Money Is Not Wealth

On the eve of USA's November 2008 national election, an urgent proposal for an unsecured $700-Billion, maybe $800-Billion loan to mismanaged banks and stockbrokers was generating understandable controversy. In its initial form the Bush Buddies Bailout was one more Weapon of Mass Deception, a (later, a two-step) public welfare program for wealthy people who game the system. But the problem remains.

What, exactly, went - and continues to go - wrong? What ARE reasonable goals, what are NOT, and how might a more populist government reach good ones?

The more we read, the more we realize that - as much as we want our money back - that is only one of many ways our country is becoming impoverished. Often by corporations, which most definitely are NOT people! (For one thing, these rapacious corporations have no shame.)

Never waste the opportunities offered by a good crisis.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (Fifteenth Cent. Florentine writer and statesman)

Yes, as through this world I've wandered,
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?
- Bertolt Brecht

Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.
- Jimmy Carter (1979, as U.S. President)

It is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working-class - especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions.
- What Life Means to Me, by Jack London (1905)

... peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace "could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it." War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War served the vital function of diverting collective aggression. They recommended "credible substitutes" and paying a "blood price" to emulate the economic functions of war. Prospective government-devised alternatives to war included reports of alien life-forms, the reintroduction of a "euphemized form" of slavery "consistent with modern technology and political processes", and - one deemed particularly promising in gaining the attention of the malleable masses - the threat of "gross pollution of the environment".
- Wikipedia's summary of The Report From Iron Mountain (1967)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
- U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
- John Adams, letter to Jonathan Jackson (2 October 1780), The Works of John Adams, vol 9, p.511.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
      -- President Abraham Lincoln (1864 letter to William Fletcher Elkin), or faked in Caldwell Remedy Company pamphlet (May 10, 1888), or...
         <http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/1-1.pdf> (pp. 4-6)
        <https://americanmissive.com/2009/03/20/did-abraham-lincoln-say-that/>

What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth. For the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him only?
- Massasoit

Only when the last tree has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will you realize your money cannot be eaten.
- an old Cree saying? Maybe not; but good.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.
- U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938

Train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.
- Walt Whitman

NEW: Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life (Institute for Critical Digital Culture, 2018)
"Every click on a website and every swipe on a smartphone may trigger a wide variety of hidden
data sharing mechanisms distributed across several companies and, as a result, directly affect a
person’s available choices. Digital tracking and profiling, in combination with personalization,
are not only used to monitor, but also to influence peoples’ behavior. ...
"Facebook uses at least 52,000 personal attributes to sort and categorize its 1.9 billion users by,
for example, their political views, ethnicity, and income. In order to do so, the platform
analyzes their posts, likes, shares, friends, photos, movements, and many other kinds of behaviors.
"In addition, Facebook acquires data on its users from other companies. In 2013, the platform
began its partnership with the four data brokers Acxiom, Epsilon, Datalogix and BlueKai, the latter
two of which were subsequently acquired by the IT giant Oracle. These companies help Facebook track
and profile its users even better than it already does by providing it with data collected from
beyond its platform."

NEW: Losing my religion for equality (Jimmy Carter, 2009)
"The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God."

NEW: The Gerasimov Doctrine (Politico, 2017)
"It’s Russia’s new chaos theory of political warfare. And it’s probably being used on you."

NEW: "Who am I? Why am I here?" (#25thAmendmentNow)
"A running thread of Trump not knowing where he is, how he got there, or the appropriate response to give in the moment."

NEW: "Who am I? Why am I here?" (#25thAmendmentNow)
"A running thread of Trump not knowing where he is, how he got there, or the appropriate response to give in the moment. Some mental health professionals are concerned that he may be exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's, but he might just be an idiot."

NEW: The Hamilton 68 Dashboard tracks Russian influence operations on Twitter. (Hosted by the Alliance for Securing Democracy.)

NEW: CONGRESSIONAL SCORECARD; Congressional Civil Liberties Record in the Trump Era ACLU, 2018)

