I always love it when a sleazy, authoritarian plan backfires spectacularly.
The following story from CNET is simply mind-boggling:
As KSL-TV reports, residents of an apartment building in Salt Lake City, Utah, say they found a curious piece of paper stuck to their doors.
Headlined “Facebook Addendum,” it had fascinating stipulations.
The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was adamant Section 213 was needed to protect against terrorism. But the latest government report detailing the numbers of “sneak and peek” warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism. Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.
– From the post: More “War on Terror” Abuses – Spying Powers Are Used for Terrorism Only 0.5% of the Time
Ron Wyden, a Senator from Oregon, has been one of the most influential and significant champions of Americans’ embattled 4th Amendment rights in the digital age. Recall that it was Sen. Wyden who caught Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lying under oath about government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Mr. Wyden continues to be a courageous voice for the public when it comes to pushing back against Big Brother spying. His latest post at Medium is a perfect example.
Here it is in full:
Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of the always excellent Open the Books, has published an excellent piece over at Forbes covering the ongoing Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal.
The article is titled, It’s Not Disney World–The VA Scandal Two Years Later, and here are a few excerpts:
Two years ago, Americans were horrified to learn that as many as 1,000 of our nation’s veterans had died while waiting for medical care at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. Any hopes of reforming the dysfunctional VA culture were dashed two days ago when Secretary Robert McDonald made an appalling comparison to waiting in line at Disney parks.
McDonald said, “When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience.”
Here, a Clinton match-up is highly likely to be an unmitigated electoral disaster, whereas a Sanders candidacy stands a far better chance. Every one of Clinton’s (considerable) weaknesses plays to every one of Trump’s strengths, whereas every one of Trump’s (few) weaknesses plays to every one of Sanders’s strengths. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, running Clinton against Trump is a disastrous, suicidal proposition.
– From the February article: Why Hillary Clinton Cannot Beat Donald Trump
If the Trump/Sanders debate proceeds as planned in California, you’re about to witness one of the most important moments of a 2016 general election that hasn’t even begun yet. To say such a debate would be an unmitigated disaster for Hillary Clinton would be the understatement of the century. Let’s explore why.
First of all, Hillary Clinton outright rejected a debate request from Bernie Sanders ahead of the June 7th California primary. Given Sanders’ recent momentum, as well as her need to persuade a significant number of his supporters to back her in November; such a denial was not only arrogant, it was highly insulting to voters in America’s largest state. From team Clinton’s perspective there was little upside to agreeing to a debate, versus easily manageable downside from a few days of negative media coverage. Or so they thought…
People are going to be pissed off no matter who wins this election and that is a very important social dynamic I believe is vastly under appreciated by the majority of mainstream pundits and analysts out there. This is also very distinct from the environment that prevailed in 2008. Four years ago, the financial markets were crashing and the economic future of America was circling the toilet bowl, yet a majority of Americans embraced the potential of a young, inexperienced biracial politician from Illinois who was saying all of the right things. Despite the gigantic disappointment he has proven to be as President, there is no denying that he had all of the Democrats and most Independents under his spell on this day four years ago.
Fast forward to 2012 and the county isn’t “divided” as mainstream media talking heads like to say. The country is pissed off. Genuine and legitimate frustration permeates the land from sea to shining sea and rightly so. Ever since the banker coup of 2008, crony capitalism has been institutionalized as the only real way to make money. If you aren’t connected or “too big to fail,” sorry but America isn’t the place for you. What makes the economic nightmare so much worse is that it is being coupled with a complete and total decimation of civil liberties. One by one the Bill of Rights is being ignored and indeed trampled on systemically by the political and economic oligarchs emboldened by their successful takeover of the executive, legislative and for the most part judicial branches of government.
– From the 2012 post: The Seventy Percent
The following data points are simple incredible.
From The Hill:
The Libertarian Party has seen a sustained surge of new members joining, with first-time registrants in May on pace to increase 20-fold over the same period from last year. New data obtained by The Hill shows that the Libertarian National Committee averaged around 100 new members a month last year, bottoming out with just 74 first-time registrants last May.
But beginning in early 2016, as the contours of the Republican and Democratic races began took shape, new membership began creeping upward to 148 in January, 323 in February, 546 in March, 706 in April, and now 1,292 in the first three weeks of May alone.
From 74 registrants to 1,292 in a year. While the absolute numbers remain small, that’s an extraordinary increase. Here’s what it looks like in chart form:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration set a record for the number of times its federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page requested under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a new Associated Press analysis of government data.
