No Agenda Episode 967 - "dotard"

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No Agenda Episode 967 - "dotard"
  No Agenda Episode 967 - "dotard"
    dotard
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  Credits
    dotard
    Where The C Stands For
    Executive Producers: Matthew Trimble, Sir Thomas of Great Bay, Oystein Berge
    Associate Executive Producers: Joe Bisesi, Cole Candler, Leslie Cook, Carter Pelham, Carolyn Blaney, Jared Zaifman
    Become a member of the 968 Club, support the show here
    Art By: Illuminadia
    End of Show Mixes: UKPMX - Oh My Bosh - Danny Loos-Secret Agent Paul-Stepford Wives-PlaceBoing- Dave Courbanou - Able Kirby - Jungle Jones - Chris Wilson - Tom Starkweather - Conan Salada - Future Trash
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  Cover Art
    Art By: Illuminadia
  Shownotes
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    PR
      Meetup
        Adam & John,
        A number of my coworkers that I’ve converted — anyone else who would like to attend is definitely welcome — will be having a No Agenda meetup this coming at 7PM Thursday, 28 September:
        Frisco Tap House
        Columbia, Maryland
        It would be great if you could advertise this on the show tomorrow. Feel free to forward my email address for those who have questions or require additional information. No photos will be taken due to anonymity concerns.
        Thank you,
        Nate - Sir GQ
        Baron of Maryland
    Agenda 2030
      Bali volcano: Thousands evacuated, travel advisory issued as Mt Agung threatens to erupt - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:39
        Updated September 23, 2017 14:55:25
        Australia has issued a new travel advisory for Bali as experts warn the island's enormous volcano, Mt Agung, could erupt soon.
        Indonesian authorities have raised the alert for the volcano to the highest levelIt is the third time in more than a week that the alert level has been raisedSome 9,400 villagers have been evacuated from their housesHundreds of tremors each day are shaking the volcano, and the region's leading vulcanologist has said the probability of an eruption is increasing by the day.
        Indonesian authorities raised the alert level for the volcano to the highest level, meaning an eruption could be imminent.
        It was the third time in little more than a week that the alert level was raised.
        The Department of Meteorology, Climate and Geophysics said there has been a "tremendous increase" in the mountain's seismic activity, though it could not give a timeframe.
        Dr Devy Kamil Syahbana has said tourists should be ready to change their plans if the volcano erupts.
        The most likely initial impact of a big eruption is the closure of the island's airport.
        Perth woman Edwina Salazar was travelling to Bali on Saturday with her twin five-year-old boys.
        She said the decision to fly was something she weighed.
        "Obviously when there's a warning that's put out in regards to any particular natural disaster it's very concerning," she said.
        "Hopefully it's all fairly premature and Agung will just continue to rumble away as it does, we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope everything stays OK."
        The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said tourists to Bali should reconfirm their trips with their airlines and tour operators.
        The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said some 9,400 villagers have evacuated from their houses, and were scattered in 50 shelters in the districts of Karangasem, Klungkung and Buleleng.
        The agency said no residents or tourists should be within 9 kilometres of the crater and within 12 kilometres to the north, north-east, south-east and south-south-west.
        Mt Agung has not erupted yet and flights to Bali are not affected but an exclusion zone around the volcano is already affecting tours and trekking groups.
        Seismic monitoring equipment on the volcano recorded 676 tremors on Thursday caused by lava pushing through layers of rock deep beneath the mountain, and in one six-hour period on Friday morning there were another 178 tremors.
        Dr Syahbana, the head of volcano mitigation for eastern Indonesia, said the tremors were coming from inside the volcano.
        "Our data shows the number of earthquakes is still increasing, which shows that the magma has very huge energy," he said.
        "It means we have to be alert to the situation but we don't need to panic."
        He said the earthquakes themselves were evidence of the potential eruption.
        "Magma is pushing to all directions, finding the softest path," he said.
        "At the moment when the magma succeeds to go in a certain path, it creates an earthquake '-- it opens the path to go to the surface.
        Dr Syahbana is monitoring Mt Agung from an observation station about 12km from the volcano's crater.
        He said it was impossible to predict the size of the Agung eruption, if it erupted.
        The volcano has not erupted since 1963, when about 1,000 people died.
        Dr Syahbana said that eruption was a 5 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI) '-- a massive eruption that is far bigger than any recent eruptions in Indonesia.
        The explosions on Mt Sinabung earlier this year only rated a VEI of 2, Dr Syahbana said.
        He said tourists could still come to Bali, but they must be ready if anything changed.
        "If something is changing, you need to be prepared for that," he said.
        "We're not even sure this volcano will erupt. It's possible for the magma to be exhausted and for this crisis to end. That's the possibility we're hoping for."
        ABC/Wires
        Topics:volcanic-eruption, travel-health-and-safety, bali, indonesia
        First posted September 22, 2017 17:07:05
      NASA accidentally shows PROOF of Large-Scale Weather Manipulation in satellite images
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 12:14
        Is this a massive conspiracy? Or is it possible that NASA really is playing around with our weather on Earth?
        Many people would most likely agree we are looking at a massive conspiracy, while others believe the evidence is right in front of us.
        This year's Caribbean hurricane season has turned 'weather' into a dominant subject in the world.
        Catastrophic damage has been witnessed in the Caribbean, where entire Islands were swept away by the incredible power of mother nature. However, is this just mother nature's work, or is there something ELSE going on?
        For decades have 'conspiracy theories' about weather control circulated the internet, and rumors of weather control by the government have become ever so popular.
        What was considered as an impossible feat, today is possible thanks to decade-long geoengineering efforts that have given us the ability to control the weather: resulting in a two-way street that can destroy our planet as much as it can help.
        Climate engineering commonly referred to as geoengineering, also known as climate intervention, is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climatic system with the aim of affecting adverse global warming.
        So where is that EVIDENCE? Where can I see with my own eyes that our weather is actually being manipulated?
        Well, see for yourself.
        Located just off the coast of Africa. Changing the weather has become a reality fro humanity, but it seems that we arent really able to control it, are we?Just off the coast of Australia, this images shows how bad it can get. The above image, perfectly explain what Dane Wigington, writing for Wakeup-World, and Davide Wolfe describes as ''many variances of radio frequency cloud impacts''This images shows the coast of California. Maybe its time to stop weather modification projects before we mess up Earth's climate for good.Off Africa's west coast. Are we in danger to lose control?Another image from Africa's west coast.Weather control off the coast of Spain. We are changing the weather, and its not for the good of the human population.Here is another image off the African coast.Africa's coastal regions are a hot zone for weather geoengineering efforts even though they are referred to by mainstream media as nothing more than the result of ''dust'' in the air, notes Dane Wigington who quotes an excerpt from a Fox9 News article:
        ''Right now, much of the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Caribbean have slightly warmer than normal ocean temperatures which would normally aid in tropical development.
        ''But there is so much dust and dry air in the atmosphere that storms are getting choked off before they even get started.''
        Dane indicates how radio frequency transmissions can alter cloud formations, and that its the result of the''spraying of toxic electrically conductive heavy metals''. Now take a wild guess and imagine everything we breathe.Is HAARP really responsible for weather changes? In this next image, Dane clearly points out that the enigmatic set of clouds formed near a HAARP Station, which eventually generated the unique looking cloud patterns.Check out this video:
        What are your thoughts about this?
        Source and reference: David Wolfe'--Wakeup-World'--Fox9 News
        [mashshare]IvanIvan has been part of the team at Universe Explorers since February 2015.He is a freelance writer, editor-in-chief of ancient-code.com He also writes for Svemir Online and Ancient Origins.History, Archaeology, Space and world's mysteries are some of the topics he writes about.You can follow Ivan on Facebook"
      HAARP To 'Make The Sky Glow' With Radio Waves Over Western Arctic Starting Thursday
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 21:22
        For four nights beginning on Thursday night, a scientist in Alaska is attempting to create an artificial aurora that could perhaps be seen as far away as Yukon.
        The experiment is out of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) Observatory at Gakona, Alaska, and is planned for 9:30 p.m.
        You Thought HAARP has been shut down? Nope!
        The experiment is going to take place at 9.30pm, and it comes from the High-frequency Active Aurora Research Program Observatory which is in Gakona in Alaska. An artificial airglow in the sky is going to be created by assistant research professor Chris Fallen at the University of Alaska Fairbanks at the Geophysical Institute.
        Fallen said that sometimes the artificial airglow is called a radio-enhanced aurora or an artificial aurora. He went on to say that what it means is that radio waves from the ground that are powerful can make a glow in the sky. Fallen is going to look into which of the transmissions he makes produce the brightest artificial aurora. He said that the reason why some radio wave transmission causes a glow in the upper atmosphere that is the same colors as the natural aurora is something that is not well understood at the moment.
        What HAARP Is... And Everything Its Used ForThe knowledge that comes from the experiment of Fallen might also help scientists to gather a better understanding of natural auroras. Fallen went on to say that the experiment should provide them with information on the communications between Earth and satellite and how they are affected by the ionosphere. Fallen believes that this is something that would be very important for navigation uses.
        The residents of Dawson City in Yukon and Whitehorse should get a good chance to take photographs providing the conditions are clear. Fallen said to the North the best chance of being able to spot the artificial aurora is by taking photographs as the glow from it might be too low for just the naked eye to pick up. Of course, the weather plays a big part in how successful the experiment is going to be. Fallen said that in the past observation has been hampered thanks to clouds and said that if the weather is not in his favor this time, he will postpone.
        He went on to say that the experiment is expensive to conduct as while in operation the facility goes through around 600 gallons of diesel every hour. Along with taking photographs, Fallen said that anyone with a shortwave radio would be able to hear the radio frequency that actually creates the aurora. It was said to be a sound much like that of a fax machine.
    Caliphate!
      Armed SAS troops with 'shoot to kill' orders are deployed | Daily Mail Online
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 01:48
        Armed special forces troops are being deployed on the London Underground and have been told to 'shoot to kill' terrorists.
        Members of the SAS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been told to target terrorists who are on trains, buses and planes.
        It is believed some of the troops will patrol the busy tube network in the capital in pairs and will be disguised as couples.
        They will be armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistols so they can 'take down' potential gunmen and suicide bombers, reports the Daily Star Sunday.
        Armed special forces troops (stock photo of SAS soldiers) have been told to 'shoot to kill' after being trained for months
        Those in the special covert teams have been trained at the SAS base in Hereford for the past few months.
        A source said they are trained in 'rapid-fire techniques' and told the newspaper: 'The task force is comprised of some of the most experienced special forces personnel in the Army.
        'The unit is composed of some of both male and female personnel from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment who are trained killers and can pose as couples while travelling on public transport.'
        The paper also reports that the trained staff have been given 'soft-nose' bullets to limit the risk of other passengers who are travelling on public transport.
        A 'bucket bomb' (pictured) was found inside a shopping bag exploded and injured at least 30 people on Friday
        It comes as two men were arrested in connection with the Parsons Green bucket bomb attack which left 30 people injured on Friday.
        A teenage suspect, believed to be an Iraqi refugee, was detained in the Port of Dover after being tracked to its departures hall, but it emerged he had been arrested at Parsons Green a fortnight before the blast.
        A second suspect, a 21-year-old man, was later arrested in Hounslow, with police also swooping on a house in Stanwell, Surrey, directly opposite Heathrow airport.
    Kurds
      Producer Boots on The Ground
        ITM, I moved to Erbil for a job a few months back. I'm exposed here in a
        sea of xxxxxx so please keep me anonymous....
        here's the situation regarding the upcoming referendum :
        Barazani wanted the central government to recognize the Peshmerga as
        part of the Iraqi military, the same way the 'Popular Mobilization
        Units' were, and he's demanding back payments for the whole period the
        Peshmerga helped fighting ISIS. The central government refused, and he's
        using the referendum to pressure them.
        The main problem now is Kirkuk (where the Oil is), both Kurdistan and
        the central government want it, expect major conflicts there.
        as for the rest of "Kurdistan", people are stocking up food since both
        Turkey & Iran are against the referendum, and will most likely close
        their borders on Monday.
      Kirkuk residents stock up ahead of Kurdish referendum
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: The Daily Star >> Live News
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:18
        you've reached a subscriber-only article. Sign up now and access the full breadth of The Daily Star content in minutes.
        subscribe now unrestricted access 1 month...$12 | 3 months...$30 | 6 months...$55 | 1 year...$99 Existing users can login here or register for a new account.
        Advertisement
      Trump, stop gobbling at Turkey
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Turkish Digest
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:33
        Trump, stop gobbling at Turkeyby Washington Examiner | Sep 23, 2017, 12:01 AM
        Turkey is a NATO member with substantial armed forces. It has the potential to stabilize or further destabilize the Middle East. And last year, it imported $9.4 billion worth of American goods.
        In a word, it is an ally.
        More:Trump, stop gobbling at Turkey
      Iraqi Kurdistan vote poses direct threat to Turkish national security: Turkey
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Veterans Today
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:22
        '... from Press TV, Tehran
        Turkey help bleed Syria, especially in Aleppo. Now someone might think it's Turkey's turn to bleed.
        [ Editor's Note : I certainly did not think that Turkey was bluffing with its earlier pronouncements that its relations with Iraqi Kurdistan, long and intimate ones, would take a 180°-turn if the referendum were held.
        Turkey's main concern is seeing the referendum trigger an uprising in its own unhappy Kurdish regions, when it already has serious concerns with a Kurdish independent state being carved out on its southern border with Syria, and sharing a common border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
        There is some irony in this, and a bit of humor'... that the man that jumped into pillaging Syria when he saw a good opening, especially the Aleppo area, has now seen the wheel turn with his number coming up on the target list.
        Undiscussed in this controversy so far is how deeply both Israel and Saudi Arabia are involved in supporting Barzani, and why. The Israelis were quick to announce their support, while the Saudis said just the opposite. But that looks like a bare-faced lie to me, as the Saudis would love nothing better than to hook up with the Iraqi Kurds who will need military support and money, in return for being able to run Iran regime-change operations out of Kurdistan.
        The Saudis are determine to oppose Iran's emergence as the main economic power in the region
        Creating some problems for Erdogan, after he came in to support Qatar in its dispute with the Saudi royals, is also a goal. Revenge is a big thing in the Arab tribal world, where all the tribes are basically supremacists, wanting to rule the show, and miserable when they are not.
        And last, a third force is lurking in the shadows, also undiscussed, and that is the off-the-books US contractors who are looking to be out of work soon in Syria. There is nothing more dangerous that a bunch of well-trained cutthroats who have been operating with impunity doing their nasty work, facing unemployment.
        Chaos, turmoil, war and suffering are mother's milk to these criminals. If you want to know who is really behind this new Kurdish destabilization push, all you have to do is see who is hiring all the soon to be out of work white-collar hoodlums from the Syrian proxy terror war.
        The good news is the offer of mediation. As I have been editorializing, I suspected Barzani is playing a game of chicken here to increase his share of the oil revenue cut and has decided now is the best time to push for it, because as we are seeing, neither Iran, Turkey and Syria would want to see a new war explode in their back yard'... Jim W. Dean ]
        Jim's Editor's Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal '' [email protected]
        This includes research, needed field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving, and more '' Thanks for helping out
        *
        ''No Kurdish independence on my watch'' says Erdogan
        '' First published '... September 23, 2017 ''
        Turkey's top security body says an independence referendum planned by Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region ''directly'' threatens Turkish national security. On Friday, Turkey's National Security Council held a meeting chaired by President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara to discuss the referendum planned by the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
        In a closing statement, the council said the KRG's insistence on holding the vote on Monday despite warnings from Ankara, Baghdad, and the United Nations would have ''terrible consequences'' for the region.
        ''The illegitimacy of the referendum'... and its being unacceptable were once again specified. It was strongly stressed that this step, which directly threatens Turkey's national security, was a grave mistake that threatens Iraq's political unity and territorial integrity as well as peace, security and stability of the region,'' the statement read.
        Turkey, which is home to the largest Kurdish population in the region, fears that the Kurdistan plebiscite would embolden the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in its push for autonomy in Turkey's southeastern areas.
        Turkey reserves its sovereign rights under international accords should the Kurdish referendum go ahead, the statement added, signaling an extension of military presence in Iraq.
        ''Turkey reserves all options arising from bilateral and international agreements if the Kurdish regional referendum is held,'' it said.
        The statement also renewed Ankara's call on the KRG to cancel the referendum ''when there is still time'' and expressed the Turkish government's readiness to mediate between the KRG and the Iraqi central government to settle their disagreements ''on a constitutional basis and through dialog.''
        Barzani delays presser on independence vote
        Meanwhile, KRG President Masoud Barzani postponed a scheduled news conference on the controversial referendum from Saturday to Sunday.
        ''The news conference will take place on Sunday, and the time and venue will be announced later,'' Barzani's office announced without elaborating.
        'All options on the table'
        The National Security Council's meeting was followed by a Turkish cabinet meeting that focused on countermeasures ahead of the Iraqi Kurdish vote.
        Speaking after the cabinet meeting, Bekir Bozdag, the Turkish deputy prime minister and government spokesman, told reporters that ''all options were on the table'' as far as Ankara's response to the referendum was concerned.
        ''It is not possible for us to accept the postponing of the referendum either. We demand a total cancellation, so that we won't have to impose sanctions,'' he said.
        Earlier this week, Erdogan threatened to impose sanctions against the Iraqi Kurdistan over the independence vote. Since September 18, the Turkish army has been conducting tank drills near the border with the Iraqi Kurdish region.
        *
        Related Posts:All content herein is owned by author exclusively. Some content may be satirical in nature. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, technicians or Veterans Today Network and its assigns. In addition, all images within are full responsibility of author and NOT Veterans Today Network.Legal Notice - Comment Policy
        Posted by Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor on September 23, 2017, With 180 Reads Filed under Russia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
    Migrants
      Danish Prime Minister Warns of the Emergence of Muslim Parallel Societies, No-Go Zones
      Danish PM: Muslims have taken control of parts of the country
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:26
        In a sensational interview, Prime Minister Lars L¸kke Rasmussen acknowledges that Muslims have taken control of parts of Denmark. This is happening in connection with the ongoing debate on parallel societies, which neither Denmark nor any other Western countries have overcome.The Prime Minister specifically mentions Muslims in connection with the faltering legal situation that has arisen in parts of the country. Lars L¸kke Rasmussen expresses concern that there are places in the country where the state is unable to maintain law and order, places that are instead controlled by Muslim gangs:
        - It's a matter of being realistic about the situation. And it is so that there are areas where there already is a different set of rules. Where the gangs are in control and the police can not work, says Lars L¸kke Rasmussen to Jyllands Posten.
        In a longer interview with the paper, he explains how the changing governments struggles with parallel societies have failed.
        - We get the short hand and bounce back and forth. One day we have a burka debate and the next day a debate about Muslim schools. The air is filled with easy solutions, and I think we have to try to rethink this - based on an open recognition that we have these parallel societies.
        Lars L¸kke Rasmussen has initially asked Minister for Immigration, Integration and Housing, Inger St¸jberg, Minister of Economy and Interior, Simon Emil Ammitzb¸ll, and Minister of Justice, S¸ren Pape Poulsen, to come up with new 'tools' that can be used in for example, concrete schools with major integration problems or residential areas with many immigrants on welfare.
        Of course, the only tool that would be effective: Forced mass deportations.
        Comment below.
        Latest
    DPRK
      U.S. families got fake orders to leave South Korea. Now counterintelligence is involved. - The Washington Post
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:59
        North Korean soldiers photograph Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, in March as he visits the Joint Security Area inside the Korean Demilitarized Zone. (Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Sean K. Harp/ Army)
        Army counterintelligence officials in South Korea are investigating fake mobile alerts and social media messages warning American military families and Defense Department personnel of orders to evacuate the volatile peninsula on Thursday.
        U.S. Forces Korea ''did NOT send this message,'' officials said in a subsequent Facebook post. They warned that Americans living in South Korea with U.S. troops and Defense Department employees should confirm that any evacuation-related communications are legitimate before acting.
        [Kim reacts to Trump, says he will 'tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire']
        ''Anyone receiving this false message should not click any links or open any attachments included in the correspondence,'' the Facebook message said.
        The U.S. military did not indicate who it thought had sent the phony messages, and it is unclear whether any military networks were compromised. An advisory issued by the Army and reported by Stars and Stripes urged people who have received the message to report it to an Army counterintelligence unit, which assess attempts by adversaries and their foreign intelligence services to exploit or access U.S. networks.
        The fake warnings come at a sensitive time, as President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trade insults and the United States presses the rogue regime to stop its nuclear weapons program. Such efforts have done little to rein in the dictator. On Friday, after the White House announced a new round of economic sanctions to further isolate the North, Kim '-- whom Trump has taken to calling ''Rocket Man'' '-- threatened to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.
        The U.S. military command in Korea routinely rehearses such evacuations, typically in the spring and fall. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed on the peninsula, along with thousands more family members.
        Any such evacuation would be announced by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Army officials said.
        ''If a situation develops quickly and the Department of State requires assistance in the evacuation of noncombatants, the Secretary of State will request that the military assist in the evacuation,'' the plan states. ''During this stage, the military will assemble the noncombatants and then either relocate or evacuate them to a safer place.''
        The Army advised that if an evacuation is ordered, Americans should carry with them irreplaceable documents, a first-aid kit, extra clothing, a flashlight and a blanket or sleeping bag. The service also recommends that families prepare a kit ahead of time that includes a backpack, legal documents, three days of food, bottled water, prescription medications, toiletries and a handheld radio.
        ''The Republic of Korea has the most heavily defended border in the world,'' the plan said. ''Though the probability of conflict remains low, the potential of hostilities occurring on the Korean peninsula is greater than in many other parts of the world.''
        More on Checkpoint:
        U.S. general says the size of most recent North Korean nuclear test 'equates to' a hydrogen bomb
        Trump says 'talking is not the answer' with North Korea after Pentagon's latest missile-defense test
        Mattis says he is now convinced that the Pentagon must keep three ways of launching a nuclear attack
      US bombers fly off North Korea's coast in show of force
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Sep 2017 14:29
        North Korea said on Saturday targeting the U.S. mainland with its rockets was inevitable after "Mr. Evil President" Donald Trump called Pyongyang's leader "rocket man", further escalating rhetoric over the North's nuclear weapons and missile programs.
        North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho's remarks to the United Nations General Assembly came hours after U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighters flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea, in a show of force the Pentagon said showed the range of military options available to Trump.
        Ri's speech capped a week of rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, with Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trading insults. Trump called Kim a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard."
        On Saturday, the mudslinging continued with Ri calling Trump "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency" who is trying to turn the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest". Ri said Trump himself was on a "suicide mission" after the U.S. president had said Kim was on such a mission.
        "'President Evil' is holding the seat of the U.S. President," Ri said, warning that Pyongyang was ready to defend itself if the United States showed any sign of conducting a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country."
        "Now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force," Ri told the annual gathering of world leaders.
        He said sanctions would have no effect on Pyongyang's resolve to develop its nuclear weapons, with the ultimate goal being "balance of power with the U.S."
        Trump announced new U.S. sanctions on Thursday that he said allow targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.
        Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted its ninth round of sanctions on Pyongyang to counter its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.
        The U.S. bombers' flight was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea that any U.S. fighter jet or bomber has flown in the 21st century, the Pentagon said.
        "This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the President has many military options to defeat any threat," said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.
        "We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies."
        North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several flying over Japan, as it accelerates its program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.
        Earlier on Saturday, U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.
        The Pentagon said the maneuver was a show of force that demonstrated the range of military options available to the president.
        The flight, which was disclosed shortly before North Korea's foreign minister was due to address the United Nations, was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea that any U.S. fighter jet or bomber has flown in the 21st century, the Pentagon said.
        "This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the President has many military options to defeat any threat," said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White, calling North Korea's weapons program "a grave threat."
        "We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies," White said.