Pertinent Posts

Debian GNU/Linux project to mark 25th birthday TODAY (IT Wire, August 16, 2018)
"Maintaining a Debian system was made simple after some developers created a package management system known as apt. Apt — and its derivatives like aptitude and synaptic — have served to make the task of updating a Debian system simple."
(Ubuntu, the most popular Linux, is based on Debian.)
“Natural” birth-control app dogged by unwanted pregnancies gets FDA approval (Ars Technica, August 15, 2018)
"Body temp is unreliable for birth control, but FDA approval clears way for similar apps."
ACLU: Federal agencies setting ‘trap’ to deport immigrants (Associated Press, August 15, 2018)
"Federal immigration agencies have launched a coordinated campaign to arrest and deport immigrants seeking to become legal U.S. residents through marriage, according to documents released this week in a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union."
Hackers have already weighed in help 'Putin's favorite Congressman' Dana Rohrabacher (Daily KOS, August 15, 2018)
"A Democratic challenger to Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman so obviously in the pocket of Vladimir Putin that other Republican congressmen joke about how he’s in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, is going public over hacking attempts that plagued his campaign before the recent primary. Stem-cell scientist Dr. Hans Keirstead lost the June 5 primary in California Congressional District 48 by a razor-thin 125 votes, finishing behind Rohrabacher and real estate investor Harley Rouda in California’s top-two primary system."
Twitter suspends Alex Jones for urging people to keep “battle rifles” ready (Ars Technica, August 15, 2018)
"After holding out for a few weeks, Twitter joined the chorus of social media and tech giants that have punished conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for questionable content. But the catch is that Jones' ban will last just seven days."
Gunrunning USA (Tom Dispatch, August 14, 2018)
"Every year an average of 17,102 children and teens and 116,255 Americans overall are shot in 'murders, assaults, suicides, and suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, or by police intervention.' And this doesn’t happen for no reason. Consider these recent estimates from the Small Arms Survey, a gun research group: 'There were approximately 857 million civilian-held firearms in the world at the end of 2017... National ownership rates vary from about 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents in the United States to less than 1 firearm for every 100 residents in countries like Indonesia, Japan, Malawi, and several Pacific island states.' In fact, the U.S. leads the rest of the world by a long shot in gun ownership, with 45% of those 857 million weapons (you do the math) right here in this country. War-torn Yemen comes in a distant second."
Three More Intel Chip Exploits Surface ITPro Today, August 14, 2018)
"There's more evidence today that Intel has been playing fast and loose with security in order to stay ahead of the fast-chip competition. Today it was announced that there are three more Meltdown/Spectre-type Intel chip exploits. The vulnerability affects Intel's desktop, workstation, and server CPUs."
(And voting-machine reliability.)
Election Websites, Back-End Systems Most at Risk of Cyberattack in Midterms (Dark Reading, August 14, 2018)
"Both adult and kid hackers demonstrated at DEF CON how the hackable voting machine may be the least of our worries in the 2018 elections."
Using common social media tactics to subvert US elections (Associated Press, August 14, 2018)
"The aim of these possibly Russia-linked perpetrators appears to be to draw in as many people as possible with emotional appeals and then spur them to action. In this case, though, the action is public protest rather than affinity marketing, and the goal is to sow dissension rather than to build brand awareness."
Trump warns Cuomo: Anybody who runs against me ‘suffers’ (Associated Press, August 14, 2018)
"Trump said that Cuomo ... called him and told him, 'I’ll never run for president against you.'
'But maybe he wants to,' Trump went on, adding: 'Oh, please do it. Please. Please. He did say that. Maybe he meant it. The one thing we know — and they do say — anybody that runs against Trump suffers. That’s the way it should be.'"
(mr. president, that's NOT what Teddy Roosevelt meant by a "Bully Pulpit".)
Trump lashes out at Omarosa, calls her ‘that dog’ (Associated Press, August 14, 2018)
"While Trump trades in insults on a near daily basis, deeming Manigault Newman a 'dog' was a stunning move in a row that touched on several sensitive issues in Trump’s White House, including a lack of racial diversity among senior officials, security concerns — Manigault Newman taped her firing in the White House Situation Room — and extraordinary measures such as non-disclosure agreements to keep ex-employees quiet."
Gates testimony dredges up Trump inaugural spending mystery (Associated Press, August 14, 2018)
"Donald Trump’s inaugural committee pushed back hard last summer on questions about whether the unprecedented $107 million budget for the event was fraught with cost overruns and misspending. A top inauguration official assured The Associated Press that spending had been restrained and monitored.
In court last week, that same official — Rick Gates — acknowledged that he personally may have pocketed some of the inaugural committee’s money.
Though only a footnote to Gates’ disclosure of tax fraud, extramarital affairs and embezzlement from Manafort, the admission raised new questions about how well the inaugural committee tracked its own spending and why Gates was chosen for a top inauguration job in the first place."
Google Tracks You Even If Location History's Off. Here's How to Stop It (Wired, August 13, 2018)
"If, like most people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong. According to an AP investigation published Monday, even if you disable Location History, the search giant still tracks you every time you open Google Maps, get certain automatic weather updates, or search for things in your browser. The problem affects anyone with an Android phone and iPhone users running Google Maps on their devices. There's a way to stop it—but it takes some digging."
It's easy to physically gain admin access on a voting machine that is used in 18 states. (Twitter, August 11, 2018)
"Requires no tools and takes under 2 minutes."
Republican Gov. Baker Signs Automatic Voter Registration Bill Into Law In Massachusetts (Huffington Post, August 10, 2018)
"This is a victory for voters, and for a healthy and vibrant democracy."
Challenging the Electoral College’s winner take all system in Massachusetts (Boston Globe, August 10, 2018)
"A Harvard Law professor, former governor William F. Weld, and Al Gore’s onetime attorney are making a long-shot bid to change the Electoral College system, arguing that it encourages presidential candidates to devote all their time to a handful of swing states and ignore the vast majority of the country. The high-powered group is suing two blue states, Massachusetts and California, and two red states, Texas and South Carolina, arguing that the winner-take-all system that they and 44 other states use to allocate electors to the Electoral College effectively disenfranchises millions of voters who back the losing candidates."
Hack causes pacemakers to deliver life-threatening shocks (Ars Technica, August 9, 2018)
"Researchers criticize device maker Medtronic for slow response."
Over 20 Flaws in Most Popular Healthcare Software Put 120 Million Patients At Risk (Infosecurity Group, August 9, 2018)
"OpenEMR develops open source electronic health record (EHR) and practice management tools, which are used to serve an estimated 30 million patients in the US and over three-times that number globally."
Puerto Rican officials confirm Hurricane Maria death toll exceeds 1,400 (The Weather Channel, August 9, 2018)
"The staggering figure is more than 20 times the official death toll, which stands at 64, according to National Public Radio (NPR)."
US scientist who edited human embryos with CRISPR responds to critics (MIT Technology Review, August 8, 2018)
"Can we safely fix the DNA of human embryos in a lab dish?"
Omarosa Secretly Recorded Trump and Played the Audio to Others, Sources Say (Daily Beast, August 8, 2018)
"The reality-TV star-turned White House official-turned reality-TV star again promises her new book, UNHINGED, will provide a candid and revealing look at her time inside the Trump administration. Part of the book documents what she describes as Trump’s 'mental decline.' The president, she claims, 'rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next.'"
What You Found In 3 Million Russian Troll Tweets (FiveThirtyEight, August 8, 2018)
"Last week, FiveThirtyEight published nearly 3 million tweets sent by handles affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian 'troll factory.' That group was a defendant in one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments, which accused the IRA of interfering with American electoral and political processes."
The Chinese threat that an aircraft carrier can’t stop (Washington Post, August 7, 2018)
"This year’s focus was on 'Maintaining America’s Edge' in the dawning era of high-tech combat, and the big takeaway was this: The future of warfare is now, and China is poised to dominate it.
Speakers at the conference described a new generation of combat systems, powered by artificial intelligence, cyberweapons and robots that can operate on land, sea and air. But America is still largely wedded to legacy weapons of the past — superbly engineered (but super-expensive) aircraft carriers, bombers, fighter jets and submarines."
Even If Emission Reduction Targets Are Met, Earth Still Heading Towards ‘Hothouse’ State (Huffington Post, August 7, 2018)
“It may be very difficult or impossible to stop the whole row of dominoes from tumbling over. Places on Earth will become uninhabitable if ‘Hothouse Earth’ becomes the reality.”
Study: Earth risks tipping into 'Hothouse State' (Phys.org, August 6, 2018)
"The planet urgently needs to transition to a green economy because fossil fuel pollution risks pushing the Earth into a lasting and dangerous 'hothouse state', researchers warned on Monday. If polar ice continues to melt, forests are slashed and greenhouse gases rise to new highs—as they currently do each year—the Earth will pass a tipping point. Crossing that threshold 'guarantees a climate 4-5 Celsius (7-9 Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial times, and sea levels that are 10 to 60 meters (30-200 feet) higher than today,' cautioned scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
NEW: An Army of Deer Ticks Carrying Lyme Disease Is Advancing and Here’s Why It Will Only Get Worse (Mother Jones, August 6, 2018)
"'We haven’t been able to find any clean ticks. They’re ALL infected.' Yet in Maine, Gov. Paul LePage—a conservative Republican who has questioned global-warming science—won’t acknowledge the phenomenon. His administration has suppressed state plans and vetoed legislation aimed at limiting the damage, former government officials say. They say state employees, including at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, have been told not to discuss climate change. It appears the problem has been swept under the rug."
Trump's Self Sabotage Is Epic, Meeting With Mueller Could Be His Waterloo (Daily KOS, August 6, 2018)
"Donald Trump has lived his life in a binary choice world. As biographer Tony Schwartz puts it, 'You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it.' This narrow, defensive outlook took hold at a very early age, and it never evolved. ‘When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now,’ Trump told a recent biographer, ‘I’m basically the same.”’
Now the first grader wants to take on the prosecutor’s prosecutor, Robert Mueller. His lawyer Jay Sekulow said Sunday, 'The President has been clear that he wants to interview. I will tell you his legal team is concerned.' Concerned? They’re wearing Depends!"
Rick Wilson: Trump’s Tweets May Actually Be His Undoing (Rolling Stone, August 6, 2018)
"President Trump’s manic Twitter dysentery over the weekend contained more than a few nuggets that would have shamed, embarrassed or mortified normal presidents in a normal era. The impulsive president has backed himself into a corner, and Robert Mueller knows it."
New Pew study hints at 2018 Democratic rout (Daily KOS, August 6, 2018)
"The Pew Research Center recently released a study comparing Democratic and Republican primary turnout this year with that of 2014, when Republicans eye-gouged Democrats all night long on Election Day. Democratic turnout is way up compared to 2014, and is also outpacing GOP turnout by leaps and bounds."
Fox News Correspondent Conor Powell Resigns: ‘Lots of Reporters Are Very Unhappy’ (The Wrap, August 6, 2018)
"Conor Powell was 'uncomfortable with the direction of the news organization in recent months,'”
US EPA is now allowing asbestos back into manufacturing (The Architects Newspaper, August 6, 2018)
"The report states that the agency will no longer consider the effect or presence of substances in the air, ground, or water in its risk assessments."
Wells Fargo blames 'computer glitch' for hundreds of customers lost homes (Daily KOS, August 6, 2018)
"About 625 customers were incorrectly denied a loan modification or were not offered one even though they were qualified, according to the filing. In about 400 cases, the customers were ultimately foreclosed upon."
David Hogg and Twitter troll the NRA’s financial woes—some offer NRA ‘thoughts and prayers’ (Daily KOS, August 5, 2018)
"The NRA admitted in a recent court filing that it’s hurting financially thanks to activism by the teenage survivors of the Parkland school massacre. Clearly the young people are winning. '4,000,000 17-year-olds turn 18 before the November election.'"
3D-printed (and CNC-milled) guns: Nine questions you were too afraid to ask (Ars Technica, August 5, 2018)
"Numerous states want Cody Wilson's gun files to not be posted online—they're too late."
NEW: Yuval Noah Harari extract: ‘Humans are a post-truth species’ (The Guardian, August 5, 2018)
"In his new book, '21 Lessons for the 21st Century', the bestselling author turns his attention to the problems we face today. Here, he argues that 'fake news' is much older than Facebook."
Trump's Supreme Court nominee argued presidents should be shielded from all criminal probes — even questioning (Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2018)
"Since the Watergate era of the 1970s, four presidents — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and now Donald Trump — have faced criminal investigations into their actions led by special prosecutors. For Nixon and Clinton, those probes led to impeachment charges in Congress.
But Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, has argued these special investigations are a mistake and may well be unconstitutional. Though he was a key player in the investigation of Clinton, Kavanaugh has since concluded that a sitting president should be accorded temporary immunity from any criminal probe while in office."
Trump denies his son is at legal risk, yet concedes the 2016 meeting with Russians was to get dirt on Clinton (Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2018)
"Trump again referred to the probe’s purpose as a 'hoax,' a characterization he has often made publicly despite U.S. intelligence agencies’ certitude of Russia’s election interference. Trump has previously said he was unaware of the meeting beforehand, though his former lawyer is reportedly prepared to say otherwise. The president repeated his assertion in a series of Sunday morning tweets."
The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America (New York Times, August 4, 2018)
"A new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that children are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures."
Captive Audience: How Companies Make Millions Charging Prisoners to Send An Email (Wired, August 3, 2018)
"For companies like JPay, the business model is simple: Whatever it costs to send a message, prisoners and their families will find a way to pay it."
How History Classes Helped Create a 'Post-Truth' America (The Atlantic, August 2nd, 2018)
"The author of Lies My Teacher Told Me discusses how schools’ flawed approach to teaching the country’s past affects its civic health."
Will Lockheed Martin Change The World With Its New Fusion Reactor? (Forbes, August 1, 2018)
"The lack of greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear waste, or safety hazards means that widespread adoption of the technology could halt climate change in its tracks. More than that, it might end global energy scarcity altogether. We are talking about an energy revolution of epic proportions – if we can just get it to work."
NEW: Exodus: The Climate Migration Crisis (The Weather Channel, with 7-min. video, August 1, 2018)
"Waves crest up to 27 feet, landing so hard they launch over three-story houses. Winds gust to over 80 mph, sending trees to the ground and knocking out power to 92 percent of the city. Entire beaches push inland, piling several feet of rock and sand onto roads and covering street signs, porches and mailboxes. Houses shake, sloshing water in toilet bowls. Slabs of concrete from sidewalks and neighborhood sheds float down the street as white-capped waves form on the streets."
(Scituate, Massachusetts, this past March. For us, this was very close to home!)
Here's How America Uses Its Land (Bloomberg, July 31, 2018)
20 terrifying uses of artificial intelligence (Tech Republic, July 31, 2018)
"Many advances in artificial intelligence are innovative and extraordinary, but some are downright creepy. Here are 20 of the eeriest ways people are using, or could use, AI."
Tesla Launches A $1,500 Surfboard, Sells out Almost Immediately. (Futurism, July 30, 2018)
How Record Heat Wreaked Havoc on Four Continents (New York Times, July 30, 2018)
"Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones."
Stunning Editorial From the New Yorker (Daily KOS, July 29, 2018)
"The only resolution the President has left to us, unless he resigns, is for Congress to begin consideration of impeachment proceedings. The country surveys a scene of devastation. The wreckage of American institutions lies all around us. Any future under the present leadership is unthinkable. The point of no return has been passed, and the country has no choice but to take the first, dread steps toward putting its house in order."
(The good news is that it was about President Nixon in 1973. The bad news is the good fit for now.)
Trump Breaches 'Off-the-Record' Promise to the New York Times with Utterly Unhinged Rage-Tweets (Daily KOS, July 29, 2018)
"For someone who relentlessly bashes the media for its honesty and ethics, Donald Trump seems to have little concern for either, particularly with regard to the media. And this goes much farther than his reckless attacks that media experts have warned are likely to result in violence against journalists who are just trying to do their job."
California's Fires Are Creating Volcanic Clouds (Outside, July 28, 2018)
"All three of the state's major blazes are making rare pyrocumulus clouds right now."
Actually, Republicans Do Believe in Climate Change (New York Times, July 28, 2018)
"Republican opposition to climate policy has occurred, in part, because climate policy has been a Democratic issue. As part of our research, we interviewed several retired members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who stressed this point. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, spoke of his opposition in his first several years in Congress: 'All I knew was that Al Gore was for it, and therefore I was against it.'"
NEW: Mike Pence, Holy Terror. Are you sure you want to get rid of Donald Trump? (New York Times, July 28, 2018)
"There are problems with impeaching Donald Trump. A big one is the holy terror waiting in the wings.
That would be Mike Pence, who mirrors the boss more than you realize. He’s also self-infatuated. Also a bigot. Also a liar. Also cruel.
To that brimming potpourri he adds two ingredients that Trump doesn’t genuinely possess: the conviction that he’s on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy."
Precinct Data Shows Rich, White Neighborhoods Flipping Democratic in 2016. Will It Last? (New York Times, July 27, 2018)
"Republicans have been the party of the rich and Democrats the party of the poor for about as long as political scientists have collected data on American elections. That might not be quite so true anymore, at least among white voters."
Trump touts economic growth, but it hasn't lifted his support - or his party's election prospects (Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2018)
Amazon’s Rekognition messes up, matches 28 lawmakers to mugshots (Ars Technica, July 26, 2018)
"Facial recognition historically has resulted in more false positives for African-Americans. The ACLU is concerned that over-reliance on faulty facial recognition scans, particularly against citizens of color, would result in a possible fatal interaction with law enforcement. Amazon's Rekognition has already been used by a handful of law enforcement agencies nationwide. Because of these substantive errors, the ACLU is again calling on Congress to enact a moratorium on law enforcement’s use of facial recognition."
IBM Watson Reportedly Recommended Cancer Treatments That Were 'Unsafe and Incorrect' (Gizmodo, July 25, 2018)
"Stat reviewed documents that were included in two presentations given in June and July 2017 by IBM Watson’s former deputy health chief Andrew Norden. The documents were reportedly shared with IBM Watson Health management.
According to Stat, those documents provided strong criticism of the Watson for Oncology system, and stated that the 'often inaccurate' suggestions made by the product bring up 'serious questions about the process for building content and the underlying technology.'"
Judge blocks Iowa voter ID law (Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 25, 2018)
"Ruling restores absentee voting period, bars ID requirements."
Ten Reasons The Cohen Tape Is Worse Than Anyone Realizes and There Are More To Come (Daily KOS, July 25, 2018)
"George Will is playing a senior leadership role in this effort by creating political distance between the Party and Trump. He understands that nothing bad he says about Trump the man will sway the base. Instead his true goal here is to short circuit any threat to the viability of the work of the Trump administration. We see the exact same response from Ryan and McConnell, pretend to be dismayed by individual statements or actions but do nothing to stop the wrecking ball from doing its work."
In his own words: Trump on Russian interference and Vladimir Putin (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2018)
"In a recent seven-day stretch, Trump suggested that Russia didn’t meddle, then sided with the intelligence community, at least in part, then appeared to reverse himself again when he tweeted that 'it is all a big hoax.'"
How Much Money Are The Trumps Making Off Of The White House? (Politicus USA, July 24, 2018)
"If Democrats take back all or part of Congress, they have already signaled that they will be coming after Trump’s profiteering off of the presidency. There is already legislation written that would forbid the government from spending a dime at Trump properties. When Trump used monetization as an excuse to take away security clearances, he opened a can of worms, and if he pushes it, he is definitely not going to like the results."
Reality Winner warned America that Russia hacked our voting rolls. Why is she in jail? (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 24, 2018)
"Last week’s news that special counsel Robert Mueller had the goods on 12 high-level Russian spies whose job was to hack computers and muck up America’s 2016 presidential election was a political bombshell - but also a resounding vindication for a 26-year-old Georgia woman with the wonderfully poetic name of Reality Winner."
NEW: The Politics Of Friendship (Forbes, July 23, 2018)
"A polarized populace unable to reach across the aisle or even across the fence is not the America that we have been raised to believe in, or what I believe any of us really want."
Perovskite Challenges Silicon’s Dominance in Solar Power (Daily Beast, July 23, 2018)
"Hardly a week goes by without reports of a perovskite (pronounced p’raf-skite) solar cell approach toppling another efficiency record. In the past month or so records have been set with a tandem cell, 7-cell mini module, inverted cell and the largest, most efficient flexible film-type cell. No solar technology has ever advanced this quickly."
5 Reasons You Should Switch From Windows To Linux Right Now (Forbes, July 23, 2018)
"A ton of people are interested -- are at least actively curious -- about ditching Windows and making the jump to Linux. With that in mind, I wanted to present five reasons that may lead you to consider switching. Know that these are subjective, and they're targeted at the average Windows user and not folks who rely on Windows-exclusive applications for a paycheck.
One thing to know right up front: the modern Linux desktop OS is no longer the obtuse, bewildering and command line driven thing it used to be. Not remotely."
The US is richer because of Europe—no matter what Trump says (Quartz, July 23, 2018)
"Trump’s trade war with Europe and his hostility toward broader Western alliances such as NATO portend a future of diminished standards of living—as a direct result of less trade—and greater global conflict—indirectly due to reduced economic integration.
By calling Europe a 'foe,' Trump makes clear that he simply doesn’t understand why rich countries trade with one another, which, to be fair, is something that also puzzled economists for many years."
The mystery of Russia’s missing wealth shows how Putin retains his power (Quartz, July 22, 2018)
"Russia is a nuclear power. But an economic power it is not. Last year, the country’s GDP totaled around $1.6 trillion, less than that of the state of Texas. Nor is its wealth growing: Russia’s GDP in 2017 was smaller than it was in 2013, adjusting for price changes.
And yet there’s no question of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s international influence. Witness his ability to hack bigger, richer countries’ democratic elections, or, as this week’s Helsinki summit highlighted, to cow Donald Trump. The Kremlin’s knack for punching above its weight when it comes to geopolitics is a reminder that wealth sometimes matter less than what you do with it.
Or, more precisely, to whom you give it. Oligarchs are an essential part of Putin’s power apparatus. And as a recent working paper (pdf) by economists Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman, and Filip Novokmet reveals, the wealth that won their fealty came directly from the country’s reserves—and, indeed, from the pockets of the Russian people."
World War III started during the 2016 elections—and the United States lost the first battle (Daily KOS, July 22, 2018)
"The battle raged on during the 2016 elections, and most of America had no idea it even happened. Russia was so skillful in opening up this war that there are wide swaths of Americans who either do not believe the attacks happened, or are siding with the Russians.
The attack on our presidential elections will have far greater implications than the attack on Pearl Harbor, and will end up being far worse than 9/11. It is an attack not on our naval fleet, not on our Army, and not on our financial centers. Instead, it was a strike right at the core of our democracy—the very fabric of our nation."
Why Google won't break a sweat about EU ruling (The Register, July 20, 2018)
"If you're expecting Tizens, Fires or alt-droids to flower, don't hold your breath."
This blistering resignation letter from White House adviser Elizabeth Holtzman is a must-read. (Upworthy, July 20, 2018)
"The woman who helped write the Refugee Act is resigning in disgust over Trump's immigration policies."
Novichok poisoning: Russian suspects in Skripal attack sent coded message saying 'The package has been delivered' (The Telegraph, July 20, 2018)
"The coded dispatch helped cement suspicions that it was the Russian state behind the attempted assassination, before counter terror police using facial recognition technology and CCTV images were able to identify those responsible."
Four reasons we’ve reached a tipping point on Trump, by Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post, July 20, 2018)
"Rather than anger or anti-Americanism, the pervasive sentiment among our closest allies is one of sympathy for plight, anxiety and sadness. In Western Europe, Trump is regarded as a figure the allies must jointly weather and manage.
The issue is no longer 'merely' whether Trump colluded with the Russians and committed obstruction of justice, but whether he is a clear-and-present danger to the United States. The conclusion should be obvious: Giving aid and comfort to our biggest geopolitical foe and engaging in private sessions that may compromise American interests even further are together now our greatest security threat. Impeachment is a political question with grave implications for our political system. But when the president’s conduct poses a threat to the nation, removal of the president who poses the threat may be essential.
It is not an exaggeration to say a party that continues support for Trump is anti-American."
(Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Washington Post, offering reported opinion from a center-right perspective.)
NEW: Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do?,by Will Hurd (New York Times, July 19, 2018)
"Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president would be one of them.
The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans."
("Lawmakers must keep the American people informed of the current danger", writes a Republican congressman from Texas.)
NEW: 34 years ago, a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America (Big Think, July 18, 2018)
"In 1984, Bezmenov gave an interview to G. Edward Griffin from which much can be learned today. His most chilling point was that there’s a long-term plan put in play by Russia to defeat America through psychological warfare and 'demoralization'. It’s a long game that takes decades to achieve but it may already be bearing fruit.
Bezmenov made the point that the work of the KGB mainly does not involve espionage, despite what our popular culture may tell us. Most of the work, 85% of it, was 'a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare.'"
NEW: Kushner sidesteps Democratic National Committee lawyers (Politico, July 18, 2018)
"The complaint is the latest development in the DNC’s lawsuit claiming Trump’s presidential campaign conspired with Russia in 2016 at the expense of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Kushner is a defendant in the case, along with a long list of others in Trump’s inner circle, including campaign manager Paul Manafort, adviser Roger Stone and Russia itself.
In a court filing Tuesday, DNC lawyers said Kushner, a defendant in the case, has avoided service at least six times since June, when they tried and failed three times to deliver court documents to someone at Kushner’s Manhattan apartment who refused to accept them.
They went scouting for Kushner at his Washington home in Kalorama, where they were rebuffed by Secret Service agents, who told the process server to “figure out another way.”
Two days later, on June 28, lawyers for the DNC tried sending Kushner the documents by certified mail, which requires a signature. The U.S. Postal Service couldn’t deliver. Returned to sender.
Back in Manhattan, Democrats made a final attempt on July 16, when a process server tried to drop the summons in the mailroom or paste it to Kushner’s door. The building’s staff refused to cooperate, saying the first son-in-law no longer lived in the building."
Ms. Sanders, have you no decency? (Daily KOS, July 18, 2018)
"Something has changed in the press room. Normally, when soulless Sarah gets tired of her back and forth with a particular reporter, she says 'I'm going to move on now' to the reporter and calls on another reporter. Clearly the press corps is fed up with that cop out.
Today, time after time, the original reporter just kept repeating the same question over and over again, louder each time, until Slanders was finally forced to respond. Even worse for Slanders, the reporters are starting to coordinate. Sanders got tired of Hallie Jackson from MSNBC hammering her on Trump's perceived lack of credibility with the American people, so she ignored her and called on someone else. The new reporter said 'Thank you Sarah. I'll cede my time back to Hallie so she can get her question answered.' Slavish Sarah had no choice but to go back to Hallie Jackson."
NEW: I Was a White House Stenographer. Trump Wasn’t a Fan. (New York Times, July 17, 2018)
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (Vice, July 17, 2018)
"Remote-access software and modems on election equipment 'is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.'
Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had 'provided pcAnywhere remote connection software … to a small number of US customers between 2000 and 2006,' which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.
Got that? Done between 2000 and 2006, not divulged until April 2018, and not made public until now."
Senator suggests U.S. translator in Putin-Trump meeting should immediately testify to Congress (Daily KOS, July 17, 2018)
"Despite vehement objection from diplomatic efforts and even his own staff, Donald Trump insisted on meeting one-on-one with Vladmir Putin, the former KGB spy chief who they knew would run circles around a narcissistic and incompetent Trump. And that he did, making it clear that Donald Trump is not only incompetent, but under Putin’s thumb. Trump reportedly didn’t even want notes to be taken during the meeting and attended with only one other person: a U.S. translator.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has now suggested the translator meet with Congress to report directly to them about what was said in this private meeting between Trump and Putin. After all, the security and interests of the United States and our western allies are at risk."
NEW: New York Daily News front cover blasts Trump as "Putin's poodle" (Daily News, July 17, 2018)
NEW: Growing body of evidence suggests 'worst-case scenario'—Trump has been a Russian asset for years (Daily KOS, July17, 2018)
"As Rachel Maddow noted on Monday night’s must-watch show, we now must face the reality that a Russian asset may have ascended all the way to the White House. It’s horrifying and uncomfortable and we must now confront this reality."
In India, Summer Heat Could Soon Be Unbearable. Literally. (New York Times, July 17, 2018)
"Extreme heat can kill, as it did by the dozens in Pakistan in May. But as many of South Asia’s already-scorching cities get even hotter, scientists and economists are warning of a quieter, more far-reaching danger: Extreme heat is devastating the health and livelihoods of tens of millions more. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, they say, heat and humidity levels could become unbearable, especially for the poor. It is already making them poorer and sicker.
A recent analysis of climate trends in several of South Asia’s biggest cities found that if current warming trends continued, by the end of the century, wet bulb temperatures — a measure of heat and humidity that can indicate the point when the body can no longer cool itself — would be so high that people directly exposed for six hours or more would not survive."
'Each day is more painful than the last': Parents separated from kids beg US public for help (CNN, July 16, 2018)
"The children cry, they don't recognize our voices and they feel abandoned and unloved."
NEW: Hillary Clinton's response to Trump's shameful press conference just might break Twitter (Daily KOS, July 16, 2018)
NEW: Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor, by U.S. Lt. Gen. (ret.) Mark Hertling (Politico, July 16, 2018)
"Make no mistake: Hacking the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s time we responded accordingly."
(Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (ret.) is the former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and the Seventh Army.)
NEW: Update: Trump's Most Fervent Supporter Cancels TV Appearance, Refusing to Defend #TreasonSummit (Daily KOS, July 16, 2018)
Sifting through the wreckage of Trump’s Europe tour for signs of a foreign policy (Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2018)
"Critics already are calling it the 'blame America first' tour. That was perhaps inevitable after President Trump blamed American 'foolishness and stupidity' on Monday for the nosedive in U.S. relations with Moscow, not Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Syria and in the 2016 presidential election.
Later, after an unprecedented two-hour private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said he didn’t see'any reason why' Russia would meddle in America’s electoral politics, citing Putin’s 'strong and powerful' denials, a stunning rebuke to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
That followed six days of jaw-dropping presidential taunts aimed at international institutions and alliances that have formed the backbone of U.S. foreign policy and national security for decades, unnerving traditional partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and allied capitals around the globe."
Trump Shows the World He's Putin's Lackey (New York Times, July 16, 2018)
"No matter how low your expectations for the summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on Monday, it was hard not to be staggered by the American president’s slavish and toadying performance. Maybe the president is exactly as compromised as he looks."
A Russian newspaper editor explains how Putin made Trump his puppet (Vox, July 16, 2018)
“They consider him a stupid, unstrategic politician.”
White House: Trump Isn’t a Traitor, Just a Cognitively Impaired Egotist (New York Magazine, July 16, 2018)
"Ostensibly, the president is saying here that he does believe the FBI’s conclusions about Russian interference — but was simply unwilling to stand up for American law enforcement in Putin’s presence. It is hard to see how such behavior does not qualify as the height of diplomatic cowardice, under the American right’s own definition of that term.
Meanwhile, anonymous administration officials offered an even more damaging 'defense.'"
Trump’s Own Team: He ‘Looked Incredibly Weak’ Next to Putin (Daily Beast, July 16, 2018)
"On a global stage, Trump didn’t just cower; he actively cemented an image of submissiveness to his Russian counterpart. 'I honestly had little to no good expectations for this,' said a senior Trump political appointee who works on issues surrounding Russian disinformation efforts, adding that the event 'went about as well as I expected. Trump looked incredibly weak up there. Putin looks like a champion,' the official continued. 'I’d like to say I’m shocked, but this is the world in which we live now.'
Those who have worked for the president say they have come to expect these types of moments—in large part because they are rooted in two of Trump’s most prominent characteristics: insecurity and stubbornness."
In Helsinki, Trump violated his oath of office (New York Times, July 16, 2018)
"It was as if President Franklin Roosevelt had said after Pearl Harbor: 'Hey, both sides are to blame.'
In the past few years what has Putin done to deserve an American president sucking up to him for an “extraordinary” relationship? Putin has seized Crimea, covertly invaded Ukraine, provided the missiles that shot down a civilian Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, bombed tens of thousands of refugees out of Syria into Europe, destabilizing Europe, been involved in the death of a British woman who accidentally handled a Russian nerve agent deployed to kill ex-Russian agents in England and deployed misinformation to help tip the vote in Britain toward exiting and fracturing the European Union.
Most of all, Putin unleashed a cyberattack on America’s electoral process, aimed at both electing Trump — with or without Trump’s collusion — and sowing division among American citizens. Our intelligence agencies have no doubt about this."
Trump Gives Putin a Win in Finland, Kindling New Outrage at Home (Bloomberg, July 16, 2018)
"In Washington, lawmakers from both sides of the aisles were aghast. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said Trump turned in 'one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.' McCain added that the summit was 'a tragic mistake.'
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said there was no question Russia interfered in the election. 'The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally,' Ryan said. 'There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.'
'This was the day an American president stood on foreign soil next to a murderous lying thug and refused to back his own country,' former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired, said in a tweet. 'Patriots need to stand up and reject the behavior of this president.'"
Trump’s defense of Putin finds few supporters in Congress (Washington Post, July 16, 2018)
"Within hours of the event’s conclusion, Republicans had joined Democrats in criticizing the president’s comments. Many more in the president’s party reasserted the findings of Russian culpability, distancing themselves from their leader.
'The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally,' said House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). 'The United States must be focused on holding Russia accountable and putting an end to its vile attacks on democracy.'"
Former CIA Director calls Trump's comments at Putin press conference 'nothing short of treasonous' (Daily KOS, July 16, 2018)
"Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you??? --John O. Brennan"
Affidavit: 'key' Republican 'leaders' had secure back channel to the Kremlin in October 2016 (Daily KOS, July 16, 2018)
"According to this affidavit, an unknown number of those leaders had a secure line of communications to the Kremlin in October of 2016, immediately before the elections. For what possible purpose? Are we going to find out who? And do government investigators already know?"
Step aboard a 13,000-ton icebreaker navigating the Northwest Passage (Associated Press, July 15, 2018)
"Sailing through the Arctic Circle’s fabled Northwest Passage on an icebreaker to document the changes global warming has wrought in one of the world’s most fragile environments."
Climate change is contributing to the migration of Central American refugees (Public Radio International, July 15, 2018)
"Author and journalist Todd Miller, who has written a new book called, 'Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security,' says climate change is a key factor forcing families to flee from Central America and Mexico — and deadly droughts, hurricanes, floods and mudslides are projected to intensify further in the region as global warming increases, which will hit small farmers especially hard.
Miller says statistical data already document the devastating effects of NAFTA and CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) on small farmers who were suddenly put into direct competition with highly subsidized US agribusinesses and grain movers. Around 2 million small farmers, particularly in southern Mexico, were displaced or could no longer make ends meet, Miller says."
To Combat Gentrification, One City Is Changing How Homes Are Bought and Sold (Truthout, July 15, 2018)
"In 2017, the neighbors established the city’s first community land trust, a nonprofit designed to give residents control over the land within the neighborhood boundaries and keep housing there affordable."
How Israel, in Dark of Night, Torched Its Way to Iran’s Nuclear Secrets (New York Times, July 15, 2018)
Warren Is Preparing for 2020. So Are Biden, Booker, Harris and Sanders. (New York Times, July 15, 2018)
‘We’re picking up the pace’ on election security following indictment of Russian agents, Galvin says (Boston Globe, July 15, 2018)
"The indictments 'proved what we already knew,' Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said. 'We’re all concerned, of course, but we feel we’re in a better position than most. We only use paper ballots, and our system is not on the internet.'"
On Eve of Talks, Trump Congratulates Putin and Calls E.U. a Trade ‘Foe’ (New York Times, July 15, 2018)
"Of the hacking itself, Mr. Trump said: 'Certainly, I’ll be asking about it, but again, this was during the Obama administration.'
Asked whether Mr. Trump considered Putin a ruthless dictator, Mr. Trump replied, 'I assume he probably is. I think we could probably get along very well.'"
Trump, Having a Bawl in Europe (New York Times, July 15, 2018)
"Rather than accept the reality, laid out in detail by his own Justice Department, that we are in a dangerous cyberwar with Russia, the president did what he does best. The 'Apricot Toddler,' as he was dubbed in Britain, pounds the high chair, makes messes, pushes buttons, stage-manages cliffhangers and filigrees his labyrinth of lies."
NEW: Ex-Watergate Prosecutor Drops Bomb: Mueller Prepping Indictments For Trump Campaign Officials (Politicus USA, July 14, 2018)
"There is no way, no how that the Russians would have enough political sense and have enough feel for what the game on the ground is without having spotters and people in the Trump campaign directing this. And if you look at this indictment, it is filled with incredible details about the Russians. I mean, this is not gathered just based on forensic evidence. And they know. They know who the Americans are. They know who is going to be indicted. And they’re in the process now of putting that evidence together so they can convict these people beyond a reasonable doubt."
NEW: Even Russia Is Done With Trump: Majority Calls U.S. POTUS ‘Dangerous’ And ‘Self-Centered’ (Politicus USA, July 14, 2018)
"The poll’s findings show a pretty stunning turnaround in Russian support for Trump. Before the election, in fact, all of the G20 countries wanted Hillary Clinton to win – except for Russia.
Now, they seem to recognize what the rest of the world has known all along: Trump is a dangerous narcissist."
The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump (The Guardian, July 14, 2018)
"From post-modernism to filter bubbles, ‘truth decay’ has been spreading for decades. How can we stop alternative facts from bringing down democracy?"
Cleanup of Pence family gas stations cost Indiana more than $20 million (Associated Press, July 14, 2018)
'We don't know how it worked': the inside story of the Thai cave rescue (The Guardian, July 14, 2018)
"Briefings by Thai officials and interviews with six Australian, American, Chinese and Thai divers involved in the operation have revealed extensive details of a plan some were unsure could work, even after it started."
‘Time is running out’: Inside the treacherous rescue of boys trapped in a Thai cave (Washington Post, July 13, 2018)
"The unprecedented rescue operation that gripped the world and overwhelmed this mountainous outpost in northern Thailand for three weeks - recounted here based on interviews with more than 30 participants - began June 23 with a flurry of texts messages: A lot of sons were late for dinner. "
Maryland voter registration system runs on software owned by Russian-financed firm (WBAL TV, July 13, 2018)
"Nobody knew the background of this company, nobody knew that it was a Russian, nobody knew that the person had changed their name until yesterday."
'Trump Baby' blimp has taken flight and scared Trump away from London, where he feels 'unwelcome' (w/3-hour video of London parade; Daily KOS, July 13, 2018)
"Comments:
'Can we fly it over DC?'
'Had we only known that his ego was so fragile that we just have to fly a few blimps in strategic places and like garlic to a vampire, we could force him back into the pits of hell from whence he came!'
'Let’s get these made as mylar party balloons so everyone can be protected. It’s better than garlic!'"
Trump's oily and obnoxious personality sorely tests British diplomacy (The Guardian, July 13, 2018)
"The contradictory US president’s inclination is to side with those who want to break up the EU."
Trump takes war on 'fake news' to UK – and tells towering, easily debunked lies (The Guardian, July 13, 2018)
"The US president’s attacks on CNN and the Sun were dismal, but they stayed true to his well-honed communications strategy."
U.S. intel chief warns of devastating cyber threat to U.S. infrastructure (Reuters, July 13, 2018)
"Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are launching daily cyber strikes on the computer networks of federal, state and local government agencies, U.S. corporations, and academic institutions, said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Of the four, 'Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor, no question.'"
New indictments show Russian hacking effort was large, intense, sustained—and GOP supported (Daily KOS, July 13, 2018)
"The new indictments filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday may seem disappointing in that they don’t directly change any member of the Donald Trump campaign. However, these charges don’t exonerate Trump, his staffers, or any other American from participation in a conspiracy with the Russian government. In fact, they lay the groundwork to make exactly those charges."
Russians tried to hack Clinton server on day Trump urged email search (The Guardian, July 13, 2018)
"An indictment filed by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, said Russian hackers attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016. That day, at an event in Florida, Trump invited the Russian state to search for the approximately 30,000 emails that Clinton was found to have deleted from her private server on the grounds that they were not related to government work. 'Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,' Trump said. 'I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.' "
Revealing Kangson, North Korea's First Covert Uranium Enrichment Site (The iplomat, July 13, 2018)
"For more than a decade, North Korea has operated a uranium enrichment site just outside Pyongyang."
Guy Gets Tossed In Jail For Contempt Charges Because Cops Say They Need To Unlock His Phones To Get Evidence Of Drug Possession (Techdirt, July 13, 2018)
"There's a Fifth Amendment case developing in Tampa, Florida revolving around cellphones, passcodes, and contempt charges."
NEW: Susan Collins abandons all pretense of carefully considering her Supreme Court vote (Daily KOS, July 12, 2018)
(Ignore Susan Collins, because she's a lost cause. But read the good Comments thread about changing Conservatism, etc.)
Lawsuits alleging weed killer Roundup caused cancer given green light by San Francisco judge (USA Today July 11, 2018)
Scientists may have solved a huge riddle in Earth’s climate past. It doesn’t bode well for the future. (Washington Post, July 11, 2018)
"An ancient flood seems to have stalled the circulation of the oceans, plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a millennium of near-glacial conditions."
Exposed: secret corrupt retirement deal between Anthony Kennedy and Donald Trump (Palmer Report, July 10, 2018)
"Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was secretly negotiating with Donald Trump about his replacement, even as he was casting major pro-Trump votes that were out of character with his own judicial record. This comes on top of earlier revelations that Kennedy’s son played a key role at Trump’s favorite Russian money-laundering bank. We’re now looking at a full blown scandal that’s getting uglier by the hour."
Trump pardons Oregon ranchers whose arson case sparked Bundy takeover of refuge (The Oregonian, July 10, 2018)
"Today is a win for justice and an acknowledgement of our unique way of life in the high desert, rural West,'"
(Setting forest fires in National Parks? Unique, indeed.)_
Watch 10 billion tons of Greenland ice fall into the ocean in a half-hour (Washington Post, July 9, 2018)
(Also see, "Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.")
"The researchers are collecting field data on these kinds of events to try to draw conclusions that will be applicable to the much larger, and harder to study, Antarctic. In the Antarctic, ice loss has the potential to be far worse. Imagine a similar break across the front of the 75-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier, as opposed to the 4.5-mile-wide Helheim. It will be driven by similar dynamics."
For Trump, Kavanaugh Is Midterm Bait (New York Times, July 10, 2018)
"By nominating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the president gives his crowd what they want."
There’s So Much You Don’t Know About Brett Kavanaugh, by the Editorial Board (New York Times, July 9, 2018)
"And you probably won’t until it’s too late."
Trump was like a "predator" toward teens at parties in ’80s and ’90s, says BBC report (Vice, July 9, 2018)
Trump thought the NK statement was a denuclearization agreement (Daily KOS, July 9, 2018)
"All this time, Trump thought (and apparently still thinks) that the Singapore joint statement was a 'contract,' one in which NK agreed to denuclearize. Of course, it was not. No such language exists in the statement, no such 'contract' exists, and there was never any agreement to denuclearize."
Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart - Or His Handler?, by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine, July 8, 2018)
"A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion."
(Also, note the handy chart of guilty faces.)
Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution by U.S. Stuns World Health Officials (New York Times, July 8, 2018)
"Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs. The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced. What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health.
In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure - and the Americans did not threaten them."
North Korea Calls U.S. Diplomatic Posture 'Regrettable' (New York Magazine, July 7, 2018)
"As the afterglow of the Trump-Kim tete-a-tete wears off, the prospect of any kind of easy North Korean solution is looking - unsurprisingly - like a mirage. On Saturday, in the aftermath of a visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a statement issued by North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. stance on negotiations 'regrettable.' 'What the U.S. is requesting is the cancerous demands from previous administrations that blocked all dialogue processes,' the statement read, in the kind of overheated rhetoric that the Kim regime and Trump administration share a fondness for. It also referred to a 'dangerous phase that might rattle our willingness for denuclearization that had been firm.'"
Ten days after homophobic sign draws protests, small-town Indiana church vanishes (Daily KOS, July 7, 2018)
"On Saturday, an elder confirmed that Remnant Fellowship Church has left the building; the elder claims the church was evicted. No plans for relocation were mentioned."
NEW: The sweltering soccer field ICE moved the mothers...so official wouldn't hear their screams (Daily KOS, July 6, 2018)
"It’s important to make a note here for those who who still try to justify this practice because the mothers committed a 'crime': this is a misdemeanor offense! There are greater penalties for more serious crimes of shooting off illegal fireworks, mailing dentures, and the unauthorized use of the 4-H emblem. None of those carry the penalty of losing your children.
The DHS Secretary was going to make two 'secret' visits to ICE detention facilities. The ICE officers DID NOT want the parents to talk to Kirstjen. Reporters were also banned from speaking with her. ICE forcibly rounded up the mothers and moved them to a distant soccer field. Temperatures were in the high 90s on June 29 in Los Fresnos when this occurred. The parents screamed for help when the DHS Secretary arrived."
On The Seven Republican Senators Who Just Betrayed Us In Moscow (Daily KOS, July 5, 2018)
"Trump and the GOP want to hold onto their control of the U.S. Senate more than anything in the world. They want it so bad they were willing to go to Moscow and telegraph their new quarterback, Vladimir Putin, to run the same play he ran in 2016, the one where Russian Internet trolls carpet-bombed Facebook and Twitter, spreading nasty smears about Hillary Clinton and thereby allowing Donald Trump to slither into office."
Robert Mueller is running out of prosecutors, and time, faster than he's running out of crimes (Daily KOS, July 5, 2018)
"It doesn’t appear that the special counsel is spending too much on too little. Instead, he’s having a hard time stretching his budget to cover all the crimes the investigation is turning up. With 20 indictments and 5 plea deals down, Mueller isn’t close to being finished with all the aspects of this investigation. And with Paul Manafort heading to trial before the end of July, members of Mueller’s team will soon after to spend some of their time in courtrooms. Analysts describe the Manafort case as an 'all hands on deck' situation. Not only does it represent the core of several issues going forward - from contact with Russian operatives during the campaign, to money-laundering that happened before the campaign - the case can also be expected to deal with both the legality and scope of the special counsel investigation. Winning the Manafort case might not guarantee that Mueller is going to win ‘em all … but losing it means, more or less, going home."
We’ll All Be Paying for Scott Pruitt for Ages, by The Editorial Board (New York Times, July 5, 2018)
"Just when America had all but given up hope, Scott Pruitt’s appalling reign as Environmental Protection Agency administrator is finally over. . . . And so Mr. Pruitt heads for the door, leaving behind a dark, oily stain on the office that he has spent the past year and a half vigorously defiling."
The Moist Mystery of Scott Pruitt’s Resignation (New York Times, July 5, 2018)
"Pruitt served an important function in this White House. I do hope that we gave him proper credit for that. It fell to him to embody the entire Trump ethos - grab what you can, exploit your insider status, lift nepotism to an art form and never fly coach - in one high-ranking official. And he took this on with an unblushing readiness that, viewed from a certain angle, was impressive in the extreme. A lesser grifter wouldn’t have floated the idea of a $100,000-a-month charter aircraft membership so that he could use private jets for government business. Pruitt did. A lesser grifter wouldn’t have spent $1,560 of the taxpayers’ money on a dozen pens from a fancy Washington jewelry store. Pruitt did.
His naughtiness spanned several countries and continents. It was global. There was the lavish trip to Morocco, a country with dubious relevance to the E.P.A., that a lobbyist helped arrange. There was travel to Italy at a cost of at least $120,000. It’s not clear how much work he got done, but his tours of the Vatican were multiple and splendid.
Scott Pruitt’s agenda of self-aggrandizement was so ambitious that I really did wonder if he was inoculated from punishment, just as he was immune from shame. I was wrong. It turns out that while the Trump administration has interred many cherished principles and traditions that we thought were keepers, karma isn’t among them. Perhaps someday soon it will come for the president as well."
Trump tweet: EPA head Scott Pruitt is resigning (Ars Technica, July 5, 2018)
"Meanwhile, draft emissions rule will sidestep relitigation of endangerment finding.
The former Oklahoma Attorney General made headlines over the past several months with repeated scandals over extravagant spending. Pruitt reportedly used agency funds to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tactical pants and other security-related items. He also used agency resources to help his wife find a job and even to help him purchase a used Trump hotel mattress. Questions about who Pruitt promoted and how raises were doled out also caused significant damage to Pruitt's public image. Thirteen different federal investigations had been opened up into the administrator's conduct."
E.P.A. Drafts Rule on Coal Plants to Replace Clean Power Plan (New York Times, July 5, 2018)
"Ex-coal plant lobbyist to head White House effort."
Net neutrality makes comeback in California; lawmakers agree to strict rules (Ars Technica, July 5, 2018)
"After compromise, nation's toughest net neutrality bill back on track."
NEW: This Is How North Korea Will Develop A Hydrogen Bomb (Forbes, July 5, 2018)
"Although North Korea no longer has their longstanding nuclear test site available to them, they have all the ingredients and infrastructure to create a very powerful fission bomb, and have demonstrably done so in recent years. They are just one ingredient — an artificial and unstable isotope of hydrogen — away from having everything necessary for a hydrogen bomb: the most powerful destructive force ever unleashed by humanity. If we do nothing, that final ingredient will be in their hands within 18 months."
Trump’s summit with Kim could foretell catastrophe with Putin, by George F. Will (Washington Post, July 4, 2018)
"There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. --President Trump, June 13
North Korea is upgrading its nuclear research center at a rapid pace, new satellite imagery analysis suggests. --The Wall Street Journal, June 27"
Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world. (Washington Post, July 4, 2018)
"The United States's unemployed and at-risk workers are getting very little support from the government, and their employed peers are set back by a particularly weak collective-bargaining system. Those factors have contributed to the United States having a higher level of income inequality and a larger share of low-income residents than almost any other advanced nation. Only Spain and Greece, whose economies have been ravaged by the euro-zone crisis, have more households earning less than half the nation's median income - an indicator that unusually large numbers of people either are poor or close to being poor."
Trump repeatedly suggested invading Venezuela, stunning top aides – report (Guardian, July 4, 2018)
"The administration officials are said to have taken turns in trying to talk the president out of the idea in August of last year."
One-third of the world’s population lives in a declining democracy. That includes the United States. (Washington Post, July 4, 2018)
"At the end of 2017, most people in the world lived in democracies. But since then, one-third of the world's population - or 2.5 billion people - have lived through 'autocratization,' in which a leader or group of leaders began to limit those democratic attributes and to rule more unilaterally. The current autocratization trend is visible across the world - and affects Europe and the whole American continent. Only sub-Saharan Africa shows some democratic improvements on average.
And for the first time since 1979, the same number of countries (24 in total) are backsliding on democracy as are advancing. In the United States, weakening constraints on the executive branch have resulted in a significant decline of liberal democracy.
What's more, only 15 percent of the world's population lives in countries where everyone, regardless of gender or socioeconomic status, has roughly equal access to political power."
It’s Independence Day, but Americans aren’t feeling so proud (Washington Post, July 4, 2018)
"Pew Research Center found in December 2017 that 18 percent of Americans say they trust the government in Washington 'always' or 'most of the time.' That compares with 73 percent who said the same of the government when the National Election Study began tracking the question in 1958. Trust began to erode in the ’60s and ’70s and reached a 30-year high soon after the 9/11 attacks, but it fell to just over 20 percent in the early Obama administration and has barely budged since."
America Started Over Once. Can We Do It Again?, by the Editorial Board (New York Times, July 3, 2018)
"The 14th Amendment, in particular, hit the reset button on American democracy. It extended the protections in the Bill of Rights, which applied only against the federal government, to cover people in their dealings with the states. Its best known and most litigated provision, Section 1, went even further, guaranteeing for the first time the basic equality of all people, no matter their skin color, station in life or citizenship."
NEW: Could driverless cars cause more congestion in urban cores? (Washington Post, July 3, 2018)
"A new Boston-based study suggests the vehicles may increase traffic congestion in cities’ downtown areas as more people embrace ride-hailing services and abandon transit. The same study also found, however, that driverless vehicles could dramatically improve traffic conditions in the suburbs."
Forget The Parades. Protest This Fourth of July. (New York Times, July 3, 2018)
"July 4 commemorates a protest so incendiary that its participants, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, risked execution as traitors to the crown. These dissidents came together to affirm their commitment to a political community based on equality, at least in theory. For a century and a half, social-justice activists honored this history by continuing it, trying to hold the nation to its own standards on the anniversary of the day they were declared."
Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set around the world during the past week (Washington Post, July 3, 2018)
"No single record, in isolation, can be attributed to global warming. But collectively, these heat records are consistent with the kind of extremes we expect to see increase in a warming world."
Trump Meets With Four Potential Supreme Court Nominees (Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2018)
"The pace of the interviews underscores the urgency in filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. The opening gives Mr. Trump his second nomination to the high court and the chance to replace a swing vote with a reliably conservative judicial voice, one who could set a new direction for the court on abortion rights, gay rights and other issues that have divided the country."
A declaration of independence from Donald Trump (Daily KOS, July 1, 2018)
"When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which was signed on July 4, 1776, by the nation’s founders in Philadelphia, he included a list of 27 grievances against the British King George III. Who knew that 242 years later, the U.S. would be facing another despotic ruler? The parallels between the actions of George III and Trump are uncanny. The cover of Time magazine with Trump looking into a reflection of himself wearing a crown wasn’t far off."
López Obrador, an Atypical Leftist, Wins Mexico Presidency in Landslide (New York Times, July 1, 2018)
Canada pushes back, slaps tariffs on U.S. goods from ketchup to pizza (Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2018)
New Authoritarian GOP Removed "Democracy" from Textbooks As Too "Partisan" (Daily KOS, July 1, 2018)
(Also see David Frum's The Republican Party has a platform that can't prevail in democratic competition (Vox, January 18, 2018)
Trump Threatens Americans Who Disagree with Him in Slobbering FOX News Interview (Daily KOS, July 1, 2018)
Did Anthony Kennedy Resign from the Supreme Court to Protect His Son? (Snopes, July 1, 2018)
"The 81-year-old justice's resignation announcement triggered a spate of conspiracy posts focused on his son's connections to Donald Trump and Deutsche Bank."
Constitutional Professor Laurence Tribe About Trump Picking His Own Jurist (Daily KOS, June 30, 2018)
"Among the first cases the Court agreed to hear the day after Kennedy announced his retirement will decide whether a Trump pardon from federal prosecution will shield someone from state prosecution even if that state retains its dual sovereignty loophole.
If SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade in 2019 or 2020, I’d predict a massive backlash: Dems would win the presidency and both the House and Senate in Nov 2020, and Congress would enact a law adding 2 seats to SCOTUS in 2021 or 2022. Remember there’s no constitutional magic in nine.
A president under active criminal investigation of whether he won legitimately and whether he has obstructed that very investigation should not be permitted by a mere Senate majority to designate the justice whose votes could prove pivotal to the fate of his presidency."
NEW: The Other Russia Collusion Scandal Is Breaking Wide Open, by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine, June 30, 2018)
"In 2016, Vladimir Putin reaped two of his greatest foreign policy triumphs in quick succession. The United Kingdom voted narrowly to exit the European Union, advancing a longstanding Russian goal of splitting Western allies that have long been united against it. Later that year, the United States voted even more narrowly to elect Donald Trump president."
Hundreds of thousands attend Families Belong Together rallies around the world (Daily KOS, June 30, 2018)
Churches are fuming over being taxed by Republicans and Trump (Daily KOS, June 29, 2018)
"The gist of the 'hidden tax atrocity' simply requires churches, hospitals, and other historically tax-exempt organizations to begin paying a 21 percent tax on some types of fringe benefits they provide their employees. As a seasonal tax professional and former minister, this author is well-acquainted with the ridiculous number of tax-free benefits church employees, especially members of the clergy, receive because they are 'blessed' to live in a country that gives churches tens of billions annually as 'theocratic welfare.' The new tax will seem like more 'secular persecution' to churches and their employees who are accustomed to special treatment due to their 'deeply held faith.' Expecting them to pay taxes like their bible commands is an abomination, and is perceived as the secular government punishing them."
Jon Stewart calls out Trump for his "gleeful cruelty" (Daily KOS, June 29, 2018)
"If there’s one hallmark to your presidency that I think we're finding the most difficult is that no matter what you do it always comes with an extra layer of gleeful cruelty and dickishness.
It's not just that you don't want people taking a knee. It's that they're 'sons of bitches' if they do.
It's not just denying women who accuse you of sexual assault. It's saying, 'They're too ugly anyway.'
You can't just be against the media. They're 'enemies of the people.'
It's not even partisan. Anyone in the Republican Party dare speak against you, they also must be humiliated, even if they have a terminal disease.
What Donald Trump wants is for us to stop calling his cruelty and fear and divisiveness wrong, [and] to join him in calling it right. And this we cannot do. And I say, by not yielding, we will prevail!"
New map reveals massive number of offshore oil wells in California waters (Daily KOS, June 29, 2018)
"On January 4, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown joined Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Washington Governor Jay Inslee in condemning President Donald Trump's plan to expand oil and gas drilling in federal waters as 'reckless' and 'short-sighted.'
Ironically, as the three Governors condemned Trump’s offshore drilling proposal it turns out time that California regulators under Jerry Brown have overseen a massive expansion of new offshore drilling in state waters in recent years - while a new map website, BrownvTrumpOilMap.org, reveals that Governor Jerry Brown controls four times as many offshore wells in state waters than Trump controls in federal waters."
Loans of over $1 Billion to Trump by SCOTUS justice Kennedy's son, but nothing to see here... (Daily KOS, June 29, 2018)
"Last month, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went on Hugh Hewitt's radio program to issue an urgent plea. 'My message to any one of the nine Supreme Court justices,' he said, was, 'If you're thinking about quitting this year, do it yesterday.' Mr. Grassley said speed was of the essence in light of the midterm elections in November. ]If we have a Democrat Senate,' he said, 'you’re never going to get the kind of people that are strict constructionists.'
Intermediaries pressed the point with Justice Kennedy privately, telling him that Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump's White House counsel, would in all probability leave after the midterms. Mr. McGahn has been a key architect of Mr. Trump's successful efforts to appoint wave after wave of conservative judges, they said, and his absence would complicate a Supreme Court confirmation."
