Powerful NSA Hacking Tools Have Been Revealed Online (Must read, Washington Post) Clinton’s Syria War Plans (VERY scary, must read, The American Conservative) The King of ‘Political Intelligence’ Faces a Reckoning (More Washington D.C. sleaze, Wall Street Journal) U.S. Opens Probe Into Concerns Over Health-Provider Payments (Just another slimy corporate scam, Wall Street Journal) We … Read more

Election 2016 – Why Defeating Trump Won’t Make Trump Go Away

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In the wake of Trump’s recent hiring of Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon to campaign CEO, a June article published in Vanity Fair is now receiving a lot of attention.

Here are a few excerpts from the article, Is Donald Trump’s Endgame the Launch of Trump News?

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Yes They Exist – Meet the Democrats for Trump

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We’ve all heard the rumors of lifelong Democrats who support Trump in 2016. It’s time to meet a few of them.

The Washington Post reports:

WEIRTON, W.Va. — The Ohio Valley is filled with registered Democrats, the kind that hung portraits of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy on their living room walls. It is made of coal and steel towns and union workers, and stretches from the Pittsburgh exurbs across West Virginia’s panhandle into Ohio.

But here in Weirton — where Weirton Steel Company employed 12,000 people and now only 900 — many say they will cast their ballots for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They talk about him over beers at local taverns and at church socials. For many of those in the unions, he’s the first Republican for whom they’ll vote — even as national unions, including the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO, have endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

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Private Prisons Get the Boot – Good Riddance

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It pleases me that I can finally report some good news on a topic that has been near and dear to me for many years: private prisons.

Today, the Department of Justice announced that it would be phasing out the use of private prisons entirely within the next five years or so. There are many reasons I think private prisons are a very bad idea, and I touched on some of them in 2013’s post, A Deep Look into the Shady World of the Private Prison Industry. Here’s my introduction to that piece:

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New York Congressional Candidate Challenges Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Paul Singer to a Debate

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This is a pretty genius move by Zephyr Teachout.

First, some background, via the Huffington Post:

In May, billionaire Paul Singer fundamentally changed one of the most interesting political contests of 2016. The vulture fund manager wrote a $500,000 check to a super PAC supporting John Faso, a Republican trying to fill an open congressional seat in New York’s Hudson Valley. Overnight, Faso became a serious contender in a race that had been dominated by progressive Democrat Zephyr Teachout.

Faso had been relying on super PAC funding from another hedge fund billionaire, Robert Mercer, to get through a much tighter primary contest on the Republican side. When Singer signed on in May, Faso had the firepower to challenge Teachout in the general election.

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New York Times 2015 Op-Ed Issued a Dire Warning About Polling Accuracy

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As I demonstrated in yesterday’s article, How Bloomberg Spun its Own Poll Data to Make Hillary Clinton Seem Inevitable, the media is intentionally spinning poll results at best, and completely fabricating them at worst.

While that’s bad enough, there are also some deep, fundamental problems which plague any attempts to conduct accurate polling in 2016. Cliff Zukin, professor of public policy and political science at Rutgers University and a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, wrote about many of these issues in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece titled, What’s the Matter With Polling?

Here are a few excerpts:

Over the past two years, election polling has had some spectacular disasters. Several organizations tracking the 2014 midterm elections did not catch the Republican wave that led to strong majorities in both houses; polls in Israel badly underestimated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strength, and pollsters in Britain predicted a close election only to see the Conservatives win easily. What’s going on here? How much can we trust the polls as we head toward the 2016 elections?

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Liberty Links 8/16/16

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28 links today. Enjoy. Pentagon’s Sloppy Bookkeeping Means $6.5 Trillion Can’t Pass an Audit (The Fiscal Times) Tracking Lobbying by Foreign Governments (Mind-boggling lack of transparency, by Demand Progress) Pentagon Acknowledges US Ground Forces Supporting ISIS Fight in Libya (More non-boots on the ground, The Hill) With Yemeni Casualties Rising, GOP Senator Looks to Block Big … Read more