In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed last year.Such cases contributed to an alarming measurement: People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record. In the first full year after President Barack Obama’s election, that figure was only 65 percent of cases.
– From the post: Obama Administration Denied or Censored Information in 77% of FOIA Requests During 2015
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan recently had some choice words for the liberal Potemkin Village that is President Barack Obama.
What follows are some excerpts from her cutting Washington Post op-ed, published yesterday.
After early promises to be the most transparent administration in history, this has been one of the most secretive. And in certain ways, one of the most elusive. It’s also been one of the most punitive toward whistleblowers and leakers who want to bring light to wrongdoing they have observed from inside powerful institutions…
The impact of America’s putrid and corrupt oligarchy continues to make its destructive presence felt across the land. As we learned earlier this month in the post, Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014:
The Pew Research Center recently released a fascinating study which showed what many of us already suspected, that the U.S. middle class has declined in 90% of metropolitan areas from 2000-2014, or in 203 of 229 areas studied.
It’s what I like to call the Hunger Games economy. You’re thrown into the woods with a diminishing capacity to work hard and earn a middle income, and if you fail to enter the upper echelons you’ll be reduced to poverty. The result is insecurity, stress and ultimately resentment, which before too long bubbles to the surface in all sorts of unwelcome ways. A strong and vibrant middle class has always provided a buffer to truly nasty civil unrest and revolution in these United States. As it goes extinct, the probability of those things rises exponentially.
Yesterday, the Pew Research Center returned to the headlines, with a detailed analysis of another disturbing trend. You know something big is happening when you start breaking records going back to the 19th century.
Pew reports:
With all the U.S.-trained fighters dead, captured or missing and their leader in the hands of Al Qaeda, top U.S. commanders are scrambling this week to determine how to revive the half-billion dollar program to create a moderate Syrian army to fight the Islamic State.
The outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who viewed the force as a critical element of the military strategy in both Syria and Iraq, is conferring with top Pentagon officials behind closed doors to figure out what options are left for what is widely considered a policy and military failure, according to senior defense officials.
Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee, returned from a trip to the region last week where he was briefed on the effort. His assessment of the program: “a bigger disaster than I could have ever imagined.”
– From the post: Further Details Emerge on the Epic U.S. Foreign Policy Disaster that is Syria
U.S. foreign policy is such a disastrous joke, trying to keep up with it is essentially a full time job.
In case you still had any doubt as to why ISIS and other assorted terrorists seemed virtually unstoppable in Syria until Russia became involved, the following piece should clear things up.
From McClatchy DC:
A senior figure from a Syrian rebel group with links to al Qaida was allowed into the United States for a brief visit, raising questions about how much the Obama administration will compromise in the search for partners in the conflict.
23 links today. Enjoy. Facebook Democratized the News, but New Changes Do the Opposite (Important read, New York Times) Shaken Austrian Government Pledges Action on Asylum After Far-Right Surge (Reuters) The Senate Killed JASTA, Then Passed It… (The “sue Saudis for terrorism” legislation was totally watered down, Just Security) When It Comes to Losing Ugly, Bernie Has … Read more
A Clinton match-up is highly likely to be an unmitigated electoral disaster, whereas a Sanders candidacy stands a far better chance. Every one of Clinton’s (considerable) weaknesses plays to every one of Trump’s strengths, whereas every one of Trump’s (few) weaknesses plays to every one of Sanders’s strengths. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, running Clinton against Trump is a disastrous, suicidal proposition.
– From February’s post: Why Hillary Clinton Cannot Beat Donald Trump
The best “why Hillary Clinton can’t beat Donald Trump” articles tend to be written by liberal-leaning Bernie Sanders supporters. These people can’t stand Trump, yet find it impossible to ignore the obvious flaws and rampant cronyism inherent in Her Majesty. This dislike of both frees such thinkers from distracting bias and provides for refreshing analysis and a unique perspective on 2016.
The latest example of such commentary comes courtesy of author Anis Shivani, writing at Salon. The piece is titled, Donald Trump is Going to Win: This is Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Defeat What Trump Represents, and it explores a less discussed angle of the psychic differences between the two candidates in the eyes of voters. I found the opening paragraphs of the piece to be the most interesting:
The neofascist reaction, the force behind Trump, has come about because of the extreme disembeddedness of the economy from social relations. The neoliberal economy has become pure abstraction; as has the market, as has the state, there is no reality to any of these things the way we have classically understood them. Americans, like people everywhere rising up against neoliberal globalization (in Britain, for example, this takes the form of Brexit, or exit from the European Union), want a return of social relations, or embeddedness, to the economy.