NEW: Global Warming in South Asia: 800 Million at Risk (New York Times, June 28, 2018)
"The analyses reveal that hot spots tend to be more disadvantaged districts, even before the effects of changes in average weather are felt. Hot spots are characterized by low household consumption, poor road connectivity, limited access to markets, and other development challenges. Unchecked climate change, in other words, would amplify the hardships of poverty. Cities like Karachi, Pakistan, emerge as hot spots because higher temperatures are forecast to lower labor productivity and worsen public health."
NEW: How Rosenstein’s and Wray’s testimony undermined GOP efforts to undermine the Russia investigation (Washington Pot, June 28, 2018)
"On Thursday, the various arguments Trump and his Republican allies have leaned on to suggest or outright claim FBI bias against the president got knocked down, one by one, by the top of the bureau's chain of command. What's more, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray categorically denied these characterizations of the FBI's work while under oath. Wray and Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, testified Thursday for hours to the House's Judiciary Committee."
House Republicans shout down Rosenstein in tense hearing (Reuters, June 28, 2018)
"The tense congressional hearing came as Republicans brought to the House floor a non-binding resolution that scolded the Justice Department for not turning over more records, a move that is widely seen as a possible precursor to holding Rosenstein in contempt of Congress. The resolution passed along party lines, 226-183."
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a new blunt message for Donald Trump (3-min. YouTube video, June 28, 2018)
"Why the hell are you going through all this effort to rescue coal?"
The Discovery of Complex Organic Molecules on Saturn's Moon Enceladus Is a Huge Deal (Gizmodo, June 27, 2018)
"This isn'’t proof that life exists on this icy moon, but it does show that Enceladus' warm, soupy ocean is capable of producing complex and dynamic molecules, and the kinds of chemical reactions required to produce and sustain microbial life.
This is the first-ever detection of such large and complex organic molecules on an extraterrestrial water world."
Why Are So Many Political Parties Blowing Up? (Part 1), by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times, June 26, 2018)
"The U.S. Republican Party has blown up in all but name, going overnight from an internationalist, free-trade, deficit-hawk party to a protectionist, anti-immigrant, deficit-dove party — all to accommodate the instincts of Donald Trump and his base.
Italy's last election ended with its mainstream center-left getting crushed, bringing to power instead a coalition of far-left, far-right populists, whose focus ranges from guaranteeing minimum income for Italy's 11 percent unemployed to rebuffing immigrants and the European Union.
Britain's Labour Party has gone from center-left to quasi-Marxist. And the Brexit-loving Tories, having pushed Britain to exit the E.U. without any plan, are now divided and paralyzed over how to implement the economic suicide they've promised voters.
The U.S. Democrats are fractured between a Bernie Sanders quasi-socialist wing and a center-left wing, but are glued together for now - thank goodness - by the overriding need to defeat Trump. German Chancellor Angela Merkel took four months to form a barely coherent governing coalition, after her ruling party got hammered in the last election - and that fragile coalition may soon implode over immigration tensions. And French President Emmanuel Macron leads a centrist party that did not exist three years ago."
(There's much more.)
The numbers prove our government has been taken over by a tyrannical minority - but there is hope (Daily KOS, June 26, 2018)
"On the heels of some controversial or downright terrible decisions from the majority conservative court, courtesy of a stolen Supreme Court seat in 2016, it is now crystal clear that every branch of our government is being run by the minority. While progressive ideas remain wildly popular, conservatives have pulled off a complete coup, overrunning the majority of voters. This conservative agenda, this conservative court, are NOT what the American people voted for - and here are the numbers to prove it."
Historian Pulls Up 1934 NYTimes Story Urging Jews Be Civil Towards Nazis. (Daily KOS, June 26, 2018)
"CUNY professor and historian Angus Johnston pulled up some 1934 NYTimes stories wherein a Quaker calls for Jews to be civil to Hitler and Nazis. Johnston then includes responses from individual Rabbis and Rabbinical society."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old socialist, topples powerful incumbent Joe Crowley (Think Progress, June 26, 2018)
"She is the first challenger to beat a Democratic incumbent this year. Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) became the first Democratic incumbent to lose his primary election Tuesday. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old socialist, ran an insurgent campaign focused on Medicare for all, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and tuition-free higher education. "What the Bronx and Queens needs is Medicare for all, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal justice reform. We can do it now. We beat a machine with a movement.' She has now taken down a man widely considered a candidate for the next Speaker should Democrats retake the House."
At the U.S.-Mexico border, immigrant mothers seeking asylum prepare for whatever may come (Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2018)
"For many, the terrors back in their homelands - in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador - supersede the tribulations especially engineered for them by the U.S. government. Most believe this is their last chance as the Trump administration methodically rolls back nearly every avenue of immigration relief. 'If we return, I'll be killed for sure.'"
Trump makes not-so-thinly veiled threat to Democratic congresswoman (Daily KOS, June 25, 2018)
"US Congresswoman Maxine Waters has been declared an enemy of the State.
When a head of state, armed with secret police power vested in ICE/DHS, which unlawfully terrorizes children, pronounces against a restaurant owner or Congress member; then that utterance becomes an official act of the state, not of an ordinary citizen.
DjT is not above the Law, but he is not an ordinary citizen either. He acts like a tyrant, however, lawlessly.
The asymmetry of power is so great that DjT’s performative act equates with an Iranian cleric issuing a fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie.
Moreover, DjT announces via Twitter to the fanatics of his totalitarian movement that Congresswoman Waters is an enemy of the State."
GOP goes full fascist but the media stays on the baby jail story (Daily KOS, June 25, 2018)
"Ordinarily, the idea that people were continuing to rail against a problem because it had not been solved would be disappointing. But it's not. It's amazing. Seeing that it is possible to return to the same story day after day, even when Trump is running his distract-o-matic at maximum, is not just the first step toward real change, but definitely something that should be celebrated - right after we celebrate the end of Trump's disastrous zero tolerance policy."
Michael Avenatti Accesses Child Immigrant Facility in Harlem, New York – Posts This Heartbreaking Image (Hill Reporter, June 25, 2018)
GOP Holocaust analogists furious over Nazi border policy comparisons (Daily KOS, June 24, 2018)
"According to the GOP, Obamacare, abortion, gun control, national debt, the IRS - but not separating undocumented families - are the same as the Holocaust."
Can Alice/35 U.S.C. § 101 Stop Microsoft-Connected Patent Trolls in the US? (Techrights, June 24, 2018)
"Microsoft still attacks GNU/Linux using software patents and as mentioned here before (earlier this month), Microsoft entryism or hijack of Yahoo turned Yahoo patents into the same thing it turned Nokia's patent portfolio into. These patents are now being passed to trolls, according to RPX and recent docket filings.
A notorious patent troll, Uniloc, has just been squashed owing to Alice/35 U.S.C. § 101. The Uniloc-Microsoft history is well documented because it went on for many years.
The Microsoft-connected patent troll Acacia has also just been defeated (in PTAB), as recently as 6 days ago."
Boeing's robot submarine is back roaming off the California coast (Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2018)
"The 51-foot-long, yellow and grey autonomous undersea vehicle is being designed to glide just beneath the waves or along the ocean floor for months at a time with little to no contact with human operators. Its missions could include surveillance that would be either too mundane or dangerous for human submarine crews to tackle and reconnaissance."
Hawaii’s quest for a new type of independence (Boston Globe, June 23, 2018)
"Hawaii is the only American state that was once a kingdom. The royal family was overthrown in 1893 with decisive help from President Benjamin Harrison and US Marines. Soon afterward a new president, Grover Cleveland, condemned the overthrow as 'an act of war' and asked Congress to return the royal family to power. Congress refused. Instead, in 1898, it voted to annex Hawaii. In 1959 Hawaii was admitted to the Union as our 50th state."
(See, The Basis for the Restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom, A Report from the Hawaiian Islands by Leon Siu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ke Aupuni O Hawaii.)
NEW: Britain Has a Russia Collusion Scandal Now. It Looks Exactly Like Trump’s, by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine, June 22, 2018)
"The most important thing to understand about the Russia scandal is that it perfectly fits a clear pattern of behavior. What Vladimir Putin is accused of doing to help Donald Trump win the presidency is essentially identical to what he is either accused of or proven to have done to help many other right-wing candidates in many other countries. As the plot in the United States is slowly exposed, a remarkably similar one in the United Kingdom is quickly surfacing.
Months before the United States narrowly elected Trump, the United Kingdom narrowly elected to withdraw from the European Union. Both votes advanced Russian foreign policy goals - in the latter case, by splitting up the Western alliance. (Trump has energetically pursued this strategy, too.) Russia employed many of the same tools to influence both elections. It deployed social-media bots and trolls to spread its message. It recruited friendly candidates who gave voice to previously marginal Russophile positions. And, as the newly surfaced evidence suggests, it indirectly financed the campaign."
The Genesis of Trump's Family-Separation Policy, by Jonathan Chait (New York Magazine, June 22, 2018)
"When Donald Trump first proposed to ban all Muslim immigrants from the United States two and a half years ... ago, the Republican front-runner was asked if he would have supported the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. [He expressed] his general sympathy for the concept. 'It's a tough thing. It’s tough,' he said. 'But you know, war is tough. And winning is tough. We don't win anymore. We don't win wars anymore. We don't win wars anymore. We're not a strong country anymore.'
One of the things this comment revealed was Trump's odd belief that the internment of loyal Japanese-Americans had somehow helped win the war, rather than divert human and material resources from the war effort in service to a cruel, racialized panic, as historians generally believe. ... It displayed one of Trump's foundational values: his contempt for human and legal rights, especially those of racial minorities, and his atavistic fixation with toughness as both the source of the country's (imagined) historical decline and the key to its restoration.
The brutal vision of the American state Trump has been painting for three years has finally materialized before our eyes."
Meet the favorite philosophers of young white supremacists (Think Progress, June 22, 2018)
"A new book explores how philosophers like Nietzsche and Heidegger have inspired a new generation of fascists."
Rejecting Presidential Self-Pardons (Associated Press, June 22, 2018)
"Even in an era of deep political division, Democrats and Republicans agree presidents should not pardon themselves. And if the nation's chief executive ever does so, majorities of Americans in both parties believe Congress should impeach that president."
USA's 1967 Protocol, Articles 1-34: The Immigration Law No One Is Talking About (Daily KOS, June 21, 2018)
"For 50 years, the Protocol has governed the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers by every President until Donald Trump."
NEW: Return of the Blood Libel, by Paul Krugman (New York Times, June 21, 2018)
"The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we've gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages. What's almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it's not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren't happening. They're just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.
And you know what this reminds me of? The history of anti-Semitism, a tale of prejudice fueled by myths and hoaxes that ended in genocide."
Zara, Brand That Made Melania Trump's 'Don't Care' Jacket, Used To Design Holocaust Shirt, Swastika Bag (Daily KOS, June 21, 2018)
"It's not that Trump and his family don't understand the downside of imposing even the smallest amount of stress on children. It's just that they value different children in differing degrees. Melania Trump clearly thought that it was too traumatic to move the couple's young son to Washington during the school year, so she stayed with him in New York, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for security."
California net neutrality bill gutted as lawmakers cave to AT&T lobbyists (Ars Tecnica, June 21, 2018)
"Bans on paid data cap exemptions and access payments removed by committee."
German intelligence sees Russia behind hack of energy firms: media report (Reuters, June 20, 2018)
"Russia was probably behind a widespread cyber attack on German energy providers disclosed last week."
[Also see last year's, Germany fears Russia stole information to disrupt election (Politico, June 20, 2018)
"Fears of hacking has German lawmakers worried ahead of September’s ballot."]
NEW: ‘At Least During the Internment …’ Are Words I Thought I’d Never Utter, by George Takei (Foreign Policy, June 19, 2018)
"I was sent to a camp at just 5 years old — but even then, they didn't separate children from families."
Observations from Nuremberg (Daily KOS, June 19, 2018)
"As I moved from room to room, I was struck by the similarity of Hitler's tactics to those Trump has been using. I'm not saying that Trump is another Hitler, but he is certainly using some of his techniques, among which are big lies and propaganda repeated over and over until people believe it, a gradual process of dehumanizing the 'undesirables' (equivalent to migrants/illegal immigrants in the U.S.), false claims that Jews were taking good Germans' jobs (as with Trump's false claims about Mexicans and immigrants), and conditioning Germans over a period of time, again through state propaganda, to accept his false claims and his portrayal of himself as Germany's savior. Trump uses Fox News in the same way to convince his followers that immigrants are not only illegal but also animals and indecent people who deserve anything done to them."
Trump's Policies 'Come from the Darkness,' Says US Senator Gillibrand (Politico, June 19,2018)
"It's not specifically about the president. It's about ideas that are evil. It's about darkness, which is rooted in hate. A lot of ideas right now that are in this county are dark ideas: building walls, dividing this country, marginalizing trans members who are troops, marginalizing kids who are transgender, not supporting DACA kids, literally polluting our air and our water.
In the civilian world, you would just say those are horrible, outrageous things that we should fight against because they’re harmful and they hurt people. And so we don't really talk about good and evil in our day jobs, but we certainly talk about policies that harm people and are hurtful and are cruel, and a lot of the policies that this president has put forward are harmful and cruel. And if you want to call it evil,you can."
Living with a supremacist, in a supremacist place: I'll tell you where Trumpism ends (Daily KOS, June 19, 2018)
"Supremacy isn't limited to believing that other people are inferior because of something genetic. Supremacy is believing that others should be placed in an inferior position simply because you feel that you should be dominant over them. It is a desire for superiority, and it isn't dependent on any qualities of either the supremacist or those they desire to have supremacy over. They will use any means possible to attempt to justify a society in which they are treated as superior; in which they are dominant. They align with other people based on how much those other people being dominant will increase the individual's dominance."
The GOP's Problems Are Bigger Than Trump (The Atlantic, June 19, 2018)
"President Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is overstated. But that doesn't mean that his downfall would resolve its challenges.
Dumping Trump won'’t actually get rid of the pathologies that made his rise to president possible. Republicans will remain vulnerable to takeover by charismatic hucksters without a substantively constructive policy agenda, an ability to successfully govern, or a vision for a coalition that transcends ressentiment. And the populist entertainers will keep getting filthy rich in the process. It is they who've come closer to taking over the GOP."
How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country (New York Times, June 19, 2018)
"In cities and counties across the country - including Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee - the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government. At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties."
In an exasperating abdication of responsibility, the Supreme Court says 'never mind' on gerrymandering (Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2018)
"It is a cynical and undemocratic - but not yet illegal - process that is engaged in by both parties and which is only likely to be solved by the courts. Sadly, instead of taking the issues on squarely, the court disposed of two cases - one from Wisconsin and one from Maryland - on narrow procedural grounds."
ZTE crashes after Senate passes a Trump deal killing bill (Daily KOS, June 19, 2018)
"The US Senate passed a defense authorization bill to the tune of 707 billion dollars. Some senators were successful in attaching an amendment which will reimpose the White House’s original ban on ZTE buying components from US firms. This will cause a standoff with the Trump administration, which wanted to 'fix' the problem in trade negotiations with China."
"I hope the Chinese govt pulls the half billion bribe away from the failing Trump resort. Our foreign policy should not be run by Trump's business problems. He ought not to be engaged in business while pretending to be president."
Senate Rebukes Trump With Vote to Reinstate ZTE Sales Ban (Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2018)
"The measure was wrapped in a larger, must-pass defense bill, which will need to be reconciled with House version."
In a world of digital nomads, we will all be made homeless, by John Harris (The Guardian, June 18, 2018)
"Whose utopia is this, when people have to sever emotional links and leave where they grew up to find dependable work?"
What happened last time it was as warm as it's going to get later this century? (Ars Technica, June 18, 2018)
"The climate won't stop changing in 2100. Even if we succeed in limiting warming this century to 2ºC, we'll have CO₂ at around 500 parts per million. That's a level not seen on this planet since the Middle Miocene, 16 million years ago, when our ancestors were apes. Temperatures then were about 5 to 8ºC warmer, not 2º, and sea levels were some 40 meters (130 feet) or more higher, not the 1.5 feet (half a meter) anticipated at the end of this century by the 2013 IPCC report."
The inside story of how AI got good enough to dominate Silicon Valley (Quartz, June 18,2018)
"Artificial intelligence is sort of the end goal of computer science. Computer science is about automating stuff, and artificial intelligence is about automating everything."
(Uh, everyBODY.)
Trump makes space exploration racist and fascist with announcement of 6th branch of armed forces (Daily KOS, June 18, 2018)
"Trump: My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world's greatest space-faring nation. It is not enough to have an American presence in space; we must have an American dominance in space."
(The US is signatory to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (prohibiting militarization of space) that no nation has violated, not even during the worst of the Cold War.)
"Christian" TV Host Leigh Valentine: Those Crossing The Southern Border Illegally Are Treacherous Murderous God-Haters (Right Wing Watch, June 18, 2018)
"'Rape after rape after rape,' Valentine said. 'Children below 10 years old engaging in sexual activity. All kinds of sin and disgrace and darkness; the pit of the pits. So we're not getting the top-of-the-line echelon people coming over this border, we're getting criminals. I mean, total criminals that are so debased and their minds are just gone. They're unclean, they're murderers, they're treacherous, they're God-haters."
NEW: The person who knows and understands Trump the best isn’t a psychologist (Daily KOS, June 16, 2018)
"Tweets from Tony Schwartz:
1) I believe the media needs to give up the pretense of treating Trump's behavior as something to analyze on any rational grounds. This is entirely a story about a man acting out a severe personality disorder. Reporters don't know how to handle that, so they avoid it.
2) This presidency is now all about mental illness. Trump's dangerous & pathological narcissism is getting progressively worse. His reality testing about summit with Kim Jung Un is very low. We are at a rapidly escalating risk as Trump's grandiosity & paranoia rise inexorably.
3) Imagine that Trump was a Democrat. He would have long since been impeached or forced to resign - by Democrats. The Republican Party long ago sold its soul."
NEW: Mark Sanford Explains Why Republicans Will Do Nothing As The Republic Is Destroyed (Daily KOS, June 16, 2018)
"Sanford, a frequent critic of Trump who lost his primary this week to pro-Trump challenger Katie Arrington, suggested there's a simple, unspoken principle in Congress that enables his party's hands-off approach toward Trump: 'What you do as an elected official is ... an old-time senator told me years ago, the name of the game is staying in the game.'"
Republicans scramble to understand if Trump just sunk their immigration effort (CNN News, June 16, 2018)
"House Republicans were in full-on damage control Friday morning as they sought to downplay President Donald Trump's comments that he wouldn't support the GOP compromise bill. After a day of confusion that threatened the future of the legislation, the White House issued a statement on the record that Trump supported the bill along with a more conservative piece of legislation."
Trump suggests separation of families at border is a negotiating tool (CNN News, June 16, 2018)
"Trump again falsely blamed Democrats for his administration's actions, and said they could put a stop to the family separations by working with Republicans in Congress. Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents over a period of about six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security. 'I hate the children being taken away,' Trump said Friday morning. But Trump suggested Friday in an interview on Fox News' 'Fox and Friends' that he would not reverse his administration's policy unless Democrats agreed to his longstanding immigration priorities."
The best description I've heard for the Trump Presidency (Daily KOS, June 15, 2018)
"'The Trump Presidency is a bust out joint.' In Chicago, a bust out joint is a legitimate business. One way or another, usually through either extortion, or unpaid loan shark money, the mob moves in and takes over operation of the business. Let's just say it's a bar. They go on a spending spree, using the bar's lines of credit. They buy booze, glasses, new cash registers, bar stools, anything they can buy on credit, until the place is maxed out. And when the bills come due, they empty the register, back up a truck, load everything into it and disappear. They sell everything as pure profit, and the bar goes belly up."
Russian state TV: 'Crimea is ours; Trump is ours' (Daily KOS, June 15, 2018)
Trump confounds allies, facts with stance on Russia (Associated Press, June 15, 2018)
"President Donald Trump's belief that Russia should be immediately reinstated into the club of the world's major industrial democracies has confounded U.S. allies. And, his repeated blaming of his predecessor for Russia's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in Ukraine is at odds with the facts."
Cohen signals openness to cooperating with federal investigators (CNN News, June 15, 2018)
"President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen has indicated to family and friends he is willing to cooperate with federal investigators to alleviate the pressure on himself and his family, according to a source familiar with the matter."
Word of the Day: Neopatrimonialism (Daily KOS, June 14, 2018)
"Neopatrimonialism is a stepping away from democratic rule toward authoritarian rule. The introduction of neopatrimonialism happens when an elected leader, their family, and their loyal supporters take broad control of an otherwise modern government through destabilization."
Branding the New Flavor of American Fascism (Daily KOS, June 14, 2018)
"Trump and the 21st century Republican Party are fascists. Those who point to 20th century Germany and Italy and say we're not them, well, of course not; they were unique in their development and thus so are we. Still, the truth of where we are and what we have become irrevocably slams modern America into a classification of fascism; there is no escape.
The truth and the first amendment mean nothing to Trump and the Republicans. They embrace propaganda as fervently as any German fascist, just look at that amazing brain sludge they produced for the Koreans. Constant, exhausting gas-lighting and fantasy render any possible vehicle for the truth crippled. Trump constantly, specifically attacks individual outlets, Goebbels nods in hell at all of this.
They’re insatiable, disgusting grifters, Trump flagrantly stomps on the Constitution enriching himself with golf while Ivanka and Jared raked in an incredible $82 million dollars last year. $82 million! Are you kidding me? Public service is a laughable fantasy with these fascists, money, racism and lying are their gods.
The rule of law, oh well, slap another critical political principle into the new flavor of American fascism. It means nothing to Trump and the Republicans. Steal a Supreme Court seat to further suppress votes, and an appalling pardon pattern specifically designed to circumvent law itself, not just a crime. Watch another horrified American resign in the Department of Justice as Trump attacks healthcare, American fascism loathes its founding constitution."
The Trump/Kim summit was a sign of the collapse of U.S. influence (Daily KOS, June 14, 2018)
"Trump has been embarrassingly eager to accept the fig leaf that Kim has extended to him - the opportunity to put on a dumb show of a summit in order to ratify a new deal for North Korea brokered by Russia and China. The truly sad thing is that the U.S. is clearly a junior partner in our corrupt new world order - less than a junior partner, really, more like a flunky."
Trump calls Kim a 'tough guy' when asked about North Korean dictator's human rights abuses (ABC News, June 14, 2018)
"When Baier noted that Kim is 'a killer, he's clearly executing people,' Trump responded by calling Kim 'a tough guy.' This is far from the first time that Trump has shared positive views of strongmen and dictatorial rulers: he gave Syria's Bashar al-Assad 'an A' in terms of leadership in 2015; said the U.S. would be 'so much better off' if Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi was still in charge in 2016; and last year, he defended Russian President Vladimir Putin by saying 'there are a lot of killers' in the world, adding, 'You think our country's so innocent?'"
Trump faces backlash after North Korea summit (ABC News, June 14 2018)
"President Trump is facing backlash for his defense of Kim Jong Un's history of human rights abuses as more questions arise about the document they signed."
Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble. (Washington Post, June 13, 2018)
A.I. Can Track Humans Through Walls With Just a Wifi Signal (Inverse, June 13, 2018)
"A new piece of software has been trained to use wifi signals - which pass through walls, but bounce off living tissue - to monitor the movements, breathing, and heartbeats of humans on the other side of those walls. MIT offers this press release and video about the software. The researchers say this new tech's promise lies in areas like remote healthcare, particularly elder care, but it's hard to ignore slightly more dystopian applications. It's worth noting that at least one member of the research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology behind the innovation has previously received funding from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Another also presented work at a security research symposium curated by a c-suite member of In-Q-Tel, the CIA's high-tech venture capital firm."
Apple Is Adding A New Feature That Prevents Police From Unlocking iPhones (BuzzFeed, June 13, 2018)
"It would prevent firms like Cellebrite, which reportedly helped the FBI in the San Bernardino case, from gaining access to locked devices."
"You're all in this together!" Comedienne Michelle Wolf opens up about Correspondents Dinner hypocrisy (Daily KOS, June 13, 2018)
Trump's Negotiating Style Is Pure Art of the Moron, by Rick Wilson (Daily Beast, June 13, 2018)
"Well, thank you, Donald. You sent a message to our allies in Asia and beyond that you're willing to compromise their security and ours for an inconsequential photo-op with a hopped-up fatboy dictator who looks like Pyongyang already has a Krispy Kreme and a Popeyes, and he's the only one allowed to eat in them."
Putin Gave Trump The Idea To Suspend Military Exercises Near Korea (Political Informer, June 12, 2018)
"From the Wall Street Journal in January: Around the same time, Mr. Trump had an idea about how to counter the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, which he got after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin."
President Trump's Press Conference On North Korea Summit, Annotated (NPR News, June 12, 2018)
"President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Tuesday in Singapore. The two signed a joint statement committing to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. After the summit, Trump spoke to reporters about the meeting and took questions. Following is a transcript of the press conference, provided by the White House, annotated by NPR reporters."
Democrats Want To Interview Ivanka Trump In The Russia Probe (BuzzFeed, June 12, 2018)
Ivanka and Jared are working in the White House for 'free' ... and raked in $82 million last year (Daily KOS, June 12, 2018)
"They've engaged in international corruption and destabilizing the Middle East, and they're complicit in children being stolen from their parents … and they're still pulling in tens of millions of dollars a year. They should be shunned."
US launches bid to find citizenship cheaters (AP News, June 12, 2018)
Forget probable cause: New bill could let cops pull your prescription history without a warrant (Daily KOS, June 12, 2018)
Signs From Around The Country - Art Is Politics (Daily KOS, June 12, 2018)
"One hundred of us spending a single afternoon putting signs on freeways around the country is worth a hundred thousand of us spending an afternoon holding signs in the same place at the same time."
(See the example photographs!)
Native American tribes win big at the Supreme Court (Daily KOS, June 12, 2018)
"Parties from developers to municipalities to states themselves, as here, cannot rely on authorizations that predate this decision when it comes to activities that could significantly affect fish populations. They’re going to have to engage tribes. It's a major coup to have a legal avenue of recourse if negotiation fails or cooperation falters.
Moreover, tribes now have reason to examine other treaty rights in relation to state and private actions - and not just surrounding the rights to fish and hunt. ... This outcome could have implications for diverse tribal movements, like those to preserve Bears Ears and fight the Dakota Access pipeline."
Puerto Rico seeks to delay releasing death records after hurricane; judge rejects motion (CNN News, June 12, 2018)
"The lawsuits by CNN and CPI follow the accumulation of evidence suggesting Puerto Rico's official death toll for Hurricane Maria, which stands at 64, is a vast underestimation. In May, researchers from Harvard and elsewhere published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine claiming an estimated 4,645 people may have died in the storm. That estimate was based on interviews with more than 3,000 households across Puerto Rico."
NEW: The world is running out of sand - and there's a black market for it now (Business Insider, June 11, 2018)
"Worldwide, we go through 50 billion tons of sand every year. That is twice the amount produced by every river in the world. After air and water, sand is our most used natural resource. We use it even more than oil. It's used to make food, wine, toothpaste, glass, computer chips, breast implants, cosmetics, paper, paint, plastics. "
We're Worrying About the Wrong Kind of AI (Bloomberg, June 11, 2018)
"Biologists are growing 'mini brains' in labs faster than they can answer the ethical questions."
[MONSTER] Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (Ask Bob Rankin, June 11, 2018)
"DHS calls this Big Brother plan HART: Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology. HART is under the aegis of the National Security Agency (NSA). In the NSA's view of things, we are all 'persons of interest' because we all have some sort of connection to a foreigner who is within the NSA's lawful purview, however tenuous or flat-out incorrect that connection may actually be. Therefor, the NSA claims authority to collect all the data it can about us, and that is an appalling amount of data.
To make matters worse, DHS plans to tie all of its data together using one of the least reliable forms of identity authentication: face recognition biometric data."
Canada Parliament condemns U.S. attack on Trudeau, country simmers (Reuters, June 11, 2018)
"The motion in parliament, introduced by the opposition New Democrats, rejected 'disparaging ad hominem statements by U.S. officials which do a disservice to bilateral relations.' The purely symbolic vote of solidarity came a day after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said: 'There is a special place in hell' for Trudeau for his 'bad faith diplomacy' with Trump, as a dispute over trade escalated. Prime Minister Gary Trudeau has kept a low profile since Trump called him 'very dishonest and weak' and withdrew support for a Group of Seven communique reached at the summit Trudeau hosted in Quebec on Saturday.
While the agreement of legislators who are normally opposed on most fronts was remarkable, the anger also spread to pundits, officials, celebrities and ordinary citizens as Canadians vowed consumer boycotts of American goods and brainstormed insults of Trump on social media."
GOP strategist Steve Schmidt: Nearly every elected Republican has betrayed his or her oath (Daily KOS, June 10 2018)