    22TH
      Mel Brooks on Blazing Saddles and Political Correctness
    EuroLand
      Spaans schip met 16.000 agenten in Barcelona om referendum te stoppen
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: ZapLog
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:57
        Catalaanse minister BuZa: 'Democratie Spanje en Europese Unie staat op het spel' '' In de maak zijnde Liberaalgroene kabinet VVD-CDA-D66-CU zal ontmanteling Nederlandse democratie, vrijheid en welvaart in nog hogere versnelling zetten
        Dit cruiseschip kwam gisteren in Barcelona aan, en wordt de basis van 16.000 agenten die het geplande referendum over onafhankelijkheid moeten voorkomen. (Afbeelding: Getty Images (2)).
        Nadat de Spaanse politie deze week 14 officials van de Catalaanse regering arresteerde en beslag legde op de financin van de regionale overheid, heeft de regering in Madrid een groot cruiseschip naar de haven van Barcelona gestuurd die als tijdelijk onderkomen zal dienen voor 16.000 M.E. agenten, die de 'orde' in de stad moeten bewaken en het illegaal verklaarde referendum moeten voorkomen. Dit is wat er van de stem van de gewone man in Europa is overgebleven: in Nederland werden de uitslagen van niet gewenste referenda simpelweg genegeerd en in de prullenbak gedeponeerd; in Spanje geeft men het volk zelfs niet eens meer een stem. De democratie in de EU is dood en begraven, alleen heeft het slachtoffer dat zelf nog steeds niet in de gaten.
        Het cruiseschip 'Rhapsody' kwam gisteren in Barcelona aan en zal tot zeker 3 oktober -2 dagen na het geplande referendum over de onafhankelijkheid van Cataloni- in de haven blijven liggen. Volgens de krant El Correo moeten op 1 oktober 16.000 man van de rellenpolitie (hier bekend als de Mobiele Eenheid) ''meer dan de Catalaanse politie kan inzetten- klaarstaan om het referendum te voorkomen en nieuwe massa demonstraties te onderdrukken.
        Leiders van de onafhankelijkheidsbeweging hebben de Spaanse premier Rajoy beschuldigd van het uitroepen van de noodtoestand in Cataloni. Volgens hen had hij onderhandelingen moeten aangaan over de voorwaarden van het referendum.
        'Democratie in Spanje en EU staat op het spel'
        De Catalaanse regering geeft zich echter niet zonder slag of stoot gewonnen, en zegt dat het op een geheime locatie zo'n 6000 stembussen heeft verstopt. 'Het referendum zal worden gehouden en wordt nu al georganiseerd,' aldus minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Raul Romeva. 'Maar de omstandigheden zijn overduidelijk niet zoals we hadden gewenst.'
        'Wat er op het spel staat is niet of Cataloni wel of niet onafhankelijk wordt,' vervolgde hij, 'maar de democratie in Spanje en de Europese Unie.' Hij voegde daaraan toe dat de uitslag van het referendum binnen 48 uur zal worden gehonoreerd, wat inhoudt dat Cataloni zich onafhankelijk zal verklaren als een meerderheid daar voor is. Peilingen wijzen overigens uit dat een meerderheid voor het referendum is, en 40% voor onafhankelijkheid.
        'Er is absoluut geen alternatief,' vervolgde de minister. 'Er liggen nog maar twee zaken op tafel: een democratisch project, of onderdrukking.' (1)
        Referenda in Europa worden in prullenbak gegooid
        De 16.000 mobiele eenheid troepen die Spanje wil inzetten, wijzen erop dat het 'onderdrukking' gaat worden. Wat er wat democratie betreft natuurlijk al een flink tijdje is in de Europese Unie, want eerdere referenda in Frankrijk, Nederland en Ierland over de Europese Grondwet werden genegeerd, en een Nederlandse referendum over Oekra¯ne werd door de regering Rutte eveneens in de prullenbak gedeponeerd. Tevens werd een volledig legaal en democratisch volksreferendum op De Krim werd valselijk een 'annexatie' genoemd, enkel omdat de uitslag (98% voor aansluiting bij Rusland) niet overeenkwam met de doelstellingen van de Westerse politieke elite.
        Hetzelfde geldt voor ingrijpende besluiten zoals het toelaten van miljoenen moslims tot onze landen, en de daaraan gekoppelde islamisering van onze samenleving. Uit peilingen blijkt dat een ruime meerderheid in alle Europese landen dit absoluut niet wil. Een kans om zich over de toekomst van hun land uit te spreken wordt echter aan niet (C)(C)n volk gegeven.
        Liberaalgroene kabinet zal ontmanteling democratie en vrijheid versnellen
        Mensen lijken het nog veel te goed te hebben om zich te realiseren dat de politieke leiders in Brussel, Berlijn, Madrid en ook Den Haag allang afscheid hebben genomen van de democratie. Wij mogen enkel nog in naam op verschillende partijen stemmen, maar feitelijk voeren die -op een enkele uitzondering zoals de PVV en het Forum voor Democratie na- allemaal dezelfde pro-Europese, linksgroene, pro-islamitische en globalistische koers, waarin onze soevereiniteit stap voor stap wordt ontmanteld en overgeheveld naar Brussel en de VN.
        De voortekenen wijzen erop dat dit democratie-, vrijheid- en welvaart ontmantelende proces door het in de maak zijnde Liberaalgroene kabinet VVD-CDA-D66-CU alleen maar zal worden versneld.
        http://xandernieuws.punt.nl/content/2017/09/Spaans-schip-met-16000-agenten-in-Barcelona-om-referendum-met-geweld-te-stoppen
        Annotaties:
    No Agenda Al- Tazaj Chicken
      JCD's chicken recommendation inspired me to make Al- Tazaj Chicken for family and friends and everybody loved it.
      The chicken is delicious and the garlic mayo sauce that goes with it is dynamite. My recipe, cobbled together from a couple online sources follows below.
      Deconstruction and great food tips, truly you are TBPITU (and yes I have provided value for this value, I am not a douche-bag)
      ITM,
      anonymous in San Francisco
      Chicken:
      - Salt chicken on both sides, any kind of chicken works but a butterflied chicken is more authentic
      - Marinate it for 4 hours to overnight in:
        - 1/3 cup good olive oil
        - 1/3 - 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
        - 2 tablespoons minced garlic
        - 1 small can green chilis
        - 1 tsp red pepper flakes
        (this much marinade will work for 1-2 pounds of chicken parts)
      - Then grill as you would normally grill your chicken
      - Serve hot, topped with garlic mayo, preferably with French Fries on the side (also authentic to the Saudi Arabian style)
      GARLIC MAYO
      - Mix
        - 3 tablespoon butter,
        - 1 heaped teaspoon garlic,
        - salt
        - lemon juice, 1/2 - 1 tsp
      - bring to a boil, then take off the heat; wait till any bubbling stops
      - add a heaping tablespoon of mayonnaise and mix thoroughly
    F-Russia
      Mark Zuckerberg's Political Awakening - Bloomberg
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:49
        Technically speaking, Mark Zuckerberg has been on paternity leave. In late August his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave birth to their second child, a girl. But though Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., stayed away from the office for a month after the delivery, he has been utterly unable to avoid what's become a second full-time job: managing an escalating series of political crises.
        In early September, Facebook disclosed that it sold $100,000 in political ads during the 2016 election to buyers who it later learned were connected to the Russian government. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Mark Warner of Virginia, the most senior Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have said they're considering holding a hearing, in which case Zuckerberg could be asked to testify.
        Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller has made Facebook a focus of his investigation into collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump's campaign. A company official says it's ''in regular contact with members and staff on the Hill'' and has ''had numerous meetings over the course of many months'' with Warner. On Sept. 21, Zuckerberg said the company would turn over the ads to Congress and would do more to limit interference in elections in the future. Facebook acknowledges that it has already turned over records to Mueller, which suggests, first, that the special counsel had a search warrant and, second, that Mueller believes something criminal happened on Zuckerberg's platform.
        Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Sept. 25, 2017. Subscribe now.Photographer: El Comercio/GDA/Zuma Press
        The Russia investigations complicate Zuckerberg's efforts to shore up support for Facebook in the wake of a bitter election. Even as the company enjoys record profitability'--its market value has more than doubled since 2015, to $500 billion, making Zuckerberg the world's fifth-richest person'--Facebook faces criticism for its role in distributing pro-Trump propaganda during the 2016 election (one viral story falsely claimed that the pope had endorsed Trump) and for contributing to a climate of extreme polarization. On Sept. 14, ProPublica reported that it had managed to purchase ads targeted at users who'd listed interests such as ''Jew hater'' and ''How to burn Jews.''
        Facebook quickly changed its ad system to prevent similar purchases, but the episode gives further ammunition to critics who worry that the company has grown too powerful with too little oversight. Abroad, Facebook faces challenges from aggressive European antitrust regulators and governments suspicious of both its power and its treatment of user data. The idea of a crackdown is catching on in the U.S., too, amid a larger backlash against Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg has become a big, enticing target for both liberal Democrats, who see him as a media-devouring monopolist, and for nationalist Republicans, who see an opportunity to rail against the company that embodies globalization more than any other.
        ''Every great community has great leaders who take responsibility for people's well-being''
        Since January, Zuckerberg has been on a tour of America that seems designed to combat those perceptions. He's done laps at a Nascar track in North Carolina, sat in a big rig at a truck stop in Iowa, and jawed with workers at a fracking site in North Dakota. The ongoing road trip, organized in part by David Plouffe, Barack Obama's former campaign manager and the head of policy and advocacy at Zuckerberg's philanthropic organization, is being documented by a former presidential photographer for Newsweek. Much of the time on these trips, he's accompanied by private security guards who resemble Secret Service agents.
        The optics of these moves, and the people Zuckerberg has hired to orchestrate them, have caused many to suspect that he might be doing more than burnishing his image. In addition to Plouffe, Zuckerberg has hired several former senior Obama White House officials and Hillary Clinton's pollster. In the past year he's delivered a kind of proto-stump speech at Harvard and disclosed that he's no longer an atheist. ''Now I believe religion is very important,'' he wrote on Facebook last December. Most tellingly, for some anyway, in late 2015 he moved to change Facebook's corporate charter to allow him to maintain control in the event'--totally hypothetical, of course'--he were to run for office. (The move is the subject of a class-action lawsuit, which goes to trial on Sept. 26.)
        Since his paternity leave began, Zuckerberg has also raised funds for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, announced a $75 million investment in a new global health initiative, and led a campaign to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the Obama initiative allowing young undocumented immigrants, or Dreamers, to remain in the U.S. Zuckerberg's political engagement has been so extreme that one night in August, presumably while the baby slept, he argued with anti-immigrant trolls for several hours on Facebook.
        The most popular explanation for all this politicking, one shared by some members of the Trump administration, is that Zuckerberg is exploring whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, when he'll be 36 years old. ''He would be formidable if he ran,'' says Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist who previously served as communications director for Florida Senator Marco Rubio's presidential campaign. ''It's as if, 50 years ago, the publisher of the New York Times ran for president. Except that Facebook is even more powerful than the Times ever was.'' A survey conducted in July by Public Policy Polling found Zuckerberg running even with Trump in a hypothetical race.
        Mark Zuckerberg Is Not Running for President
        Zuckerberg denies he's running and seems irritated by the speculation. But he concedes that many of the things he's done might seem political'--at least from a certain cynical vantage point that he, for one, doesn't share.
        ''I get what people are saying,'' he says in an interview at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on a warm afternoon in June. Zuckerberg has made himself available to discuss Facebook's efforts'--and his own'--to make the world a better place. During the interview he insists his travels have been about personal discovery, not politics. Zuckerberg is a relentless self-improver who undertakes an annual personal challenge. One year he learned Mandarin; another year he built his own artificial intelligence bot, getting Morgan Freeman to provide the voice. This year was about getting in good with the flyover states. ''Wouldn't it be better,'' he asks with a sly smile, ''if it was actually an accepted thing for people to want to go understand how other people were living?''
        Of course, the Zuckerberg tour, which will hit six more states between now and Thanksgiving, isn't just about understanding. It's also an attempt to cast Facebook's founder as someone other than an aloof operator who doesn't care whether you use the platform to share pictures of your grandkids or advertise to aspiring Jew-burners. Zuckerberg wants America to understand him and, in doing so, understand Facebook. As he puts it: ''People trust people, not institutions.'' It's a nice thought, but it remains to be seen whether Zuckerberg, whose communication skills aren't as sharp as his competitive instincts, can pull it off. He's been underestimated before'--by Harvard, by competitors, and by Wall Street'--but he's never faced the mix of outcry and scrutiny he's up against today. Washington has Facebook in its sights.
        With autoworkers at a Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich.
        Source: Facebook
        By his own telling, Zuckerberg's political awakening began a little more than a year ago. ''I guess it was while the primaries were going on,'' he says. Trump was on the ascent, thanks to a nationalist message Zuckerberg saw as an attack on the global connectivity Facebook has long promoted. Similar movements were gaining ground in Europe.
        Zuckerberg is perched on the edge of a modernist sofa in the glass conference room that serves as his de facto office. (Facebook employees all work in open workspaces.) He's dressed in uniform'--dark jeans, gray T-shirt, black sneakers'--but appears less self-assured than usual and seems to grasp for the right words. ''I mean, for most of the existence of the company, this idea of connecting the world has not been a controversial thing,'' he continues. ''Something changed.''
        In April 2016, at the company's annual developer conference, F8, Zuckerberg, who's never formally endorsed a candidate and is registered as an independent, made a reference to Trump's proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. ''Instead of building walls, we can help build bridges,'' he told the crowd, without mentioning the candidate by name. ''Instead of dividing people, we can help bring people together.''
        The comments generated headlines and hot takes (''Mark Zuckerberg attacks Donald Trump,'' the Verge put it), but, as always with Zuckerberg, his remarks were studiously vague. Facebook's CEO has disclosed more about his personal life than perhaps any other big-company executive. We know his favorite way to barbecue, have watched his older daughter take her first steps, and are aware that he and his wife struggled to conceive. But even with information this intimate, it's hard to really know Zuckerberg in the normal sense of the word, or to feel the kind of emotional connection that skillful politicians can evoke.
        Zuckerberg sometimes talks about the promise of brain implants, which he believes will one day convey the entirety of one's mental state to another human being, and it's easy to see why the idea might appeal to him. His expressive range runs from almost annoyed all the way to not displeased. He speaks in complex sentences that sound as if they've been worked out in advance. In appearances and interviews, he can come off as super cerebral, less like a person and more like a simulacrum of one engineered for Facebook's benefit.
        All this puts Zuckerberg'--despite his global name recognition, his unlimited funds, his Hollywood-worthy back story'--at a disadvantage when he attempts politics, as he did in the days immediately following the 2016 election. ''Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, of which it's a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea,'' he said at a conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Nov. 10. ''Voters,'' he continued, appearing to suppress a laugh, ''make decisions based on their lived experience.''
        ''Some nights I go to bed and I'm not sure if I made the right decisions''
        The blame deflection came off as glib and unconvincing. Zuckerberg's pitch to his customers, who spent almost $28 billion on ads last year, is predicated on exactly the notion that people make decisions based on things they see on Facebook. And the Trump campaign used Facebook extensively. ''I wouldn't have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn't known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,'' Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon (and the current executive chairman of Breitbart News) told Bloomberg Businessweek last October. ''We know its power.'' The sentiment that Facebook helped hand the presidency to Trump is shared by Clinton, who in her new book blames it for allowing Russian-controlled bots on its service, among other things. ''Facebook is now the largest news platform in the world,'' she writes. ''With that awesome power comes great responsibility.''
        Zuckerberg softened his position after his remarks about the election were widely criticized. In a late-December video conversation with his chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, which was posted to his personal Facebook page, he acknowledged that his company has some responsibility for what appears on users' pages. Then, in early January, he announced his cross-country journey.
        His first stop was Texas, where he visited with the police department in Dallas, met with religious leaders in Waco, and attended a rodeo. ''The funny thing about running a company like this is that I'm more likely to travel to a big city in another country than a rural place in our country,'' he says now. ''I just figured, OK, I want to see what all these different communities are about.''
        Over the next six months, his excursions evolved into a sort of political platform. The rising popularity of nationalism, he now argues, wasn't caused by the economic stagnation in rural areas Trump has pointed to, but rather by a kind of social stagnation. Since the 1970s, Zuckerberg observes, membership in community groups such as churches and youth sports leagues has declined. (This idea was famously popularized by the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone.) ''It is possible many of our challenges are at least as much social as they are economic'--related to a lack of community and connection to something greater than ourselves,'' Zuckerberg wrote in a 6,000-word open letter he posted on Facebook in February. ''Online communities are a bright spot.''
        Many argue that online communities are compounding our loneliness. A study published earlier this year by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that heavy social media users were, on average, more isolated than their peers. Zuckerberg doesn't see it that way, arguing that the best way to a better society is more Facebook.
        In surveys of users, only 100 million people told Facebook they use the site to connect with groups they find ''meaningful.'' In almost any other context on Earth that would be an enormous population, but it's only 5 percent of Facebook's user base. Zuckerberg finds the figure disappointing and has told employees they should seek to increase the level tenfold. ''It'll take years,'' he says, ''but if we can get to a billion more people in meaningful groups online, that will reverse the decline in community membership and start strengthening the social fabric again.''
        Zuckerberg's travels also caused him to reconsider aspects of Facebook's functionality. The company has long relied almost exclusively on algorithms to show users news and videos they were most likely to interact with. The practice is great for advertisers, but it's been criticized for creating echo chambers in which users are more likely to believe and share news articles that would otherwise seem obviously false. If you think the whole world supports Trump, because Facebook exclusively shows you content from your Trump-supporting friends, then it's easy to believe the pope does, too.
        Zuckerberg had mostly shrugged off these critiques'--Facebook's algorithms, he argues, expose people to more viewpoints than they'd otherwise see'--but he says he began examining the role that human curation might have after meeting with a religious leader in Waco who told him about counseling members of his congregation who'd been laid off during a factory closure. ''Every great community has great leaders who take responsibility for people's well-being,'' he says.
        With Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. in Charlotte.
        Source: Facebook
        The Waco pastor's insight might seem a bit obvious, but Zuckerberg says it caused him to pour additional resources into Facebook's groups, a widely used feature that executives had mostly ignored. Groups were originally designed as a way for families and friends to privately share photos and news. The service attracted large numbers, such as Pantsuit Nation, a group of Clinton supporters that had almost 3 million members by Election Day, but it had significant limitations. Administrators, for instance, had no easy way to check on web traffic to the group page, a feature that had long existed on competing platforms such as Meetup. This spring, Zuckerberg ordered a revamp.
        He asked Facebook product managers to treat group administrators as a constituency, like advertisers and app developers, and to give them tools to police ugliness. In a Facebook post in May, he said the company would start encouraging Facebook friendships among people who don't know each other in real life, in addition to connecting existing friend groups.
        The Facebook groups team had already been trying to do this to some extent but hadn't received much internal support, says Alex Deve, the product manager. ''What changed was that the whole company was focused on it,'' he says. ''Suddenly you had everybody on it.''
        ''Stand up and give your neighbor a high-five!''
        In a loft in Chicago's industrial West Loop neighborhood in June, a crowd of Facebook superfans gathers around a makeshift stage where one of the company's public-relations executives is delivering a warmup speech for the main event. This is the first annual Facebook Communities Summit, which is styled as a miniature version of Facebook's F8 conference. Instead of inviting 4,000 or so software developers, Facebook has handpicked 300 of its most engaged group moderators. There are representatives from groups for professional locksmiths, Austin fishing enthusiasts, and Nigerian feminists. The effect is an audience that's much more diverse than at the typical tech company event and also considerably more enthusiastic.
        ''C'mon, Mark!'' a young man shouts as the CEO appears, his smile gleaming. Zuckerberg normally walks with an unnervingly perpendicular posture, but today he slouches ever so slightly as he ambles to the stage. Rather than appear from behind a curtain as usual, he enters from the back and walks down the aisle, pausing every few steps to shake a hand and, at one point, to coo at a baby.
        ''I'm Mark,'' he finally says, stepping onto the stage, ''and I'm a member of the Zuckerberg family group.''
        He ticks off the changes Facebook has made. ''We're going to give you new tools that are going to offer insights into who your members are,'' he says, as a slide with a new analytics toolbar flashes. Other changes seem similarly modest'--moderators can easily delete old posts from members they've banned, for instance'--but each new feature is greeted with screams of approval.
        With members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
        Source: Facebook
        The event, which is being livestreamed, is aimed as much at the outside world as at the group moderators in the room, which is why Zuckerberg uses it as an occasion to make another announcement. The ''Facebook community,'' as Zuckerberg has taken to referring to his company, is on the verge of adding its 2 billionth user. ''It's a great milestone, but it also means that we just have an even greater responsibility in the world right now,'' he says. ''Some nights I go to bed and I'm not sure if I made the right decisions.''
        And with that, he reveals he's rewritten Facebook's mission statement. The company's old credo, ''Make the world more open and connected,'' is out. The new one: ''Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.'' It's a mouthful, but Zuckerberg suggests the tweaked focus will allow humanity to tackle ''challenges we can only take on together,'' such as ''curing diseases, and stopping climate change, and spreading freedom and tolerance, and stopping violence.'' He continues, ''We have to build a world where people come together to take on these big, meaningful efforts.''
        ''We're in a pretty unique position, and we want to do the most good we can''
        The crowd cheers, but the reaction outside the room is mixed. Conservative outlets point out that Zuckerberg is sort of saying that Facebook will one day replace churches'--on Fox News, a Baptist pastor is brought on for a rebuttal'--and media critics note that global togetherness won't address questions about Facebook's role as a media organization. Neither critique is fair, but both show how Zuckerberg has entered a phase of his career in which his every utterance has the potential to be litigated on op-ed pages and cable TV.
        ''Facebook doesn't appear to have a coherent view of its role and its power,'' says Nicco Mele, the director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. He points out that Facebook has struggled to deal with extremist content on its site. Since the launch of its live-video feature last year, users have streamed dozens of violent acts, including murders and suicides. ''This is a great place for the government or other organizations to step in and set guidelines,'' he says.
        During our June interview, Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook's efforts to address criticisms about harmful uses of its products are a work in progress. ''We're in uncharted territory,'' he says. He describes his 6,000-word letter as something that was more tossed off than market-tested'--''a blob,'' he calls it'--and plays down the role played by political advisers such as Plouffe. When asked whom at Facebook or his foundation he consulted with before embarking on the road trip, he blinks, as if failing to understand the question. ''Well, who else is there to get on board?''
        That comment applies to every decision Zuckerberg makes. Thanks to a block of supervoting shares, he owns 14 percent of Facebook but has voting control of the company'--and, with it, control over a media platform that reaches more than a quarter of the world's population. Last year at the company's annual meeting, he proposed (and then, as Facebook's controlling shareholder, approved) a plan to issue an additional class of shares that will allow him to maintain his control even if he sells most of his shares.
        In our interview, Zuckerberg explains that the move was necessary so he could invest most of his wealth in philanthropic causes. (He's worth $73 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.) But the proposal also included a provision that would allow him to control the company if he left to serve in government. Zuckerberg says he's been hesitant to explain the provision because of the lawsuit, and adds that he wasn't imagining the presidency but rather taking ''a temporary role in government related to technology or science,'' for instance if the U.S. needed to improve a critical part of its technology infrastructure. The class action, stemming from complaints filed by two shareholders last year, seeks to block the creation of the new share class. It will go to trial in Delaware at the end of September. Zuckerberg is expected to testify.
        Throughout the interview, he seems irritated that his actions could be viewed as anything other than expansive benevolence. ''We're in a pretty unique position, and we want to do the most good we can,'' he says of Facebook. ''There's this myth in the world that business interests are not aligned with people's interests. And I think more of the time than people want to admit, that's not true. I think that they are pretty aligned.''
        As he says this, his publicist stands up and indicates the interview is over, but Zuckerberg isn't quite done. He smiles and then says, ''I need to give you a hard time.'' He proceeds to complain about a Bloomberg Businessweek story in January that noted he employs a team of about a dozen content moderators'--as well as communications managers, professional photographers, video producers, Morgan Freeman'--who are all responsible for maintaining his personal Facebook page. ''You're taking away from all the time that I spent on this,'' he says.