"Letter to an American. Please read. We are connected to our Allies through shared values and the immense sacrifices that have been made to preserve freedom and liberty. Trump disgraces himself, his office, our history and our nation with his vile conduct."
'Drama, Action, Emotional Power'’: As Exhausted Aides Eye the Exits, Trump Is Re-energized (New York Times, June 10, 2018)
"President Trump has gone overseas to embark on some of the most consequential diplomatic negotiations of his tenure, threatening an all-out trade war with allies and seizing a chance to make peace with a nuclear-armed menace. But back home, he left behind a West Wing where burned-out aides are eyeing the exits, as the mood in the White House is one of numbness and resignation that the president is growing only more emboldened to act on instinct alone."
Former PM of Belgium Captions G7 Photo: "Just tell us what Vladimir has on you. Maybe we can help." (Daily KOS, June 10, 2018)
(This viral photo is humorous, but its source, context and Comments thread are serious. Do see its parody, under "Black Humor".)
A Fox News host just made the most honest gaffe in the conservative network's history (Washington Press, June 10, 2018)
"Fox & Friends accidentally said this about Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un at the Singapore summit: 'Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators.'"
(If Fox News kills its video, you can see a copy here.)
In Newark, Police Cameras, and the Internet, Watch You (New York Times, June 9, 2018)
"Surveillance cameras monitored by the police have become a ubiquitous presence in many cities. In Newark, anyone with internet access is allowed to watch."
Ranked Choice: A Better Electoral System in Maine, by Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen (New York Times, June 9, 2018)
"Besides losing the national popular vote in 2016, President Trump got less than 50 percent of the vote even in six states he won. What made that possible was the plurality-rule voting system, in which each voter opts for a single candidate, and the winner is the candidate with the highest vote total, even when short of a majority. Plurality rule is used by all states in presidential voting and every state except Maine for elections for Congress and governor. But, by electing candidates whom most voters haven't chosen, it aggravates polarization.
Moreover, it often deters appealing candidates. Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton were unpopular in 2016; a late Gallup poll rated their unfavorability at 62 percent and 57 percent, respectively. Both Bernie Sanders (the darling of liberal young people) and Michael Bloomberg (supported by numerous moderates) might have made an attractive candidate as an independent. But both stayed out of the general election because they understood that, under plurality rule, they would be splitting the anti-Trump vote with Mrs. Clinton and helping Mr. Trump to victory.
Ranked-choice voting - now being tested in Maine and increasingly in use in municipal and county elections across the country - helps solve both problems."
NY Times Editorial Board supports Ranked-Choice Voting:: Vote for Me! For Second Place, at Least? (New York Times, June 9, 2018)
"Voters in Maine will tackle that question on Tuesday, when the state holds its primaries using a radical yet sensible electoral reform that could fundamentally change how campaigns are run and who ends up winning. It will be the first time the method - known as ranked-choice, or instant-runoff, voting - is used in a statewide election.
The purpose is to ensure that officials are elected with an outright majority when there are three or more candidates, and to elevate those with the widest appeal. It works like this: Rather than checking a box for just one candidate, voters rank all candidates in order of preference. If a candidate earns a majority of the votes, he or she wins. If not, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and his or her ballots get redistributed to whomever those voters ranked second. If another round is needed, the process continues, eliminating the candidate with the next fewest votes, until one candidate has a majority."
NEW: God's EPA Administrator - Did the politics and history of evangelical Christianity create Scott Pruitt? (Slate, June 8, 20118)
"The more ardently Christian an American becomes, the less he or she cares about the environment. Evangelicals are the least environmentally inclined of committed U.S. Christians. This is the biggest obstacle to the American environmental movement. About one-quarter of Americans are evangelical Christians. They also appear to turn out to vote at higher rates than other religious groups, so they wield considerable political power. Then there is the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency is currently headed by an evangelical, the now-infamous Scott Pruitt. They like him because they think he's like them: He puts people before the environment, just like God does."
Family can sue Walgreens over woman's death after insurance denial, court says (CNN News, June 8, 2018)
This special ed teacher promised to one day donate $1M to her students. She wasn't kidding. (NorthJersey.com, June 7, 2018)
Des Moines DREAMer dies within weeks after being sent back to Mexico's violence (Des Moines Register, June 7, 2018)
Ronal Francisco Romero Died in Agony in ICE Custody. Now His Family Is Preparing to Sue. (Daily Beast, June 7, 2018)
Protesters Demand Answers About Transgender Woman Who Died In ICE Custody (KUNM, June 7, 2018)
Trump: Many Texans watched Harvey from their boats, requiring Coast Guard rescue (Houston Chronicle, June 7, 2018)
"This isn't the first time the president has made comments that seemed bizarre or ill-informed. For example, he claimed without evidence millions of people voted illegally and inflated the number of people attending his inauguration and other rallies. He wrongly claimed to have seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attacks on television."
Judge Rules Pruitt Must Provide Evidence for his Climate Denial (Daily KOS, June 7, 2018)
"It doesn’t take a law degree and years on the judicial bench to smell the BS; the school teachers who received the report in a mass spamming last year quickly saw through the sham."
Maybe Scott Pruitt isn't corrupt enough (Washington Post, June 6, 2018)
"Pruitt could be shaking down corporate polluters for tens of millions of dollars - and he's trying to use his influence to get a deal on a used Trump mattress that costs $1,750 new? He could get so many sweetheart deals from those he regulates that his wife would never have to work again - and he’s using pull so she can sell $3.99 chicken sandwiches?
Pruitt’s problem isn't that he’s corrupt; it's that he isn't corrupt enough. He could be thrashing with the big gators in the swamp, but he's lounging with larvae in a mud puddle. Pruitt should abandon his penny-ante corruption and get rich the way others do in Trump's Washington."
Trump's Morally Bankrupt Family Separation Policy is Leaving Children in Inhumane Detention Facilities, in Violation of the Law (America's Voice, June 6, 2018)
"In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced and DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen implemented an unprecedented 'zero tolerance' policy, vowing to prosecute all immigrants crossing the border in between ports of entry, resulting in children being taken from their parents. The purpose is clear: to deter families seeking protection from violence or improved opportunities for their family."
Stormy Daniels Is Suing Her Former Lawyer, Calling Him A "Puppet" For Trump (BuzzFeed, June 6, 2018)
"The lawsuit alleges that her former lawyer, Keith Davidson, 'elected to be a puppet' for Trump and Michael Cohen 'in order to advance their interests' at Daniels' expense."
NEW: In the future, college never really ends (Washington Post, June 6, 2018)
"In the Future of Work, robots are supposed to wipe out tons of jobs, create a bunch of new ones or deliver some combination of both. Economists predict any of these scenarios will force the average worker to do practically the same thing throughout their careers: keep learning and learning and learning. Some colleges in the United States are already preparing for this age of perpetual education."
Three months later, a mass exploit of powerful Web servers continues (Ars Technica, June 6, 2018)
More than 115,000 websites - many run by major universities, government organizations, and media companies - remained wide open to hacker takeovers because they hadn't installed critical patches released 10 weeks ago. Many of the sites were already compromised and were being used to surreptitiously mine cryptocurrencies or push malware on unsuspecting visitors."
More than half of U.S. households have ditched landline phones (Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2018)
"There are countries in Europe where 80% to 90% of households are wireless only, so this trend could continue for some time."
Manafort violates bail but the reasons he did it are now more interesting (Daily KOS, June 5, 2018)
"The below thread indicates the depth of Manafort's involvement in the Ukraine incursion by Russia and the range of influence including illegal lobbying. It demonstrates how much Mueller already has in evidence. It's important to remember that a Trump pardon for Manafort isn't going to cover some state-level activities that will be prosecuted where the money was transferred. Manafort could flip and give Trump up because of Manafort being implicated with a bunch of current and former European politicians during the Russian 'invasion' of Ukraine/Crimea."
The kids are gone, but their boomer parents can't afford to downsize (Boston Magazine, June 4, 2018)
"When did downsizing become as expensive as upsizing? For many older homeowners in Massachusetts today, there's no place like the home they’re already in - as in no place to go. This is especially true for those who live in cities and towns 25 miles or more from Boston, where home prices have yet to climb back to the heights they reached before the economy plunged in 2008. In Plymouth, the median sale price of a single-family home at the end of 2017 was about 4 percent below its pre-recession peak in 2005. Towns such as Hyannis and Southbridge sat deeper in the hole - still more than 15 percent down. Compare that with Cambridge, where the median sale price rose by 96 percent between 2005 and 2017. In parts of Boston, prices have outright doubled since 2005. Never has home-value disparity in Eastern Massachusetts been so extreme."
NEW: Mass deportation fears continue to silence the immigrant victims of domestic abuse (Daily KOS, June 4, 2018)
NEW: Senator Jeff Merkley denied entry into one migrant detention facility, claims he saw kids caged in another (CBS News, June 4, 2018)
"'I wanted to be able to visit the facility where apparently upwards of 1,000 children are being held in that massive building, a former Walmart, and the federal government, President Trump and team, Attorney General Sessions, Homeland Security, they do not want members of Congress or the public to know what's going on,' said Merkley.
Merkley's colleague, Sen. Bob Menendez tweeted in response to the senator's story, saying he shared a similar experience in being barred from gaining access to a detention facility. He said that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen 'owes us answers.'
Remarking on the administration's 'zero-tolerance' policy that allows border security agents to separate undocumented children from their parents when they're detained crossing the border, Merkley added, 'This is not zero tolerance. This is zero humanity. It's damaging children, putting them through a horrific experience in a land where they know no one, and they don't know where they're being sent and they don't understand why they're being sent.
The president has repeatedly held Democrats responsible for what he slammed as a 'horrible law,' but critics say there is no such law requiring families to be split up.
'When I was at the center at McAllen Border Station, this is the processing center, earlier and I was admitted there and I did see the people, hundreds of children locked up in cages there at that facility,' said Merkley, claiming that the federal government was whitewashing the challenges of the entrance system."
The New Machiavelli, by Peter Turchin (Cliodynamica, June 4, 2018)
(Like Donald Trump, a new book teaches old tricks.)
Should Germany expel American ambassador Richard Grenell? (Spectator, June 4, 2018)
"The diplomat’s comments to Breitbart have caused German politicians to question his suitability."
(That Breitbart article's Comments thread provides hints as to why.)
What Microsoft buying GitHub means to open-source software development (ZDNet, June 4, 2018)
"Buying GitHub may make sense for Microsoft, but many open-source developers hate the deal. They are certain that Microsoft will 'Embrace, extend, and extinguish' the programs of potential rivals. As one put it on a Google+ thread, 'What does M$ have to gain from this, other than by either shutting it down in the long term, monetizing it further or by data mining folks? In just a matter of hours, they made GitHub a completely toxic entity.'"
Doctors hail world first as woman's advanced breast cancer is eradicated (The Guardian, June 4, 2018)
"Immune cells from the woman's own body used to wipe out tumours."
Could dark matter atoms explain a recent observation? Paper suggests some dark matter atoms; charges are much smaller than an electron's. (Ars Technica, June 3, 2018)
Uncle Sam wants you to join the United States Digital Service (Ars Technica, June 3, 2018)
(To emulate Estonia?)
The Big One could leave 250,000-400,000 quake refugees in California. Where will they go? (Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2018)
A nuclear deal with North Korea would require unprecedented access to secret weapons sites (Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2018)
NEW: Giuliani: Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn't Be Indicted For It (Huffington Post, June 3, 2018)
"Congress would have to impeach Trump first before any criminal prosecution could move forward, the president's lawyer says."
Trump Is Not A King, Just A Con Man Trying To Evade The Law. (Daily KOS, June 3, 2018)
"Implicit in the U.S. v. Nixon decision is the principle that a President is not 'above the law,' which is essentially what Trump is asserting here."
NEW: Trump and Kim both want 'denuclearization' but disagree on what that means (Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2018)
"North Koreans view denuclearization as a long-term aspiration, the way Americans talk of someday abolishing nuclear weapons from the globe. North Korea has a long list of other grievances, and could demand the removal of U.S. troops, or even the U.S. nuclear umbrella, from South Korea."
Your iPhone is tracking your movements and storing your favorite locations all the time (ZDNet, June 2, 2018)
"You can turn this feature off completely by toggling the switch in the Significant Locations page in Settings. This prevents new data being collected, but it does not delete data already collected and stored."
Canada's Prime Minister blows away Trump tariffs, condemns U.S. government - not the American people (Daily KOS, June 1, 2018)
"Trudeau stressed that Canada's issues are not against the American people - who will remain their partners, allies and friends. Canada's issues are with Trump and his Republican-led administration. Trudeau says he hopes common sense will eventually prevail, but sees no signs of that happening from this American government."
Cell phone surveillance detected near the White House, DHS says (CNN News, June 1, 2018)
"The cavalier attitude toward our national security appears to be coming from the top down. It is high time for the FCC and this administration to act immediately to protect American national security."
Google reportedly won’t renew controversial drone imaging program. (Ars Technica, June 1, 2018)
"Google will apply its AI expertise to drone footage until 2019, then it will stop."
Arizona law gives delivery robots same rights as pedestrians – but they must abide by same rules (Insiders Buzz, June 1, 2018)
Facebook's Privacy Policy is History (Ask Bob Rankin, May 31, 2018)
"Facebook collects every scrap of data about you that it can, even posts or messages that you begin but decide not to finish. Your current location and past travels are collected, even if you have location services and GPS disabled on your mobile device; your carrier has to know where you are at all times to provide service, and all four major carriers sell that data to anyone who will pay, we learned just last week. (See my article Everyone Knows Where You Are for that story.) Facebook can afford to pay, and its greed for data about you is insatiable.
Data about you may come from other sites that use Facebook as a registration authentication option, or that employ the "like us on Facebook" button provided by Facebook. Even if you avoid registering with your Facebook account or clicking on the "like us" button, Facebook still gets the data that you were on a given page of a given site. Finally, Facebook buys data about what you do offline from data brokers, even if you have never had a Facebook account!
In other words, Facebook is the nosiest neighbor that everyone in the world has ever had."
Truth, Lies, and Literature, by Salman Rushdie (New Yorker, May 31, 2018)
"In the three countries I've spent my life caring about - India, the U.K., and the United States—self-serving falsehoods are regularly presented as facts, while more reliable information is denigrated as 'fake news.' However, the defenders of the real, attempting to dam the torrent of disinformation flooding over us all, often make the mistake of yearning for a golden age when truth was uncontested and universally accepted, and of arguing that what we need is to return to that blissful consensus. The truth is that truth has always been a contested idea.
I don’t pretend to have a full answer. I do think that we need to recognize that any society's idea of truth is always the product of an argument, and we need to get better at winning that argument. Democracy is not polite. It's often a shouting match in a public square. We need to be involved in the argument if we are to have any chance of winning it. And as far as writers are concerned, we need to rebuild our readers' belief in argument from factual evidence, and to do what fiction has always been good at doing - to construct, between the writer and the reader, an understanding about what is real."
Trump Inauguration Charges Dismissed Because Prosecutors Withheld Evidence (Huffington Post, May 31, 2018)
"A judge sanctioned Justice Department attorneys for withholding videos filmed by Project Veritas.
This undeniable prosecutorial misconduct is a serious governmental abuse of power. From the initial overcharging decisions to these latest revelations about the government's misleading editing of the Project Veritas video, the U.S. Attorney's office has repeatedly abused its power in a quest to lock people up for exercising their First Amendment rights on Inauguration Day."
$4? .04 cents? No, $0 for family of black man shot through garage door by police for playing Drake (Daily KOS, May 31, 2018)
SS7 routing-protocol breach of US cellular carrier exposed customer data (Ars Technica, May 30, 2018)
"40-year-old SS7 is being actively used - at least since 2016 - to track user locations and communications."
Judge gives a big F-U to Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump's plan to screw defrauded students (Daily KOS, May 30, 2018)
NEW: DHS official: 658 children taken from adults at Mexico border (NBC News, May 30, 2018)
"An average of about 50 children taken daily."
NEW: How University of Toronto philosopher Jordan Peterson will change the world (The Hill, May 30, 2018)
"Peterson not only is extraordinarily intelligent, but also widely learned. Listening to him is like wrapping your mind with a Paul Johnson history, an interdisciplinary, intercultural, time-traveling tapestry of transcendent themes and truths - where evolutionary biology, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, music, art, religions, culture and myth are all interwoven.
People find him because of viral YouTube clips, where he dismembers sanctimonious ideologues with a mike-dropping command of fact and logic; they stay for two hour lectures on psychology, mythology, and religious texts - there are more than 400 hours online - on their new-found quest for understanding and meaning.
Peterson’s focus for decades has been what drives human beings to do evil, particularly the great evils of the 20th century, from Auschwitz to Soviet gulags, as well as helping people have agency over their own lives and the ability to endure and transcend the inescapable suffering of life. That empathy makes him singularly effective and compelling: unlike most intellectuals' arrogant pieties that are driven more by resentment than concern, Peterson is obsessed with actual human suffering."
Trump goes full white nationalist in service of the Republican Party (Daily KOS, May 30, 2018)
While the media and justice system sleep, Trump is building autocracy one 'slice' at a time (Daily KOS, May 30, 2018)
"Trump's attacks on Meuller's investigation are a mirror of the way Trump has, day in and day out, gone after the press. Trump has regularly claimed that any story that uncovers uncomfortable facts is 'fake news' He regularly states that even the most rapidly growing platforms are 'failing.' And he paints all media sources outside the Fox-verse as joined in a left-wing conspiracy.
By doing this, he's been enormously successful in undermining the role of the press as a gatekeeper and alarm for the public. He's been successful expressly because much of the traditional media is still caught up in whether it's appropriate to call a lie a lie, while Trump races ahead, gleefully tossing bombs over his shoulder."
Trump tried to get Sessions to un-recuse himself and keep investigation in hands of a 'loyalist' (Daily KOS, May 30, 2018)
Harvard study estimates thousands died in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria (Washington Post, May 29, 2018)
"At least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria and its devastation across Puerto Rico last year, according to a new Harvard study released Tuesday, an estimate that far exceeds the official government death toll, which stands at 64."
TMZ Goes MAGA: How Harvey Levin's Gossip Empire Became Trump's Best Friend (Daily Beast, May 28, 2018)
"The president and the king of gossip have a relationship that's paid off for them both. Never more so than when Trump almost lost the election."
After pointlessly groping countless Americans, the TSA is keeping a secret watchlist of those who fight back (Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2018)
Europe plans ban on plastic cutlery, straws and more (CNN, May 28, 2018)
"The European Commission wants to ban 10 items that make up 70% of all litter in EU waters and on beaches. The list also includes plastic plates and drink stirrers."
What It's Like When Elon Musk's Twitter Mob Comes After You (Daily Beast, May 28, 2018)
"Female journalists who cover Elon Musk have the same personal rule: Mention his name on Twitter at your peril. That's because there is an army - mostly young, mostly white, almost entirely men - that marches behind him. These MuskBros, as we call them, make it their mission to descend on women who criticize Musk, and tear them to pieces."
NEW: Researchers achieve almost instant magnetization of matter by light (Physics.org, May 28, 2018)
"An experimental and theoretical study conducted at the University of São Paulo's Physics Institute (IF-USP) in Brazil has discovered an ultrafast way of magnetizing matter with minimal energy consumption - using Europium Selenide and a light bulb!"
In Hawaii, lava continues its creep onto grounds of geothermal power plant (Ars Technica, May 27, 2018)
"60,000 gallons of pentane have been removed from the site. "
F.B.I.'s Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russia-Linked Malware (The New York Times, May 27, 2018)
"The F.B.I. has several recommendations for any owner of a small office or home office router. The simplest thing to do is reboot the device, which will temporarily disrupt the malware if it is present. Users are also advised to upgrade the device's firmware and to select a new secure password. If any remote-management settings are in place, the F.B.I. suggests disabling them."
China is taking digital control of its people to chilling lengths; the Chinese government’s unsettling new system will see citizens rated by ‘good deeds’ (The Guardian, May 27, 2018.
"Watching Donald Trump trying to deal with China is like watching a clown dancing in front of an elephant. The US president’s entire approach is transactional - the methodology he employed in his allegedly successful career as a property developer. It’s all sticks and carrots, bluff and counter-bluff, aggressive bluster followed by rapid retreats. Sometimes, it appears to work.
If the future is digital, a significant minority of China's 1.4 billion citizens are already there. More significantly, the country’s technocratic rulers have sussed that digital technology is not just good for making economic transactions frictionless, but also for implementing sophisticated systems of social control."
Trump falsely accuses newspaper of creating source supplied by White House (Boston Globe, May 27, 2018)
The First Lady Is Missing, by Louise Marley (May 26, 2018)
(Unlike this White House, it's fiction but it is not fantasy.)
Dinosaur-killing impact + volcanoes kept the Earth hot for 100,000 years. Crushed up fish fossils provide the answers. (Ars Technica, May 26, 2018)
NEW: Cape Town's water crisis proves we need to think about water in a new way (Quartz, May 25, 2018)
Also: Official site: Cape Town Drought (City of Cape Town, South Africa; current)
NEW: The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow (The Stern Facts, May 25, 2018)
"Eduard Dmitrievich Lozansky, a US citizen and potentially an unregistered foreign agent for the Russian Federation, is a prolific Putin propagandist. a citizen of America, and he is the key man who introduced the Republican Party’s conservative movement to Russia."
Israeli Intelligence Firm's Election-Meddling Analysis Comes Under Mueller's Scrutiny (Wall Street Journal May 25, 2018)
"Psy-Group presentation outlines ways Trump campaign was helped by fake social media accounts."
Facebook, Google face first GDPR complaints over 'forced consent' (TechCrunch, May 25, 2018)
"The companies are using a strategy of 'forced consent' to continue processing the individuals’ personal data - when in fact the law requires that users be given a free choice unless a consent is strictly necessary for provision of the service. (And, well, Facebook claims its core product is social networking - rather than farming people's personal data for ad targeting.)"
GDPR Oddsmakers: Who, Where, When Will Enforcement Hit First? (Dark Reading, May 25, 2018)
"The GDPR grace period ends today. Experts take their best guesses on when data protection authorities will strike - and what kind of organizations will be first to feel the sting of the EU privacy law."
Happy PrivDay, May 25th, by Doc Searles (Linux Journal, May 25, 2018)
"25 May should be marked green for everyone who has hated the simple fact that harvesting personal data from everybody on the internet has been too damned easy for too damned long for too damned many companies, and governments too.
"What does the GDPR mean for the 'natural persons' it also calls 'data subjects'? It means we're in charge now: at least of ourselves - and of our sides of relationships with the corporate entities we deal with."
Can a City Really Sue an Oil Company for Climate Change? (Wired, May 25, 2018)
"In January Richmond joined six other California cities in suing oil companies for growing coastal threats related to climate change—primarily the sea level rise jeopardizing Richmond’s working coastline.
In addition to the California cities’ various lawsuits, New York, Seattle, and municipalities in Colorado have all filed lawsuits against various combinations of oil companies since the summer of 2017."
Russian unit, GRU officer linked to 2014 shoot-down of airliner over Ukraine (Ars Technica, May 25, 2018)
"Open-source intelligence, physical evidence show Russia provided the missile system."
A day after canceling North Korea summit, Trump says it may be back on (Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2018)
How plans for a North Korea summit collapsed: Trump sought a legacy, underestimated the difficulty (Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2018)
Trump cancels canceled meeting with North Korea's Kim, citing 'tremendous anger and open hostility' (Daily KOS, May 24, 2018)
(There's also this cartoon...)
Amazon confirms that Echo device secretly shared user's private audio (Ars Technica, May 25, 2018)
"The call that started it all: 'Unplug your Alexa devices right now.'"
For First Time in Modern Era, Living With Parents Edges Out Other Living Arrangements for 18- to 34-Year-Olds (Pew Social Trends, May 24, 2018))
"Share living with spouse or partner continues to fall."
'Bad trip': USAF members guarding nuclear missiles took LSD, records show (The Guardian, May 24, 2018)
Milwaukee PD releases Sterling Brown arrest video and it's absolutely awful; officers 'disciplined' (Daily KOS, May 23, 2018)
Arizona Department of Education removes 'evolution' from science texts because god (Daily KOS, May 23, 2018)
"During her campaign, Diane Douglas made it clear that she wants public schools to look more like Sunday School."
Insurance official: 'Substantial' ObamaCare premium increases coming in 2019 (The Hill, May 23, 2018)
"The premium increases were in part due to the repeal of ObamaCare's individual mandate in the Republican tax-reform bill in December. He also cited lawmakers' failure to pass a bill aimed at shoring up the market, which fell apart earlier this year amid a partisan dispute over abortion restrictions."
FBI Seizes Control of Russian Botnet (Daily Beast, May 23, 2018)
'The FBI operation targets a piece of sophisticated malware linked to the same Russian hacking group that hit the Democratic National Committee in 2016.'
Everyone Knows Where You Are (Ask Bob Rankin, May 22, 2018)
"If you know my current location, you can do me physical harm. If you know my kids' phone numbers, you can kidnap them. If you know anyone's location history, there’s a good chance you can blackmail them, or build a criminal case, force a divorce settlement favorable to your client, or just send them a message that scares the bejeezus out of them.
"LocationSmart took its 'buggy component' offline after Krebs contacted them, then promptly clammed up. Of the Big Four carriers, only T-mobile would admit to Krebs that it sells customers' real-time location data to LocationSmart. But they all do it. Doing so is perfectly legal; you gave permission when you accepted your carrier's terms of service. It's right there on page 197, paragraph 16, subheading T.
"Hold onto your indignation; it gets worse..."
'Weird, odd, a dumpster fire': Trump's North Korea summit coin ridiculed (The Guardian, May 22, 2018)
"Coin marking nuclear talks that might not happen yet criticised as premature and giving Kim Jong-un unwarranted status."
The open bigotry of Trumpland is beginning to backfire on the racists (Daily KOS, May 22, 2018)
Drain The Swamp: An actual sinkhole has opened on the White House lawn. It's growing (Quartz, May 22, 2018)
(Also see, Is the Trump presidency a religious cult? Coincidence, you say?? I think not! :-)
Giant predatory worms invaded France, but scientists just noticed them (Washington Post, May 22, 2018)
NEW: Ignore the hype over big tech. Its products are mostly useless, (The Guardian, May 21, 2018)
Hawaii: Big Island Lava Flows Reach Site Of Geothermal Plant (Honolulu Civil Beat, May 21, 2018)
"A naturally occurring berm has so far halted the flow's advance, but officials warn if the lava does hit the plant's underground wells it could trigger the release of poisonous gases."
The Banana States of America (Washington Post, May 21, 2018)
"Right now the fear of the United States going totalitarian doesn’t feel quite right. This crowd is too clownish to be Stalinist. Rather, the United States is turning into a banana republic."
Who wants Amazon's HQ2? Some of the 20 finalists back away from the big project (Gateway Media, May 21, 2018)
"The competition for Amazon HQ2 appears to be turning into a race to exit the race for the economic prize."
Also see Hudson: Why I’m not on the Amazon bandwagon (Metrowest Daily News, May 17, 2018)
Sweden distributes 'be prepared for war' leaflet to all 4.8m homes (The Guardian, May 21, 2018)
"The publication comes as the debate on security – and the possibility of joining Nato – has intensified in Sweden in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and recent incursions into Swedish airspace and territorial waters by Russian planes and submarines."
This Liberal went to a Right Wing candidate forum and saw an alternate reality (Daily KOS, May 20, 2018)
"The Candidate Forum between two Republican Primary candidates proves an important point; the Right Wing lives in an alternate state of reality. The candidates adopted the biggest Trump flaw, lying. Because they have the trust of the community and a corresponding media and Right Wing think-tank support, they can mislead a large section of society. The Trump-adoring Republican learned the following:
- There is a deep state, unelected bureaucrats that they must extricate.
- Disregard the mainstream media. Illegal immigrants continue to rush the border. [LIE]
- California is running a massive deficit. [LIE]
- They won't cut Social Security for old folks, but migration to privatization for the future is their policy [2008 anybody?]
- They will uphold the second amendment at all cost."
Only Trump could meet with North Korea's leader (Boston's Metrowest Daily News, May 19, 2018)
New Yorkers respond to lawyer's racist rant with 'Latin party' outside his house (The Guardian, May 18, 2018)"
Aaron Schlossberg was abusive to Spanish-speaking workers. Activists hosted a good natured party with a theme: retribution."
Treatment-Resistant Fungal Infections Increasing Worldwide (U.S. News & World Report, May 18, 2018)
"Scientists warn the treatment-resistant infections 'pose a considerable threat to disease control.'"
Does Donald Trump hate children? (Quartz, May 18, 2018)
"From children's health insurance to student debt to preserving the environment, the US president has shown little regard for future generations of Americans."
NEW: The Boston restaurant where robots have replaced the chefs (Washington Post, May 17, 2018)
"Started by a group of 20-something robotics engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who partnered with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, the new Spyce restaurant in downtown Boston is founded on the idea that a fulfilling meal can be more science than spontaneity. The restaurant's founders have replaced human chefs with seven automated cooking pots that simultaneously whip up $7.50 meals in three minutes or less."
Rep. Mo Brooks says maybe sea levels are only rising because a bunch of rocks are falling in (Daily KOS, May 17, 2018)
(This item would be in the Black Humor section - if fools like this did NOT control our government.)
Mueller investigation enters Year Two: What comes next - and how it could end (Washington Post, May 17, 2018)
"Mueller still hasn't answered the biggest question: Did the Trump campaign coordinate with Russia to influence the 2016 election? But he has secured guilty pleas from three former Trump campaign or administration officials: national security adviser Michael Flynn, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates and campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Mueller has also indicted 13 people and three companies who were part of a Russian Internet troll operation that used online propaganda to push voters toward Trump."
NEW: States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018 (Prison Policy Initiative, May 16, 2018)
"Oklahoma now has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., unseating Louisiana from its long-held position as 'the world's prison capital.' By comparison, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive, but even these states lock people up at higher rates than nearly every other country on earth. Compared to the rest of the world (graph), every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime."
Senate Transcripts Suggest Trump, Jr., Was Willing to Collude with Russians (New Yorker, May 16, 2018)
Why the GOP Senate is suddenly throwing Donald Trump under the bus today on Russia (Palmer Report, May 16, 2018)
"They must know that something very ugly is about to surface, and they're trying to protect themselves by distancing themselves from it in advance. So what do they know that we don't? Whatever it is, they must think it's coming out soon."
Probing Pence: Did his Hillsdale College commencement speech get anything right? (Freedom From Religion Foundation, May 16, 2018)
"Pence can attest all he wants, but personal assertions don't alter reality."
The Shadow Sector: North Korea's Information Technology Networks (James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, May 2018)
"This paper examines several nodes in North Korea-linked IT networks and considers the implications for current and future policy efforts to stem North Korean revenue and mitigate the cyber-security threats the country poses."
How California's primary could stop Democrats from retaking the U.S. House (Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2018)
"Under the state’s top-two primary, the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes advance to the general election in November, regardless of party. Democrats fear that the high numbers of hopefuls on the primary ballot could split the vote and leave the party without candidates in high-stakes congressional races in November. Meanwhile, Republicans are worried they could be left off the ballot in the governor’s race and other statewide contests in November, giving their voters less of an incentive to turn out to vote for GOP House candidates."
Microsoft blocks Windows 10 April 2018 update to some Intel SSDs (Ars Technica, May 15, 2018)
"For unknown reasons, the update is incompatible and leaves systems in a boot loop."
(This also can cause some Linux dual-boot installations to make Win10 unbootable; first, make backups and a Windows 10 bootable USB disk or DVD!)
NEW: New analysis shows that 85% of gun-owning parents do NOT practice safe gun storage (Daily KOS, May 15, 2018)
NEW: The Untold Story of Robert Mueller's Time in Combat (Wired, May 15, 2018)
"Today, the face-off between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and President Donald Trump stands out, amid the black comedy of Trump's Washington, as an epic tale of diverging American elites: a story of two men - born just two years apart, raised in similar wealthy backgrounds in Northeastern cities, both deeply influenced by their fathers, both star prep school athletes, both Ivy League educated - who now find themselves playing very different roles in a riveting national drama about political corruption and Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The two men have lived their lives in pursuit of almost diametrically opposed goals - Mueller a life of patrician public service, Trump a life of private profit."
America's War On Terror: A Staggeringly Well-Funded Blowback Machine, by Tom Engelhardt (Tom Dispatch, May 15, 2018)
"The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute published an estimate of the taxpayer dollars that will have gone into America's war on terror from September 12, 2001, through fiscal year 2018. That figure: a cool $5.6 trillion (including the future costs of caring for our war vets). On average, that's at least $23,386 per taxpayer."
Israel must avoid a moral and political defeat (Washington Post, May 15, 2018)
"Having tried and failed to defeat Israel with rockets and armed cross-border attacks, Hamas this spring deployed a new strategy: assembling thousands of nominal civilians to march on and attempt to breach the border fence, in the calculation that many would be killed. On Monday, this cruel and cynical tactic paid off, albeit at enormous human cost. By the Israeli account, Hamas assembled some 40,000 people at 13 points along the border, then sent groups of them toward the fence, armed with wire cutters, slingshots, knives and, in a couple of cases, firearms. They were met with clouds of tear gas, but when that failed to disperse them, Israeli snipers opened fire. At least 60 Palestinians were killed. On Tuesday, Israeli officials said two dozen had been identified as militants of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad."
Under Trump, the U.S. has abandoned the last shred of balance on Israel (Washington Post, May 14, 2018)
"The decision to move our embassy to Jerusalem was a symbolic one, but it is a vitally important symbol. Because both Israel and the Palestinians claim the city as their capital, no country had put an embassy there, choosing instead to locate them in Tel Aviv. Previous presidents have promised to move our embassy but not followed through, one after another deciding it would only inflame tensions. The fact that others had promised it, but not delivered, was no doubt a powerful incentive for Trump to relocate the embassy, since he loves being able to say he did what nobody else could do. It’s also obvious he feels absolutely no concern or empathy for the Palestinians and their fate."
NEW: Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract (Gizmodo, May 14, 2018)
"It's been nearly three months since many Google employees - and the public - learned about the company's decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company's continued involvement in Maven."
White House, EPA headed off chemical pollution study (Politico, May 14, 2018)
"The intervention by Scott Pruitt's aides came after one White House official warned the findings would cause a 'public relations nightmare.'"
Mitt Romney calls pastor who delivered blessing at Jerusalem embassy opening 'religious bigot' (Politico, May 14, 2018)
"'Robert Jeffress says 'you can’t be saved by being a Jew,' and 'Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell,'' Romney, who is Mormon, wrote on Twitter Sunday night. 'He's said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.'"
Michael Cohen's emails to Stormy's original lawyer could turn into a double whammy for him (Daily KOS, May 14, 2018)
"The several emails Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti has released in recent days suggest that Michael Cohen was awful chummy and perhaps conspiring with Daniels' original attorney, Keith Davidson, who was supposed to be negotiating the best deal for Daniels, not Cohen."
From Ice Cube to Black Cube - this doubtful Trump Administration melodrama, by Maureen Dowd (New York Times, May 12, 2018)
"Our brains are so scrambled that it's starting to make sense that none of it makes sense. In the Trump era, sure, why not? Everything is plausible."
Bloomberg warns that an 'epidemic of dishonesty' threatens U.S. democracy (Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2018)
"The greatest threat to American democracy isn't communism, jihadism or any other external force or foreign power. It's our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power."
NEW: Volcanic activity threatens Hawaii geothermal plant long at center of resident concerns (Washington Post, May 12, 2018)
""
'Shell-Shocked' in Hawaii: How Lava Overran a Neighborhood (New York Times, May 12, 2018)
Shrinking glaciers, bigger fires and hotter nights: How climate change is altering California (Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2018)
"As global warming accelerates, California is getting hotter and drier. Trees and animals are moving to higher ground. Air conditioning is an increasing necessity. More winter precipitation is falling as rain and there's less spring snowmelt to satisfy the water demands of farms and cities."
NEW: If Trump Is Laundering Russian Money, Here's How It Works (Wired, May 11, 2018)
"You see a murkiness and level of complexity with which the Cohen and Trump companies have operated—what are they hiding? Why are secondary and tertiary entities signing under pseudonyms and ‘cover' names? Truly legitimate, transparent companies don’t need to do that. Does this point to corruption and/or conspiracy? It certainly looks that way!"
The lizard wisdom of Donald Trump (Seattle Times, May 11, 2018)
"Given his background, there is growing reason to believe that Donald Trump understands the thugs in North Korea, China and Iran a whole lot better than the people who attended our prestigious Foreign Service academies."
Hey, did you know that: The Trump-Russia Swamp just got a Lot Deeper? (Daily KOS, May 11, 2018)
"Enough already. Enough of all these Russian connections … every time we turn over a Trump rock!"
Trump Tirade Is Culmination of Immigration Frustration (New York Times, May 11, 2018)
What is wrong with these people? (Washington Post, May 11, 2018)
"Within the last 24 hours: Fox Business guest Ret. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (a birther and notorious crackpot) declares, 'The fact is, is John McCain, [torture] worked on John. That's why they call him Songbird John'; White House aide Kelly Sadler says aloud at a White House meeting that McCain's opposition to CIA nominee Gina Haspel doesn't matter because he is 'dying anyway'; and White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, who has not fired Sadler, unleashes a bigoted, ignorant rant against immigrants."
3,500 Facebook ads show the scale of Russian manipulation of U.S. election (Washington Post, May 10, 2018)
"The ads, from mid-2015 to mid-2017, illustrate the extent to which Kremlin-aligned forces sought to stoke social, cultural and political unrest on one of the Web'’s most powerful platforms. With the help of Facebook's targeting tools, they delivered their disinformation to narrow categories of users – from black or gay users to fans of Fox News."
Florida man behind 100 million robocalls hit with huge FCC fine (Washington Post, May 10, 2018)
Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can't. (New York Times, May 10, 2018)
"Researchers can now send secret audio instructions undetectable to the human ear to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant."
Microsoft is Attacking the Competition Through Patent Trolls Based in Texas, Armed by Microsoft's Former Management (Tech Rights, May 9, 2018)
"Microsoft is a patent extortion company with a recent (the 'new' Microsoft) 73% stake in the troll that feeds many of the other trolls, including Dominion Harbor in Texas. Microsoft is willing to lose a lot of money just to sabotage rivals."
Senate Democrats believe net neutrality is a political winner as they try to reinstate regulations (Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2018)
Women trounce men on first major primary night of the year (Politico, May 9, 2018)
"But overwhelmingly, it was Democratic women winning nominations in GOP-leaning districts."
Anti-Semitic US Senate Candidate Emerges in California (NBC Bay Area, May 9, 2018)
"Patrick Little from Albany popped up second on a late-April Survey-USA poll, garnering 18 percent behind incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein. 'My whole campaign is predicated on removing the Jewish supremacists from control of our country,'"
AT&T was paying Trump's lawyer as the administration turned into foe (Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2018)
Donald Trump gave a huge gift to Vladimir Putin, and may have saved the Russian government (Daily KOS, May 9, 2018)
"Russia Today: To implement all the domestic programs Putin has promised for Russia, the cost will be 8 trillion rubles ($127 billion). But where is Russia to get such a huge amount when the government has long been strapped for cash? Looks like we found it. Trump is withdrawing US from the Iran nuclear deal. Oil prices should go up, which is good for us."
Emails Reveal EPA Approach to Climate Policy under Pruitt's Leadership (Scientific American, May 9, 2018)
Obama full statement on Trump exit from Iran nuclear deal (Chicago Sun-Times, May 8, 2018)
Trump's Approval Rating Makes Me Hopeful For Our Country: Tuesday's Good News (Daily KOS, May 8, 2018)
Rudy Giuliani's flubs may let Stormy Daniels take down President Trump (USA Today, May 7, 2018)
"Donald Trump's new legal counsel might have done the impossible: making Michael Cohen seem competent while transforming Stormy Daniels into a bigger legal threat. ... there are two things to learn from the latest Giuliani train wreck. First, regardless of the legal questions, the line the president and his team are trying to walk narrows daily. What was once 'Trump doesn’t know Stormy Daniels' became 'he met her but didn’t know about the payoff' and is now 'he knew, but he also didn't know because he makes so many of these payoffs.' The alleged affair with Daniels may not carry the legal danger of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe, but politically speaking it's more and more likely Trump won't be able to make this story (and possibly others to come) go away. Second, Giuliani/s continued presence on TV, even after Trump tried to walk back his comments, proves there's no cavalry coming over the hill to save the president."
The Pleasure and Pain of Being California, the World's 5th-Largest Economy (New York Times, May 7, 2018)
Pele, the Hawai'i Goddess of Fire, Lightning, Wind, and Volcanoes (Tremblor, May 5, 2018)
Cambridge Analytica must hand data to US citizen, says British regulator (CNet, May 5, 2018)
"An American turns to the UK's Data Protection Act to find out what info CA had on him. The company was at the center of the storm over Facebook data and privacy."
Chinese government is behind a decade of hacks on software companies (Ars Technica, May 5, 2018)
"Though sloppy at times, Winnti Umbrella remain advanced and extremely prolific."
"I had to guard an empty room": the rise of the pointless job (The Guardian, May 4, 2018)
Trump blindsides Sanders - again (Politico, May 4, 2018)
"In a familiar refrain, the press secretary says she didn't have the full story on president's payments to Stormy Daniels."
Trump's Lawyer Went to the Worst Law School in America (Politico, May 4, 2018)
"The Thomas M. Cooley Law School, Michael Cohen's alma mater, has long been a punchline in the legal world."
NSA says searches of Americans' data spiked in 2017 (ZDNet, May 4, 2018)
"The agency collected a staggering 534 million domestic phone records last year, up threefold on the year earlier."
NEW: Spectre-NG - Multiple new Intel CPU flaws revealed, several serious (Heise, May 3, 2018)
"Eight new security flaws in Intel CPUs have already been reported to the manufacturer by several teams of researchers. All eight are essentially caused by the same design problem - you could say that they are Spectre Next Generation."
Trump is desperately afraid of something in Michael Cohen's files - and it's not Stormy Daniels (Daily KOS, May 3, 2018)
Trump may have let something slip about the Russian lawyer from the Trump Tower meeting (Financial News, May 3, 2018)
Trump threatens to use 'the powers granted the presidency' to end investigation (Daily KOS, May 2, 2018)
The Trump administration is going after Native Americans now, too (Daily KOS, May 2, 2018)
NEW: Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata (The Register, May 2, 2018)
NEW: Ancient humans settled the Philippines 700,000 years ago (Science Magazine, May 2, 2018)
As fire season begins, blazes streak across Arizona (Tremblor, May 1 2018)
Why conservatives are mad: the press 'shouldn't be the one' to point out White House lies (Daily KOS, April 30, 2018)
"American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp: 'Journalists shouldn’t be the one to say the President or his spokesperson is lying. What that does to 50 percent of the country is make them feel they are not credible to listen to.'"
NEW: The census is a threat to communities of color (Washington Post, April 30, 2018)
Fascists Compete To Own America (Common Dreams, April 30, 2018)
"Now might be a really good time to examine the origins and nature of the whole right-wing collusion between business and government."
From Golden State Killer to Grim Sleeper, DNA helping break serial killer mysteries from 1970s and 1980s (Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2018)
Michael Hayden: The End of Intelligence (New York Times, April 28, 2018)
(Mr. Hayden is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.)
"Over the years I had learned that the traditions and institutions that protect us from living Hobbesian 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' lives are inherently fragile and demand careful tending. In America today, they are under serious stress.
"It was no accident that the Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year in 2016 was 'post-truth,' a condition where facts are less influential in shaping opinion than emotion and personal belief. To adopt post-truth thinking is to depart from Enlightenment ideas, dominant in the West since the 17th century, that value experience and expertise, the centrality of fact, humility in the face of complexity, the need for study and a respect for ideas.
"President Trump both reflects and exploits this kind of thinking. It is fair to say that the Trump campaign normalized lying to an unprecedented degree. There was the candidate's claim that legions of Arabs celebrated wildly in New Jersey as the World Trade Center collapsed. He defended his calls for the intentional killing of the Sept. 11 terrorists' families because 'they knew what was happening' and had 'watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center,' something for which there is zero evidence. He insinuated that Senator Ted Cruz's father had a hand in John F. Kennedy's assassination and that the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had been murdered.
"When pressed on specifics, the president has routinely denigrated those who questioned him, whether the 'fake' media, 'so called' judges, Washington insiders or the 'deep state.' He has also condemned Obama-era intelligence officials as 'political hacks.'
"You could sometimes convince a liar that he was wrong. What do you do with someone who does not distinguish between truth and untruth? We in the intelligence world have dealt with obstinate and argumentative presidents through the years. But we have never [before] served a president for whom ground truth really doesn’t matter."
A Hawaiian island got about 50 inches of rain in 24 hours on April 14-15th. Scientists warn it's a sign of the future (Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2018)
ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days. He's not the only one who had to prove his citizenship (Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2018)
It's Time for the Personal Datasphere (Finally!), by Andy Updegrove (The Standards Blog, April 27, 2018)
"Back then the problem was (and it still is) that the critical keys to avoiding data lock in are standards, and the process that develops those standards wasn't (and still isn't) controlled by end users."
As two Koreas shake hands, Hidden Cobra hackers wage espionage campaign (Ars Technica, April 27, 2018)
"North Korea ramps up espionage hacks that target the US and 16 other countries."
Paul Manafort's lawsuit against Robert Mueller gets thrown out of court (Daily KOS, April 27, 2018)
Kremlingate Is Really Just Watergate for Morons - With Russians, by John R. Schindler (The Observer, April 26, 2018)
"Trump is far too psychologically unstable and personally compromised to be deemed a good fit for clandestine work by the KGB (or any serious spy service). However, Trump gives every appearance of being a longtime agent of influence, that is a person (often a high-flyer in business or politics) to be exploited as a conduit for pro-Kremlin propaganda."
YouTube's Plan to Clean Up the Mess That Made It Rich (Bloomberg, April 26, 2018)
"Extremist propaganda, dangerous hoaxes, videos of tasered rats—the company is having its worst year ever. Except financially."
NEW: 51 Percent Of Republican Voters Agree The Press Is ‘Enemy Of The People’ (The Daily Caller, April 26, 2018
"The Quinnipiac University poll reveled 66 percent of U.S. voters say they believe the news media, while 22 percent say the media is the 'enemy of the people.' However, of Republicans, 51 percent believe the news media is the 'enemy of the people' compared to 37 percent who trust them. The news comes as President Donald Trump has continued to blast the media, giving them the nickname 'fake news.'")
Forcing us to reckon with the past, America's first lynching memorial and museum opens in Alabama (Daily KOS, April 25, 2018)
JFK Assassination: The Tell-Tale Brain Keeps on Telling. What Is It Saying? (Who, What, Why?, April 25, 2018)
Cars Are Ruining Our Cities (New York Times, April 25, 2018)
When it rains, it pours - California can look forward to more extreme dry-wet "climate whiplash" (Ars Technica, April 25, 2018)
"Bigger variability in annual rainfall, snowfall in store for the Golden State."
How bacteria are changing your mood (BBC News, April 24, 2018)
"Science is piecing together how the trillions of microbes that live on and in all of us - our microbiome - affect our physical health. Even conditions including depression, autism and neurodegenerative disease are now being linked to these tiny creatures."
E-waste recycler Eric Lundgren loses appeal on computer restore discs, must serve 15-month prison term (Washington Post, April 24, 2018)
"A federal district judge ruled that the discs made by Eric Lundgren to restore Microsoft operating systems had a value of $25 apiece, even though they could be downloaded free and could only be used on computers with a valid Microsoft license."
Judge Rules Trump Administration Must Continue DACA Program (Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2018)
"The ruling is broadest so far against administration's move to end the Obama-era program, but judge postpones effect to allow administration to respond."
Flight Records Illuminate Mystery of Trump's Moscow Nights (Bloomberg, April 23, 2018)
How Long Can Trump's Long Con Last? (Bloomberg, April 23, 2018)
"Trump has exaggerated his wealth for years. In office, he's trying a similar scam."
Crispr: A genetic scalpel (Quartz, April 23, 2018)
"In 1993, a breakthrough new technology, known as CRISPR, gave scientists a path to treat incurable diseases through genetic editing. In 2016, due to its potential for misuse, the US Intelligence Community designated genetic editing a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction and Proliferation.'"
NEW: Is it a coincidence that Trump uses the language of white supremacy? (Washington Post, April 20, 2018)
NEW: It's becoming clear that Trump won't run in 2020 (Washington Post, April 20, 2018)
"Now, even Trump's most steadfast allies are quietly admitting that the Southern District of New York’s investigation poses an existential threat to his future, both politically and legally. Trump allies are telling the president his 'fixer' could flip for the feds, just like Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. In Washington and across the country, Republicans are sensing the president is a wounded political figure, leading them to withhold their future support or - in one high-profile case - to challenge the president directly."
Engineers Are Leaving Trump's America for the Canadian Dream (Bloomberg, April 20, 2018)
"The long wait for green cards was bad enough. Antagonism toward immigrants is pushing skilled foreigners across the border."
Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400. Here are the tapes. (Washington Post, April 20, 2018)
"Posing as 'John Barron,'he claimed he owned most of his father's real estate empire."
NEW: Comey writes in memo he laughed after Trump floated the idea of jailing journalists (CNN, April 20, 2018)
"In a memo dated February 14, 2017, Comey said that Trump complained during an Oval Office meeting about classified information being leaked to the media. Comey wrote that he said he 'agreed very much' that it was 'terrible' such information was being leaked, and added that he was 'eager to find leakers and would like to nail one to the door as a message.'"
The leaked Comey memos just blew up in Trump's face (Washington Post, April 20, 2018)
Democratic Party files lawsuit alleging Russia, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks conspired to disrupt the 2016 campaign (Washington Post, April 20, 2018)
Palantir Knows Everything About You (Bloomberg News, April 19, 2018)
"Peter Thiel's data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens. The scary thing? Palantir is desperate for new customers."
"For all of Palantir's professed concern for individuals’ privacy, the single most important safeguard against abuse is the one it's trying desperately to reduce through automation: human judgment."
"The court's 2014 decision in Riley v. California found that cellphones contain so much personal information that they provide a virtual window into the owner's mind, and thus necessitate a warrant for the government to search. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, wrote of cellphones that “with all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life.’ Justice Louis Brandeis, 86 years earlier, wrote a searing dissent in a wiretap case that seems to perfectly foresee the advent of Palantir.
"'Ways may someday be developed,' Brandeis warned, 'by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences.'"
"'The world changed when it became clear everyone could be targeted using Palantir,' says a former JPMorgan cyber expert who worked with Cavicchia at one point on the insider threat team. 'Nefarious ideas became trivial to implement; everyone's a suspect, so we monitored everything. It was a pretty terrible feeling.'"
StingRays (Quartz, April 19, 2018)
(Also see What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget?, March 10. 2018)
NEW: Nikki Haley’s "confusion" sheds light on the Trump-Russia mystery (Washington Post, April 18, 2018)
"'With all due respect, I don’t get confused.' These eight words from Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will go down as among the most powerful indictments of the rancid governing culture President Trump has fostered. They may also shed light on one of the great mysteries of the moment: Why is it that Trump regularly backs off when it comes to confronting Vladimir Putin and Russia?"
James Comey says GOP turned itself into a Trump cult in exchange for tax cuts - so he's leaving (Raw Story, April 18, 2018)
NEW: The Fire Rosenstein Squad among Trump's Buddies (Empty Wheel, April 18, 2018)
The Trump administration doubles down in the Wall Street Journal on why trickle-down really does work (Economic Policy Institute, April 18, 2018)
German Government Chooses Open Source For Its Federal Cloud Solution (Fossbytes, April 18, 2018)
Woman Who Landed Damaged Southwest Jet Was One Of Navy's First Female Fighter Pilots (Huffington Post, April 18, 2018)
"Passengers praised the skill of Tammie Jo Shults in landing the plane after it lost an engine."
Dear Boss: I plan to take the next 12-18 months to find a new position (TYSK, April 18, 2018)
"During this time I will show up for work when it is convenient."
Watchdog says EPA broke law with Scott Pruitt's $43,000 phone booth (Independent, April 17, 2018)
Sean Hannity's Ties to Two More Trump-Connected Lawyers (The Atlantic, April 17, 2018)
"The Fox News host denies that Michael Cohen was ever his lawyer - but Hannity was represented by a pair of legal advisers who also have close links to the president."
The man who could fire Mueller (Washington Post, April 17, 2018)
"If Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, next in line to be Robert Mueller's boss is Solicitor General Noel Francisco—who is no fan of James Comey or the FBI."
Good Grief. Cohen's World Gets Mobbier The Closer I Look (Talking Points Memo, April 17, 2018)
Comey's remarkable new admission helps explain how Trump won (Washington Post, April 17, 2018)
Scientists Accidentally Develop 'Mutant' Enzyme That Eats Plastic (EcoWatch, April 17, 2018)
Haunted by history (Aeon, April 16, 2018)
"War, famine and persecution inflict profound changes on bodies and brains. Could these changes persist over generations?"
NEW: For Tax Day, a reminder that economic arguments for the GOP tax plan have no theoretical basis (Economic Policy Institute, April 16, 2018)
US, UK issue joint warning on Russian hackers (CNN, April 16, 2018)
Alert (TA18-106A) - Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Targeting Network Infrastructure Devices (US-CERT, April 16, 2018)
Cohen Isn't the Biggest Catch from Trump World (Bloomberg, April 16, 2018)
"Other players (Greenblatt and Weisselberg) know far more about the president's dealings than his lawyer does."
The words Hannity likely never uttered about Michael Cohen: 'In the interest of full disclosure ...' (Daily KOS, April 16, 2018)
Prosecutors to court: Trump's arguments against reviewing potential criminal evidence are absurd (Daily KOS, April 16, 2018)
Back to Normal in Syria (Slate, April 16, 2018)
A North American Climate Boundary Has Shifted 140 Miles East Due to Global Warming (Daily KOS, April 16, 2018)
New worldwide solar projects leave fossil fuels in the dust (Daily KOS, April 15, 2018)
NEW: Is the Trump presidency a religious cult?, by Reza Aslan (Big Think, April 15, 2018)
(8.5-min. video analyzes Trump presidency as a White Evangelical cult.)
James Comey Interview on ABC: I think Trump is morally unfit to be president (Daily KOS, April 15, 2018)
Trump wants to review material seized from personal lawyer before federal investigators (Washington Post, April 15, 2018)
Avenatti Predicts That Michael Cohen Will Be Indicted Within Next 90 Days Plus Man In Photo ID'd (Daily KOS, April 15, 2018)
Cohen brazenly is with cigar smoking friends outside hotel instead of Federal Court hearing Friday (Daily KOS, April 14, 2018)
Why the question of whether Michael Cohen visited Prague is massively important for Donald Trump (Vox, April 14, 2018)
"The Steele dossier claimed Cohen went to Prague to meet Russians. He's said for more than a year that he didn't."
Guess who else was in Prague when Michael Cohen was there (Daily KOS, April 13, 2018)
Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier (McClatchy DC Bureau, April 13, 2018)
Bolton, key Trump adviser, has evolved his views on Syria (McClatchy DC Bureau, April 14, 2018)
The president's controversial, unconstitutional, dumb Syria strikes are insane - and just might mean we can start talking seriously about politics again. (Reason, April 14, 2018)
"When Trump Loses Alex Jones' and Gains Elizabeth Warren's Support, All Things Are Possible!"
Except, Senator Elizabeth Warren specifically opposed this action! She said (Elizabeth Warren, April 14, 2018):
"The recent chemical attacks in Syria are horrifying. They are a clear violation of international law and an assault on decent people. The world must hold Assad accountable for his violence against the Syrian people – and the United States should be part of a planned, coordinated multilateral effort to do exactly that.
"But the Constitution gives Congress the power to authorize military action. If Donald Trump wants to expand American military involvement in Syria's civil war, he must seek approval from Congress – and provide a comprehensive strategy with clear goals and a plan to achieve them.
"And if Donald Trump truly wants to help Syrians fleeing murderers, he should immediately drop his heartless, relentless effort to ban their children from America."
Allies dispute Russian and Syrian claims of shot down missiles (The Guardian, April 14, 2018)
Damascus defiant as U.S. strikes prove more limited than feared (Washington Post, April 14, 2018)
Syria: 'Mission accomplished,' says Trump after overnight strikes - live updates (The Guardian, April 14, 2018)
Here are 16 tweets where Trump attacks Obama for exactly what Trump is doing in Syria now (Daily KOS, April 13, 2018)
U.S. and allies fire missiles at Syria in retaliation for suspected poison gas attack (Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2018)
Chick-fil-A's Creepy Infiltration of New York City (New Yorker, April 13, 2018)
NEW: 7-min. video, How a Single Swedish Submarine Defeated the US Navy (Real Engineering, April 13, 2018)
This chart shows every major technological innovation in the last 150 years - and how they have changed the way we work (Business Insider, April 13, 2018)
The Internet Is Killing Democracy, with Jamie Bartlett, director of the Center for Analysis of Social Media (Who.What.Why., April 13, 2018)
"It’s becoming clear, says Bartlett, that internet technology is simply antithetical to democracy. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that, as the internet grows, authoritarian regimes proliferate. As tech companies get bigger, the institutions of democracy come under greater pressure.
"Bartlett talks about how monopolistic practices are built into the DNA of tech companies, and reveals the intended and unintended consequences of maintaining those monopolies."
The Internet Apologizes (New York Magazine, April 13, 2018)
"Something has gone wrong with the internet. Even Mark Zuckerberg knows it. Testifying before Congress, the Facebook CEO ticked off a list of everything his platform has screwed up, from fake news and foreign meddling in the 2016 election to hate speech and data privacy. 'We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility,' he confessed. Then he added the words that everyone was waiting for: 'I’m sorry.'"
Avoid Gulf stream disruption at all costs, scientists warn (The Guardian, April 13, 2017)
Gulf Stream current at 'record low' with potentially devastating consequences for weather, warn scientists (Independent, April 12, 2018)
"The Gulf Stream current, which has not been running at peak strength for centuries, is now at its weakest point in the past 1,600 years. Climate change resulting from rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a likely cause of this phenomenon. Disruption of ocean circulation is thought to be driven by global warming, and could lead to sea level rise and extreme events like storms."
NEW: Facebook, This Is Not What "Complete User Control" Looks Like (Electronic Freedom Foundation, April 11, 2018)
"Zuckerberg’s insistence that users have complete control is a smokescreen. Many members of Congress wanted to know not just how users can control what their friends and friends-of-friends see. They wanted to know how to control what third-party apps, advertisers, and Facebook itself are able to collect, store, and analyze. This goes far beyond what users can see on their pages and newsfeeds."
A Sidelined Wall Street Legend Bets on Bitcoin (New Yorker, April 11, 2018)
"Michael Novogratz is searching for redemption in cryptocurrencies."
NRA admits to 23 Russia-linked contributors, continues to deny big money from Russia (Daily KOS, April 11, 2018)
Furious Republican Congressman Calls Trump a 'Motherf****r' in Conversation with Conservative Pundit (AlterNet, April 11, 2018)
"He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him."
Trump warns Russia to 'get ready' for U.S. strike on Syria (NBC News, April 11, 2018)
"A Russian diplomat earlier said American military assets would be targeted in the event of missiles being fired at Syria."
Corker: G.O.P. tax cuts could be 'one of the worst votes I've made' (The Hill, April 11, 2018)
Right on Paul Ryan's heels, another House Republican bails (Daily KOS, April 11 2018)
Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan won't run for re-election (Axios, April 11, 2018)
NEW: Guess which cable news network covered the Cohen raid the least (Washington Post, April 11, 2018)
Cohen Raid Is Trump's 'Watergate Moment' Strategist Urges Ryan, McConnell To Save The Republic (Daily KOS, April 11, 2018)
A Brief History of Michael Cohen's Criminal Ties (Rolling Stone, April 10, 2018)
"From the Russian mob to money launderers, Trump's personal attorney has long been a subject of interest to federal investigators."
FBI Raid on Michael Cohen Is the Most Dangerous Day of Donald Trump's Life (Daily Beast, April 10, 2018)
"The president's low-rent Ray Donovan can bully porn stars, but not Robert Mueller. The shtick is up."
(Foul-language alert)
Donald Trump Has Good Reason to Be Rattled About the Michael Cohen Raid (New Yorker, April 10, 2018)
President Trump's Wild Response to the F.B.I. Raid on Michael Cohen's Office (New Yorker, April 9, 2018)