        At first it seems he's being playful, but his expression hardens as he continues, his voice rising. ''I also have an assistant who helped set up this meeting,'' he says. ''Does that mean I don't do the meeting?'' He continues: ''My takeaway from that piece is, like, this'''--meaning everything he posts on Facebook'--''isn't authentic. And that, I just felt, wasn't accurate.''
        Zuckerberg's anxiety about authenticity is one that anyone who's spent time on social media knows well. If a vacation isn't on Facebook, is it even a vacation? Is the irresistible article that my friend shared real, or has it been virally engineered by some affiliate of the Kremlin? Is Facebook really an improvement over real-life connections?
        For a second, Zuckerberg is wholly alive'--engaged and even a little pissed off. A Businessweek reporter tries to gently point out that as Zuckerberg's power over his 2 billion users grows, it makes sense that he'd need to employ a team to manage his image.
        But having lodged his complaint, Zuckerberg withdraws. ''All right,'' he says, turning away. ''Good interview.''
        (Updates with Facebook announcement in third paragraph.)
      How Matt Drudge became the pipeline for Russian propaganda
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 10:46
        Sarah Wasko / Media Matters
        On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew. The next day, President Barack Obama alleged that the responsible parties were Russian-backed separatists seizing territory in the region following Russia's annexation of Crimea. Obama's statement came amid a furious effort by Russian propaganda outlets to foster confusion about the act. In their telling, the tragedy had actually been a failed attempt by Ukrainians to shoot down President Vladimir Putin's plane.
        The Russian propaganda effort received a substantial boost when right-wing internet journalist Matt Drudge highlighted a story on the topic from RT.com, the website of the Russian government-backed English-language news channel RT. Drudge titled the resulting item on the Drudge Report, his highly trafficked link aggregation website, ''RT: Putin's plane might have been target...'' in bright red text.
        After Drudge propelled the RT story to his massive audience, it was picked up by right-wing U.S. conspiracy websites. (Others on the right warned that Drudge had gone too far by aiding a Russian disinformation campaign.)
        This was not an anomaly. Drudge has for years used his site as a web traffic pipeline for Russian propaganda sites, directing his massive audience to nearly 400 stories from RT.com and fellow Russian-government-run English-language news sites SputnikNews.com and TASS.com since the beginning of 2012, according to a Media Matters review. Those numbers spiked in 2016, when Drudge collectively linked to the three sites 122 times.
        Drudge's increasing affinity for and proliferation of Russian propaganda comes amid what The New York Timescalls ''a new information war Russia is waging against the West.''
        RT and Sputnik News are part of what the Times' Jim Rutenberg has termed ''the most effective propaganda operation of the 21st century so far,'' a coordinated network of state-controlled TV and online media outlets and social media accounts that take advantage of the traditional protections of Western liberal democracies to undermine public confidence in the governments of those nations. TASS, which has received less attention in the United States, is a Russian news agency similar to The Associated Press but owned by the state.
        Russia's English-language propaganda operation came under increasing scrutiny from the U.S. intelligence community during and following the 2016 presidential election, during which, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, it was part of an effort to bolster now-President Donald Trump's campaign. Mixing slanted coverage with outright lies, the state media effort promotes an anti-establishment worldview featuring criticisms of the U.S. from both the far left and far right, packaged with the same strategies used by modern American news outlets to increase viewership.
        When the Kremlin's interests converge with the right's interests in undermining Democratic politicians like former President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, its outlets find prominent allies in the U.S. conservative media landscape. As Andrew Feinberg, the former White House correspondent for Sputnik News, has explained, the Russian media outlets are part of the ''right-wing media ecosystem,'' with their stories picked up and promoted by prominent far-right news sites like Breitbart.com and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars.com.
        For decades, Drudge has played a dominant role in that ecosystem. The Drudge Report is one of the most highly trafficked news websites in the country, and because it simply aggregates links, it is the top source of referral traffic to a host of right-wing and mainstream news websites. That ability to create a firehose of traffic leads some reporters, especially on the right, to craft stories for the explicit purpose of getting Drudge links, allowing him to serve as the media's assignment editor. And the media outlets benefiting from that traffic are not only U.S. traditional media or conservative outlets, but the press organs of one of the nation's top adversaries.
        To measure this effect, Media Matters wrote a program to crawl through Drudge's archives and create an index of all instances in which the website linked to pages that included the URLs ''rt.com,'' ''sputniknews.com,'' or ''tass.com.''
        We found that the Drudge Report has promoted dozens of RT articles every year since 2012. Soon after Sputnik launched in November 2014, it, too, began regularly receiving attention from Drudge. TASS articles receive much less promotion, but Drudge's website features a permanent link to the TASS main page (listed as ITAR-TASS).
        As the U.S. presidential race and Russia's machinations both escalated in 2015, the number of Russian propaganda articles promoted by Drudge shot up to 79 for the year. The total jumped again to a high of 122 articles in 2016, before dropping down to 45 this year through September 18.
        The articles Drudge highlighted cover a wide range of U.S. and international topics, but -- as one might expect from the content of Russian propaganda outlets -- many fall into discrete categories that fit the interests of the Kremlin.
        During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, several of the Drudge-promoted articles reported on the contents of emails andvoicemailsthe U.S. intelligence community says were stolen from the Democratic National Committee or former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta by Russian hackers.
        Others promoted the claims of WikiLeaks founder and former RT host Julian Assange. Drudge highlighted coverage from Russian propaganda outlets of his attacks on Clinton and hiscontradiction of the U.S. intelligence community over whether Russia was the source of the Democratic emails he published.
        Drudge has also regularly turned to RT and Sputnik for unskepticalcoverage of statements from Putin and other Kremlin officials, including their denials of Russian election interference, their criticisms of the U.S. role in Syria, and their efforts to undermine NATO members.
        And he's frequently highlighted the Russian outlets' conspiracy theories and hysterics, including their reports on meetings of the ''mysterious Bilderberg Group,''debunkedclaims that Google manipulated its search results to favor Clinton, and warnings of increasing Western support for satanism.
        Drudge's affinity for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his propaganda outlets is undoubtedly a major asset for the Kremlin. Drudge has rare power as a media gatekeeper due to his unusual ability to push reporting from previously unknown outlets to a massive audience.
        Jones' Infowars -- also a favorite of the Russian government -- is a case study in the potential impact of sustained promotion from Drudge. A 2013 Media Mattersstudy found that the Drudge Report linked to Infowars hundreds of times over the previous two years, giving the conspiracy theory website crucial exposure to the rest of the right-wing media space.
        As Jones himself put it, Drudge was the ''one source who really helped us break out, who took our information, helped to punch it out to an even more effective level.''
        Putin could say the same.
        Research provided by Adama Ngom and Shelby Jamerson.
    SJW BLM LGBBTQQIAAP
      Antifa Group Announces 'Deface Columbus | The Daily Caller
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Sep 2017 14:13
        Following multiple acts of vandalism on Christopher Columbus statues since August, a militant antifa group has announced ''Deface Columbus Day'' on Oct. 9 as a coordinated campaign to deface and destroy more historical monuments.
        In Yonkers, New York, a Columbus statue was beheaded on Aug. 30. Antifa vandals were also responsible for the destruction of the oldest Christopher Columbus monument in the nation on Aug. 21. Vandals left the messages ''Racism: Tear it down'' and ''The future is racial and economic justice.''
        On Sept. 20, a New York City-based antifa organization calling itself Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement put out a press release on far-left extremist websites like It's Going Down to call on their comrades elsewhere in the United States to take action and ''decorate'' their neighborhoods and parks. The group published a promotional video for the event.
        The call from Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement for more vandalism follows ''woke'' outrage against the Renaissance-period explorer whose discovery of the Americas initiated immigration to the New World. As The Daily Caller previously reported, the New York-based evolutionary Abolitionist Movement currently hosts anti-police workshops in the city for antifa members, with calls for violence against the police, armed insurrection and other revolutionary actions.
        First reported on Far Left Watch, the press release on It's Going Down includes the following text:
        The battles lines have been drawn and white supremacists are on notice. White nationalist statues are crumbling all over the US as our collective revolutionary power is growing. As the monuments of white supremacist society fall we must continue to make it clear that their reign of terror is coming to an end.
        For the occasion of Columbus Day, October 9th, one of the most vile 'holidays' of the year, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is calling for collectives all over the country to take action against this day and in support of indigenous people in the US and abroad who have been victims of colonialism and genocide.
        We are calling for groups to ''decorate'' their neighborhoods as they see fit: put up murals, wheatpaste posters, drop a banner, etc. On October 9th put a picture of your action on social media and use the hashtags below. With these actions multiplied around the country, we will make it unequivocally clear that revolutionaries will always stand with the indigenous!
        Revolutionary greetings to the insurgent Zapatista communities, the Lakota warriors, the Mapuche fighters, and all of our indigenous comrades in the struggle. With these actions, we renew our commitment to building a revolutionary movement strong enough to turn the tide permanently.''
        The extremist, communist movement proposes the use of hashtags like #FuckColumbusDay and #DestroyCapitalism on social media to promote widespread awareness of their actions.
        Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
      General Intent Crimes vs. Specific Intent Crimes | Nolo.com
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 15:53
        Some crimes require proof that the defendant not only committed an illegal act, but also with an illegal purpose.
        With the overwhelming majority of crimes, defendants must act intentionally'--or at least recklessly'--in order to be guilty. Statutes that require intentional acts fall under the category of either ''general intent'' or ''specific intent.''
        (For more on the mental state, or ''mens rea,'' required to commit a crime, see How Defendants' Mental States Affect Their Responsibility for a Crime. Also see Can I be convicted of a crime if I didn't realize what I did was illegal?)
        General IntentMost crimes require general intent, meaning that the prosecution must prove only that the accused meant to do an act prohibited by law. Whether the defendant intended the act's result is irrelevant.
        Example: A state's law defines battery as ''intentional and harmful physical contact with another person.'' This terminology makes battery a general intent crime. The intent element is satisfied if the defendant intends to cause harmful physical contact and actually causes it'--it doesn't matter whether the defendant actually intended to hurt or seriously injure the victim. So, if Jill punches Jack in the eye after Jack calls her an ''idiot,'' she has probably committed a battery. All the prosecution has to show is that Jill intentionally punched Jack. The prosecutor doesn't need to show that Jill intended to hurt Jack'--the law assumes as much.
        Specific IntentSpecific intent crimes typically require that the defendant intentionally commit an act and intend to cause a particular result when committing that act. (U.S. v. Blair, 54 F.3d 639 (10th Cir. 1995).) In that regard, merely knowing that a result is likely isn't the same as specifically intending to bring it about. (Thornton v. State, 397 Md. 704 (2007).)
        Example: A state's law defines aggravated battery as ''intentional and harmful physical contact with another with the intent to maim or disfigure.'' This is a specific intent crime because it requires that the defendant not only cause harmful contact, but also with the purpose of maiming or disfiguring the victim. So, suppose that Denise says to Vance, ''No one will love you once I mess up that pretty face.'' She then slices off his nose with a large, sharp razor blade. Since the evidence is likely to establish that she specifically intended to disfigure Vance, she is probably guilty of aggravated battery.
        Example: A state's law provides that a person who takes another's property ''with intent to deprive the owner is guilty of larceny.'' By describing the defendant's purpose in taking property, it is a specific intent crime. (Wetherelt v. State, 864 P.2d 449 (Wyo. 1993).)
        How to Tell?Frequently, statutes don't clearly state whether the offenses they describe require specific or general intent. Rather, courts determine a crime's intent element by following the general rule that terms like ''knowingly'' and ''voluntarily'' denote general intent (as in "knowingly and voluntarily use force against another"). Terms that describe something more than knowledge and voluntariness, like "purpose," tend to indicate specific intent (as in "knowingly and voluntarily use force against someone with the intent to disable him or her"). (U.S. v. Peralta, 930 F. Supp. 1523 (S.D. Fla. 1996).)
        Talk to a LawyerLike so many areas of law, determining whether a crime requires general or specific intent can be tricky. If you've been charged with a crime, immediately consult an experienced criminal defense attorney. An experienced lawyer can fully explain the applicable law, advise you of any available defenses, and otherwise protect your rights.
      Pelosi Protestors Funding from producer Joseph
        You posited on the last show that the protesters at the press conference Nancy Pelosi held were likely funded by Soros. You were correct. In one way or another all of them have recieved support from Soros and his foundations.
        __________________________
        The USA Hearald (http://goo.gl/1vS6e3) and NBC Bay Area (https://goo.gl/JE4MWp) identified the "Immigrant Liberation Movement” as one of the groups protesting. And WaPoWaPoWaPo (https://goo.gl/eaaXYy) reported, "the protesters were identified as members of the local chapters of RISE, Faith in Action and the California Youth Immigrant Justice Alliance, according to Pelosi aides."
        _________________
        The Immigrant Liberation Movement (ILM), was created by the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, East Bay Immigrant Youth Coalition, Faith in Action Bay Area/PICO California, and Pangea Legal
        https://goo.gl/1xirCY
        _________________
        Pangea Legal Services describes themselves in their about us: "Pangea was the name of the earth's original continent when it was one connected landmass. For us, 'Pangea' symbolizes the unity and oneness of our global community."
        http://www.pangealegal.org/about-us/#origins
        Pangea Legal Services is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with several direct ties to Soros and the Open Society Institute.
        https://goo.gl/38zWN1
        https://goo.gl/j4qABw
        https://goo.gl/ZsNqgK
        ________________
        The Immigrant Youth Coalition (IYC) describes themselves as "an undocumented and Queer/Trans youth led organization based in California. Our mission is to mobilize youth, families and incarcerated people to end the criminalization of immigrants and people of color. We organize to create social change that confronts the interlocking systems of oppression."
        https://goo.gl/QJMEpM
        The IYC is fiscally sponsored by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) - an open-borders activist group that has received funding from Unbound Philanthropy, the Borealis Philanthropy, and from Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
        https://goo.gl/42q99q
        https://goo.gl/PdKteo
        _______________
        RISE, is part of the Immigration Advocates Network (IAN). IAN is an alliance of leading immigrants'-rights organizations, including the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
        https://goo.gl/nKA27N
        They recieve funding from groups like the ford foundation, the carnegie corporation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the four freedoms fund, and the Open Society Institute.
        http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7796
        _________________
        Faith in Action, is part of the PICO network.
        https://goo.gl/mjjRLB
        PICO was founded by Father John Baumann, a Jesuit priest who was trained in Saul Alinsky-style community-organizing tactics in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s. Using “people of faith” as its foot soldiers, PICO seeks to maximize “the potential for transformation -- of people, institutions, and of our larger culture."
        PICO's proposed solutions nearly always entail expanding the power and control of government, while displacing the private sector. As PICO puts it, “government can play a vital role in improving society.”
        PICO is also a sponsoring organization of the We Believe Together - Health Care for All network.
        Donations to this group are tax-deductible. According to their website, "funding comes from dues paid by member institutions, foundation grants and support from individual donations." Some of the larger donors include the Citigroup Foundation and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.
        https://goo.gl/kFLJvM
        https://goo.gl/qf1C2U
        _________________
        The California Youth Immigrant Justice Alliance is a fiscally sponsored project of the MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND (MALDEF).
        https://goo.gl/G2k32k
        MALDEF has been instrumental in shaping policy agendas that have been passed into law, including federally funded bilingual education programs, in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants, the granting of driver's licenses regardless of immigration status, and the establishment of “sanctuary cities.”
        MALDEF has also played a major role in transforming the immigration debate in America, fostering what has become the widespread acceptance of direct attacks on the very idea of national sovereignty, the de facto elimination of any requirement for citizenship rights, and the casual dismissal of all critics as “anti-immigrant” nativists, racists, and “McCarthyites.”
        MALDEF's funding primarily comes from a core group of corporations and large foundations, most notably the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It has also received considerable support from the Open Society Institute.
        https://goo.gl/w8rNnk
        ___________________
        This research also led me to an interesting article from Breightbart about a couple from Hawaii that is donating millions to open boarders causes. The included list of organizations working towards open immigration is really extensive.
        From the article: "Who are these groups, working around-the-clock to open America’s border?
        There’s MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens. There’s MTV star and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’s group Define American. There’s the American Immigration Council, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
        There are group that promote the ‘dreamers’—children brought here illegally by their parents—such as United We Dream Network and the Arizona Dream Act Coalition. There are groups that support illegal workers, such as National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
        There are regional groups with national impact, like Arizona’s La Puente Human Rights Movement, the Florida Immigration Coalition, the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice and the [California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance.]
        There’s NALEO, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, the Migration Policy Institute, and American Civil Liberties Union Foundation. The ACLU in Los Angeles has made immigration issues their primary focus. There’s also the crucially important National Immigration Law Center.
        There’s Caring Across Generations, and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and the National Partnership for New Americans. There’s PICO National Networkand the Mi Famila Vota Education Fund. There’s Catholic Legal Immigration Network, and Kids in Need of Defense, and there’s Culture Strike and Race Forward and Presente.org and CASA de Maryland and Woman’s Refugee Commission.
        ...These groups are funded by organizations with direct ties to...George Soros and his Tides Foundation and their other offshoots. They work together and the staff and executives often bounce between organizations."
        https://goo.gl/mFoaXX
      Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People
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        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 20:09
        David Jacobs via YouTube screenshotIt feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege'--particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness. In America, we are near or at the bottom in every relevant metric determining quality of life. Our arrest and incarceration rates, our likelihood of dying a violent death, our likelihood of graduating high school and attending college, our employment rates, our average net worth, our likelihood of surviving past 70'--I could continue, but the point is clear.
        But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness's relationship to us. In fact, it's eerily similar.
        We're the ones for whom the first black president created an entire initiative to assist and uplift. We're the ones whose beatings and deaths at the hands of the police galvanize the community in a way that the beatings and sexual assaults and deaths that those same police inflict upon black women do not. We're the ones whose mistreatment inspired a boycott of the NFL despite the NFL's long history of mishandling and outright ignoring far worse crimes against black women. We are the ones who get the biggest seat at the table and the biggest piece of chicken at the table despite making the smallest contribution to the meal.
        And nowhere is this more evident than when considering the collective danger we pose to black women and our collective lack of willingness to accept and make amends for that truth. It's a damning and depressing paradox. When speaking about race and racism, we want our concerns and our worries and our fears to be acknowledged. We want white people to at least make an effort to understand that our reality is different from theirs and that white supremacy is a vital and inextricable part of America's foundation, and we grow frustrated when they refuse to acknowledge their role'--historically and presently'--in propagating it.
        When the racism isn't blatant or doesn't appear to exist at all, we want them to give us the benefit of the doubt. Because we've trained ourselves to be able to sense it'--even in minute and barely perceptible amounts'--because our safety depends on our recognition of it. We share how it feels to be stopped by a police officer, or perhaps to walk into an all-white bar and have each eye trained on us, or perhaps to jaunt down a street in an all-white neighborhood, and we want them to understand how words and gestures they consider to be innocuous can be threatening, even if there's no intention of malice.
        Although we recognize that not all white people are actively racist, we want them to accept that all benefit from racism, and we become annoyed when individual whites take personal exception and center themselves in any conversation about race, claiming to be one of the ''good ones'' and wishing for us to stop and acknowledge their goodness.
        But when black women share that we pose the same existential and literal danger to them that whiteness does to us; and when black women ask us to give them the benefit of the doubt about street harassment and sexual assault and other forms of harassment and violence we might not personally witness; and when black women tell us that allowing our cousins and brothers and co-workers and niggas to use misogynistic language propagates that culture of danger; and when black women admit how scary it can be to get followed and approached by a man while waiting for a bus or walking home from work; and when black women articulate how hurtful it is for our reactions to domestic abuse and their rapes and murders to be ''what women need to do differently to prevent this from happening to them'' instead of ''what we (men) need to do differently to prevent us from doing this to them,'' their words are met with resistance and outright pushback. After demanding from white people that we're listened to and believed and that our livelihoods are considered, our ears shut off and hearts shut down when black women are pleading with us.
        Making things worse is that black women and girls are also black people in America'--a fact we seem to forget whenever possessing a bad memory is convenient. The effects of racism'--metaphysical and literal'--and the existential dread and dangers felt when existing while black are not exclusive to black men and boys. They face the same racisms we do and the same doubts from whites about whether the racism actually exists that we do, and then they're forced to attempt to convince their brothers and partners and friends and fathers and cousins and lovers of the dangers of existing as black women, and they're met with the same doubts. The same resistance. The same questions. They are not believed in the (predominantly white) world or in their (predominantly black) communities. And we (black men) remain either uninterested in sincerely addressing and destructing this culture of danger and pervasive doubt or refuse to admit it even exists.
        I'm not quite sure where I first heard ''straight black men are the white people of black people.'' I know I read a version of it recently in Saki Benibo's ''The 4:44 Effect.'' Mela Machinko tweeted, ''Cishet black men are the white people of black people'' over a year ago and apparently received so much criticism for it that she temporarily locked her account. But in a conversation we had earlier today, she shared that her tweet was actually a revision of another tweet she'd read. (A month after Mela's tweet, it was revised again by @rodimusprime.) I also know that I've read pieces and been a part of conversations connecting our (black men's) relationships with black women to the relationships we have with white people but never quite heard it articulated this way.
        Either way, that statement, that phrasing and what they suggest are shocking and succinct: simple, subtle and fucking scary.
        And it's true.
      Islam Is Pushing Gays to the Right in France, Germany, and the Netherlands
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 17:30
        For decades, in both America and Europe, the gay establishment '' gay magazines, gay rights organizations, and self-designated gay leaders '' have been dictating politics to the gay multitudes. Those politics have been consistently left-wing and Democratic. Not all gays have played follow-the-leader, but most have, so that in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections Hillary Clinton won a far larger percentage of the gay vote than Donald Trump.
        Even though Hillary had opposed same-sex marriage until 2013, had taken millions of dollars from governments that execute homosexuals, and was married to the man who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, the gay mafia had managed to depict her as gay-friendly while depicting Donald Trump, a longtime gay marriage supporter, as an enemy of gay rights.
        Even more perverse than the official gay take on Trump vs. Clinton is the official gay party line on Islam. To get a good picture of this party line, all you need to do is glance through the archives of The Advocate, a gay news magazine.
        ''Islam is not intrinsically homophobic,'' wrote Trudy Ring in a 2013 Advocatereport about Muslim ''activists and scholars'' who, she claimed, were making progress in their effort to make Islam ''more welcoming to LGBT people.'' In a 2014 piece, Stevie St. John promoted a Muslim lesbian's claim that the Koran ''prescribes no punishment for being gay or transgender.''
        True, but wildly deceptive: in fact, the Koran contains explicit condemnations of homosexual conduct, while the punishments for such conduct are spelled out in Islamic law. Then there's the 2017 Advocatearticle in which one Samra Habib happily noted that after the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre, many news media eschewed anti-Islamic ''finger-pointing'' and instead ''offered many queer Muslims a platform to share how they too were in mourning and how they often felt doubly ostracized'' '' victimized, in other words, by both ''Islamophobia and homophobia.''
        Any whitewash of Islam is reprehensible. But when gays whitewash Islam in a publication read by other gays, it's downright dangerous. No ideology on Earth is more anti-gay. In ten Muslim countries, gay sex is punishable by death. To pretend that there's any way of reconciling homosexuality and Islam, or any chance of transforming Islam into a gay-friendly faith, is to encourage a menacing fantasy.
        So it's promising to observe that as Islam plants its roots ever more deeply in the soil of Western Europe, more and more European gays are wising up, breaking ranks with the fools and liars in their midst who preach that the ''gay community'' and the ummah are natural allies, and casting their ballots for politicians whom they'd previously scorned.
        In April, for example, Thomas Adamson of the Associated Press reported that although gay rights groups in France had not wavered in their fierce opposition to Marine Le Pen's Front National (FN), the party now enjoyed a higher level of support among gay voters than among straights.