Trump calls raid of Cohen's office 'an attack on our country,' says 'We'll see' about firing Mueller (Daily KOS, April 9, 2018)
Deconstructing Trump's whopper about California voter fraud (Los Angeles Times, April 8, 2018)
NEW: The NFL's plan to protect America from witches, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (The Guardian, April 6, 2018)
Automation is Coming. How Will it Affect the Developing World? (Photography Life, April 6, 2018)
(With photos from Pakistan.)
Trump is threatening to repeat Obama's mistakes in Syria (Washington Post, April 6, 2018)
NEW: Facebook is unfixable. We need a nonprofit, public-spirited replacement, by Cory Doctorow (Boing-Boing, April 6, 2018)
Facebook's new rules aim to thwart the kind of ads bought by Russian trolls during the election (Washington Post, April 6, 2018)
NEW: Facebook admits it discussed sharing user data for medical research project (The Guardian, April 5, 2018)
Brennan rips Trump: "Your self adoration is disgraceful" (The Hill, April 5, 2018)
NEW: Insurance companies are failing the American people (Senator Elizabeth Warren, April 5, 2018)
NEW: Genome editing of human embryos using CRISPR/Cas9- crossing the ethics of gene editing? (Bioinformatics Review, April 4, 2018)
"I believe this is the first report of CRISPR/Cas9 applied to human pre-implantation embryos and as such the study is a landmark, as well as a cautionary tale."
NEW: Shouldn't Police at Home Exhibit at Least as Much Discipline as Soldiers at War? (National Review, April 4, 2018)
A police officer who went to jail undercover quit the force after he got out - and his decision is a sobering reminder of how bad prison really is (Business Insider, April 4, 2018)
YouTube shooter's father says she was angry at company (Mercury News, April 3, 2018)
"I'm being discriminated and filtered on YouTube and I'm not the only one."
YouTube shooting brings burst of fake news, hacking (Mercury News, April 3, 2018)
Supreme Court shields a police officer from being sued for shooting a woman in her front yard (Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2018)
Third Woman Sues to Void Secrecy Pact Linked to Trump (Bloomberg News, April 2, 2018)
Dan Rather hits one out of the park, knocks Sinclair Broadcasting's 'Orwellian' propaganda (Daily KOS, April 2, 2018)
Here are 66 local news stations airing Sinclair's brainwashing anti-media promo (Media Matters, April 2, 2018)
"The promotional videos have aired in 29 states and Washington, D.C."
John Bolton Skewed Intelligence, Say People Who Worked with Him (AlterNet, March 31, 2018)
"Anyone who is so cavalier not just with intelligence, but with facts, and so ideologically driven, is unfit to be national security adviser. He's impervious to information that goes against his preconceived ideological views."
If extreme Republican Gerrymandering is not corrected, 2018's blue wave must be as big as what followed Nixon's 1974 resignation to retake House (Alternet, March 30, 2018)
(See major report, Report: Extreme Gerrymandering & the 2018 Midterm, Brennan Center for Justice of NYU Law School, March 23, 2018)
Faced With Drought, the Pharaohs Tried (and Failed) to Adapt (New York Times, March 30, 2018)
"Ancient Egyptian leaders increased their empire’s grain production and crossbred cattle for resilience in an early effort to ward off climate disaster, a study shows."
Boston Will Survive If It Can Prevent Climate Change (AlterNet, March 30, 2018)
"Climate scientists, architects and engineers are rethinking Boston to cope with rapidly rising sea levels."
(Also see the Climate Ready Boston Map Explorer, and Want to Stop Climate Change? Take 'Em to Court!, March 19, 2018)
Black woman gets 5 years for voting once; no charges for NC woman who voted twice (Daily KOS, March 30, 2018)
Citing Trump's 'racial slurs' and 'epithets,' judge says lawsuit over DACA termination can proceed (Daily KOS, March 30, 2018)
Why I left Fox News, by Ralph Peters (Washington Post, March 30, 2018)
"I declined to renew my contract as Fox News's strategic analyst because of the network's propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today's Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.
"I could only rarely and briefly comment on the paramount security question of our time: whether Putin and his security services ensnared the man who would become our president. Trump's behavior patterns and evident weaknesses (financial entanglements, lack of self-control and sense of sexual entitlement) would have made him an ideal blackmail target - and the Russian security apparatus plays a long game.
"Listening to political hacks with no knowledge of things Russian tell the vast Fox audience that the special counsel's investigation was a 'witch hunt', while I could not respond, became too much to bear. There is indeed a witch hunt, and it's led by Fox against Robert Mueller.
"The cascade of revelations about the Russia-related crimes of Trump associates was dismissed, adamantly, as 'fake news' by prime-time hosts who themselves generate fake news blithely."
Account of the Stormy Daniels Story Is So Bad It's Funny. So why do 41 percent of Republicans buy it? (The Nation, March 30, 2018)
"It's not (necessarily) because they're stupid. It's simply an example of motivated reasoning - the human tendency to discount information that conflicts with our deeply held beliefs and embrace that which supports them, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to people who aren't invested in the same belief system. We all do this to a degree.
"But it's important to understand the mechanism by which this cognitive process functions. It requires an alternative, ostensibly factual narrative from some seemingly credible individual or institution. There must be an alternative set of 'facts' to latch onto in order to dismiss something as obviously false as the story Cohen and Trump's staff are peddling to the American people "
Kentucky Teachers Shut Down Schools after GOP Slips through Bill that Robs Teacher Pensions (Daily KOS, March 30, 2018)
Power Needs to Be Restored to Internet Users. The problem is bigger than Facebook. (The Nation, March 29, 2018)
"Imagine, if you went browsing for books in a bookstore, the store monitored which books you took off the shelves, what pages you flipped to, how much time you spent on each book, and then what you bought… and then made that information available to advertisers, let alone political campaigns. That in essence, is the deal most Americans have tacitly made with Google and Facebook.
"Or, imagine if when you went to a political rally in a park, the telephone company made a deal with the campaign holding the rally and gave it everyone's cell-phone numbers and subscriber information… and then if you complained about it, said, well, you agreed to give up your privacy when you started using the phone you bought from us. Shocking, right? But today, if you want, the Democratic data firm TargetSmart will sell you a voter database of millions of people who attended one of the 200 biggest Women’s Marches in January 2017, based on mobile-device data that it got from telcos."
NEW: Worried about what Facebook knows about you? Check out Google (NBC News, March 28, 2018))
"It was constantly tracking his location in the background, including calculating how long it took to travel between different points, along with his hobbies, interests, possible weight and income, data on his apps and records of files he had deleted. And that's just for starters."
Are you ready? Here's all the data Facebook and Google have on you (The Guardian, March 28, 2018)
"The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look."
Time Is Running Out For Atlanta In Ransomware Attack (National Public Radio, March 28, 2018)
Science does it again: It finds a 'new' organ in the human body (Daily KOS, March 28, 2018)
Interstitium: Scientists say they've discovered a new human organ (AOL News, March 28, 2018)
NEW: Another shoe just dropped in the Mueller probe (Washington Post, March 28, 2018)
Why is Paul Manafort the sole American indicted by Mueller who hasn't flipped? (Daily KOS, March 28, 2018)
Manafort associate had Russian intelligence ties during 2016 campaign, prosecutors say (Washington Post, March 28, 2018)
Cloak and Data: The Real Story Behind Cambridge Analytica's Rise and Fall (Mother Jones, March 28, 2018)
"The story of Cambridge Analytica's rise - and its rapid fall - in some ways parallels the ascendance of the candidate it claims it helped elevate to the presidency. It reached the apex of American politics through a mix of bluffing, luck, failing upward, and - yes - psychological manipulation. Sound familiar?"
NEW: Had Enough Of Facebook's Duplicity And Incompetence? (Ask Bob Rankin, March 27, 2018)
The NRA admits that it gets foreign funds, but gets fuzzy on how it funds elections (Daily KOS, March 27, 2018)
Why the AR-15? (John Graham, March 27, 2018)
"The whole gun-control debate is like an iceberg, only a small fraction is visible. The security and constitutional arguments are the visible part of that iceberg. The biggest impediments to a sensible solution, in my opinion, are hidden beneath the water line, and they are emotional and psychological. If you want to ban weapons designed for the battlefield from the public square, or at least severely restrict their use, then you need to acknowledge the role that such weapons play in providing a sense of personal power and an outlet for rage in many men—and construct alternatives."
(Also see, "Mother Jones Freaks Out About DIY Guns")
Republican Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says, "Repeal the Second Amendment" (New York Times, March 27, 2018)
NEW: Trump has been a tool for Russian organized crime for decades- Part 4/ A Tale of Two Bagmen (Daily KOS, March 26, 2018)
Adult film star Stormy Daniels is used to being objectified and dismissed. Her "60 Minutes" interview underscored why she shouldn't be.
(Huffington Post, March 26, 2018)
NEW: Facebook stock takes hit on FTC probe and news it records users' call logs (NBC News, March 26, 2018)
Federal Trade Commission Begins Investigating Facebook. The probe was sparked by revelations that Cambridge Analytica misused Facebook user data. (Huffington Post, March 26, 2018)
Remington, Centuries-Old Gun Maker, Files for Bankruptcy as Sales Slow (New York Times, March 25, 2018)
Gun Violence Affects Us All - Black And White, Rich And Poor, Young And Old (Medium, March 24, 2018)
This is how you know the Parkland students are winning. (Daily KOS, March 24, 2018)
Was Today's Best Speech Given by an 11-Year-Old? For My Money, Yes. (Daily KOS, March 24, 2018)
Emma Gonzalez moves thousands to silence and tears during the DC March For Our Lives (Daily KOS, March 24, 2018)
Fox News Turns Against Donald Trump for the Worst Imaginable Reason (Daily KOS, March 24, 2018)
Ask Slashdot: Is There a Good Alternative to Facebook? (Slashdot, March 24, 2018)
NEW: The blowback against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal continued on Friday when Elon Musk ordered pages for SpaceX and Tesla Motors deleted. (NBC News, March 23, 2018)
The new technology that aspires to #DeleteFacebook for good (Washington Post, March 23, 2018)
Rebel bank prints its own notes and buys back people's debts (The Guardian, March 23, 2018)
"It was influenced by Strike Debt in the USA."
NEW: Report: Extreme Gerrymandering & the 2018 Midterm (Brennan Center for Justice of NYU Law School, March 23, 2018)
Ryan's Super PAC and NRCC used info hacked by Russian intelligence in ads against Democrats in 2016 (Daily KOS, March 23, 2018)
Leaked: Cambridge Analytica's blueprint for Trump victory (The Guardian, March 23, 2018)
Attorney says Roy Moore supporters offered him $10,000 to drop client who accused the Senate candidate of sexual impropriety (Washington Post, March 23, 2018)
A Creeping Sense of Doom for Republicans (The Cook Political Report, March 23, 2018)
Austin bomber Mark Anthony Conditt was part of Christian survivalist group that discussed 'dangerous' chemicals. (Independent, March 22, 2018)
"23-year-old terrorized Texas city with explosive packages under alias 'Kelly Killmore'."
'He was a quiet and normal kid': The infantilization of young, white, male domestic terrorists (Daily KOS, March 22, 2018)
What Border Agents Say They Want. It's Not a Wall. (New York Times, March 22, 2018)
The Water Is Coming, Cities Are Sinking. When Are We Going To Stop The Fossil Fuel Party? Huffington Post, March 22, 2018)
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch counts 1.8 trillion pieces of trash, mostly plastic (Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2018)
Thousands of servers found leaking 750MB worth of passwords and keys (Ars Technica, March 22, 2018)
"Leaky etcd servers could be a boon to data thieves and ransomware scammers."
The scary truth that Cambridge Analytica understands (Washington Post, March 22, 2018)
Cambridge Analytica and Our Lives Inside the Surveillance Machine (New Yorker, March 21, 2018)
Ajit Pai says net neutrality was the top threat to broadband deployment. (Ars Technica, March 21, 2018)
"FCC chair still can't offer proof that repeal will boost broadband access."
Saudi Crown prince said he has Kushner 'in his pocket' after allegedly receiving sensitive information from the President's Daily Briefing (Raw Story, March 21, 2018)
As Trump fumes over leak about his congratulatory call to Putin, word is 'there’s going to be a scalp over this.' (Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2018)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg breaks silence, admits "breach of trust" (CBS News, March 21, 2018)
Yes, we should be outraged about Facebook (Washington Post, March 21, 2018)
How Christopher Wylie, Cambridge Analytica's whistleblower, became Facebook's unlikely foe (Washington Post, March 21, 2018)
Cambridge Analytica Redux: Nix and Two Mercers Ally with Erik Prince Partner in New Company, "Emerdata" (Daily KOS, March 20, 2018)
NEW: February 2018 heatwave across the Far North (Climate.gov, March 20, 2018)
The NSA Worked to "Track Down" Bitcoin Users, Snowden Documents Reveal (The Intercept, March 20, 2018)
Senate Intelligence Committee finally acknowledging the security of the 2018 US election is in jeopardy (Daily KOS, March 20, 2018)
Trump's national security advisers warned him not to congratulate Putin. He did it anyway. (Washington Post, March 20, 2018)
This new report on Trump's state of mind should alarm you (Washington Post, March 19, 2018)
Stormy Daniels - not Robert Mueller - might spell Trump's doom (Washington Post, March 19, 2018)
"The saga of the adult-film star and the juvenile president has become a rollicking affair. Each step of the way, Daniels has out-Trumped Trump."
NEW: Want to Stop Climate Change? Take 'Em to Court! (Bloomberg News, March 19, 2018)
"A novel case highlights the profound unfairness of global warming."
Facebook's rules for accessing user data lured more than just Cambridge Analytica (Washington Post, March 19, 2018)
"Facebook 'goes into this endless hairsplitting[, pretending] that people should have known,” said Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that has brought privacy cases before the FTC. '[In fact,] no one could have known that their friends were disclosing their personal data on their behalf. It’s entirely illogical, and it breaks the consent law.'"
NEW: Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix describes "shadow" election tactics (CBS News, March 19, 2018)
"We're used to operating through different vehicles in the shadows, and I look forward to building a very long term and secretive relationship with you."
Cambridge Analytica, Trump-Tied Political Firm, Offered to Entrap Politicians (New York Times, March 19, 2018)
Revealed: Trump's election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians (UK Channel 4 News, March 19, 2018)
Cambridge Analytica and Facebook accused of misleading British MPs over data breach (The Guardian, March 18, 2018)
"Call for Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to testify before parliamentary committee."
How Russia's rich elite spend their billions in London (The Guardian, March 17, 2018)
Trump lawyer's call to end the Russia probe is all about the investigation's aftermath - or firing Mueller (Washington Post, March 17, 2018)
How Facebook’s destructive ethos imperils democracy (The Guardian, March 17, 2018)
How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions (MSN News, March 17, 2018)
Trump-linked firm Cambridge Analytica had private data of 50M people (The Hill, March 17, 2018)
Cambridge Analytica, the shady data firm that might be a key Trump-Russia link, explained (Vox, March 16, 2018)
"Why House investigators think this company might have gamed Facebook and helped Russia spread fake news."
A forgotten US hero stopped the My Lai massacre 50 years ago today (Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2018)
Facebook suspended Donald Trump's data operations team for misusing people’s personal information (The Verge, March 16, 2018)
"Cambridge Analytica played a key role in the 2016 presidential election campaign."
Vindictive Trump fires FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe just two days before his retirement (New York Times, March 16, 2018)
Trump seeks more than $20 million in damages from Stormy Daniels (Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2018)
Stormy Daniels' lawyer says she was physically threatened and six more women are stepping forward (Daily KOS, March 16, 2018)
Jimmy Kimmel says he's filing a federal complaint after buying Trump merchandise (Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2018)
In fundraising speech, Trump says he made up trade claim in meeting with Justin Trudeau (Washington Post, March 15, 2018)
Trump confesses at Missouri fundraiser: "I make up facts." (Vice News, March 15, 2018)
(Of course he lies; look how embarrassing it gets, when he tell the truth!)
DHS warns of new Russia hacks as US sanctions Russia over election interference (Ars Technica, March 15, 2018)
"DHS alert warns of Russian government malware targeting critical infrastructure."
Cryptocurrencies fall as Google announces ad ban (Ars Technica, March 14, 2018)
"Facebook banned ads for cryptocurrency from its ad networks in January."
Help Us Cure Online Publishing of Its Addiction to Personal Data, by Doc Searls (Linux Journal, March 14, 2018)
(and The Big Datastillery that targets YOU)
What is 5G and why did Trump nix a huge tech deal to boost America's lead in its development? (Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2018)
Stephen Hawking, brightest star in cosmology, dies aged 76 (The Guardian, March 14, 2018)
'Remember to look up at the stars': the best Stephen Hawking quotes (The Guardian, March 14, 2018)
Stephen Hawking's secret to surviving his terrible condition? A sense of humor. (Washington Post, March 14, 2018)
From The Simpsons to Pink Floyd: Stephen Hawking in popular culture (The Guardian, March 14, 2018)
Pennsylvania special election shows GOP still hasn't found a winning midterms message (Washington Post, March 14, 2018)
"National Republicans threw the kitchen sink to hold a House seat in Pennsylvania that President Trump won by 20 points. But while the special election remains too close to call, Democrat Conor Lamb clings to a narrow lead and declared victory early this morning."
New bill in Congress would hand your data to cops. (Medium, March 14, 2018)
"Some lawmakers are trying to sneak the CLOUD Act through by attaching it to a must-pass government funding bill."
Get Used To Nor'easters — Arctic Warming May Mean More Severe Winters In The Northeast (Huffington Post, March 14, 2018)
U.S. insurers are backing fossil fuel companies and then charging you for climate change risks (Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2018)
"Since 2015, 15 large foreign insurers, including industry giants Allianz, AXA, Swiss Re and Zurich, have either divested or agreed to divest about $22 billion from coal companies, and three have stopped or limited coal underwriting. No major U.S. companies have made similar moves. U.S. insurers’ recklessness in supporting fossil fuels is dangerous not just for the planet but for the companies themselves."
Why Do We See So Many Things as 'Us vs. Them'? (National Geographic Magazine April "Race" Issue, March 13, 2018)
"We are wired at birth to favor our own group over others. But science might be able to help us move past what divides us."
Trump's Personal Assistant Fired Over Security Issue (Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2018)
"Problems related to online gambling and mishandling taxes prevented John McEntee from gaining necessary security clearance."
Tillerson says U.K. spy poisoning 'clearly' came from Russia - and gets fired (NBC News, March 13, 2018)
Gowdy breaks from GOP committee, says Russia worked to undermine Clinton (Politico, March 13, 2018)
Republicans wind down House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation, claiming no evidence of collusion (Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2018)
"The Republican report concludes that the Russian government's extensive meddling in the campaign was not intended to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That puts the House Republicans at direct odds with the nation's intelligence agencies, which assessed last year that the Kremlin specifically sought to undermine Clinton and assist Trump."
I sued Donald Trump for blocking me on Twitter. Here's what happened next. (Daily KOS, March 12, 2018)
San Francisco's ICE spokesman quits, disputes agency's claim that 800 eluded arrest (San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2018)
Donald Trump's Attack on German Prosperity (Der Speigel, March 12, 2018)
"U.S. President Donald Trump seems intent on launching a trade war. He is ignoring appeals to common sense coming from Europe and Asia, but one country stands to lose more than any other: Germany."
NEW: How to Make a Clean Break With the Clingiest Social Networks (Wired, March 12, 2018)
(Get loose from Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat.)
NEW: Expert warns of "terrifying" potential of digitally-altered video (CBS News, March 12, 2018)
Blocking of Qualcomm takeover could end the tech industry's cozy ties to Beijing (Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2018)
George Papadopoulos Claimed Trump Encouraged His Efforts to Establish a Russian Back Channel (Mother Jones, March 12, 2018)
Vladimir Putin Blames U.S. Election Interference On "Jews", Ukrainians (Huffington Post, March 10, 2018)
"The Russian president denied accusations of meddling during a tense interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly."
NEW: What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget? (Bloomberg News, March 10, 2018)
"Maybe it doesn’t faze you that your local police have a $400,000 device that listens in on cell phones. How will you feel when your neighbor has a $1,500 version?
"This isn’t something that can really be fixed. It's just built into the way communications work. You can always zero into one signal among many signals, if you have enough data. You don’t need to hack anything - just analyze the signals in the air."
Drive A Mazda? Your Privacy Could Be Gone In 10 Seconds. (Forbes, March 9, 2018)
U.S. Tech Company's Devices Were Used to Inject Surveillance Malware Into Computers in the Middle East (Slate, March 9, 2018)
Parkland student Sarah Chadwick creates a fearless parody mocking the threatening NRA ad (Daily KOS, March 8, 2018)
Miss Universe in Moscow: How Trump's beauty contest spawned a business deal with Russians and a bond with Putin (Yahoo, March 8, 2018)
What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump's Obsession With Putin Began (Mother Jones, March 8, 2018)
"His 2013 visit paved the way for a scandal that shook the world."
NEW: New documents reveal FBI paid Geek Squad repair staff as informants (ZDNet, March 7, 2018)
"A freedom of information request revealed that the FBI used the Best Buy division's repair staff to flag illegal content."
NEW: Geek Squad's Relationship with FBI Is Cozier Than We Thought (Electronic Freedom Foundation, March 6, 2018)
Pettiness: Donald Trump's Highway Might Touch Stormy Daniels' Rampway (The Cut, March 6, 2018)
British ex-spy claims Kremlin blocked Trump from naming Mitt Romney as secretary of state (Raw Story, March 5, 2018)
The day Putin cried (BBC, March 5, 2018)
NEW: From 'Fraud' To Individual Right, Where Does The Supreme Court Stand On Guns? (National Public Radio, March 5, 2018)
NEW: Things I Have Learned About Gun Control, by Scott Adams (Dilbert, March 4, 2018)
The known unknowns of plastic pollution (The Economist, March 3, 2018)
"So far, it seems less bad than other kinds of pollution (about which less fuss is made)."
NEW: Ex-CIA chief: Trump "unstable, inept, inexperienced, and also unethical" (The Hill, March 2, 2018)
Putin boasts new strategic weapons will make US missile defense "useless" (Ars Technica, March 1, 2018)
"Nuke-powered cruise missile and torpedo, hypersonic missiles counter US ballistic missile defense."
Supreme Court won't hear case challenging DACA, tells Trump to wait in line with everyone else (Think Progress, February 26, 2018)
NEW: Welcome to the Age of Climate Migration (Rolling Stone, February 25, 2018)
"Extreme weather due to climate change displaced more than a million people from their homes last year. It could soon reshape the nation."
NEW: Steven Pinker's case for optimism (The Economist, February 24, 2018)
"'Enlightenment Now' explains why the doom-mongers are wrong."
Nearly half of 2017's cryptocurrencies have already failed, and more are likely on their way out. (Engadget, February 24, 2018)
Math professor makes the case for free and open educational resources (Red Hat, February 23, 2018)
"David Usinski explains how OERs benefit students, instructors, educational institutions, and even course writers."
Rick Gates, former top campaign aide to Trump, pleads guilty in Russia investigation (Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2018)
How Manafort's inability to convert a PDF file to Word helped prosecutors (Ars Technica, February 23, 2018)
Former Trump campaign manager allegedly emailed doctored docs to his assistant.
Trump Says He May Pull Immigration Enforcement From California (Bloomberg News, February 22, 2018)
Intel did not tell U.S. cyber officials about chip flaws until made public (Reuters, February 22, 2018)
Stunning Report: 170m Americans Now Drinking Radioactive Water - See if Your H₂0 is Affected (EnviroNews, February 22, 2018)
Millions of U.S. jobs are still missing. Don't blame immigrants or food stamps. (Washington Post, February 22, 2018)
Mueller more than doubles criminal charges against Manafort and Gates (Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2018)
Donald Trump stands by proposal to give teachers guns: 'Attacks would end!' (The Guardian, February 22, 2018)
"President expands upon idea to arm some teachers in schools: 'Gun-adept teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly!'"
(How? By getting the PUBLIC to buy more guns, turning schools into armed camps, and sending shooters to football stadiums instead?)
NRA head breaks silence to attack gun control advocates: 'They hate individual freedom.' (The Guardian, February 22, 2018)
Where the N.R.A. Speaks First and Loudest (New York Times, February 21, 2018)
"NRATV, the organization’s online video channel, has become a little-noticed but vital forum for the dissemination of some of the most strident pro-gun messaging in politics."
U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman booed at a Metro-Denver town hall as people demand action on guns (Denver Post, February 21, 2018)
"In a district that voted for Democrats Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Coffman has been a perennial political target for Democrats."
NEW: The 10 worst presidents: Besides Trump, whom do scholars scorn the most? (Washington Post, February 20, 2018)
NEW: The Geeks Who Put a Stop to Pennsylvania's Partisan Gerrymandering (Wired, February 20, 2018)
China Dropped Its One-Child Policy. So Why Aren't Chinese Women Having More Babies? (New York Times,February 20, 2018)
Don Jr. Advises President Trump After School Shooting: Don't Go Wobbly on Guns (Daily Beast, February 20, 2018)
"In the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, young survivors issued a call to action to President Trump, but his eldest son is telling him not to listen."
NEW: The Arrest Was a Bust. The Officers Got Overtime Anyway. (New York Times, February 19, 2018)
No one becomes a mass shooter without a mass-shooting gun (Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2018)
Rapid-fire rifle device on special offer in salute to Trump (The Guardian, February 18, 2018)
"'Bump stock' used by Las Vegas shooter in promotional tie in with presidential campaign slogan."
John Oliver Makes Impassioned Plea to Discuss Gun Control After Florida School Shooting (Hollywood Reporter, February 18, 2018)
Trump Gets Caught in His Own Web of Lies (Observer, February 18, 2018)
Fact-checking Trump's error-filled tweetstorm about the Russia investigation (Washington Post, February 18, 2018)
Trump lashes out over Russia probe in angry and error-laden tweetstorm (Washington Post, February 18, 2018)
Trump Will Not Act Against Russia Because He Is Very Likely Being Blackmailed By Russia. (Daily KOS, February 17, 2018)
Trump's top security advisor says Russian meddling 'incontrovertible' (Los Angeles Times, February 17, 2018)
Mueller's Message to America: The clear goal of the special counsel is to speak to the American public about the seriousness of Russian interference. (The Atlantic, February 17, 2018)
"The main question that Mueller asks is not whether the Russians are guilty, but what America is going to do about it?"
Prominent Republican Donor Issues Ultimatum on Assault Weapons (New York Times, February 17, 2018)
NEW: This Ex-Marine's Wife Has Been 'SLAPPED' By The Navy (Honolulu Civil Beat, February 16, 2018)
"A classic retaliatory lawsuit was filed after she raised concerns about possible housing contamination at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe."
NEW: Mueller's Latest Indictment Shows Trump Has Helped Putin Cover Up a Crime (Mother Jones, February 16, 2018)
"By continuing to cast doubt on Russian involvement, the president is helping the Kremlin get away with its election attack."
So, about that 'Russia hoax', Mr. Trump.... (Daily KOS, February 16, 2018)
Robert Mueller Indicts 13 Russians, Details Foreign Efforts To Boost Trump, Harm Clinton (HuffingtonPost, February 16, 2018)
"The special counsel’s office also indicted three Russian entities on Friday, including a state-operated troll farm."
Russian troll farm, 13 suspects indicted in 2016 U.S. election interference (Washington Post, February 16, 2018)
(Follow-up to articles on Dec. 14, 2017, etc.)
Don Trump Jr. thinks silencers are great because they'll help get "little kids into the game" of guns (Daily KOS, February 16, 2018)
Jared Kushner's Finances Are In Shambles And He's A Threat To National Security (Daily KOS, February 15, 2018)
Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen: Beyond Porn Star Payments, Russia Angle, by Russ Baker (Who.What.Why, February 15, 2018)
Obama calls for 'common-sense' gun laws after Florida school shooting (AOL, February 15, 2018)
Florida White Supremacist Group Admits Ties to Alleged Parkland School Shooter Nikolas Cruz (ADL, February 15, 2018)
Florida high school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz's Instagram profile shows him wearing MAGA hat (AOL, February 15, 2018)
Suspect confessed to police that he began shooting students "in the hallways" (New York Times, February 15, 2018)
Mass shootings are getting deadlier. And the latest ones all have something new in common: The AR-15 (Los Angeles Times, February 14, 2018)
Florida teen charged with 17 murder counts in school attack (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, February 14, 2018)
Trump's lawyer just made the Stormy Daniels affair much more interesting (Washington Post, February 14, 2018)
NEW: Donald Trump, nonreader-in-chief, again wants to kill off IMLS, the library agency (TeleRead, February 13, 2018)
Pepsi announced it's laying off employees the same day it touted $1,000 bonuses because of the new tax law (Business Insider, February 13, 2018)
Walmart to Trim Store Management Ranks (Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2018)
What Climate Change Means for Glaciers, Storms, Fires, Clouds, and More (NASA, February 13, 2018)
Karla Bigham retains Democrat's Minnesota Senate seat in swing territory (Washington Post, February 13, 2018)
Florida woman wins Democrats' 36th red-to-blue flip (Daily KOS, February 13, 2018)
Democrat Margaret Good wins upset victory in Florida House race (Sarasota Herald-Tribune, February 13, 2018)
NEW: Ninth Circuit decision could lead to SCOTUS showdown over your right to a private sex life (Daily KOS, February 12, 2018)
Rob Porter is my ex-husband. Here's what you should know about abuse. (Washington Post, February 12, 2018)
President Trump has finally released his comic book (Washington Post, February 12, 2018)
Trump tells a lot of little lies. This is the big one. (Washington Post, February 12, 2018)
Trump is vandalizing the one house he can't own, by Michael Gerson (Washington Post, February 12, 2018)
Technologist Aviv Ovady Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse. (BuzzFeed, February 11, 2018)
"'What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has happened, regardless of whether or not it did?"
NEW: The U.S. military is spending billions to clean up drinking water contaminated with toxic firefighting foam while continuing to use dangerous new formulas. (The Intercept, February 10, 2018)
NEW: As Jared Kushner's security clearance is delayed, White House hesitates to act on others with possible problems (Washington Post, February 9, 2018)
"The president’s son-in-law and close adviser has been allowed to see materials, including the President’s Daily Brief, that are among the most sensitive in government. He has been afforded that privilege even though he has only an interim clearance and is a focus in the ongoing special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election."
NEW: Scientists studying psychoactive drugs accidentally proved the self is an illusion (Quartz, February 9, 2018)
"When you are unconscious, you continue to exist without perceiving your own presence. You cease to participate in reality but continue to live. When roused back into consciousness, you lack a narrative to explain the time away. The narrative of the story that seems to be your life is just a function of your brain's mechanisms, not who you really are. Still, the hallucination of consciousness is one we're all having in tandem. When we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality,"
NEW: Remington is looking into filing for bankruptcy, unable to withstand 'Trump slump' (Daily KOS, February 9, 2018)
Where's Trump's $500bn spending splurge going? (BBC News, February 9, 2018)
NEW: U.S. Election Assistance Commission Certifies ClearVote 1.4 Election System (US EAC, February 8, 2018)
Pain Pill Giant Purdue to Stop Promotion of Opioids to Doctors (Bloomberg News, February 8, 2018)
"Company says it plans to cut more than half of U.S. sales force. Purdue developed many modern pharmaceutical sales tactics."
Before He Died, a New York Taxi Driver Wrote About How the Gig Economy Ruined His Life (Vice, February 8, 2018)
For Second Time in Week, Stocks Plunge as Market Enters 'Correction' Territory (New York Times, February 8, 2018)
Secret iPhone code published online in 'biggest ever' leak (The Telegraph, February 8, 2018)
Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says (NBC News, February 8, 2018)
NEW: Former U.S. Attorney-General Holder says Mueller could prosecute Trump for obstruction (Politico, February 7, 2018)
NEW: New documents show how Mueller quickly expanded investigation (CNN, February 7,2018)
"The FBI request to the GSA appears to confirm a fear that the President's friends warned him about last spring. They worried that a special counsel, which comes with broad authority to investigate any matters deemed relevant, could lead to an expansive investigation beyond what the FBI had in its initial inquiry."
Tillerson says Russia is meddling in America's next big round of elections and there's not much the US can do to stop it (Business Insider, February 7, 2018)
(Compare to Tillerson on January 29, "White House says there's no need for new Russia sanctions"!)