      Dysphoria - Wikipedia
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 17:16
        Dysphoria (from Greek: Î´ÏÏƒÏ†ÎÏÎÏ‚ (dysphoros), Î´Ï…Ïƒ-, difficult, and Ï†Î­ÏÎµÎ¹Î½, to bear) is a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction. In a psychiatric context, dysphoria may accompany depression, anxiety, or agitation. It can also refer to a state of not being comfortable in one's current body, particularly in cases of gender dysphoria. Common reactions to dysphoria include emotional distress, in some cases, even physical distress is seen. The opposite state of mind is known as euphoria.
        In psychiatry [ edit] Intense states of distress and unease increase the risk of suicide, as well as being unpleasant in themselves. Relieving dysphoria is therefore a priority of psychiatric treatment. One may treat underlying causes such as depression or bipolar disorder as well as the dysphoric symptoms themselves.
        The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) categorizes specific dysphoria in the obsessive''compulsive spectrum.
        Gender dysphoria [ edit] Gender dysphoria is discomfort, unhappiness, or distress due to one's gender or physical sex. The current edition (DSM-5) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders uses the term "gender dysphoria" in preference to "gender identity disorder".[1]
        Related conditions [ edit] The following conditions may include dysphoria as a symptom:
        Drug-induced (dysphoriants) [ edit] Some drugs can produce dysphoria, including Îº-opioid receptoragonists like salvinorin A (the active constituent of the hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum), butorphanol, and pentazocine,[7]Î¼-opioid receptorantagonists such as naltrexone and nalmefene,[8] and antipsychotics like haloperidol and chlorpromazine (via blockade of dopamine receptors),[9] among others. Depressogenic and/or anxiogenic drugs may also be associated with dysphoria.
        In popular culture [ edit] Against Me! released the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues in which the lead singer Laura Jane Grace shares her experiences of gender dysphoria.[10]
        Shane Neilson released a book of poetry entitled Dysphoria (The Porcupine's Quill, 2017) in which he explores the experience of dysphoria.[11]
        See also [ edit] ^ Fraser, L; Karasic, D; Meyer, W; Wylie, K (2010). "Recommendations for Revision of the DSM Diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder in Adults". International Journal of Transgenderism. 12 (2): 80''85. doi:10.1080/15532739.2010.509202. ^ Abbess, John F. "Glossary of terms in the field of psychiatry and neurology". Archived from the original on 2007-07-18. Retrieved 2006-11-18 . ^ Borderline personality disorder ^ Lyubomirsky, S.; Kasri, F.; Zehm, K. (2003). "Dysphoric rumination impairs concentration on academic tasks". Cognitive Therapy and Research. 27 (3): 309''330. doi:10.1023/A:1023918517378. ^ Rosa RR, Bonnet MH (2000). "Reported chronic insomnia is independent of poor sleep as measured by electroencephalography". Psychosom Med. 62 (4): 474''82. PMID 10949091. ^ Chapman CR, Gavrin J (June 1999). "Suffering: the contributions of persistent pain". Lancet. 353 (9171): 2233''7. PMID 10393002. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(99)01308-2. ^ Thomas L. Lemke; David A. Williams (24 January 2012). Foye's Principles of Medicinal Chemistry. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 682''683. ISBN 978-1-60913-345-0. ^ Joyce H. Lowinson (2005). Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 648''. ISBN 978-0-7817-3474-5. ^ Wu, Hanjing Emily; Okusaga, Olaoluwa O. (2014). "Antipsychotic Medication-Induced Dysphoria: Its Meaning, Association with Typical vs. Atypical Medications and Impact on Adherence". Psychiatric Quarterly. 86 (2): 199''205. ISSN 0033-2720. doi:10.1007/s11126-014-9319-1. ^ Thompson, Stephen. "First Listen: Against Me!, 'Transgender Dysphoria Blues'" NPR. NPR, 12 Jan. 2014. Web. 27 May 2014 ^ "[1]" References [ edit]
    ShutUp Slave!
      Transcript of View firing
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 19:20
        Lots of spin and lies around this woman leaving the cast of a daytime show. Want an inside view into what REALLY happened? Of course you do!
        Here's the condensed version.
        The entire day was very tightly scripted. We had worked with [Hillary's] team to create a list of approved questions. Each question was assigned to a specific cast member to be asked in a specific order. Everyone knew exactly when to ask their question, what [Hillary's] answer was going to be (yes, we knew the answers in advance), when to laugh and when to be serious. Like I said, totally scripted. Everyone was warned not to go off script for any reason.
        During the interview, [Jeddidiah] went off script. That threw everyone off. Yes, [Hillary] was annoyed. You know who was even more annoyed? [Complaining Jeddidiah], because she didn't get to ask all of the questions she was assigned!
        [Complainer] demanded a meeting with producers. Afterwards, we were told that [Complainer] demanded that [Off-Script] get fired and that the producers agreed to fire her. [Off-Script Jeddidiah] and [Host of the show] were not at the meeting and were called later to let them know what happened.
        The next day, [Host] was going crazy! She was yelling about everything! She was mad that she wasn't invited to the meeting or included in the decision. She was mad that [Complainer] made such a stink about not getting to ask all her questions. She was mad that producers let [Complainer] have so much power in getting [Off-Script] fired. She was also mad at [Off-Script] for going off-script in the first place. She was yelling in the hallway, ''I told her not to go there! Stupid bitch!''
        That's pretty much it. [Host] is now mad at [Complainer] and is calling her ''My #1 Enemy.'' Those two now hate each other! The producers will drag [Off-Script] in the press and say that she got fired for reasons that had nothing to do with the interview. That's a lie.
        This marks the first time the producers of this show have ever lied about why a cast member is leaving the show.
        Ha! The producers of this show ALWAYS lie when someone leaves! The messiness continues!
        Similar: Live By The Big Mouth
        TV Show:
        Hillary:
        Off-Script Jeddidiah:
        Complaining Jeddidiah who got her fired:
        Host:
        [Optional] Love this show or hate this show?
    Antifa!
      The power of protest and pool noodles '' The Spectator
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 02:26
        Trainees learn how to be safe and lawful in non-violent protest
        When the first pool noodle struck the student, she jumped as the colorful foam tube made repetitive thud-thud sounds on her back.
        After a minute, she uncurled herself, straightened her shirt and rose without so much as a scratch. She was silent, but her face revealed that she was deep in thought.
        Rohingya in Myanmar. Arab Spring. Stonewall. Kent State. Freedom Riders. Those who partook in the pool noodle demonstration discussed moments in history '-- moments filled with adversity and perseverance.
        If you cannot withstand being beaten with pool noodles for 60 seconds, said Selika Ducksworth-Lawton, a history professor at UW-Eau Claire, you will not be able to face anyone who will combat you at a peaceful protest turned violent.
        Last Thursday, the UW-Eau Claire College Democrats invited Ducksworth-Lawton to provide student-sponsored, non-violent protest training for students, faculty and Eau Claire community members. The training took place from 5-7 p.m. in Ojibwe Room A in W.R. Davies Student Center.
        Ducksworth-Lawton is also the vice president of Uniting Bridges of Eau Claire, a charitable organization for civil rights, social action and advocacy. She has experience being an activist for gay rights and marriage equality. Today, she is a civil rights and military historian.
        ''We want our students to be lawful, to be peaceful, to be disciplined and to know how to effectively make their voices heard,'' Ducksworth-Lawton said.
        Reed White, vice chair of UW-Eau Claire College Democrats and the Northwest regional director of the College Democrats of Wisconsin, helped put the event together.
        ''We want people to be able to protest, to be able to march, if that's what's necessary to do,'' said White.
        Ducksworth-Lawton conducted the training with the help of pool noodles, a slide show and constructive conversation.
        Lt. Jay Dobson, from the Eau Claire campus police force, and Chief Gerald Staniszewski , from the city of Eau Claire police force, were also present. They outlined the campus and city laws that preside over the act of protest.
        Despite the playful appearance of the pool noodle exercise, the training was somber and safety-oriented.
        ''I do not teach protest as a fun activity '... I teach it as a very serious activity,'' said Ducksworth-Lawton. ''Protesting is powerful in moving our country toward that ideal of having inalienable rights for all.''
        People in attendance did feel the prospect of power in protest. They listened attentively and didn't hesitate to join the discussion and the demonstration.
        ''I think it's important that a group of us (can) get together and show that we know what's going on in the world,'' said Jake McGuire, chair of UW-Eau Claire College Democrats and Communications Director for the College Democrats of Wisconsin. ''We have these opinions, we can talk about them, and we can do it without causing a riot.''
        The following graphs are some important points regarding protesting said by Ducksworth-Lawton at the training.
        On campus, she said, the area for a potential protest must be reserved and a permit must be obtained to use a sound amplifier. Because it disrupts class, no protesting is permitted inside campus buildings. For safety reasons, signs with sticks attached are not to be used.
        If you are planning to protest in a park, you must first fill out an online application for an event permit. Remember to keep sidewalks and streets clear while marching. Ducksworth-Lawton told trainees to be aware of the possibility of weapons present.
        Wherever you protest, stay non-violent, Ducksworth-Lawton said. Never make physical contact in disagreement and stay safe in numbers. Have lawyers and law enforcement on your side .
        Above all, Ducksworth-Lawton said, ''protest to change hearts and minds.''
        More information about the code of conduct on Wisconsin university grounds can be found here.
        Read over Eau Claire's Code of Ordinances about marches and public assemblies in Chapter V, section 9.60.
    BTC
      BTC-TPB Admins' take about the recent Miner Incident (x-post from r/piracy) : CrackWatch
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Sep 2017 14:43
    24 for 45
      Taibbi on the Madness of Donald Trump - Rolling Stone
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:13
        He said monstrous things and lied with stunning disinhibition, and when the civilized world recoiled in horror, he seemed to take sadistic pleasure in every minute '' win or lose, the run was pure glory for him, a Sherman's March of taboo politics and testosterone fury that would leave a mark on America forever.
        There was one more thing. Candidate Trump may have been crazy, but it was craziness that on some level was working. Even at his lowest and most irrational moments '' like his lunatic assault on the family of fallen soldier Humayun Khan, in which he raved to the grieving Gold Star parents about how it was he, Trump, who had "made a lot of sacrifices" '' you could argue, if you squinted really hard, that it was strategy, a kick to the base.
        Or even if he wasn't doing these things on purpose, he must have been able to feel their impact, as the revolutionary force of his campaign demolished the 160-year-old Republican Party and barreled toward the gates of Barack Obama's White House.
        Now, it's different. Now, he just seems crazy. And it's his own administration that is crumbling, not any system.
        After a disastrous and terrifying August, which among other things saw him defend the "very fine people" among neo-Nazi protesters in a Charlottesville, Virginia, march, it's Trump's mental state '' not his alleged Russia ties, nor his failure to staff the government or pass any major legislation '' that has become the central problem of his presidency.
        Is this man losing his mind? And if so, what can be done about it? We've had some real zeros in the White House before, but we've never had a chief executive who barked at the moon or saw ghosts '' at least, not one who was so public about it.
        In Phoenix, which is technically a campaign event, the idea seems to be to surround the chief with an enthusiastic audience to boost his spirits after the fiasco of Charlottesville. Put him on the stump in the heart of MAGA country, let him feel that boar-with-a-boner high again.
        It doesn't work. The crowd is big and boisterous enough, maybe 10,000 Sheriff Joe-lovin', Mexico-hatin' 'Muricans, but Trump looks miserable. He's not the insurgent rebel anymore but a Caesar surrounded by knives. He's got a special prosecutor crawling up his backside, and there are numerous prominent politicians, including at least two in his own party, who are questioning his sanity in public amid growing whispers of constitutional mutiny. Moreover, after shrugging off a thousand other scandals, Trump seems paralyzed by the Nazi thing. He can't let it go. Say one nice thing about Nazis, and it's like people can't get over it. Unfair!
        He plunges into a 77-minute rant on this subject, listing each offending news outlet by name. In a nicely Freudian twist, he starts with The New York Times, which incidentally is the same paper that nearly a century ago identified "Fred Trump of 175-24 Devonshire Road" '' the president's late father '' as a detainee from a 1927 Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens. Back then, "native-born American Protestants" were railing against "Roman Catholic police" '' essentially the dirty-immigrant Irish, last century's Mexicans. Not much changes in this country. Maybe the father of the 2072 Republican nominee is here tonight in a MAGA hat.
        President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he speaks to supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center during a rally on August 22, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona. Ralph Freso/Getty Images That old family shame might be why the president, who's always denied Fred Trump was a Klansman ("Never happened"), is having such a hard time with Charlottesville and race. He rails against the "Times, which is, like, so bad," moves on to the "Washington Post, which I call a lobbying tool for Amazon" and winds up with "CNN, which is so bad and pathetic, and their ratings are going down."
        CNN's ratings aren't down. The network's second-quarter prime-time viewers just cracked a 1 million average, its most-watched second quarter ever, largely due to the blimp wreck of the Trump presidency. It's the one incontrovertible achievement of this administration. The network tweets as much shortly after Trump says the line. The Phoenix audience doesn't care. "CNN sucks!" they chant. "CNN sucks!"
        I was late to the event and actually standing outside the press pen, so when the crowd turns to scream and hiss at the media, I'm on the angry-zombie side of the line. A man taps my shoulder.
        "Fuck those people!" he shouts.
        I smile, zip up my jacket to hide my lanyard, then turn around to give him a thumbs up. The crowd escalates:
        "Tell the truth! Tell the truth!"
        Trump goes on, raging against "very dishonest media" and trying to rekindle the spirit of the campaign. He self-plagiarizes a little, reviving the "little Marco" dig for "little George" Stephanopoulos.
        The audience seems into it for a while. But it goes on too long. During the campaign, Trump was expert at keeping a hall buzzed with resentment for an hour or so. But he hits weird notes now. He goes off on a tangent about his enemies, it's not clear which ones. "They're elite?" he says. "I went to better schools than they did. I was a better student than they were. I live in a bigger, more beautiful apartment, and I live in the White House, too, which is really great."
        Polite applause.
        "You know what?" he goes on. "I think we're the elites. They're not the elites."
        No one is counting fingers, but you can tell people are having trouble making the math work. We're elite because you have a nice apartment? Campaign Trump bragged endlessly about his wealth '' "I have a Gucci store that's worth more than Romney" was a classic line '' but back then he was selling a vicarious fantasy. Trump's Ferrari-underpants lifestyle was the silent-majority vision of how they would all live once the winning started. But candidate Trump was never dumb enough to try to tell debt-ridden, angry crowds they were already living the dream.
        At one point, Trump ends up standing with a piece of paper in hand, haranguing all with transcripts of his own remarks on Charlottesville. To prove that he's been misquoted or misunderstood, he goes through the whole story, from the beginning. It gets quiet in the hall.
        It's an agonizing parody of late-stage Lenny Bruce. The great Sixties comedian's act degenerated into tendentious soliloquies about his legal situation (he had been charged with obscenity). Bruce too stood onstage in his last years for interminable periods, court papers in hand, quoting himself to audiences bored to insanity by the spectacle.
        This is exactly Trump. Even his followers are starting to look sideways at one another. In a sight rarely seen last year, a trickle of supporters heads for the exits. Then Trump cracks.
        "The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news," he says, to tepid applause.
        He stops and points in accusing fashion at the press riser.
        "Oh, that's so funny," he says. "Look back there, the live red lights. They're turning those suckers off fast out there. They're turning those lights off fast."
        We reporters had seen this act before. On October 10th of last year, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at one of the most massive rallies of the campaign, Trump accused CNN of shutting down the feed because he was criticizing their debate coverage. In that case, a camera light really did flicker, but CNN was actually turning the live feed on, not off. That was possibly an honest mistake. Possibly also it was Trump just pulling the media's tail, tweaking us with a line of bull, as he had with countless other provocations. The general consensus of attendant journalists that night was that Trump was messing with us.
        Phoenix is different. Trump seems to believe what he's saying. He really thinks that not just CNN, but all of the networks are shutting down their feeds, overwhelmed by the power of his words. "Boy, those cameras are going off," he says, coming back to the subject. "Oh, wow. Why don't you just fold them up and take them home? Oh, those cameras are going off. Wow. That's the one thing, they're very nervous to have me on live television..."
        The president of the United States is seeing things. He might as well be shooing imaginary ants off his suit. His followers still love him, but even they're starting to notice. They come for the old standards, but this new Trump material gets mixed reviews.
        Outside, a fan gives the speech a half-hearted thumbs up. "I liked 'Lock her up,'" the man says with a shrug. "They did that for a little while."
        "[He's saying] 'I don't'¨ promote racism, that's'¨ just the media trying to'¨ fuck with me,'" says Rich'¨ Yukon, a biker from a Tempe-based club called the Metalheads. "But he gets a little out of hand here and there, he says some shit."
        After the event, Trump tweets, "Beautiful turnout of 15,000 in Phoenix tonight!" Later, he reportedly fires the organizer of that same "beautiful" event, longtime aide and RNC contractor George Gigicos, apparently for not delivering a terrifyingly massive enough crowd. Sources told Bloomberg that Trump saw open floor space in TV shots before he took the stage, and this put him in a "foul mood" from which he never recovered.
        Trump has never had much use for facts, or decorum, or empathy, or sexual discretion, or any of the hundred other markers we normally look at to gauge mental wellness. But he's never been like this. This guy is lost, and as he flails for a clue, he keeps struggling violently against the conventions of his own office. The presidency has become a straitjacket.
        We deserve Trump, though. God, do we deserve him. We Americans have some good qualities, too, don't get me wrong. But we're also a bloodthirsty Mr. Hyde nation that subsists on massacres and slave labor and leaves victims half-alive and crawling over deserts and jungles, while we sit stuffing ourselves on couches and blathering about our "American exceptionalism." We dumped 20 million gallons of toxic herbicide on Vietnam from the air, just to make the shooting easier without all those trees, an insane plan to win "hearts and minds" that has left about a million still disabled from defects and disease '' including about 100,000 children, even decades later, little kids with misshapen heads, webbed hands and fused eyelids writhing on cots, our real American legacy, well out of view, of course.
        Nowadays we use flying robots and missiles to kill so many civilians and women and children in places like Mosul and Raqqa and Damadola, Pakistan, in our countless ongoing undeclared wars that the incidents scarcely make the news anymore. Our next innovation is "automation," AI-powered drones that can identify and shoot targets, so human beings don't have to pull triggers and feel bad anymore. If you want to look in our rearview, it's lynchings and race war and genocide all the way back, from Hispaniola to Jolo Island in the Philippines to Mendocino County, California, where we nearly wiped out the Yuki people once upon a time.
        President Trump with First Lady Melania Trump standing on a fire truck to display a Texas state flag after addressing First Responders and Corpus Christi, Texas area residents at a briefing on Hurricane Harvey storm relief and rescue efforts on August 29, 2017. Shealah Craighead/The White House This is who we've always been, a nation of madmen and sociopaths, for whom murder is a line item, kept hidden via a long list of semantic self-deceptions, from "manifest destiny" to "collateral damage." We're used to presidents being the soul of probity, kind Dads and struggling Atlases, humbled by the terrible responsibility, proof to ourselves of our goodness. Now, the mask of respectability is gone, and we feel sorry for ourselves, because the sickness is showing.
        So much of the Trump phenomenon is about history. Fueling the divide between pro- and anti-Trump camps is exactly the fact that we've never had a real reckoning with either our terrible past or our similarly bloody present. The Trump movement culturally represents an absolute denial of our sins from slavery on '' hence the intense reaction to the removal of Confederate statues, the bizarre paranoia about the Washington Monument being next, and so on. But #resistance is also a denial mechanism. It makes Trump the root of all evil, and is powered by an intense desire to not have to look at the ugliness, to go back to the way things were. We see this hideous clown in the White House and feel our dignity outraged, but when you really think about it, what should America's president look like?
        Trump is no malfunction. He's a perfect representation of who, as a country, we are and always have been: an insane monster. Frankly, we're lucky he's not walking around using a child's femur as a toothpick.
        When it's not trembling in terror, the rest of the world must be laughing its ass off. America, land of the mad pig president. Shove that up your exceptionalism.
        A week in Trump time is like a century, and the week after the Phoenix fiasco felt like a thousand years. First, he slipped in a prime-time pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio '' Trump's Ghost of Christmas Future, an envelope-pushing birther and demented prairie fascist who looked destined to spend his eighties in jail. Then, Trump held a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinist¶. The diminutive Scandinavian stood trying not to reach for his cyanide pill as Trump proudly explained to the press that he'd timed the Arpaio pardon with coverage of Hurricane Harvey for maximum ratings impact. The poor Euro looked like a Belgian nun forced to bunk up with Honey Boo Boo.
        Trump spent much of the week expressing morbid excitement about Harvey, as though the sheer size of the storm somehow reflected upon him personally. "HISTORIC rainfall," he gushed. Then, he went to Texas and said a slew of inappropriate things, celebrating crowd turnout and continually popping wood over the killer storm's "epic" dimensions '' "nobody's ever seen this much water," he raved. He repeatedly forgot to express empathy for victims, but doled out a major attaboy to FEMA administrator Brock Long, who "really became famous on television the past few days."
        Then, Trump went somewhere, fell asleep, woke up and decided first thing to take a Twitter leak on nuclear belligerent Kim Jong-Un, who just days before had shot missiles over northern Japan. "The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years," Trump wrote. "Talking is not the answer!"
        After enough weeks and months of behavior like this, it's become axiomatic in many circles that Trump simply must go, for whatever reason. Our desperation as a nation to get back to "normal" '' that is to say, back to being able to pretend we're a civilized people with justified hegemonic authority '' has hit such a fever pitch that there is now real energy behind a pair of long-shot efforts to remove our mad king from the throne ahead of schedule.
        The problem is that Trump might just live in an awful sweet spot '' a raving, dangerous embarrassment, about the worst imaginable, but safe under the law absent new information. Depending on whom you ask, we may have to break democratic rules to be rid of him '' something we've never had a problem doing, of course, but this is no desert sideshow, this would be center stage with the whole world watching.
        Impeachment, now favored by upwards of 43 percent of voters, is one track. Many thought Trump was impeachable from Day One thanks to ethical conflicts and other issues. But successful impeachment would not only require significant defections from a Republican-controlled Congress, but proof of high crimes and misdemeanors, so far elusive.
        There's a widespread misconception that impeachment is a purely political matter, that it can and should happen the instant a two-thirds majority of the Senate deems it necessary. Some of this has been fueled by social-media discussions quoting figures like Gerald Ford, who as a minority congressman once said, "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be."
        But many legal experts disagree. "That was the worst thing that Ford could have said," says Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University. While, superficially, impeachment is a political decision, to get all the way to the finish line the effort "has to meet the legal standard of high crimes and misdemeanors."
        Merely being an inappropriate, racist, unethical, sociopathic embarrassment, even on the Trump level, doesn't necessarily rate as an impeachable offense. The president must be caught committing a crime, and it must be serious.
        Impeachment is going to be tough political sledding in almost any case. Part of Trump's purpose in going to Arizona was to start digging the grave of Republican senator and open Trump antagonist Jeff Flake, who is up for re-election in 2018. Flake is polling far behind a Trump-backed primary challenger, Dr. Kelli Ward, thrilling the mad regent. "WEAK on borders, crime, and a non-factor in the Senate," Trump tweeted of Flake. "He's toxic!"
        In the wake of Charlottesville, Trump surrogates like longtime friend Roger Stone argued that the president shouldn't back down at all to global outcries, but instead run back on offense by going after a "scalp" in his own party. By helping to blow up Flake, whose approval rating among voters in his own state, according to one poll, is down to 18 percent, Trump can demonstrate he still wields life-or-death power over most GOP elected officials. This will surely chill any effort to try to shorten Trump's term.
        Still, five different investigations into Trump's relationship with Russia are currently underway, and there's little question that the undisguisedly sweeping nature of the inquiry is freaking Trump out. It was not difficult to notice that a predawn FBI raid on the home of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort took place just before Trump's disastrous response to the Charlottesville tragedy. If you think special counsel Robert Mueller is in Trump's head, he probably is.
        Trump hands out emergency supplies to residents impacted by Hurricane Harvey while visiting the First Church of Pearland on September 2, 2017 in Pearland, Texas. Win McNamee/Getty Images Mueller, who is wielding the biggest pitchfork in this thing, is roaming promiscuously into all sorts of areas of inquiry, from Manafort's finances to the dismissal of former FBI chief James Comey to God knows what else. Mueller is exactly the kind of person Trump doesn't need sniffing his sheets: a graying, hatchet-faced moralist who, while Trump was spending decades romping with models and partying with TV stars, was quietly building '' on a government salary '' a reputation for being "incorruptible" and having "extraordinary integrity." As a former FBI chief, he is a veteran of massive undertakings, having led one of the biggest investigations in the bureau's history after 9/11. He can be expected to have grand juries sprouting across the country like mushrooms, and if there's evidence Trump so much as farted across state lines once, it will be in Mueller's report.
        And likely none of it would '¨have happened had Trump '¨had enough self-control to let'¨ Comey's probably far narrower probe run its course. It was remarkable to hear recently'¨ deposed Trump adviser Steve'¨ Bannon say this out loud. The alt-right guru told Charlie '¨Rose that firing Comey was the biggest mistake in "modern political history," and "we would not have the Mueller investigation and the breadth that clearly Mr. Mueller is going for."
        But Mueller's investigation would almost certainly have to be a direct hit to Trump to result in removal from office. And there have been ominous signs for those who have hopes on this front. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and senior member on Intelligence, as plugged-in a politician as there is on the Democratic side, stunned a San Francisco audience at the end of August by saying that Trump "is going to be president most likely for the rest of this term." She suggested '' to cries of "No!" '' that Trump "can be a good president."
        Trump's catastrophic August, which saw his approval ratings drop to a preposterous 35 percent, was marked by two devastating unforced errors: his Phoenix speech and the similarly id-exposing Trump Tower presser about those "very fine people" among the Nazis. The press narrative since those incidents has been focused far less on impeachability than on the other road to early removal: a declaration of "inability to discharge duties" under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
        This is a form of legalized mutiny that could theoretically take place if enough people in Trump's orbit were to conclude he were mentally unfit. (There is a congressional removal scenario under this provision, too, but it's complex and even more of a long shot.) There's buzz about this coup-like scenario in both parties. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin has introduced a bill to set up an independent commission to gauge Trump's fitness. Twenty-eight Democrats have since signed the resolution.
        In the Senate, Tennessee's glad-handing, six-faced, wanna-be Napoleon, wheelerdealer Republican Bob Corker, who as recently as June was seen golfing with Trump and Peyton Manning, questioned Trump's "stability" and "competence" in a statement that was widely interpreted as a reference to the 25th Amendment. This came after Democratic Sen. Jack Reed was captured on a hot mic saying to Republican Sen. Susan Collins, "I think he's crazy." Collins replied, "I'm worried."
        Even some of the president's chief foes on the Russia front, including "deep state" types like former director of national intelligence James Clapper, have pivoted to the unfitness theme. The day after Phoenix, Clapper told CNN that Trump's speech was the most "disturbing" thing he'd ever seen from a president.
        But the 25th Amendment process, adopted in 1967, offers faint hope to anti-Trumpers. "It's the new Hail Mary," says the law professor Turley. It can be instigated in a few ways, none simple. The most likely would involve Veep Mike Pence (rumored to be preparing a 2020 run) and the bulk of Trump's Cabinet writing a letter to Congress asserting that Trump is unable to perform his duties. Presumably such an effort would also include the coterie of missile-lobbing uniform fetishists surrounding Trump, people like John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and James Mattis. These half-bright military men, upon whom so much of Washington has pinned hopes as the "axis of adults" in Trump's loony-bin administration, would likely have to defy their commander in chief.
        A letter to Congress from this crew would begin a process that would put Pence in the Oval Office as the acting president. Under the 25th Amendment, incidentally, the president is never removed, but merely sidelined. Imagine still-technically-President Trump's serene, imperturbable behavior as he watches his "temporary" replacement Pence in the White House. A two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress would eventually be needed to secure the play.
        As with impeachment, there is a misconception that a Section 4 declaration can be a purely political gambit. In fact, the procedure specifically can't be about politics. John Feerick, a Fordham law professor who helped work on the original bill with senators such as Indiana's Birch Bayh and authored a book titled The 25th Amendment, goes out of his way to point out the many things that do not qualify as "inability" under this law. The list reads like Trump's r(C)sum(C).
        The debates in Congress about the amendment, Feerick writes, make clear that "inability" does not cover "policy and political differences, unpopularity, poor judgment, incompetence, laziness or impeachable conduct." When asked about the possibility of invoking the amendment today, Feerick is wary. "It's a very high bar that has to be satisfied," he says. "You're dealing with a president elected for four years."'¨
        "It has to be very serious," agrees Turley, who adds that an inability effort would probably require "sworn statements from psychiatric professionals."
        The president, again, cannot be merely a disordered, inappropriate, incompetent, destructive embarrassment. He has to be genuinely "unable" to work. For Trump to be impeachable, he probably has to be responsible for crimes. To be declared unfit, he probably has to be demonstrably insane. He probably can't be both. Is he either?
        Unless the Russia investigation pans out, the question of whether Trump survives to 2020 '' Vegas betting houses started putting the odds below 50 percent after Charlottesville '' hangs on a single question: Is Donald Trump insane?
        It's actually not easy to answer, even conversationally. Is he crazy? On one level, of course he is, hell yes. Trump has been mad as a sack of bees since he launched his campaign. Put simply, Trump believes things that aren't there. He made it to the White House in a delusional bubble of his own creation, and his brain is clearly a denuded mush of paranoid, self-aggrandizing fictions he probably couldn't part with even if some brave confederate were to force him to try.
        People pay the most attention to Trump's political deceptions: that 3 million "illegal" voters lost him the popular vote, that Hillary Clinton wants to "release the violent criminals from jail," that Ted Cruz's father was linked to the JFK assassination, and so on. "We are the highest-taxed nation in the world" was a notable recent whopper.
        But those lies may be strategic, and Trump probably isn't married to them anyway, given that he doesn't appear to have real beliefs. Trump picks his political positions like ties: whatever's on the rack. Under duress, and with no way to escape, he will sometimes cop to being full of it, like the time he finally admitted, "Obama was born in the United States," after five years of bleating the opposite.
        But sit him in front of a doctor and see what happens when you ask: Who had the larger inaugural crowd, him or Obama? Or: Would he ever admit the Boy Scouts never called to tell him his speech was the "greatest ever"? Trump might struggle here. It's the countless little fairy tales he tells himself about his power and infallibility to which he clings like a dope fiend to a $10 bill.
        Everyone with half a brain and a recent copy of the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used by shrinks everywhere) knew the diagnosis on Trump the instant he joined the race. Trump fits the clinical definition of a narcissistic personality so completely that it will be a shock if future psychiatrists don't rename the disorder after him.
        Grandiosity, a tendency to exag'¨gerate achievements, a preoccupation with "fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty '¨or ideal love," a belief in one's specialness (which can only be understood by other special people), a need for excessive admiration and a sense of entitlement '' sound like anyone you know?
        Trump's rapidly expanding list of things at which he's either a supreme expert or the Earth's best living practitioner would shame even great historical blowhards like Stalin or Mobutu Sese Seko.
        As the "world's greatest person" at restricting immigration, who is "good at war" and "knows more about ISIS than the generals," and who is the "least racist person" with "the best temperament" who knows "more about renewables than any human being on Earth," insists "nobody reads the Bible more than me," and even knows more about New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker "than [Booker] knows himself," Trump by his own description is not a splenetic rightwing basket case at all, but just a cleverly disguised cross of God, Norman Schwarzkopf, Coretta Scott King, Gloria Steinem, Pope Francis and, apparently, Cory Booker's mother, Carolyn.
        The president's ludicrous grandiosity was a running joke throughout the campaign season, but having a personality disorder is not a disqualifying feature in a president. Even his most vocal critics in the mental-health community concede that being a narcissist, even a very sick one, does not make him unfit for office.
        "As someone who's studied Trump, as someone who's met Trump, who's interacted with him socially, I can say with absolute confidence that he suffers from severe personality disorders, perhaps a cluster of disorders," says Ben Michaelis, a New York-based psychologist who has run into Trump over the years. "But to get a sense of outright psychotic behavior ... There's some possibility, but you really need to examine him in a clinical setting."
        This holdup '' that merely being disordered isn't enough to justify removal, particularly when so many people endorsed these characteristics with a vote '' has been one logistical problem stopping the "unfitness" Hail Mary. Another has been the American Psychiatric Association's so-called Goldwater Rule, an ethical dictum that discourages mental-health professionals from diagnosing public figures from afar.
        John Gartner, a psychologist who trained residents at Johns Hopkins, has found a way around both problems. The Goldwater Rule he just ignores, because, he argues, the graveness of the Trump threat renders it quaint. Lots of his colleagues seem to agree, as Gartner has managed to gather more than 62,000 signatures from self-described mental-health professionals attesting that Trump "manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president of the United States."
        "We're not talking about a gross psychotic disorder," Gartner says. "We're talking about a way in which people with severe personality disorders can regress to what they call transient psychotic states."
        Gartner's argument is relatively simple. Add paranoia, sadism and antisocial behavior to narcissistic personality disorder and you have a new diagnosis: "malignant narcissism." Trump, he says, is no paranoid schizophrenic who walks the streets claiming to be the Son of God '' no one "so grossly ill" could be elected. However, the president's increasing tendency to obsess over persecution theories '' and not just parrot meaningless stupidities like the inaugural crowd story but seemingly believe them '' shows that he's crossing a meaningful diagnostic line into psychotic delusions, common among malignant narcissists.
        "We're not talking about a gross psychotic disorder," Gartner says. "We're talking about a way in which people with severe personality disorders can regress to what they call transient psychotic states." He adds, "It's a more subtle kind of psychosis, but it goes over the boundary into psychosis."
        The term malignant narcissist is said to have been invented by Holocaust survivor Erich Fromm, who used it to explain Hitler. It's now become a catch-word on the Internet to describe Trump, and almost inevitably '' in much the same way that language from the Steele dossier bled from the Internet to pop culture to the rhetoric of elected officials '' it has begun to be circulated within the Democratic Party. California Rep. Jackie Speier actually used the term to describe Trump after Charlottesville, in an interview in which she also called him "unhinged" and "unfit."
        But this all has the feel of a duel between court experts. If the argument comes down to whether Trump is a garden-variety narcissist or a malignant narcissist, the from-afar diagnosis may not cut it as an excuse to sideline an elected president.
        Nor should it, says Turley, who believes Trump's opponents are playing with fire. He particularly points the finger at Democrats, whom he calls "constitutional shortsellers." During the eight years of Obama, Turley says, Democrats continually boosted executive power, only to regret it once Trump was elected. Now, he says, toying with scenarios like a 25th Amendment ploy could come back to bite them.
        "They're doing this without thinking of the long-term implications," he says. "It could be their president the next time."
        Donald Trump on his phone in the White House. Benjamin Rasmussen Trump wasn't always crazy. He wasn't even always obnoxious. Many Americans don't remember, but the Donald Trump who appeared on TV regularly in the Eighties and Nineties was often engaging, self-deprecating, spoke in complete sentences and (verbally, anyway) usually lived up to his expensive schooling. He'd say things like, "These are the only casinos in the United States that are so rated," and use words and phrases like "a somewhat impersonal life" and "money isn't a totally essential ingredient."
        The difference today is striking. Trump has not only completely lost his sense of humor, particularly about himself, but he's a lingual mess. In his current dread of polysyllables '' his favorite words include "I," "Trump," "very," "money" and "China" '' he makes George W. Bush sound like Vladimir Nabokov. On the page, transcripts of his speaking appearances often look like complete gibberish.
        "When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people, maybe I'll expand that," he said to Lester Holt in May, "you know, I'll lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion."
        The difference even since last year is hard to miss, and why not? The presidency severely ages and stresses even healthy people. From Obama to Bush to Jimmy Carter, presidents on their last day of office often look like med-school cadavers. President Trump already looks older, has a lower frustration threshold and seems only to have two moods, rage and sullen resignation (a.k.a. pre-rage).
        He also can barely speak anymore, but without a close-up examination it's impossible to say if this is a neurological problem or just being typically American. As the psychologist Michaelis puts it, one major cause for loss of cognitive function is giving up reading in favor of TV or the Internet, which is basically most people in this country these days.
        "In someone of his economic background and age, [the decline] is somewhat uncommon," he says. "Then again, it's a trend. People of my generation got more information from TV than books, and people of the next generation get more information from the Internet, and that exercises less of your cognitive reserve."
        This is a huge part of the problem of trying to gauge whether or not Trump is mentally unfit for office. It isn't just that 63 million people specifically endorsed his nuttiest behaviors with a vote. It's also that maintaining modern American media habits can make most anyone seem like a victim of organic brain damage.
        In a kind of awful satire of the current American experience, part of what got Trump elected is the camaraderie he shared with other reality-averse Americans who similarly chose to live in castles of self-aggrandizement, denial and blameshifting, a journalistic product we offer to just about everyone these days.
        Trump is almost certainly worse than most of his voters. He's likely more grandiose, less empathetic and less capable of handling criticism. But his phobias about science or history or inconvenient facts, along with his countless conspiratorial hatreds and prejudices, are things he shares with millions of people. They voted for this, which creates as confounding and ridiculous a conundrum as has ever been observed in an industrial democracy. Can a country be declared unfit?
        Tuesday, August 30th, Springfield, Missouri. Fresh off his "no more talking" tweet about North Korea that again puts the world on nuke alert, Trump flies to this sleepy little Ozark hub for a bit of image rehab. The play is transparent: Unspool plans for a monster corporate tax giveaway to pull nervous rank-and-file Republicans back toward the rubber room of Trump's presidency, and grope a prominent piece of Americana '' the birthplace of Route 66 '' for the benefit of a voter base that may have been confused by the previous week's Howard Beale act.
        The speech is to be delivered at the Loren Cook Company, a maker of many things, including "laboratory exhaust systems," which seems ominous somehow. The giant warehouse slowly fills with the usual crowd of elderly flag-wavers and squirrelly white dudes with bad facial hair and ill-fitting jeans. If there are protesters anywhere in the area, they're likely very far away, probably surrounded by .30-caliber machine guns.
        Every Trump event is must-see TV now, because no one ever knows when he's going to go on one of his unscripted ape-rants. It doesn't happen today. Today we get Clonazepam Trump, Prozac Trump. He stands in front of a big flag, perches between his two teleprompters and reads prepared remarks virtually from beginning to end '' a relative rarity for this president, who hates scripts as much as he hates buttoned suit jackets. Trump reading a speech always looks like a hostage. In stark contrast to the vibrant rage of Phoenix, in Missouri he slowly spits out each lifeless clich(C) like it's a dead bird.
        "In difficult times such as these," he says, "we see the true character of the American people: their strength, their love and their resolve. We see friend helping friend, neighbor helping neighbor, and stranger helping stranger..."
        "Jeez," moans a reporter in the press section, smacking a forehead.
        Trump goes on to insinuate to the crowd that the state's Democratic senator is holding back much-needed tax reform.
        "And your senator, Claire McCaskill, she must do this for you," he says robotically. "And if she doesn't do it for you, you have to vote her out of office."
        Muted cheers. After the event, the crowd files out in a patriotic mumble. A mustachioed man who identifies himself only as "Chuck Chuck" says the lifeless speech doesn't bother him.
        "He told us about Claire McCaskill, that was good enough," he says.
        A week or so later, Trump will strike a deal to raise the debt ceiling with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer that leaves members of both parties stunned. His would-be enemies in The New York Times publish the breathless analysis they never gave to Bernie Sanders: "Bound to No Party, Trump Upends 150 Years of Two-Party Rule."
        This is the paradox of Trump. He is damaged, unwell and delusional, but at critical moments he's able to approximate a functioning human being just long enough to survive. He is the worst-case scenario: embarrassing, mentally disorganized and completely inappropriate, but perhaps not all the way insane. Maybe crimes will soon be discovered and he'll be impeached, or maybe he'll run naked down Pennsylvania Avenue this fall, or nuke someone, and be declared unfit. Until then, he's just the president we deserve, dragging our name down where it belongs. He is miserable, so are we, and we're stuck with each other. Karma really is a bitch.
    WireTapping
      Paul Manafort was wiretapped by feds, CBS News confirms - CBS News
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:41
        Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was wiretapped under a foreign intelligence warrant in connection with U.S. concerns that he was communicating with Russian operatives who wanted to influence the American election, a former U.S. official familiar with the intelligence confirms to CBS News' Andres Triay.
        The warrants were issued before Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to take over the investigation from the FBI.
        According to CNN, which first reported the Manafort wiretapping, the FBI began the surveillance in 2014, as a result of consulting work done by Washington firms for the pro-Russian party of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych,
        The U.S. government listened in on Manafort's conversations during the presidential campaign and through the election -- though not constantly -- and its surveillance includes the period when Manafort was Mr. Trump's campaign chairman.
        The FBI didn't surveil Manafort continuously during that period, according to CNN, and wasn't listening in on the June 2016 meeting he attended at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. , Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer who had allegedly claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
        There are wiretaps of multiple conversations Manafort had with Russian individuals, according to the former official. Also, CNN reports that Manafort and Mr. Trump continued to have conversations long after Manafort was forced out of the campaign, and in fact, the two talked after Mr. Trump took office -- a practice that stopped when lawyers representing each of them "insisted that they stop," CNN reported.
        It isn't clear whether Mr. Trump himself was ever heard on the government's surveillance of Manafort.
        The intercepts were part of a wide-ranging FBI counter-intelligence operation.
        CBS News' Andres Triay contributed to this report.
        (C) 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
      CNN says Manafort was wiretapped. Does that vindicate Trump's Obama-spied-on-me claims? - The Washington Post
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:40
        President Trump listens to a question during a meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations. (Evan Vucci/AP)
        At some point on Tuesday, President Trump and/or the White House will likely claim vindication '-- vindication of Trump's tweets that President Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 election.
        CNN reported Monday night that the government wiretapped Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, both before and after the 2016 campaign using FISA (or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants. It is not known whether Trump himself was wrapped up in those wiretaps, CNN reports. The Washington Post has not confirmed the warrants. Only CBS News has been able to substantiate parts of the report, citing one anonymous source.
        But would that be a valid claim for the White House to make?
        Let's start with the wording of the claim, and take it piece by piece. Here's what Trump tweeted:
        There are three elements here: 1) Trump's ''wires'' were ''tapped'', 2) It happened at Trump Tower, and 3) Obama did it.
        The first part is still unproven. If the CNN report is correct, there is still no indication that Trump himself was targeted by wiretapping; the report leaves open the possibility that a conversation with Trump may have been swept up in the Manafort tap, but we have no indication that it was.
        Even if it was, Trump wasn't the named target of the wiretap. This would be what's known as ''incidental collection.'' You may recall that phrase from the last time the White House claimed some measure of vindication for Trump's wiretapping claim, when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) disclosed that members of Trump's transition team were wrapped up in other legal surveillance that wasn't targeted at them.
        The second part '-- the Trump Tower part '-- is also possibly true based on what CNN reported, though again we just don't know for sure. While Trump himself wasn't the reported target of the wiretap, Manafort did have an apartment at Trump Tower, so it's possible that location was, in fact, wiretapped.
        As for the third part, on Obama, Trump's tweet again seems to claim more than CNN is reporting. FISA warrants require sign-off from top Justice Department and FBI officials, but Trump was suggesting that Obama was personally involved.
        It's worth noting in all of this that Trump's own Justice Department has cast doubt on his claim. In a court filing earlier this month, it said flatly that, ''Both FBI and [its national security division] confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.'' Then-FBI Director James B. Comey also said back in March that there was no evidence to support the claims.
        The last element of this that should raise some eyebrows is this:
        The conversations between Manafort and Trump continued after the President took office, long after the FBI investigation into Manafort was publicly known, the sources told CNN. They went on until lawyers for the President and Manafort insisted that they stop, according to the sources.
        If Trump's lawyers somehow knew about and fought back against the Manafort wiretap, it stands to reason that Trump himself might have been aware of it. A lingering question after Trump's March tweets was whether he, as president, knew something that the rest of us didn't. While we don't know the exact timing of all of this, perhaps this is what Trump was referring to and he, as he is wont to do, exaggerated it.
        But even that explanation wouldn't make total sense. Shortly after Trump's tweets, both then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested he didn't literally mean ''wiretapping.'' ''The president used the word 'wiretaps' in quotes to mean, broadly, surveillance and other activities,'' Spicer said. Conway added that, ''What I can say is there are many ways to surveil each other,'' and she mentioned the possibility of doing so with both TVs and microwaves. So if Trump didn't literally mean wiretapping, CNN's Manafort story wouldn't be confirmation.
        Overall, the fact remains that in more than six months since Trump tweeted them, both Trump and his Justice Department haven't produced any validation of his specific claims. If it exists, they are withholding it for completely unclear reasons.
        Update: Comey's lawyer has responded to the report and subsequent suggestions that Comey's testimony might have been wrong. "I don't believe Jim is aware of any information that would cause him to second guess or change his testimony,'' said David N. Kelley.
        Matt Zapotosky contributed to this post.
    CYBER!
      Equifax Has Been Sending Consumers to a Fake Phishing Site for Almost Two Weeks
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 22:07
        Photo: APEquifax's response to its data breach has been a total shitshow, something the company seems determined to remind us of each and every day.
        For nearly two weeks, the company's official Twitter account has been directing users to a fake lookalike website, the sole purpose of which is to expose Equifax's reckless response to the breach.
        After announcing the breach, Equifax directed its customers to equifaxsecurity2017.com, a website where they can enroll in identity theft protection services and find updates about how Equifax is handing the ''cybersecurity incident.''
        But the decision to create ''equifaxsecurity2017'' in the first place was monumentally stupid. The URL is long and it doesn't look very official'--that means it's going to be very easy to emulate. Fake versions of the site could be used to phish Equifax customers and steal their personal information, again. A much safer choice would have been to create a subdomain on the Equifax website (equifax.com) and direct users there.
        To illustrate how idiotic Equifax's decision was, developer Nick Sweeting created a fake website of his own: securityequifax2017.com. (He simply switched the words ''security'' and ''equifax'' around.) Sweeting's website looks slightly different than the official Equifax website, as you can see below, but only because he isn't actually trying to dupe anyone:
        Fake Equifax breach-response site created by Nick Sweeting.Sweeting's intentions clearly aren't malicious. If anything, he's trying to demonstrate why Equifax needs to shut down its website, or at least transfer it elsewhere, so it isn't further exposing consumers to risk.
        As if to demonstrate Sweeting's point, Equifax appears to have been itself duped by the fake URL. The company has directed users to Sweeting's fake site sporadically over the past two weeks. Gizmodo found eight tweets containing the fake URL dating back to September 9th:
        Equifax directing users to a fake phishing website.Each of the tweets containing Sweeting's URL is signed by someone at Equifax named ''Tim.'' The latest tweet was sent out September 19th. (Equifax deleted this tweet Wednesday morning, but at the time of writing the other seven tweets were still live.)
        ''It's in everyone's interest to get Equifax to change this site to a reputable domain,'' Sweeting told Gizmodo. ''I knew it would only cost me $10 to set up a site that would get people to notice, so I just did it.''
        The real Equifax site is dangerous, he said, because of how easy it is to impersonate. ''It only took me 20 minutes to build my clone. I can guarantee there are real malicious phishing versions already out there.''
      Equifax Confirms Another 'Security Incident' : The Two-Way : NPR
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:38
        Equifax was hit with a cyberattack before the one revealed earlier this month, and the hackers seem to have had many months of access to consumers' information. Mike Stewart/APhide caption
        toggle captionMike Stewart/AP Equifax was hit with a cyberattack before the one revealed earlier this month, and the hackers seem to have had many months of access to consumers' information.
        Mike Stewart/AP After the revelation that a cybersecurity breach at the international credit reporting agency Equifax exposed personal information of 143 million people, the company has confirmed an additional security incident with a payroll-related service in the months prior. It says the two are unrelated.
        Equifax is already struggling to regain public trust after it waited at least a month to disclose to consumers that the cyberattack potentially impacted their personal information, such as names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver's license numbers and credit card information.
        "Earlier this year, during the 2016 tax season, Equifax experienced a security incident involving a payroll-related service," an Equifax spokesperson told NPR. "The incident was reported to customers, affected individuals and regulators. This incident was also covered in the media."
        The company spokesperson disputes a Bloomberg report released Monday, where an unnamed source "said the breaches involved the same intruders." The company adds that the same security company, Mandiant, "has investigated both events and found no evidence that these two separate events or the attackers were related."
        Equifax's spokesperson characterizes this second breach as the "March event." However, it appears that the incident in question may have lasted considerably longer than a single month. When asked for information about previous media coverage, Equifax pointed NPR to coverage in KrebsonSecurity.
        That article describes a breach at TALX Corp., an Equifax subsidiary also called Equifax Workforce Solutions, where "crooks were able to reset the 4-digit PIN given to customer employees as a password and then steal W-2 tax data after successfully answering personal questions about those employees."
        Krebs reported that Equifax said the breach happened over the course of nearly a year: "unauthorized access to customers' employee tax records happened between April 17, 2016 and March 29, 2017."
        Equifax did not immediately confirm these details. It's not clear how many organizations were affected, though Krebs links to documentation of breaches at five organizations, including Northrop Grumman and the University of Louisville.
        According to The Louisville Cardinal, the University of Louisville's student paper, the university stated that some "750 employees had 'suspicious activity' surrounding their online TALX Tax Express accounts when someone tried to reset PIN numbers."
        Other reports date back to early 2016. A notice of data breach from Kroger executives states that the incident began in late January of that year. In a document released by New Hampshire's attorney general, the Kroger executives say that hackers "accessed the default website using default login information based on Social Security Numbers and dates of birth, which we believe were obtained from some other source."
        The thieves then used the access to employees' W-2 forms to potentially "file tax returns in their names to claim a refund."
        A Georgia man employed at Kroger filed a federal lawsuit against Equifax and its subsidiary in May 2016 over the breach, seeking class action status. In it, Betzalel Yochanan claimed that the breach happened "because Equifax failed to implement adequate security measures to safeguard consumers' Personal Identifying Information ('PII') and willfully ignored known weaknesses in its data security, including prior hacks into its information systems."
        Yochanan voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit the following month, without providing a reason.
        NPR's Sarah Knight contributed to this report.
      Should the U.S. Require Companies to Report Breaches? - WSJ
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Sep 2017 13:59
        There are two things we can count on in the wake of the Equifax breach, already credited with exposing a majority of American adults to the possibility of identity theft. The first is that more and potentially worse breaches are in our future. The second is that companies will need to be prodded toward smarter cybersecurity practices and faster reporting of breaches.
        Details of the breach'--which Equifax said it discovered in late July'--have only recently been revealed by the credit-reporting company and by Mandiant, the...
    Clinton Book
      Judicial Watch: New State Department Documents Reveal Top Agency Officials Raised Questions about Clinton Emails in Early August 2013 - Judicial Watch
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:38
        'Finally, John, you mentioned yesterday requests for Secretary Clinton's emails; may I get copies.' '' Margaret Grafeld, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Global Information Services to John Hackett, Deputy Director, Office of Information Programs and Services, August 7, 2013
        Documents Reveal that in Early August 2013, State had 17 Freedom of Information Requests relating to requests for Clinton correspondence
        (Washington, DC) '' Judicial Watch today released 113 pages of new State Department documents, revealing that in early August 2013, top State Department officials raised questions about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails and the number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking information about them.
        According to the newly obtained emails, in August 2013, State Department officials were aware of 17 FOIA requests relating to requests for Clinton correspondence, including four that ''specifically mention Emails or Email accounts.'' Despite the large number of FOIA requests and growing concern among top agency officials, the State Department did not formally request that the former secretary of state produce the emails on the clintonemail.com server until October 2014.
        Included among the 17 FOIA requests was a Judicial Watch lawsuit seeking records pertaining to possible conflicts of interest between the actions taken by Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Bill Clinton's activities. The lawsuit produced 276 pages of internal State Department records revealing that within two days of the deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya's National Congress, asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and ''meet President Clinton.'' The records also show Hillary Clinton's staff coordinated with the Clinton Foundation's staff to have her thank Clinton Global Initiative project sponsors for their ''commitments'' during a Foundation speech on September 25, 2009. The lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Dept. of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)) was filed on May 28, 2013.
        In a 2014 joint expose with the Washington Examiner Judicial Watch's Chief Investigative Reporter Micah Morrison reported:
        [F]ormer President Clinton gave 215 speeches and earned $48 million while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy, raising questions about whether the Clintons fulfilled ethics agreements related to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.
        According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch and released '... in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act case, State Department officials charged with reviewing Bill Clinton's proposed speeches did not object to a single one.
        The new State Department documents records were obtained by Judicial Watch under court order in a March 2016, FOIA lawsuit against the agency for all records ''about the processing of a December 2012 FOIA request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW]'' (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:16-cv-00574)).In December 2012, CREW filed a FOIA request with the Department of State for ''records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.'' In May 2013, the agency responded that ''no records responsive to your request were located.'' Earlier this year, the State Department Office of Inspector General concluded that the ''no records response'' sent in response to this request was ''inaccurate and incomplete.''
        According to the newly obtained records, by early August 2013, top State Department officials raised questions about FOIA requests seeking information related to the Clinton emails:
        From: Grafeld, Margaret P
        Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 10:47 AM
        To: Walter, Sheryl; Hackett, John
        Subject: Fw: IPS significant FOIA Report
        '... Finally, John, you mentioned yesterday requests for Secretary Clinton's emails; may I get copies, pls and thx.
        [Margaret Grafeld was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Global Information Services. Sheryl Walter was the State Department Director, Office of Information Programs and Services/Global Information Services. John Hackett was the Deputy Director, Office of Information Programs and Services.]
        From: Walter, Sheryl L
        Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 10:51 AM
        To: Hermesman, Geoffrey F [and others]
        Subject: FW: IPS Significant FOIA Report
        '... Geoff, can you get a copy of all requests related to Clinton's emails?
        [Geoffrey Hermesman was a State Department program analyst.]
        From: Hermesman, Geoffrey F
        Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 12:54 PM
        To: Sheryl Walter [and others]
        Subject: RE: IPS significant FOIA Report
        A search of the F2 database identified 17 FOIA cases that contain Clinton in the subject line and can be further construed as requests for correspondence between the Secretary and other individuals and/or organizations. Of these, four specifically mention Emails or Email accounts.
        From: Finnegan, Karen M
        Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 4:10 PM
        To: Walter, Sheryl L [and others]
        Subject: RE: IPS Significant FOIA Report
        Sheryl: To follow-up on my early response, Cristina is handling the Judicial Watch case, CA No. 2013-772 (DDC) (J. Kollar-Kotelly), that seeks access to all communications (including e-mail) between the Department and President Clinton and/or his foundation regarding clearing his speeches [Redacted]
        [Karen Finnegan was division chief of the State Department's freedom of information program.]
        Last month, Judicial Watch released 10 pages of Department records that included an email sent by State Department spokesman Brock Johnson alerting Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's then Chief of Staff, that a ''significant'' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request had been made for records showing the number of email accounts used by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
        ''These new emails suggest that the Obama State Department knew about the Clinton email problem at least three years but covered it up,'' said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. ''Any criminal investigation of the Clinton email scandal must include officials in the Obama administration.''
        ###
      Will Hillary ever forgive us? | SocialistWorker.org
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        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 12:39
        Hillary Clinton greets supporters during the launch of her new book in New York
        READERS OF SocialistWorker.org will probably not be shocked to learn that Hillary Clinton's What Happened is a bad book. So why bother with a review? One answer is that, while books like this aren't exactly intellectual achievements, they do provide a useful window into how the ruling class thinks about us--and that's worth knowing.
        Just to state the obvious first, however, much of What Happened is boring in a thoroughly banal and predictable way: Hillary met a voter on the campaign trail who inspired her! Hillary has a list of wonkish policies! Hillary loves her family!
        There are the inevitable references to Hillbilly Elegy, self-care and Hamilton. In fact, the book reads like Clinton--or her interns, rather--gathered a bunch of think pieces from Vox and Slate, put them through a blender, sprinkled in some quotes from fridge magnets, and frosted the whole thing with cloying Methodist pieties.
        If you're wondering if Clinton takes responsibility for anything in this book, she absolutely does: She takes responsibility for being too smart and too good for the rest of us. Clinton confesses that her "instinctive response is to talk about how we can fix things," but people were simply too angry to listen.
        In one passage, Clinton describes throngs of women coming up to her to do penance after the election:
        On one occasion, an older woman dragged her adult daughter by the arm to come talk to me and ordered her to apologize for not voting--which she did, head bowed in contrition. I wanted to stare right in her eyes and say, 'You didn't vote? How could you not vote?! You abdicated your responsibility as a citizen at the worst possible time! And now you want me to make you feel better?' Of course, I didn't say any of that.
        Clinton was too classy to scold this young woman to her face. She chose to do it in a book that will be bought by people across the country.
        At one point, Clinton even bizarrely wonders whether her efforts to help residents of Flint, Michigan, by publicizing the water crisis and proposing a different course lost her white voters in the state--but magnanimously explains "that's not what it was about for me," because there were "real live kids" to help.
        Truly a portrait in courage.
        - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
        THIS EMPHASIS on her ostensible devotion on dealing with "real live" issues runs throughout What Happened, and it is the underlying point of her attacks on Bernie Sanders, who comes in for about as much criticism as Trump.
        Clinton accuses Sanders of "thunder[ing] on at every event about the sins of "the millionaires and billionaires," while she "was more focused on offering practical solutions that would address real problems and make life better for people." As if "millionaires and billionaires" had nothing to do with the "real problems" working-class people face.
        Clinton's "practical solutions" are a patchwork of pretty tame policies: a higher minimum wage (but not too high!); some fixes to Obamacare; giving businesses more money in the hope that they might create jobs someday; even a program to encourage people to move out of economically struggling towns (and she wonders why she lost in the Rust Belt!).
        By "practical solutions," Clinton doesn't mean solutions that are "practical" to implement. She means solutions that are "practical" for the ruling class, by causing them minimal inconvenience while forestalling more radical changes.
        Clinton would never use those words to say that. On the other hand, however, she is quite explicit about her hatred of radicalism.
        For anyone who remembers the legend of Bill and Hillary Clinton as young 1960s radicals, read what she has to say about the 1968 police attacks on antiwar protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Clinton says she worried that "the antiwar movement was causing a backlash that would help elect Richard Nixon and prolong the war."
        Never mind that the 1968 convention protests took place because the Democrats bypassed popular antiwar choices to nominate a pro-war presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey--and Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley sicced his cops on anyone who dissented.
        Clinton recounts the debates among youth at the time: "Should our goal be reform or revolution?" She concluded that "the system had to be reformed from the inside" because people who are suffering now can't "wait" for a "revolution."
        This, of course, presents a false choice between pursuing change in the here and now versus doing nothing and waiting passively for the revolution to happen. In fact, the history of the socialist tradition in this country and others is of hard and patient organizing in the here and now, inside the labor movement, the Black freedom struggle, the women's movement and antiwar fights.
        But socialists see these acts as building toward revolution, not as an alternative to it. Clinton ignores the root cause of the suffering she discusses--decisions made by the ruling class, including Clinton herself.
        Thus, Clinton complains about protesters from the movement for Black lives who disrupted her talks and called for her to take responsibility for the 1994 crime bill passed during the Bill Clinton administration that kicked the era mass incarceration into high gear.
        Clinton, in fact, defends the crime bill as a "tough compromise" and tosses in a defense of her husband's destruction of welfare for good measure.
        This sums up Clinton's "practical solutions": policies that devastate Black and working-class communities. She scolds the protesters for not "engag[ing] constructively"--unlike the "leaders" she met with who back neoliberal education reforms that tear apart Black and Latino working-class schools.
        - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
        THE CHAPTER on "Turning Mourning into a Movement" highlights Clinton's insincerity and condescension.
        Clinton seeks to impress her readers with how deeply she felt the grief of family members of victims of police violence--and then goes on to assure readers that "I feel strongly about this: the vast majority of police officers are honorable, brave public servants who put their lives on the line every day to protect others."
        She writes some platitudes about systematic racism, then turns the whole issue into a discussion of gun control, ignoring the fact that the Black Lives Matter movement erupted precisely against the murderers who are armed and funded by the state.
        But this is typical of What Happened: One of the most insidious things about it is the way Clinton appropriates the struggles of ordinary people to try to convince us that her interests are the same as ours.
        She complains about the burden of "emotional labor," a concept originally meant to explain how workers, especially female service workers, are expected to restrict and manage their feelings according to the priorities of corporations and ruling institutions.
        Clinton's discussion of the question revolves around "women CEOs" and "women heads of state"--and she goes on to credit female politicians' experience with "emotional labor" for allowing them to form better coalitions in Congress than their male counterparts. The nature of these coalitions--are they, for example, agreements brokered by women to support wars or deport immigrants?--is, of course, left unspecified.
        Clinton also succeeds in what might seem like an impossible task: attacking Trump from the right. She fully indulges paranoia about Russia that sounds like it could have come from a 1950s propaganda film.
        For example, she compares the U.S. to a body whose immune system has been weakened: "Now that the Russians have infected us and seen how weak our defenses are, they'll keep at it...Their ultimate goal is to undermine--perhaps even destroy--Western democracy itself." Makes you wonder what's happening to our precious bodily fluids?
        "[W]e need to get tough with Putin," Clinton says--by increasing U.S. intervention in Syria and Ukraine, and bolstering NATO (no appeals to "emotional labor" here!). Clinton warns that Trump will not "face this threat head-on" and begs us not to dismiss her discussion of Russia "as me trying to shift blame for my loss in 2016."
        In a way, Clinton is right. While she is trying to shift the blame for her loss, she's also trying, as she did throughout the 2016 campaign, to present herself to the ruling class as the best manager of U.S. imperialism--a defender of the American-dominated world order that "defended universal human rights, defied totalitarianism, and delivered unprecedented peace, prosperity and freedom."
        That list, of course, leaves out the millions killed by the U.S. across the world over the course of the last century. But maybe the Chileans or Palestinians or Vietnamese had it coming because they didn't "engage constructively."
        - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
        SO IT'S no surprise to learn that--along with the cops, the military and intelligence agencies--Clinton finds she has much in common with the political leaders on the "other side": the Republicans. She gushes about how warm and comforting George W. Bush was during Trump's inauguration ceremony.
        Clinton also finds inspiration in Theodore Roosevelt, the white supremacist and imperialist who she praises as "a shrewd politician who managed to fend off the demands of angry populists on his left who wanted to go even further toward Socialism, and conservatives on his right who would have let the robber barons amass even more wealth and power."
        Clinton clearly sees herself in this mode, bragging about her "defense of the American system of free enterprise" during the Iowa primaries, for example. Still, socialists might be heartened by these passages--leading U.S. politicians now feel the need to openly attack socialism, rather than simply ignore it.
        Let me close by adopting one good piece of advice from Hillary Clinton: "Find an organization that's doing work you believe in...If it doesn't exist, build it."
        The political bankruptcy of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as a whole in the face of the horrors of the Trump era proves like nothing else can the need for our own working-class organizations. So fight the right, build the left, and join the socialists!
    ACA
      With Popular Single-Payer Plan, Bernie Sanders Enters New Territory: A Wealth Tax
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 11:46
        When he introduced his Medicare-for-all bill last week, Bernie Sanders also put down on paper the idea he's been talking about, sometimes loudly, sometimes with caution, other times not publicly at all, for more than 20 years: a ''wealth tax'' in the United States.
        In 1997, in his book, Outsider in the House, he declared it ''high time to establish a tax on wealth similar to those that exist in most European countries.'' Nine years later, during his first race for U.S. Senate, his opponent quoted the passage online, printed it on brochures, and pushed it in statements: ''Sanders' European-style wealth tax,'' on ''everything they own every year. Every tractor, cow, and acre.'' In response, the Sanders campaign argued that he had never formally proposed a wealth tax, just floated the idea.
        During the Democratic primary in 2016, the Sanders campaign did consider an official wealth tax, two former officials said, but the idea died over concerns about the reality of implementation and that the tax plan would be perceived as far out of the mainstream.
        Now, nearly a year after the election, the 76-year-old Vermont senator is one of the most popular politicians in America. Ahead of his Medicare-for-all announcement last week, a total of 16 senators backed the bill, putting about one third of the chamber's Democrats behind single-payer health care, an almost real-time shift in the party's baseline.
        But few American lawmakers have embraced a wealth tax '-- an annual federal tax on the net assets of the very rich '-- though economists and academics, both liberal and conservative, have made the case for one before. Others have argued that any wealth tax would be dauntingly complicated, and potentially unconstitutional. Sanders has described it as one way to spread the concentration of wealth.
        Last week, he outlined a wealth tax policy for the first time in a white paper released alongside the single-payer bill, with a list of 10 ideas for how to pay for such a program.
        ''This is something that he's always given some consideration to,'' said Warren Gunnels, a policy adviser who has worked for Sanders for 18 years, served on his presidential campaign, and helped craft the new bill.
        As outlined in the six-page fact sheet, titled ''Options to Finance Medicare-For-All,'' Sanders' federal wealth tax would establish an annual 1% levy on net worth exceeding $21 million. (For a family with $21.5 million in assets, that would mean paying a 1% tax on $500,000, or $5,000. For the wealthiest man in the United States, Bill Gates, whose net worth is speculated to be valued around $86 billion, the annual 1% tax would likely apply to all but a sliver of his net assets, and potentially total hundreds of millions of dollars.)
        In the white paper, Sanders claims that a tax on net worth would raise $1.3 trillion in 10 years. Implementing a federal wealth tax is untested and would involve complexities. Sanders officials said the IRS could be responsible for assessing net worth annually. The Treasury Department could handle items not easily appraised, using average appreciation rates and appraisals every 5 years instead of one.
        The idea, more broadly, is to level the distribution of wealth. During the presidential campaign, young and progressive voters gathered in massive numbers to hear Sanders punctuate his stump speech with dire statistics on the state of inequality. He is quick to tell voters that the 160,000 families in top 0.1% hold about the same share of wealth as the 144 million families in the bottom 90%; that the wealthiest 20 families, own more than the bottom 50%; and that just one family, the Waltons of Wal-Mart, owns more than the bottom 40%.
        ''If you know anything about Sen. Bernie Sanders, reducing the extreme amount of wealth inequality in America has been a very strong concern of his. One of the most obvious ways to reduce this extreme wealth inequality in our country is to impose a tax on wealth,'' Gunnels said, citing the French economist Thomas Piketty as a reference point on their own tax.
        Piketty's 2013 international bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, makes the case for an annual ''global'' wealth tax of up to 2% for rich households, adopted by cooperating governments across the world (a ''utopian'' ideal, he says, for a tax that might first be tried regionally). The book, a 700-page theory-of-the-case on the history and trajectory of wealth inequality, describes a widening gap in private capital ''even more worrisome'' than the widening gap in income '-- with accumulated and inherited wealth growing at a higher rate of return than the economy. The result, Piketty says, is ''indefinite'' wealth concentration, a threat to ''meritocratic values'' and ''social justice.''
        In the U.S., the book generated a months-long debate among economists, academics, and columnists. But in Washington, even as Democratic lawmakers praised his work, they steered far from the words ''wealth tax.'' When questioned about the idea in a 2014 interview, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the biggest star in progressive politics at the time, didn't engage. ''We need to take a hard look overall at our approach to taxation,'' she replied.
        Sanders' embrace of a federal wealth tax, even as merely an ''option,'' puts him in a tiny group of national politicians who have voiced support for the idea.
        In 2012, the left-leaning Green Party proposed a tax of 0.5% on assets exceeding $5 million in its official platform. (Though when asked about the plan at the time, their candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, stressed the room for ''distinction'' between her positions and the platform.) And before that, in 1999, there was Donald Trump. The business mogul, exploring a presidential campaign at the time, pitched a one-time tax of 14.25% on individuals with net assets of more than $10 million. (In a line that could have come from Sanders, Trump said the tax would, and should, affect the ''1 percent of Americans who control 90 percent of the wealth in this country.'')
        As Democrats sidle up to Sanders, some planning their own presidential campaigns, they now face the question of paying for these programs, and with that, how closely they will or will not align with Sanders when it comes to tax and economic policy.
        Among the 16 Democratic senators backing the Medicare-for-all bill alongside Sanders, spokespeople for just four replied when asked if they would consider the wealth tax option: Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont (''This was a white paper for discussion and not part of the bill or the plan going forward''), Al Franken of Minnesota (''The financing isn't part of the bill''), Jeff Merkley of Oregon (''There are multiple paths to get to Medicare for All''), and Kamala Harris of California (''She is open to discussing a host of different options to pay for the guarantee of health care for all Americans'').
        "As Sen. Sanders said, this is the beginning of the debate: Let's have a debate on the revenue options, let's have a debate on Medicare-for-all,'' said Gunnels.
        ''They're options. If somebody has a better idea then we'll look at those."
      Jimmy Kimmel Got a Hand From Chuck Schumer in His Fight Against Obamacare Repeal
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:56
        Over the past week, opposition to the latest Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare has been driven by a late-night talk show host who had expressed little interest in health care policy prior to this year.
        Jimmy Kimmel's nightly monologues decrying Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy's (R-LA) bill became must-see TV, as the ABC host systematically attacked both the specifics of the legislation and Cassidy himself.
        Behind the scenes, the ABC star was getting an assist. Kimmel and his team were in touch with health care officials, charities and advocacy groups, multiple sources told The Daily Beast. He also was in touch with the office of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) who, according to a source familiar with their conversations, ''provided technical guidance and info about the bill, as well as stats from various think tanks and experts on the effects of [Graham-Cassidy].''
        The three episodes in which Kimmel tore apart both Cassidy'--who had previously insisted that any health care bill pass a so-called ''Jimmy Kimmel test'''--and the bill's specifics helped galvanize public and political opposition to the legislation. On Friday, that legislation appeared to have effectively died, at least for now, after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced that he would not back the measure without fuller hearings and amendments. Kimmel quickly took to Twitter to personally thank McCain for potentially tanking the legislation.
        Kimmel was not a naif on the topic of health care. He had begun diving into the subject after his child was born with a congenital heart disease. He delivered an emotional monologue in May, as the Senate considered a different Obamacare repeal measure, about the care required for his son, who had received emergency surgery shortly after delivery.
        But the TV host leaned on outside experts to ensure that as his show ventured away from pop culture and more to politics, he was standing on firm turf.
        ''Jimmy wanted to learn more about what was going on politically and policy-wise,'' said a source with direct knowledge of the conversations, ''[and] he wanted to fight this thing.''
        Few, including Kimmel, expected that he would be playing this role. As recently as two weeks ago, the prospect of Obamacare repeal and replace appeared dead, with Senate Republicans having failed by one vote to push their previous attempt at overhauling Obama's signature law. But with a September 30th deadline approaching for passing healthcare legislation by a simple majority vote, the party decided to take another stab.
        Graham and Cassidy's bill had the fortune of being the last one available. It would have dramatically cut back on Medicaid spending and turned over many insurance regulations to the states, thereby threatening the central promise that Cassidy had made to Kimmel after that May monologue: that any bill would ensure that a child born with a pre-existing condition would not have his or her family bankrupted by medical bills.
        Sources close to Kimmel said he was prepared to speak out regardless, given Cassidy's past invocation of ''the Jimmy Kimmel test.'' Schumer gave him encouragement to do so. The two had been in touch ''periodically'' over the last several months as prior legislative efforts were considered and their conversations continued when Graham-Cassidy began gaining steam. ''It's part of that continued conversation,'' a source said.
        Kimmel and his staff also spoke with other activists and organizations opposing Graham-Cassidy in an effort to do his due diligence and ''his research,'' said one person familiar with the process. People spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.
        ''We've heard from and spoken to a lot of people, including Senator Schumer and the many charities and healthcare organizations that oppose this monstrous bill," a source from Jimmy Kimmel Live! told The Daily Beast.
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        The monologues were biting, and garnered plenty of media attention.
        ''This guy, Bill Cassidy, just lied right to my face,'' Kimmel said in his first show, airing a clip of his May interview with the senator. ''Stop using my name,'' he said to Cassidy.
        The ABC host revisited the topic the next night, going after Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade for questioning why he was weighing in on health care at all.
        ''I don't get anything out of this, Brian, you phony little creep,'' Kimmel shot back. ''Oh, I'll pound you when I see you. That is my blurb'--that would be my blurb for your next book: 'Brian Kilmeade is a phony little creep.'''
        The following night, Kimmel went at it again, this time singling out President Donald Trump. ''I guarantee he doesn't know anything about this Graham-Cassidy bill,'' he said of the president. ''He doesn't know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. He barely knows the difference between Melania and Ivanka!''
        It was the type of criticism that normally would elicit a direct reply from the president. But Trump and his Twitter account remained silent. Multiple senior Trump aides expressed surprise on Friday that the president hadn't already hate-tweeted the late-night host. Asked why, one White House official told The Daily Beast, ''I honestly don't know. I thought we'd see something after the Kilmeade comments for sure.''
        Other Republicans were more willing to push back. Cassidy insisted that Kimmel was out of his depth, and other lawmakers mocked the idea that a comedian would engage on health care policy. But outside analysts all came down on the side of Kimmel.
        The toll Kimmel's monologues took on Graham-Cassidy is ultimately unknowable, as the measure still seems likely to garner the support of all but a handful of Senate Republicans. But Democrats on Capitol Hill have viewed the ABC host as highly effective in large part because of his encouragement to viewers to call Senate offices to urge lawmakers to vote against it.
        ''It elevated the conversation and made sure that pre-existing conditions were being talked about again,'' said Lori Lodes, adviser to the pro-Obamacare group, Protect Our Care. ''It put a spotlight on how misleading all of cassidy's information was in trying to get people on board. It did a good job in calling him on his lies.''
        By Thursday, Kimmel was featuring prominently in Democratic political messaging, with the party's senate campaign arm launching digital ads in a dozen states targeting vulnerable Republican senators by invoking the late-night host's viral pleas for health care measures that protect those with preexisting conditions.
        McCain's opposition to the bill likely means it will not become law. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has said he will vote against it and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said she is leaning no.
        Asked whether we should expect the president to lash out at Kimmel over his advocacy at this point, the White House official added, ''He'll probably be a little preoccupied with John McCain.''
        '--With additional reporting by Andrew Desiderio
    Elite$
      Elizabeth Warren is worth millions - Jan. 8, 2015
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sun, 24 Sep 2017 13:41
        Warren, the Harvard bankruptcy law professor elected to the Senate in 2012, is worth between $3.7 million and $10 million.
        That's not including the three-story Victorian home in Cambridge, Mass., that she owns with her husband and fellow Harvard law professor, Bruce Mann. It's now assessed at $1.9 million, according to city property records.
        While she's not in the uppermost wealth echelon of Congress, she's not doing too badly either. Roll Call recently ranked her the 76th wealthiest out of 541 senators and representatives, based on her minimum net worth in 2013.
        Her average net worth of $8.75 million, including her home, secures her a spot the Top 1% bracket in terms of wealth.
        Congressional rules require lawmakers to file annual disclosure reports. The values are given as a range.
        The senator declined to comment on her wealth, a spokesman said.
        Related: Elizabeth Warren: 'Wealth trickles up'
        The vast bulk of Warren's wealth is held in mutual funds and retirement accounts with TIAA-CREF, a financial services company that provides retirement services to universities. The couple's largest holdings are the ultra-safe TIAA-CREF Traditional fund, in which they each have at least $1 million. The fund offers three guarantees: you'll never lose your principal, you'll always get a minimum interest rate and you'll receive a lifetime income stream.
        Warren and her husband also hold TIAA-CREF funds that invest in stocks, bonds and real estate, and they have between $367,000 and $830,000 in various banks, according to her 2013 financial disclosure document, the most recent available.
        In addition to her Senate salary of $174,000, Warren also got an advance of $525,000 to write "A Fighting Chance." The book chronicles Warren's rise from a struggling childhood to the Senate and her fight for middle class Americans. She also received $60,400 in royalties for previously published books on bankruptcy and credit.
        The couple's income has approached seven figures in recent years. They earned $981,000 in 2009 and $955,000 in 2010, according to tax returns she released while running for office.
        The returns did not provide many details on the source of the income. But some insight can be gleaned from a 2011 financial disclosure form, which shows Warren earned a salary of $430,000 from Harvard for 2010 and part of 2011. In 2011, the couple's total income was $616,000.
        Warren joined Harvard's faculty in 1995 and has authored nine books, including two national best sellers, according to her website. She also served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), after the 2008 financial crisis. And she led the establishment of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
        Related: Could Elizabeth Warren have made it in today's America?
        The income from her book deals differentiates her from many of her fellow lawmakers, said Viveca Novak, editorial and communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes the disclosure reports. She's also a little unusual in that all her holdings are in TIAA-CREF funds. Most other lawmakers invest in a wider array of stocks and funds.
        Following her own mantra of living debt-free, Warren lists no liabilities in 2013. In her disclosure report a year earlier, she listed an education loan from Harvard from 1996 for between $15,001 and $50,000.
        Warren has made a name for herself as a defender of Main Street America. She has fought for student loan reform to help struggling borrowers, for raising the minimum wage and for curbing Wall Street's power.
        Related: Elizabeth Warren: 8 ways to restore the middle class
        "Big banks, powerful corporations and billionaires -- people who can afford to hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers -- have amassed more and more wealth," she wrote in a CNN op-ed last spring. "Meanwhile, the foundations of our once strong middle class have begun to crumble, and families have been caught in a terrible squeeze."
        CNNMoney (New York) First published January 8, 2015: 12:08 PM ET
    DACA
      Rhode Island's Dreamers No Longer Have to Shoulder $500 in DACA Renewal Fees '' Mother Jones
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 21:48
        April Soasti, 9, front, and her sister Adriana, 7, stand with other community members after the Trump administration announced it was ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA.) Stephanie Zollshan/AP
        By October 5, roughly 150,000 young undocumented immigrants across the country, known as Dreamers, have to come up with $495 to renew their two-year work and study permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. On Monday, Rhode Island's Democratic governor Gina Raimondo announced that no Dreamers in her state will have to pay that fee.
        After working with individual donors and organizations, Raimondo has secured more than $170,000 to cover applications from the state's Dreamers'--about 250 individuals, according to the Providence Journal'--meaning these young men and women will be protected from deportation for an additional two-years. ''We're not going to allow $495 to stand in the way of our neighbors' dreams,'' Raimondo said in a press release. ''Now is the time to fight for our values and take action against hate and bigotry.''
        Institutions and immigration-advocacy groups are also working to help Dreamers elsewhere cover their renewal fees. Last week, the Mission Asset Fund, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, announced it will provide $1 million to help about 2,000 Dreamers renew their permits. Half of the funds will be reserved for California college students. United We Dream, a youth-led immigration advocacy group, meanwhile announced the creation of a '' DACA Renewal Fund '' last week.
        Under the terms recently set by the Trump administration, DACA recipients whose permits expire before March 5, 2018 are eligible to apply for a final two-year renewal, but they must do so before October 5. Before Trump decided to end the Obama-era program earlier this month, Dreamers could apply for an unlimited number of renewals.
        Immigration advocates have criticized the Trump administration for forcing Dreamers to come up with $495 on short notice. At a hearing last week, District Judge Nicholas Garaufis questioned the need for the October 5 deadline. The only people harmed by it, he said , are the ''800,000 people who are sweating that someone will knock on their door and send them to a country they don't even know with a language they don't speak.''
        A lawyer for the Justice Department said that the government was still considering changing the deadline. If it doesn't, Garaufis may force them to do so through a court order. In the meantime, Dreamers in Rhode Island will find some relief.
        Get the scoop, straight from Mother Jones.Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or subscribe to help fund independent journalism.
    War on Drug$
      New drug test can detect cocaine in a fingerprint in seconds
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:25
        A team of researchers has developed a simple paper-based test that can in a matter of seconds detect whether a person has recently been using cocaine.
        The method can potentially be applied to a variety of substances. The researchers plan to make a business case for the technique as a safe, rapid and highly accurate method of running a variety of drug tests in the real world.
        The team, from institutions in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, published their findings Friday in the journal Clinical Chemistry.
        The technique involves a method called "paper spray mass spectrometry." This allows researchers to determine the identity of a substance by measuring the mass of its molecules.
        Since molecules of cocaine have a unique mass, the spectrometer can detect their presence. The test can also detect the metabolites that result from the body processing cocaine.
        "It can detect cocaine and metabolites of which is further proof that cocaine has gone through the body and is excreted," said lead researcher Catia Costa, a researcher at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, in an interview with CNBC.
        The team tested 39 people, some known users of cocaine and some non-users. The test was 99 percent effective. A sample can be analyzed in 30 seconds, Costa said, which is extremely fast. Most conventional lab-based drug tests take several hours to days to return results. The new test also does not involve taking samples of blood, hair or urine, making it less invasive and safer, Costa said.
        It works like this: First, a fingerprint is collected on a small triangular piece of paper. Then the paper is placed on a mass spectrometer, the instrument that measures the various masses of different molecules and atoms.
        The researchers then pour a solvent on the paper and send a small electrical charge through the paper, which releases the molecules and sends them into the spectrometer's analyzer and detector, which measure and record the mass of the molecules.
        The method could, in theory, be used to test a variety of drugs. The team has already been able to detect heroin.
        They have also added a fingerprint identification step to the process, which in a real-world application would ensure the sample came from the person meant to take the test.
        The test could potentially be used in any of the usual situations where drug tests are needed, such as workplaces, legal situations, hospitals and treatment centers. The test could also be used in emergency situations, such as overdoses. Rapidly running a few tests could allow paramedics or doctors to determine what sorts of substances might be responsible for an overdose.
        Finally, Costa said, doctors might be able to use it to ensure patients are taking prescribed medications.
        Costa said she soon plans to spend three months talking to people in industry, health care and other areas to explore the business case for the product.
        The research was funded by a company called Intelligent Fingerprinting, a company that does other fingerprint-based drug tests, and the UK's National Institute for Health Research.
    Service Animals
      Someone just used a federal law to bring a live turkey on a Delta flight - The Washington Post
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 14:18
        View post on imgur.com
        There are probably few worse places to encounter a wild animal than 30,000 feet in the air '-- hence the terrifying premise of the 2006 thriller ''Snakes on a Plane.'' Accommodations are made, however, for certain domestic animals.
        In the case of one recent Delta Airlines flight, ''domestic'' meant a turkey. Yes, the same kind of large black bird that is culled in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving can also be granted a seat on your next trip to Florida.
        The unusual feathered companion was photographed by a flight attendant whose neighbor then uploaded the picture to Reddit.
        Caught with its yellow beak half open, the turkey appears to be staring straight at the camera with its dark beady eyes. It seems quite sure of its place on board.
        Behind the turkey's slender, wrinkled neck is a human arm, presumably belonging to its daring owner.
        Then, sitting one row behind the bird, there is a man in plaid with a perplexed expression on his face. We cannot say for certain the cause of said expression, but it seems a fitting reaction to such a fowl presence.
        Photobomb! (Screenshot from Imgur via Reddit)
        Another Reddit user, who said his friend was the pilot on that flight, posted a shot of what appears to be the same bird standing in a wheelchair. (There is also some white padding on the seat. Perhaps a cushion for the turkey's claws?)
        View post on imgur.com
        This is all thanks to the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986, which stipulates that airlines cannot discriminate against passengers with disabilities, including those who require service animals when travelling.
        The provision also allows for the company of ''emotional support animals'' that travel free of charge, according to Delta's guidelines, as long as the passenger provides documentation from a mental health professional demonstrating that the animal is needed ''as an accommodation for air travel and/or activity at the passenger's destination.''
        Some animals '-- snakes, spiders, farm poultry '-- are ''unacceptable.'' But at least this time, the turkey made the cut.
        In a statement to USA Today, Delta spokesperson Ashton Morrow said the passenger met all the criteria for bringing the bird along:
        Delta complies with the Air Carrier Access Act by allowing customers traveling with emotional support animals or psychiatric service animals to travel without charge in the cabin. While we can't always accommodate all pets, Delta employees made a judgment call based in part on extensive documentation from the customer. We review each case and make every effort to accommodate our customers' travel needs while also taking into consideration the health and safety of other passengers.
        Tom Bunn, a former commercial pilot who now runs an organization to help people overcome their fear of flying, told Fox News that it is quite easy to get a therapist note for such occasions.
        ''Any therapist can sign off on any kind of animal,'' Bunn said. ''Science has proven that when dogs look at you with total devotion, it produces oxytocin, a hormone that shuts down the fear mechanism. The turkey, I don't think so.''
        But it wasn't all anarchy with the bird on board. Like humans, it had to follow certain rules, like not blocking aisles or emergency exits. And contrary to what the Reddit picture suggests, Delta guidelines state that ''No animals are allowed to occupy seats that are designed for passengers.''
        No word on whether other passengers found the turkey better or worse company than a crying baby.
        More from Morning Mix
        Ten miles from Columbine, two teenage girls accused of plotting a copycat shooting
        That vexing 'natural born citizen' requirement: What were the founding fathers afraid of?
        Manager of Trump-loving USA Freedom Kids: 'To me, freedom is everything'
    CLIPS & DOCS
      VIDEO - Protesters disrupt Comey's speech at Howard University
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Reuters Video: Latest Videos US
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:59
        First Lady Melania Trump gardens at the White House - 01:00
        Russia tells North Korea, U.S. 'hot heads' to calm down - 01:28
        Trump loops Facebook into the 'Russia hoax' - 01:49
        Facebook vows to tackle election interference - 02:15
        Trump aims new sanctions at North Korea's trade partners - 01:20
        Banks won't be allowed to do business with both U.S. and North Korea: Mnuchin - 01:29
        Trump thanks China for action on North Korea - 01:55
        Trump 'deeply concerned' about Iran nuclear deal: Pence - 01:57
        Trump says Puerto Rico 'absolutely obliterated' by Hurricane Maria - 01:03
        Trump turns sanctions screw on North Korea - 02:06
        "Deplorable" brings laughs to Trump, Moon meeting - 01:24
      VIDEO - Controversy Follows On Her Heels As Melania Takes To The Garden
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Western Journalism
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:58
        Advertisement - story continues below
        The sirens of the fashion police were blaring Friday after Melania Trump ventured forth into the White House garden.
        ''Melania Trump has made another public appearance in a pricey outfit,'' wrote Kate Taylor on Business Insider, contrasting Melania Trump's outfit, which included a plaid shirt that looked ordinary but had started life with a $1,380 price tag, with the gardening fashions of Michelle Obama.
        so it appears @FLOTUS wore this $1,380 @Balmain plaid shirt to today's garden event. (don't @ me. i am the messenger.) pic.twitter.com/jgOFvoD7hp
        '-- Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) September 22, 2017
        ''Obama used the garden as a place to showcase her down-to-earth fashion,'' Taylor wrote, noting that Obama was praised for wearing J. Crew sweaters to show her common touch.
        Advertisement - story continues below
        Some commenters didn't even care about the facts as they attacked Melania Trump.
        Wearing 6" stiletto heels ===> Melania Trump Harvests Michelle Obama's Vegetable Garden ' Channels Television https://t.co/Cma15wpi7M ðŸ'
        '-- FirstWorldMusic (@1stworldmusic) September 22, 2017
        As multiple pictures showed, she wore sneakers.
        Melania Trump hosts garden event at the White House https://t.co/THBzfdaqq6
        '-- ðŸ Jemma ¸>>'•...'•¤'-- (@jobbers7) September 22, 2017
        Independent Journal Review decided the fuss belonged on the compost heap and looked into a true comparison of first lady outfits. He noted that Obama wore Jimmy Choo boots that retail for $1,150, while Melania Trump wore $50 Converse sneakers.
        Advertisement - story continues below
        ''So depending on how you look at it, Michelle Obama is the really out-of-touch first lady gardening. Her shoes were potentially $1,100 more expensive then Melania's,'' he wrote.
        You can catch Obama's pricey boots here, just after the 4:10 mark:
        He then suggested that trying to diminish the first lady by attacking her clothes was a waste of time.
        ''Perhaps the lesson we should all learn here is that a first lady is a human being with a lot of pressure on her and we should stop trying to attack them based on their fashion choices,'' he wrote, adding, ''All first ladies wear expensive things, idiots.''
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        During her time in the garden with members of a local Boys & Girls Club to harvest a variety of vegetables, Melania Trump stressed the need for healthy eating.
        ðŸ'· PHOTOS: @FLOTUS Melania Trump and kids tend to the White House garden https://t.co/Dxp62IozzEpic.twitter.com/Qo2Xzkc8O5
        '-- POLITICO 45 (@politico_45) September 22, 2017
        ''I'm a big believer in healthy eating because it reflects on your mind and your body, and I encourage you to continue to eat a lot of vegetables and fruits so you grow up healthy and take care of yourself. It's very important,'' said the former model.
        What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.
      VIDEO - Trump on NFL players kneeling for national anthem: Get that son of a bitch off the field
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Washington Free Beacon
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:58
      VIDEO n- This Man Looked at Some Birds on a Wire and Saw Musical Notes. Listen to How It Sounds. [Hint: Amazing]
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: The Good Men Project
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:32
        '--
        '---
        Here's the story of this video in Jarbas Agnelli's own words:
        ''Reading the newspaper one morning, I saw this picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.
        This work was made over the original photo, un-retouched, published in one of the biggest Brazilian newspapers, ''O Estado de S£o Paulo'' on 27/aug/2009, and shot by Paulo Pinto (note: I just erased the birds for effect at the end, but didn't change their positions at all. What would be the point?). This short video demonstrates my interpretation of the birds as notes.''
        '...'—Š'...
        We are reminded of a quote by Henry David Thoreau ''It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see.''
        '...'—Š'...
        Is that not what art is? And in the 21st century, a time of great change and turmoil, can we not just take what we see, and use it to connect with all of humankind?
        '--
        Music made with Logic. Video made with After Effects.
        Jarbas Agnelli
        And here is a live rendition of it being performed at the Awards Ceremony for the Top 25 YouTube Play Videos at the Guggenheim Museum.
        '--
        Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
        We're all in this together.
      VIDEO - Uber looks to Londoners after city strips license
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        Archived Version
        Source: Reuters Video: Latest Videos US
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:16
        London strips Uber of license - 01:16
        Apple's iPhone 8 lukewarm launch in New York - 01:43
        T-Mobile, Sprint close to a deal - 01:20
        Breakingviews TV: Sprint finish? - 03:13
        Hackers possibly traded on data from SEC - 01:20
        France: Macron signs contentious labour reform law - 01:10
        Diversify into mortgage-backed securities, emerging markets, advises Brett Ewing - 04:58
        Fed is wise to be cautious on outlook, says Ron Temple - 05:44
        Wal-Mart delivers to your fridge - 01:06
        Air Berlin courts Lufthansa, easyJet as bidders - 01:19
        Germany: Merkel in final election countdown - 01:47
      VIDEO - Trump: fire NFL players who kneel during national anthem
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Reuters Video: Latest Videos US
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 16:16
        EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS PROFANITY ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: U.S. President Trump, on Friday (September 22) lashed out at some players in the National Football League for refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem before a game and said teams owners should fire those players. "We're proud of our country. We respect our flag. Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He's fired, he's FIRED.'" Trump said, in a reference to his catchphrase "You're fired" made popular on his former reality TV show "The Apprentice". Trump was addressing supporters at a rally for Republican Senate candidate Luther Strange in Hunstville, Alabama. He urged sports fans to leave the stadium if they saw players go down on their knees while the anthem was being played. "I guarantee things will stop. Things will stop. Just pick up and leave. Pick up and leave," Trump said. Last year San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sparked debate after he chose not to stand for the "Star Spangled Banner" before kickoff, instead kneeling with his head bowed, as a mark of protest over police violence against African- Americans. Since then, the sight of NFL players kneeling during the "Star-Spangled Banner" has become increasingly common at football games in the United States.
      VIDEO - Michelle Obama Just Answered The 1 Question About Her Future That Many Have Been Waiting For
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        Archived Version
        Source: Western Journalism
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 15:58
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        When former first lady Michelle Obama was asked how she views the world ''right now,'' she had some choice words '-- or, rather, sounds.
        But it got better when Obama was asked a question that many on both sides of the aisle have been waiting to hear the answer to for a very long time.
        According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the former first lady cringed and quietly groaned when asked about what she though about the current state of things.
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        ''I don't have much of a poker voice,'' she said with a laugh. ''We are looking at two different administrations.
        ''One administration was built on hope, while the other administration leads with fear,'' she added, referring to her husband's administration versus the federal government under President Donald J. Trump.
        Her remarks were part of an hour-long dialogue that took place at a technology conference hosted by Pluralsight, a Utah-based company.
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        The conference was attended by more than 1,000 people, many of whom work in IT.
        However, when asked by a woman in the audience whether or not she would run for president, she had a surprising response.
        ''Oh no! That's still shocking. Like what? Are you kidding me? No,'' Obama said.
        ''No, running for office is nowhere on the radar screen but continuing in public service is something I will do for the rest of my life,'' she added.
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        During her time as first lady, Obama had launched several campaigns, including Reach Higher, which inspires students to continue their education past the high school level. Let Girls Learn was another, which helped young girls receive an education in developing countries.
        She continues to engage in public service, claiming that ''things are tough right now'' and she ''continues to be hopeful'' about the future of the political climate.
        What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.
      VIDEO - Elizabeth Warren Struggles To Answer Question About Her Wealth
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        Archived Version
        Source: Western Journalism
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 15:58
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        Earlier this week, a Boston radio host confronted Sen. Elizabeth Warren over her supposed hypocritical attacks against the ''1 percent.''
        The Massachusetts Democrat has made headlines for consistently showing disdain toward wealthy Americans. She has gone on record calling President Donald Trump a ''money grubber,'' and criticized former President Barack Obama for accepting $400,000 for a single speech.
        Warren's net worth reportedly hovers between $3.7 million and $10 million, and she also reportedly received over $700,000 for only two years of teaching at Harvard University as a law professor.
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        With this public knowledge in hand, when WRKO radio host Jeff Kuhner saw the wealthy Massachusetts senator in the radio station's hallway, he decided to take advantage of the rare opportunity to confront Warren about her statements.
        ''Question: You often say, and I agree with you, that the 99 percent are getting shafted by the 1 percent,'' Kuhner said to Warren. ''You live in Cambridge, you've got a $2 million mansion. Plus you're a multimillionaire yourself.''
        She appeared to have no qualms with Kuhner's statement, even nodding in agreement with him, so Kuhner continued further into the interrogation.
        ''How can you rail against the 1 percent, when in a sense, you are and live like the 1 percent?'' he asked.
        Warren proceeded to enter into a defense outlining why she can criticize the tax bracket she is a part of.
        Warren gave Kuhner some information about her family background, none of which answered the question she'd been asked.
        ''And you live in a mansion in Cambridge, do you not?'' Kuhner then asked.
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        Warren dodged the question once again, instead opting to outline further the struggles she faced as a broke college student.
        ''I ended up graduating from a commuter college that cost $50 a semester, and I became a special needs teacher,'' Warren said. ''And when I had a baby and started going to school part time at a state law school that cost $450 a semester, that's how I had opportunity, and I am deeply grateful to an America that made those opportunities possible.''
        Warren's second attempt at dancing around the clearly stated question did not appear to go over well with Kuhner.
        ''I know, but you are a part of the 1 percent,'' he replied.
        This prompted Warren to add that the opportunities she experienced growing up ''are not available in America today.''
        ''But you are a multimillionaire, and you have a mansion in Cambridge, do you not?'' Kuhner added. ''It's worth north of $2 million.''
        ''I had opportunities because America invested in kids like me, and that's the reason I'm in public office,'' Warren replied.
        ''I know, but you're a part of the 1 percent and you rail against the 1 percent,'' Kuhner said. ''You don't see the hypocrisy there?''
        ''It's not hypocrisy!'' Warren exclaimed. ''What this is about is whether you believe in opportunity or not. I believe in opportunity and it's what I fight for.''
        An acquaintance of Warren then jumped in to rush Warren away from the conversation. That's when Kuhner made sure to get in the last word.
        ''You mean the $350,000 for one course, is that the opportunity senator?''
        Kuhner was most likely referencing a 2012 statement made by then-Sen. Scott Brown, in which he claimed Harvard University paid Warren $350,000 to teach a single course.
        Warren has never publicly refuted these claims. She was once again given the opportunity during the exchange with Kuhner, but did not respond.
        What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.
      VIDEO - NYT Reporter: Clinton Acts Like It Was Media's Job to Get Her Elected
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        Archived Version
        Source: Washington Free Beacon
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 15:56
      VIDEO - Jedediah Bila announces it's her last day on The View
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Washington Free Beacon
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 15:54
      VIDEO-McMaster: Iran has violated nuclear deal at times, 'they're crossing the line'
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Source: Washington Free Beacon
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 15:54
      VIDEO - Mysterious Apocalyptic Message Interrupts TV Broadcasts in California: 'Violent Times Will Come'
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 14:17
        The mushroom cloud from ''Ivy Mike'' rises above in the Marshall Islands in 1952. (Photo: AP)Many Californians' regularly scheduled broadcasts were interrupted Thursday morning with strange emergency messages warning of extraterrestrial invasions and the beginning of Armageddon. The bizarre warnings aired on TVs in the Orange County area, affecting Cox and Spectrum cable users, according to the Orange County Register.
        One video of the broadcast uploaded to YouTube includes a terrified, breathless voice saying: ''The space program made contact with... They are not what they claim to be. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are coming'--the military'--I'm sorry the government knows about them...''
        Gizmodo found that the audio comes from a call that Art Bell, the host of the conspiracy theory-themed radio show Coast to Coast AM, received in 1997 from a man claiming to be a former Area 51 employee.
        Other videos of the emergency broadcast feature a different voice warning that ''extremely violent times will come.'' Redditor smittenkitten77 discovered the audio came from the Christian radio program Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll.
        ''It almost sounded like Hitler talking,'' one Cox customer told the Register. ''It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.''
        It's still unclear whether the messages were broadcast intentionally or by accident, but broadcast signal intrusions by pranksters aren't unheard of, even in the digital era. Most famously, still-unidentified hackers hijacked TV signals in the Chicago area in 1987, broadcasting footage of a person wearing a Max Headroom mask and a man's bare buttocks being spanked with a flyswatter. More recently, a suspect was arrested in 2013 after allegedly overlaying broadcasts in several states with emergency alerts about dead bodies ''rising from their graves.''
        Cox spokesperson Todd Smith told Gizmodo that the company does not know how many customers were affected and is still trying to determine where the originating signal came from. Cox believes its system got the message after a radio station or multiple stations were conducting their monthly emergency test, which cable networks piggyback on. Usually, radio stations transmit an end ''tone'' to complete their alerts. However, this time, it seems no such tone was transmitted.
        Spectrum did not immediately respond to a Gizmodo request for comment but spokesperson Dennis Johnson told the Register, ''We have confirmed that we were fed an incorrect audio file.''
        Many viewers reported being alarmed and confused by yesterday's broadcast'--though we assume some were relieved at the possibility that the end times were imminent.
        [OC Register]
      VIDEO - McCain to oppose Graham-Cassidy, likely sinking Obamacare repeal - POLITICO
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        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:43
        ''I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
        Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced Friday that he would oppose the latest Obamacare repeal measure, dealing a major blow to the legislation's prospects of getting 50 votes on the Senate floor next week.
        ''I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried," McCain said in a statement.
        Story Continued Below
        The legislation, drafted by GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham '-- McCain's closest friend in the Senate '-- is the Senate GOP's last best chance at passing a bill dismantling the Affordable Care Act before a Sept. 30 deadline. But conservative Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has already announced his opposition to the Graham-Cassidy bill '-- shredding the plan to reporters, in op-eds and through Twitter. And moderate Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is already viewed as a hard "no" on the measure, said at an event in her home state Friday that she is "leaning against" Graham-Cassidy , according to the Portland Press-Herald.
        Senate Republicans, who hold a 52-seat majority in the chamber, can only lose two votes and still pass the repeal measure. GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has also remained a key holdout on Graham-Cassidy, which is uniformly opposed by Senate Democrats.
        Aides to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he intends to hold a vote on Graham-Cassidy next week in the Senate. His office did not immediately respond to questions about whether he will hold the vote next week despite McCain's opposition.
        The Senate Finance Committee, for now, has not changed plans to hold a hearing on the Graham-Cassidy bill on Monday.
        POLITICO Pulse newsletterGet the latest on the health care fight, every weekday morning '-- in your inbox.
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        In a lengthy statement Friday, McCain reiterated concerns about the process in which the legislation was drafted that he laid out in July when he voted against another Obamacare repeal plan.
        McCain said he could not support the bill "without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won't be available by the end of the month, we won't have reliable answers to any of those questions.''
        ''I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it,'' he continued. ''The bill's authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I.''
        The Arizona Republican pointed to bipartisan talks to stabilize the health care law led by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). McCain expressed concern that pushing through a GOP-only repeal bill left the impression that those bipartisan negotiations couldn't succeed. Alexander, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said earlier this week that he and Murray were unable to reach consensus on a bill.
        ''John McCain shows the same courage in Congress that he showed when he was a naval aviator," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday. "I have assured Senator McCain that as soon as repeal is off the table, we Democrats are intent on resuming the bipartisan process.''
        In a series of tweets Friday afternoon, Graham said he "respectfully" disagrees with McCain's decision to oppose his bill.
        "My friendship with [McCain] is not based on how he votes but respect for how he's lived his life and the person he is," Graham said. "I know Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson is the best chance to repeal and replace Obamacare. Obamacare is collapsing in Arizona, South Carolina and across the nation '-- driving up premiums and reducing choices."
        Senate Republicans failed on their last Obamacare repeal attempt in July when McCain, Murkowski and Collins teamed up to tank the so-called "skinny repeal" plan.
        But unlike then, it's not clear whether McConnell could even open debate on the bill this time. More than a half-dozen senators were not committal or non-responsive to inquiries Friday about how they would vote for the motion to proceed to the House-passed repeal bill.
        Cable news reacts to McCain voting no on Graham-CassidyHowever, even though Paul opposes the Graham-Cassidy proposal, he is undecided on the procedural vote, an aide said. Paul wants to vote again on fully repealing Obamacare with no replacement. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is also undecided on both the procedural vote and the Graham-Cassidy product.
        Republicans had been scrambling to make good on their seven-year campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare by Sept. 30, when their fast-track legislative authority to pass a bill with only a simple majority votes will expire. After the end of the month, repeal legislation would need 60 votes.
        The GOP wants to use the procedure, called reconciliation, next year to pass tax reform. But the Obamacare failure could spur some in the party to try to revisit repeal.
        In the latest repeal effort, Republicans have tried desperately to win over Murkowski in particular.
        The Graham-Cassidy bill allowed Alaska and a handful of other states with low population density to potentially opt out of the law's significant cuts to Medicaid until 2026. It's unclear whether that provision would have been enough to address Murkowski's concern that Alaskans would have less access to health care under the bill.
        Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning '-- in your inbox.
      VIDEO - Can iOS 11 Record You Without You Knowing? Experts Say Yes CBS Philly
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        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:41
        CBS Local '-- The iPhone's newest operating system is raising serious questions about the potential to invade a user's privacy. According to multiple reports, iOS 11 has the ability to continue recording and save Snapchat or FaceTime videos without the person being recorded knowing about it.
        iPhone's newest update reportedly added a new feature called ''screen recording.'' With just a few clicks in the device's control settings, users are able to record whatever is happening on their screen simply by swiping from the bottom and tapping the record button.
        Christian Numerologist Says World Will End On Sept. 23
        Beta testers of the iPhone's new software have voiced their shock at the ability to record friends on Snapchat without their knowledge. After three months of testing, neither Apple or Snapchat has reportedly moved to change the recording workaround.
        The potentially serious consequences of secretly recording people on iOS 11 is not the only issue with the new platform. Tech experts say that turning off the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the iPhone's new system doesn't actually shut down those features. Andrea Barisani, a security researcher, has tweeted about the ''uncomfortable'' experience of using the operating system.
        The connectivity confusion was apparently done intentionally by Apple, who state on their website that iOS 11 won't shut down Wi-Fi just by clicking it off.
        ''In iOS 11 and later, when you toggle the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth buttons in Control Center, your device will immediately disconnect from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth accessories. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will continue to be available.''
        Deaf Man Dies After Being Shot By Police Multiple Times
        According to tech security experts, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issue creates an inviting target for hackers. Security firm Armis recently revealed eight ''critical'' vulnerabilities allowing hackers to take control of smartphones and computers through the owner's Bluetooth. ''The user is not involved in the process, they don't have to have a Bluetooth connection active, just have Bluetooth on,'' Armis co-founder Nadir Izrael said.
      VIDEO - Bitcoin: JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon lays into bitcoin again
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:24
        JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has laid into bitcoin and digital currencies once again, warning that governments will shut them down if they grow too large.
        "Right now these crypto things are kind of a novelty. People think they're kind of neat. But the bigger they get, the more governments are going to close them down," Dimon said during an interview with CNBC-TV18 in New Delhi on Friday.
        Dimon was concerned that with bitcoin, ethereum and various initial coin offerings (ICOs), there are now cryptocurrencies everywhere.
        "It's creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing," he said. "It will end badly."
        Dimon warned that governments will eventually crack down on cryptocurrencies and will attempt to control it by threatening anyone who buys or sells bitcoin with imprisonment, which would force digital currencies into becoming a black market.
        These are the latest comments from Dimon attacking bitcoin. Earlier this month he called the cryptocurrency a "fraud.". His comments, along with several prominent hedge fund investors, came before a sharp sell-off in bitcoin. The price for one bitcoin fell from around $4,340 to as low as $2,981.05 in the days after his comments.
        Bitcoin has since recovered to around $3,640.68, according to CoinDesk data. Despite this volatility, bitcoin's value has risen 264 percent this year.
        Dimon's comments came under criticism from several bitcoin investors and experts.
        "Comments like Jamie's show a failure to grasp the significance of the blockchain and the power of brand in a fundamental sea of change," said Scott Nelson, chairman and CEO of blockchain firm Sweetbridge, in an email to CNBC last week.
        Meanwhile, a company called Blockswater has filed a market abuse complaint in Sweden against Dimon and JPMorgan. Blockswater claims Dimon deliberately spread false and misleading information, according to a report by City A.M. JPMorgan Chase declined to comment, the report said.
        Money from thin airDuring the interview on Friday, Dimon also criticized bitcoin for not being a fiat currency formed by a government and backed by a central bank.
        "With central banks, (the money) says legal tender: you have to take this as payment. It's very cheap to do, it's very easy to move back and forth. JPMorgan moves $6 trillion around the world every day very efficiently, very quietly, very effectively and very cost efficient," he said.
        "Creating money out of thin air without government backing is very different from money with government backing."
        However, Dimon did praise the technology underpinning bitcoin '' the blockchain.
        "Blockchain is a technology that can be used for multiple things, including cryptocurrency. It could be used for digital dollars, and there are digital dollars already; a lot of the dollars held in our bank are digital," he said.
        WATCH: Bitcoin mining can land you in jail in this country
      VIDEO - This is what a pig's penis looks like. - YouTube
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        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:13
      VIDEO - Equifax Suffered a Hack Almost Five Months Earlier Than the Date It Disclosed - Bloomberg
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:39
        Equifax Inc. learned about a major breach of its computer systems in March -- almost five months before the date it has publicly disclosed, according to three people familiar with the situation.
        In a statement, the company said the March breach was not related to the hack that exposed the personal and financial data on 143 million U.S. consumers, but one of the people said the breaches involve the same intruders. Either way, the revelation that the 118-year-old credit-reporting agency suffered two major incidents in the span of a few months adds to a mounting crisis at the company, which is the subject of multiple investigations and announced the retirement of two of its top security executives on Friday.
        Equifax hired the security firm Mandiant on both occasions and may have believed it had the initial breach under control, only to have to bring the investigators back when it detected suspicious activity again on July 29, two of the people said.
        Equifax hasn't been transparent about the timing of the breach, Bloomberg's Michael Riley says.
        Source: Bloomberg
        Equifax's hiring of Mandiant the first time was unrelated to the July 29 incident, the company spokesperson said. In a statement issued after the publication of this story, the company said it experienced a security incident involving a payroll-related service during the 2016 tax season earlier this year. Equifax said the incident was reported to customers, affected individuals and regulators. Vitor De Souza, senior vice president for global marketing at FireEye Inc., Mandiant's parent company, declined to comment.
        The revelation of a March breach will complicate the company's efforts to explain a series of unusual stock sales by Equifax executives. If it's shown that those executives did so with the knowledge that either or both breaches could damage the company, they could be vulnerable to charges of insider trading. The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the stock sales, according to people familiar with the probe.
        Equifax has said the executives had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred when the transactions were made. The company's shares fell less than 1 percent to $94.06 at 11:06 a.m. in New York.
        Read Bloomberg's QuickTake Q&A on Equifax's security troubles
        New questions about Equifax's timeline are also likely to become central to the crush of lawsuits being filed against the Atlanta-based company. Investigators and consumers alike want to know how a trusted custodian of so many Americans' private data could let hackers gain access to the most important details of financial identity, including social security and driver's license numbers, and steal credit card numbers.
        In public statements since disclosing the intrusion on Sept. 7, Equifax said it became aware of the breach only after the data taken by the hackers had been gone for months. The company said it discovered the incident on July 29 and ''acted immediately to stop the intrusion and conduct a forensic review.'' Equifax hired Mandiant to help with the probe on Aug. 2, and said the investigators eventually learned that the hackers had accessed the data in mid-May.
        There's no evidence that the publicly disclosed chronology is inaccurate, but it leaves out a set of key events that began earlier this spring, the people familiar with the probe said.
        In early March, they said, Equifax began notifying a small number of outsiders and banking customers that it had suffered a breach and was bringing in a security firm to help investigate. The company's outside counsel, Atlanta-based law firm King & Spalding, first engaged Mandiant at about that time. While it's not clear how long the Mandiant and Equifax security teams conducted that probe, one person said there are indications it began to wrap up in May. Equifax has yet to disclose that March breach to the public.
        One possible explanation, according to several veteran security experts consulted by Bloomberg, is that the investigation didn't uncover evidence that data was accessed. Most data breach disclosure laws kick in only once there's evidence that sensitive personal identifying information like social security numbers and birth dates have been taken. The Equifax spokesperson said the company complied fully with all consumer notification requirements related to the March incident.
        Even so, the revelation of an earlier breach will likely raise questions for the company's beleaguered executives over whether that investigation was sufficiently thorough or if it was closed too soon. For example, Equifax has said that the hackers entered the company's computer banks the second time through a flaw in the company's web software that was known in March but not patched until the later activity was detected in July.
        Senate Banking Chairman Still Mum on Potential Equifax Hearing
        Security experts say victim companies have wide leeway about how deep an investigation they want outside investigators to do. Some clients will limit the breadth of access or the time outside investigators can spend on site. Others want a full assessment that encompasses their entire computer network and could include the identification of existing security vulnerabilities. Cost is often a consideration, but the victim company might also believe a breach's scope is limited.
        It's the stock sales by several executives that are likely to get the most scrutiny in light of the new timeline. On Aug. 1 and Aug. 2, regulatory filings show that three senior Equifax executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million, with none of the filings listing the transactions as being part of scheduled 10b5-1 trading plans. Equifax's Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth $946,374; Joseph Loughran, president of U.S. information solutions, exercised options to dispose of stock worth $584,099; and Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, sold $250,458 of stock.
        Equifax has said the executives ''had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time,'' and the company spokesperson declined to make them available for comment.
        Under the company's publicly disclosed timeline, there were fewer than a handful of days between the stock sales and the date Equifax said the breach was discovered. Under the new timeline, those sales come several months after the March breach but before the public had any knowledge of major security issues at one of the country's three big credit-reporting agencies.
        The new timeline is also likely to focus scrutiny on an earlier sale by Gamble of 14,000 shares on May 23. According to a regulatory filing, which didn't indicate that the sale was part of a scheduled trading plan, the value of that transaction was $1.91 million, more than twice the size of his Aug. 1 disposal of 6,500 shares for $946,374.
        If the two hacks are unrelated it could be that different hacking teams had different goals. One clue has emerged that suggests one goal of the attackers was to use Equifax as a way into the computers of major banks, according to a fourth person familiar with the matter.
        This person said a large Canadian bank has determined that hackers claiming to sell celebrity profiles from Equifax on the dark web -- information that appears to be fraudulent, or recycled from other breaches -- did in fact steal the username and password for an application programming interface, or API, linking the bank's back-end servers to Equifax.
        According to the person and a Sept. 14 internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, the gateway linked a test and development site used by the bank's wealth management division to Equifax, allowing the two entities to share information digitally.
        The discovery suggests that the attackers may have been trying to piggyback off of Equifax's connections to large banks and other financial institutions as a backdoor way to hack those entities and gain access to sensitive partner systems. The company spokesperson said Equifax is ''working diligently with our bank partners to assess and mitigate any impact to their operations.''
        '-- With assistance by Anders Melin, and Chris Strohm
      VIDEO - Protesters Interrupt Comey's Speech At H | The Daily Caller
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        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:31
        Former FBI Director James Comey's keynote speech at Howard University was interrupted by protesters singing ''We Shall Not Be Moved.''
        Comey was set to speak at Howard's 2017-18 convocation as the school's endowed chair of public policy, but he didn't receive a warm welcome from some students at the historically black college.
        A group of students in the back of the auditorium stood up during Comey's speech with their fists raised to indicate ''black power.'' The group sang the old spiritual song, ''We Shall Not Be Moved'' and broke out into chants about being black.
        ''I said I love being black!'' one protester yelled, cuing the other protesters to repeat it back. ''I love the color of my skin!''
        WATCH:
        Other students responded by chanting, ''Let him speak!'' After standing patiently for some time, Comey finally said, ''I hope you'll listen to what I have to say. I listened to you for five minutes.''
        CNN reports some protesters chanted, ''get out James Comey, you are not our homie.''
        WATCH:
        Follow Amber on Twitter
      VIDEO - Political assault at Unibar near Aarhus University, Denmark - YouTube
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Sat, 23 Sep 2017 11:27
      VIDEO - Shaheen Blames Russia For Pelosi Protest | The Daily Caller
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 11:13
        Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen suggested Tuesday morning that Russia is to blame for the illegal immigrant protesters who derailed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's community event on Monday.
        Video from the protest shows the crowd of pro-amnesty activists surrounding Pelosi and shouting her down, while accusing her of being insufficiently pro-immigrant.
        When asked why the activists were targeting Pelosi, who has been working with President Trump to try to strike a deal on DACA, Shaheen struggled to give an answer. (RELATED: Soros-Funded Activists Demand Democrats Oppose Border Security At Any Cost)
        ''Why, of all people, is [Pelosi] getting the backlash from DREAMers?'' asked CNN host Alisyn Camerota.
        ''DREAMers and young people across the country are frustrated, and they want to go to college and join the military and get jobs and be Americans, which is what they are. This is the only country most of them have ever known,'' Shaheen answered, largely dodging the question as to why the activists have turned their anger on Democrats.
        When pressed repeatedly on whether Pelosi's collaboration with Trump on DACA, which has angered left-wing activists, led to the anti-Pelosi protests, Shaheen suggested instead that Russia was to blame.
        You'll have to ask them. Who knows what stirred up this kind of animosity. What we know we know about the Russians and their interference in the 2016 elections is that they tried to increase divisions within this country,'' Shaheen said.
        ''We saw it again in Charlottesville. We don't know what's behind this, but what we do know is we need to take action to protect the DREAMers to allow them to stay in America.''
        WATCH:
      VIDEO - Woman brandishing a handgun, machete threatens people at Kardashian boutique - YouTube
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 10:30
      VIDEO - Here's What It Sounds Like Using One Of Those Stupid "Resistance" Call Scripts - YouTube
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 02:47
      VIDEO - Calling My Senator About Healthcare Using Indivisible's Ridiculous Call Script - YouTube
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Fri, 22 Sep 2017 02:46
      VIDEO - Facebook Russian ads released to Congress, Mark Zuckerberg says in live stream statement on election - CBS News
        Link to Article
        Archived Version
        Thu, 21 Sep 2017 23:41
        Last Updated Sep 21, 2017 6:59 PM EDT
        Facebook has agreed to disclose ads to Congress that were purchased by Russians on the social media platform in that country's effort to influence the 2016 election, the company announced Thursday.
        CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the brief announcement in a live video update on his Facebook page.
        "I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity," he said. "I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy -- that's not what we stand for."
        Zuckerberg said that Facebook has found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that have attempted to influence elections around the world.
        "I wish I could tell you that we are going to be able to stop all interference. But that just wouldn't be realistic," he said. "There will always be bad actors in the world and we can't prevent all government from interference."
        Facebook is taking nine steps, he said, to protect election integrity moving forward.
        He said Facebook is actively working with the federal government on its ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the election. When the social networking platform discovered the Russia-linked ads recently, they provided them to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Zuckerberg said, and it is now providing those ads to Congress.Zuckerberg said that Facebook will continue its own investigation into what happened on its platform and will continue to work with the government in discovering how foreign actors and other former Soviet states used its tools.Going forward, Zuckerberg said that Facebook will work to make political advertising more transparent and that anyone will be able to visit an advertiser's page and view the ads they are disseminating on the platform.Facebook, he said, will strengthen its own ad review process for political ads.Facebook is also increasing its investment in security -- specifically in election integrity.He said Facebook will expand partnerships with election commissions around the world.Zuckerberg said that it's working to increase the sharing of threat information with other tech companies.Facebook, he said, is working proactively to strengthen the democratic process.Zuckerberg said that Facebook is working to ensure the integrity of the upcoming German elections. Play Video
        CBS Evening News Facebook promises greater cooperation in Russia investigationFacebook promised greater cooperation in the investigation of Russian meddling in the U.S. election. Founder Mark Zuckerberg said the company wil...
        The tech giant has been heavily criticized in recent weeks over its advertising policy, with critics '' notably Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia -- alleging that ads purchased by Russian persons and entities could have influenced last year's presidential election. Facebook also came under fire for allowing advertisers to specifically target anti-Semites .
        Warner told a CBS affiliate in Richmond, Virginia, that the proof of Facebook's cooperation will be revealed in what it hands over to Congress.
        "I feel like Facebook has finally been responsible, but the proof will be in the extent of the materials they give us next week, and then will they continue to work with us to identify other sites that may have originated in Russia," Warner said.
        Hemu Nigam, an Internet security expert, told CBS News the identity of the ad buyers shouldn't have been a mystery to the social media giant, because they would know where those IP addresses originated.
        Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been tasked with investigating any potential Russian interference in the election as well as any ties President Trump or his associates have or had with the Russian government.
        (C) 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
  CLIPS & DOCS
    Art
    ACA
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      McCain to oppose Graham-Cassidy, likely sinking Obamacare repeal.mp3
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    CYBER!
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      Facebook Russian ads that influenced election released to Congress.mp3
      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—1-Intro.mp3
      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—2-FROM Russia.mp3
      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—3-Who they’re looking for.mp3
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      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—5-Bad Content.mp3
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      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—7-Anti-Bullying Tools.mp3
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      Zuckerberg statement on Russian Ads—9-Regular accounts have MUCH bigger influence than ads.mp3
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