"IN FRAUD WE TRUST": Feds drop hammer on massive 'carder' ring that caused $530 million in losses (Ars Technica, February 7, 2018)
"Infraud is the biggest online fraud enterprise ever prosecuted by US prosecutors."
A down day on the markets? Analysts say blame the machines. (Washington Post, February 6, 2018)
FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered. (New York Times, February 6, 2018)
NEW: Russian Trolls Ran Wild On Tumblr And The Company Refuses To Say Anything About It (BuzzFeed, February 6, 2018)
"Tumblrs run by Russian trolls generated hundreds of thousands of interactions with anti–Hillary Clinton, pro–Bernie Sanders content."
NEW: Judge Curiel, once attacked by Trump for his Mexican heritage, to preside over wall case (Daily KOS, February 6, 2018)
GOP state lawmaker seeks to impeach judges after Pennsylvania gerrymandering ruling (The Hill, February 6, 2018)
NEW: The Nunes memo is looking like a bust for Trump (Washington Post, February 6, 2018)
Trump labels some Democrats 'treasonous' for their State of the Union reaction (CNN, February 6, 2018)
Trump calls Democrats not applauding him 'un-American' (Chicago Tribune, February 5, 2018)
Trump, in a panic over dud Nunes' memo, says Adam Schiff 'must be stopped' (Daily KOS, February 5, 2018)
NEW: Trump Wants a Border Wall. See What's in Place Already. (New York Times, February 5, 2018)
The advance of self-interest moral decay (Boston's MetroWest Daily News, February 4, 2018)
Nunes paves Trump's road to autocracy, by E.J. Dionne Jr. (Washington Post, February 4, 2018)
Prominent St. Petersburg Opposition Activist Konstantin Sinitsyn Found Dead (Radio Free Europe, February 3, 2018)
Why cops won't need a warrant to pull the data off your autonomous car (Ars Techica, February 3, 2018)
"It's like instant replay in the NFL; I can tell what happened."
The Bombshell Memo Bombs. The Russia investigation survived Nunes' explosive revelations. (Politico, February 3, 2018)
Open source turns 20 years old, looks to attract normal people (The Register, February 3, 2018)
"Who knew sharing would transform an industry?"
Open source is 20: How it changed programming and business forever (ZDNet, February 2, 2018)
Donald Trump Is Playing a Dangerous Game of Nuclear Poker (Time, February 2, 2018)
Trump plan calls for new nuclear weapons (Politico, February 2, 2018)
Russia probe lawyers think Mueller could indict Trump (Politico, February 2, 2018)
"Many legal scholars doubt a U.S. vs. Trump case is possible, but two attorneys who have dealt with special counsel Robert Mueller's team disagree. One expects Mueller to move as early as this spring."
Trey Gowdy, only GOP House member to actually read the intelligence, pans the memo, backs Mueller (Daily KOS, February 2, 2018)
Kasich slams release of memo critical of FBI; area congressmen approve (Dayton Ohio Daily News, February 2, 2018)
McCain rebukes Republicans: Attacking FBI serves 'only Putin' (Politico, February 2, 2018)
Release of disputed GOP's Nunes memo on FBI surveillance unleashes waves of recrimination (Washington Post, February 2, 2018)
Trump's Saturday Night Massacre Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes (Common Dreams, February 2, 2018)
"The aim of the campaign against the Mueller investigation and the FBI is clear: Obstructing justice."
NEW: Tech and the future of transportation: From here to there (ZDNet, February 1, 2018)
"Transportation is about to get a technology-driven reboot. The details are still taking shape, but future transport systems will certainly be connected, data-driven and highly automated."
NEW: Labor Dept. Ditches Data Showing Bosses Could Skim Waiters' Tips (Bloomberg, February 1, 2018)
"DOL says it couldn't estimate tip pool rule's full economic effects.
"Sources reveal the agency did conduct an analysis showing up to billions in wages transferred.
"Public has until Feb. 5 to comment on proposal."
Trump Russia: Republicans 'materially altered' memo on FBI (BBC News, February 1, 2018)
NEW: Baltimore Cops Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, Trial Reveals (Vice, January 31, 2018)
What Are "Right to Repair" Laws, and What Do They Mean for You? (How-To Geek, January 31, 2018)
Several million people will get an American Care Act surprise this spring (Daily KOS, January 31, 2018)
FBI Director Opposes Memo Release Because of Inaccuracies (Bloomberg, January 31 2018)
White House postures over Nunes memo (CNN, January 31, 2018)
Well, that was dispiriting: Let's make Trump's State of the Union the last of its kind (Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2018)
Kennedy says Americans feel 'fault lines of a fractured country' (Boston Globe, January 31, 2018)
2018 State of the Union Fact-Check (New York Times, January 31, 2018)
In State of the Union speech, a milder-sounding Trump leans on the same divisive issues (Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2018)
Trump's State of the Union underscores why he is his own worst enemy (Washington Post, January 31, 2018)
Europe's new data protection rules export privacy standards worldwide (Politico, January 31, 2018)
"New regulations offer EU citizens sweeping new powers over how their data can be collected, used and stored.
Since the mid-1990s, EU policymakers have rolled out a series of data protection rules that quickly became the de facto global standards for most countries except for a few holdouts like China, Russia and the United States.
But, as companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon vacuumed up more of people’s private information, European lawmakers upped the ante, intent on setting a new bar for data protection worldwide."
NEW: Did the NRA Channel Russian Money to Trump? (Newsweek, January 29, 2018)
NEW: White House says there's no need for new Russia sanctions (Washington Post, January 29, 2018)
Missing from EU's new privacy rules: The general public (Politico, January 29, 2018)
"For data protection rules to have the intended effect, people will need to care about their data. Right now, they don’t."
Is Trump a greater threat than Nixon? Here’s the big danger ahead. (Washington Post, January 29, 2018)
Dr. Larry Nassar was not a doctor (Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2018)
"Nassar's story may seem like an outlier, but it's only the latest entry in the master narrative of our time. A powerful man, abetted by a syndicate of sponsors and enablers, commits a violent or sky-high crime — rape, sexual abuse of children, torture, murder, conspiracy with a hostile foreign power, treason — and then moves heaven and Earth to conceal it, deride those who expose it as fake news, and smear the victims and whistleblowers. Trump. Putin. Ailes. O'Reilly. Weinstein. Wynn. And Nassar."
Legislative staffers say pro-Trump supporters called them 'illegal' for being dark-skinned. Navajo legislator also says protesters asked him if he is in the U.S. illegally. (Arizona Capitol Times, January 26, 2018)
Ted Cruz, born in Canada and brought to the U.S. as a child, rejects citizenship for Dreamers (Daily KOS, January 26, 2018)
Here's what President Trump has done to impede and control the Russia investigation (Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2018)
Two new cryptocurrency heists make off with over $400M worth of blockchange. Coincheck sincerely apologizes for the inconvenience. (Ars Technica, January 26, 2018)
"This is the biggest theft in the history of the world." (Oh? Tell THAT to the American Indians!)
Intel: Meltdown, Spectre silicon fixes coming in 2018 (Ars Technica, January 26, 2018)
Senator Wyden calls out FBI director's 'ill-informed' encryption backdoor views, and demands answers. (ZDNet, January 25, 2018)
Tech firms let Russia probe software widely used by U.S. government (Reuters, January 25, 2018)
After crash, injured motorcyclist accuses robot-driven vehicle of 'negligent driving' (Washington Post, January 25, 2018)
NEW: The Military Wants to Dictate Private Land Use -- and Washington State Might Let It (Truth Out, January 24, 2018)
World's first electric container barges to sail from European ports this summer (The Guardian, January 24, 2018)
"Dubbed the 'Tesla of the canals', the unmanned vessels will operate on Dutch and Belgian waterways, vastly reducing diesel vehicles and emissions."
Bernie Sanders 'Medicare for All' townhall draws 1 million viewers (Daily KOS, January 24, 2018)
Jackman, Maine just paid $30,000 to run a white supremacist out of town (Daily KOS, January 24, 2018)
Fired Jackman, Maine town manager says he's not racist. Yes he is. (Portland Maine Press Herald, January 24, 2018)
"What else would you call someone who wants to ban Islam and calls for racial separation?"
Sean Hannity Is Now a Favorite Weapon of Russian Trolls Attacking America. Kremlin propagandists are piling on the Fox News war against the Mueller investigation. (Mother Jones, January 24, 2018)
(Also see The Hamilton 68 Dashboard. Hosted by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, it tracks Russian influence operations on Twitter.)
Identity misuse - Net Neutrality comment fraud will be investigated by government. Democrats requested investigation after millions of people were impersonated. (Ars Technica, January 24, 2018)
Trudeau announces trade agreement without U.S. (CBS News, January 23, 2018)
Schumer withdraws offer on Trump's wall (Politico, January 23, 2018)
House Science Committee wants to investigate scientist for reporting science for the government (Daily KOS, January 23, 2018)
NEW: A destructive beetle has jumped the Rockies. One expert worries it could kill a vast area of Canadian forest. (Yale Climate Connections, January 22, 2018)
Poll: More voters blamed Trump and GOP for shutdown than Democrats (Politico, January 22, 2018)
Blame McConnell and Ryan for the shutdown. It was always about them, by Catherine Rampell (Washington Post, January 22, 2018)
'Defiance Disorder': Another new book describes chaos in Trump's White House (Washington Post, January 21, 2018)
Reverend Dr. William Barber | GOP chooses "Whites Only" platform | Trump; a consistent scum-bag (Daily KOS, January 21, 2018)
Republicans are 'complicit' in Trump's 'American carnage' (Washington Post, January 21, 2018)
Genocide, famine and a democratic retreat - all after one year of U.S. inaction (Washington Post, January 21, 2018)
Don’t buy the spin. Government works, by E.J. Dionne Jr. (Washington Post, January 21, 2018)
Republicans can win elections. But they can't govern. (Washington Post, January 20, 2018)
The presidency survived the Watergate, Iran-contra and Clinton scandals. Trump will exact a higher toll. (Washington Post, January 21, 2018)
"Histories of past presidential scandals reveal common threads and turning points - but also show how Trump stands alone."
After a final Trump sabotage of negotiations, Trump's Government Shutdown is on (Daily KOS, January 20, 2018)
More Americans blame Republicans than Democrats for potential government shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds (Washington Post, January 19, 2018)
NEW: Twitter admits far more Russian bots posted on election than it had disclosed (The Guardian, January 19, 2018)
"Company says it removed more than 50,000 accounts and reported them to investigators, marking latest upward revision of figures."
As Trump's first year in office ends, his support base has eroded and the opposition is energized (Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2018)
Evidence of rapid climate change in the Arctic as permafrost erosion transforms the Arctic food web (Daily KOS, January 19, 2018)
Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life (Institute for Critical Digital Culture, January 19, 2018)
NEW: Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders (Scientific American, January 18, 2018)
"Those with an IQ above 120 are perceived as less effective, regardless of actual performance."
'Entire aisles are empty': Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages (Business Insider, January 18, 2018)
Angered by high prices and shortages, hospitals will form their own generic drug maker (Stat News, January 18, 2018)
NHS England's dev team quits, suggests NHS used them to get better deal with Microsoft (The Register, January 18, 2018)
"NHS: Thanks for all the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops."
Microsoft, Masking/Hiding Itself Behind Patent Trolls, is Still Engaging in Patent Exto rtion (Techrights, January 18, 2018)
GOP Conservatives Win Concessions to Back Bill: Government Shutdown Update (Bloomberg News, January 18, 2018)
Republicans are freaking out over a special election most Americans didn't even know about (Daily KOS, January 18, 2018)
NEW: Mobile Advanced Persistent Threat actor Dark Caracal has conducted global espionage campaign from Lebanon since 2012 (Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 18, 2018)
"... the first mobile advanced persistent threat (mAPT) we've seen deployed on a global scale. We believe the actors would use it against any target a nation state would otherwise attack, including governments, militaries, utilities, financial institutions, manufacturing companies, and defense contractors."
Triton Malware Shows the Dangers of Industrial System Sabotage (Wired, January 18, 2018)
Congress Just Passed a Terrible Surveillance Law. Now What? (ACLU, January 18, 2018)
EFF to NSA: You scammed your way to another six years of warrantless spying, and you'd better enjoy it while it lasts (EFF, January 18, 2018)
Pelosi: 'We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted To Enable Them' (The Onion, January 18, 2018)
A Bunch Of Politicians Who Complain About Trump's Authoritarian Tendencies Just Gave Him 6 Years To Warrantlessly Spy On Americans (Techdirt, January 18, 2018)
(Also see Glenn Greenwald on January 12, 2018 - below.)
Debacle in Maine classroom shows trickle-down effect of Trump's immigrant bashing (Portland Maine Press Herald, January 18, 2018)
Trump is a legislative arsonist (Washington Post, January 18, 2018)
NEW: GOP reels after 'electric shock' defeat. (Politico, January 17, 2018)
"Republicans search for lessons in Wisconsin special election upset."
NEW: This is what the Democratic special election wave looks like. (Washington Post, January 17, 2018)
Some thoughts on Spectre and Meltdown, by Colin Percival (Daemonic Dispatches, January 17, 2018)
Amazon won't say if it hands your Echo data to the government (ZDNet, January 16, 2018)
It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech, by Zeynep Tufekci (Wired, January 16, 2018)
NEW: How Propaganda and Disruption Have Become Ends in Themselves (Who.What.Why., January 15, 2018)
"Suddenly, in Cold War 2.0, a keyboard has as much power as an F-15."
NEW: A Georgetown professor explains how Martin Luther King Jr. 'has been severely whitewashed' (Business Insider, January 15, 2018)
'No, I'm not a racist,' Trump says as administration is forced to renew DACA permits (Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2018)
Robot Hell: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don't Work (Daily Beast, January 12, 2018)
NEW: The Same Democrats Who Denounce Donald Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers, by Glenn Greenwald (The Intercept, January 12, 2018)
NEW: Here are the 256 Representatives that just voted to reauthorize and expand unconstitutional NSA spying (Medium, January 12, 2018)
NEW: Walmart raises minimum pay again, while Sam's Club closes many stores (Daily KOS, January 11, 2018)
NEW: Steve Bannon has a point. Populist fury runs through a large swath of the country. (Washington Post, January 11, 2018)
NEW: Ninth Circuit Doubles Down: Violating a Website's Terms of Service Is Not a Crime (Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 10, 2018)
NEW: No tracking, no revenue: Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions (The Guardian, January 9, 2018)
NEW: Blocked by passwords, FBI can’t unlock over half of devices seized as evidence (NBC News, January 9, 2018)
NEW: Meltdown, Spectre Likely Just Scratch the Surface of Microprocessor Vulnerabilities (Dark Reading, January 8, 2018)
Jake Tapper Cuts Hyperventilating Stephen Miller Loose - "I’ve wasted enough of my viewers' time." (Daily KOS, January 7, 2018)
Trump's Incredible Shrinking Schedule -- "Executive Time" Means TV and Twitter (Daily KOS, January 7, 2018)
This morning Mr. Trump is Losing his Marbles on Twitter - Claims he is a "very stable Genius" (Daily KOS, January 6, 2018)
For Doctors, Age May Be More Than a Number (New York Times, January 6, 2018)
How to Fix Facebook - Before It Fixes Us. An early investor explains why the social media platform’s business model is such a threat - and what to do about it. (Washington Monthly, January 6, 2018)
The Looming Digital Meltdown (New York Times, January 6, 2018)
Open Source Leaders: Take Intel to Task (Lxer, January 6, 2018)
Billions of devices are affected by Meltdown and Spectre. major security flaws revealed by cybersecurity researchers on Wednesday. Update! (CNN Money, January 5, 2018)
What Happens When States Have Their Own Net Neutrality Rules? (Slashdot, January 5, 2018)
The leading lobbying group for Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech giants is joining the legal battle to restore net neutrality (Recode, January 5, 2018)
Unbelievably, women still don't have equal rights in the Constitution (Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2018)
Top Pence aides quietly depart in new year (CNN, January 5, 2018)
Orrin Hatch is leaving the Senate, but his deadliest law will live on (Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2018)
Following Release Of Damning New Book, Trump Aides Head For The Exits (CNN, January 5, 2018)
Paul Krugman: Faust on the Potomac (New York Times, January5, 2018)
Bannon Banished for Telling Truths About Trump as MAGA Monsters Turn on Each Other (Daily Beast, January 5,2018)
HP Recalls 50,000 Lithium-Ion Laptop Batteries Over Fire Risk. Affected consumers should download fix while waiting for replacement. (Consumer Reports, January 4, 2018))
240,000 U.S. Homeland Security employees, case witnesses affected by data breach (ZDNet, January 4, 2018)
Bitcoin vs. Regulators: Who Will Win? (Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2018)
"Nuclear Buttons", and the psychology that makes big, red buttons so irresistible (Quartz, January 4, 2018)
How Donald Trump's White House team handles his giant ego, by Michael Wolff (GQ Magazine, January 4, 2018)
"You Can’t Make This S--- Up": My Year Inside Trump's Insane White House, by Michael Wolff (Hollywood Insider, January 4, 2018)
AT&T sued over layoffs—after promising more investment because of tax cut (Ars Technica, January 3, 2018)
Lawmakers concerned about Trump's mental health were briefed by a Yale psychiatry professor (Politico, January 3, 2018)
"He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs." Lee, editor of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," which includes testimonials from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessing the president's level of "dangerousness," said that she was surprised by the interest in her findings during her two days in Washington. "Their level of concern about the president's dangerousness was surprisingly high."
Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous', Bannon says in explosive book (The Guardian, January 3, 2018)
NEW: The person anonymously leaking racist attacks on the Mueller grand jury sounds a lot like Trump (Think Progress, January 3, 2018)
The Republicans' Fake Investigations (New York Times, January 2, 2018)
Serial Swatter "SWAuTistic" Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes (Krebs On Security, January 2, 2018)
NEW: Do You Belong to You? (Genome Magazine, January 2, 2018)
"A recent court case grapples with whether we own our own DNA and the information it contains. The answer has implications for research, privacy, commerce, and how we live our lives."
Meltdown and Spectre expose most Intel, AMD and ARM CPUs, force redesigns for Windows, Linux, Mac OSx (The Register, January 2 2018)
(Also, this next-day TechCrunch article.)
"The vulnerabilities ... arise from a longstanding focus in the technology industry on maximizing performance. As a result, processors, compilers, device drivers, operating systems, and numerous other critical components have evolved compounding layers of complex optimizations that introduce security risks." (And they will affect ALL of us!)
NEW: A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics Turning Us on Each Other and on Ourselves (Brain Pickings, January 1, 2018)
The Retreat to Tribalism, by David Brooks (New York Times, January 1, 2018)
(Also see, The Age of Outrage: What It's Doing To Our Universities, And Our Country, by Jonathan Haidt)
Founding Father Alexander Hamilton sums up the truth about Donald Trump--225 years ago (Daily KOS, December 30, 2017)
The 100-year capitalist experiment that keeps Appalachia poor, sick, and stuck on coal (Quartz, December 30, 2017)
Presidential Word Salads (National Review, December 29, 2017)
NEW: Washington Post data reporter uncovered a stunningly hypocritical error message on Trump's website (Daily KOS, December 28, 2017)
Last-Minute Rush to Prepay Taxes Gives Way to Confusion and Anger (New York Times, December 28, 2017)
"There are a lot of angry people here because they feel powerless and they are not used to feeling powerless."
Trump fires all members of HIV/AIDS council without explanation (Washington Blade, December 28, 2017)
Trump threatens China, says Russia inquiry makes America 'look very bad' (CNBC News, December 28, 2017)
Excerpts From Trump's Interview With The Times (New York Times, December 28, 2017)
WHO to recognize gaming disorder as mental health condition in 2018 (CNN, December 27,2017)
U.S. decision to provide anti-tank missiles to Ukraine angers Russian leaders (Los Angeles Times, December 26, 2017)
Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods Into Traffic Nightmares (New York Times, December 24, 2017)
"You all just got a lot richer," Trump tells friends, referencing tax overhaul (CBS News, December 24, 2017)
Why It's So Hard To Get The Power Back On In Puerto Rico (Daily KOS, December 24, 2017)
Goodbye Russia: A generation packs its bags (BBC News, December 23, 2017)
Remember those AT&T bonuses? Oh yeah, they came along with the layoff of 1000+ workers... (Daily KOS, December 23, 2017)
American woman living in Sweden describes the 'socialist nanny-state' and it sounds amazing (Daily KOS, December 22, 2017)
It's 'very gold': The presidential coin undergoes a Trumpian makeover (Washington Post, December 22, 2017)
This gross propaganda video pressures you to 'Thank President Trump,' just like when you were a kid (Daily KOS, December 22, 2017)
Federal Court of Appeals order invalidates decision to allow Zimbabwe and Zambia elephant and lion trophy imports (Humane Society, December 22, 2017)
Apple's iPhone Throttling Will Reinvigorate the Push for Right to Repair Laws. More states are considering Right-To-Repair legislation that will make it easier to fix your electronics. (Vice, December 21, 2017)
"If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements. (And design for easy replacement, and signal clearly when one is due.) Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone."
(Apple charges $79 to replace a $10-20 battery without voiding the warranty, or sells a new phone.)
Discussion: Why Apple Slows Down iPhones with Old Batteries (Reddit, December 21, 2017)
Bitcoin Billionaires May Have Found a Way to Cash Out (Bloomberg, December 21, 2017)
Bitcoin Tumbles Through $13,000 as 'Sharks Start to Circle' (Bloomberg, December 21, 2017)
Winter solstice 2017: Five things you should know about the shortest day of the year (Washington Post, December 21, 2017)
NEW: Tom Brokaw - "So, We're At War Here" (w/FOX News) (Daily KOS, Deember 21, 2017)
Jerusalem: UN resolution rejects Trump's declaration (BBC News, December 21, 2017)
An Accountant's take: Tax Laws, Social Engineering, and the Three Events that Destroyed our Economy (Daily KOS, December 21, 2017)
Ever wondered what America looked like heading into the Great Depression? (Daily KOS, December 21, 2017)
Billionaire Koch Brothers Invest Millions More to Promote Tax Overhaul (Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2017)
Paul Krugman: Tax-Cut Santa Is Coming to Town (New York Times, December 21, 2017)
One potential loser in the new GOP tax bill: Puerto Rico (Washington Post, December 20, 2017)
Trump will personally save up to $15m under tax bill, analysis finds (Guardian, December 20, 2017)
"This is not tax reform, it's a money grab by the ultra-wealthy, including the multimillionaires in Congress and Trump's own cabinet, who will benefit. When all is said and done, over 80% of the tax cuts will wind up in the pockets of the top 1%. Meanwhile, all of this will be paid for by the middle class and families who are struggling to get by.”"
Trump stands to save millions under new tax measure, experts say (Washington Post, December 20, 2017)
"Sanders repeated this week that Trump would not release his tax returns 'as long as they’re under audit.' Nothing prevents Trump from disclosing his returns, including an audit (which is standard for all presidents), Internal Revenue Service officials and attorneys say, and every president has done so routinely for the past 40 years."
Trump just admitted the GOP's tax cuts were deceptively sold (Washington Post, December 20, 2017)
House Republicans Don't Know Some Very Basic Facts About The Tax Bill They Wrote (Huffington Post, December 20, 2017)
"It took us 18 tries to find a GOP congressman who could tell us the individual income tax brackets."
Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads (ProPublica, December 20, 2017)
"Among the companies we found doing it: Amazon, Verizon, UPS and Facebook itself. 'It’s blatantly unlawful,' said one employment law expert."
US lifts ban on lethal virus experiments despite security risks (BBC News, December 20, 2017)
The CDC's language policy isn't just politics as usual. It's Orwellian. (Vox, December 20, 2017)
NEW: The link between polygamy and war - The perils of polygamy (The Economist, December 19, 2017)
Public opposition to tax bill grows as vote approaches (CNN Polls, December 19, 2017)
"President Donald Trump, the bill's salesperson-in-chief, lands at an overall 35% approval rating in this poll, his worst mark yet in CNN polling by one point. Trump's approval ratings continue to be the lowest for any modern president at this point in his presidency. As of December of their first year in office, all first-time elected presidents back to Eisenhower have approval ratings of 49% or higher except for Trump."
White House takes down 'We the People' petitions site before responding to a single one (Washington Post, December 19, 2017)
A recount just knocked Virginia's statehouse out of Republicans' hands - by a single vote (Vox, December 19, 2017)
Britain's problem is not with Europe, but with England, by David Marquand (Guardian, December 19, 2017)
U.S. declares North Korea carried out massive WannaCry cyberattack (Washington Post, December 19, 2017)
"President Trump is handling the intelligence assessments regarding North Korea and Russia completely differently, staging an elaborate media rollout to press on sanctions against North Korea while at the same time discrediting the assessment by these very same intelligence agencies that the Kremlin interfered with our election." -- Congressman Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
NEW: Fees as high as $28 are destroying bitcoin's value for small payments. (Ars Techica, December 19, 2017)
Why the Bitcoin craze is using up so much energy (Washington Post, December 19, 2017)
First study to predict whether different populations of the same plant species can adapt to climate change: central European ones die first. (ScienceDaily, December 19, 2017)
(Note that GMO plants have NO genetic diversity.)
This old drug was free. Now it's $109,500 a year (Los Angeles Times, December 18, 2017)
It should have been a celebration for new $181 million train route. What went wrong? (Tacoma News Tribune, December 18, 2017)
Amtrak train derails onto I-5 in DuPont, Washington, causing injuries and shutting down freeway (Tacoma News Tribune, December 18, 2017)
Android Malware Mines Monero, Can Literally Destroy Phones (International Business Times, December 18, 2017)
Deliverance From 27,000 Feet (New York Times, December 18, 2017)
(The recovery of Indian climbers' bodies from Mount Everest.)
Fox News and Donald Trump are in a feedback loop that threatens to blow up the republic (Daily KOS, December 18, 2017)
Welcome to The Trump Family Swamp (Washington Post, December 18, 2017)
NEW: Eric Holder Fires Warning Shot to Republicans Undermining Mueller Investigation (Daily KOS, December 16, 2017)
Koch Brothers Are Cities' New Obstacle to Building Broadband (Wired, December 16, 2017)
What Trump and Congress are doing to Puerto Rico is blatant racism. (Daily KOS, December 16, 2017)
Paul Krugman: Bitcoin is a more obvious bubble than housing was (Business Insider, December 15, 2017)
Trump judicial nominee Matthew S. Petersen struggles to answer law questions (Washington Post, December 15, 2017)
CDC gets list of forbidden terms, including: 'fetus,' 'transgender,' 'diversity' (Seattle Times, December 15, 2017)
Trump turning US into 'world champion of extreme inequality', UN envoy warns (The Guardian, December 15, 2017)
A journey through a land of extreme poverty: welcome to America (The Guardian, December 15, 2017)
Small farmers who voted for Trump are suing him for taking away Obama-era protections (Daily KOS, December 14, 2017)
Why Pennsylvania sends too many Republicans to Washington - and why that could change (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 14, 2017)
To save the GOP, Republicans have to lose (Washington Post, December 14, 2017)
NEW: How conservative media reacted to Roy Moore’s stunning loss (Washington Post, December 14, 2017)
NEW: He belongs to no tribe (Chuck Lorre Vanity Card, December 14, 2017)
Trump's Lies vs. Obama's (New York Times, December 14, 2014)
"Trump is unlike any other modern president. He seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he's trying to make. In his first 10 months in office, he has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly. Obama told 18 over his entire eight-year tenure. That's an average of about two a year for Obama and about 124 a year for Trump."
The Russia facts are hiding in plain sight (Washington Post, December 14, 2017)
Doubting the intelligence, Trump pursues Putin and leaves a Russian threat unchecked (Washington Post, December 14, 2017)
NEW: Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking (Wired, December 14, 2017)
(To see that same effect in the USA: An Uncomplicated Guide to Hacking Your Perfect Credit Score)
"For the Chinese Communist Party, social credit is an attempt at a softer, more invisible authoritarianism. The goal is to nudge people toward behaviors ranging from energy conservation to obedience to the Party."
NEW: Why Hackers Are in Such High Demand, and How They're Affecting Business Culture (Dark Reading, December 14, 2017)
'Intentional' event redirects cloud traffic from Apple, Google & others through Russia (Apple Insider, December 14, 2017)
Goodbye, net neutrality—Ajit Pai’s FCC votes to allow blocking and throttling. But pro-net neutrality groups will sue FCC to reinstate consumer protections. (Ars Technica, December 14, 2017)
Net neutrality is gone. Feel the freedom coursing through your veins. (Washington Post, December 14, 2017)
NY State A.G. Schneiderman Releases New Details On Investigation Into Fake Net Neutrality Comments (NYS AG's Office, December 13, 2017)
"Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process – including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law. Moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of the notice and comment process … and reward those who perpetrated this fraud."
FCC Set To Vote On The Future Of The Internet (MSNBC, December 13, 2017)
Antarctic Modeling DOUBLES Sea-Level Rise Projections (Climate Central, December 13, 2017)
Dourson’s EPA Withdrawal a Victory for Science, Health (Union of Concerned Scientists, December 13, 2017)
NEW: Ideas for Improving Life in High Crime Areas (Scott Adams' Blog, December 13, 2017)
NEW: Mother Jones Freaks Out About DIY Guns (Bearing Arms, December 13, 2017)
NEW: As a Doctor, I'm Sick of All The Health Care Freeloaders (Texas Observer, December 13, 2017)
#ClassWarfare (Daily KOS, December 13, 2017)
NEW: California wildfire that scorched Bel Air started in homeless camp -- and residents fear backlash (Guardian, December 13, 2017)
"The Skirball blaze began life as a cooking fire under a freeway, but assigning blame is complicated given the harsh conditions of LA’s homeless encampments."
NEW: The Silicon Valley paradox: one in four people are at risk of hunger (Guardian, December 12, 2017)
NEW: For the first time, a key Republican senator finds a Trump judicial nominee whom he can't support (Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2017)
Roy Moore Loses, Sanity Reigns (New York Times, December 12, 2017)
Support from women hands Democrats victory in Alabama: Exit polls (ABC News, December 12, 2017)
Alabama Senate results: Democrat Doug Jones declared winner over Roy Moore (Washington Post, December 12, 2017)
59 female lawmakers call for House investigation into Trump misconduct (CBS News, December 12, 2017)
Will Trump's lows ever hit rock bottom? (USA Today, December 12, 2017)
"Donald Trump is uniquely awful. His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed. ... Trump's utter lack of morality, ethics and simple humanity has been underscored during his 11 months in office. Let us count the ways..."
NEW: A running list of the eyewitnesses who prove Trump's innocence on sexual misconduct (Washington Post, December 12, 2017)
Unhinged: Donald Trump Goes After NY Senator (Dan Rather's News&Guts, December 11, 2017)
The Trump administration's tax 'report' reads like fan fiction (Washington Post, December 11, 2017)
Pennsylvania's map is so gerrymandered that random computer maps are fairer, expert says (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Sweet home Alabama, where sometimes you're allowed to vote (Daily KOS, December 11, 2017)
NEW: Apple's Alleged Throttling of Older iPhones With Degraded Batteries Causes Controversy (MacRumors, December 11, 2017)
NEW: iPhone slow? Try replacing your battery! (Reddit, December 10, 2017)
NEW: Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests (Washington Post, December 8, 2017)
The Whistleblower Who Could Have Prevented 9/11. Why the NSA Shut Down Binney's Life-Saving Work. (Who.What.Why, December 8, 2017)
"Management, seeing a threat to their budget request, decided that it was more important to do the budget than to do the mission."
NEW: Innovation of the Week: AlphaGo Zero, Google's AI chessmaster (Boston Globe, December 8, 2017)
"Google’s DeepMind tried something different, giving its AlphaGo Zero artificial intelligence program the basic rules of chess and letting it learn on its own. Did it work? Just four hours after getting the rules (during which time it played games against itself at one per minute to learn what works), AlphaGo Zero thumped the globe’s best specialized chess software, Stockfish 8, in a 100-game match up — winning or drawing every game."
Quantum Computing Is the Next Big Security Risk (Wired, December 7, 2017)
How to Think about "Medicare for All" (New England Journal of Medicine, December 7, 2017)
How killing net neutrality will hurt online protests and free speech (Mashable, December 7, 2017)
Tax experts have finally had a chance to read the Republican tax bill: 'Holy crap!' Daily KOS, December 6, 2017)
'Holy crap': Experts find tax plan riddled with glitches. Some of the provisions could be easily gamed, tax lawyers say. (Politico, December 6, 2017)
The GOP may yet do what the Democrats cannot. Sink the tax bill. (Daily KOS, December 5, 2017)
Trump economic adviser on tax bill: 'It's death to Democrats'. (Daily KOS, December 5, 2017)
Theresa May's Brexit bubble has been popped by the Irish border (Independent, December 4, 2017)
Proposed Trump-administration rule would protect employers who steal workers' hard-earned tips (Economic Policy Institute, December 4, 2017)
"Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips."
Former RNC Chairman Says GOP Will Pay A Dear Price For Roy Moore In 2018 (Daily KOS, December 4, 2017)
Roy Moore Gets Trump Endorsement and R.N.C. Funding for Senate Race (New York Times, December 4, 2017)
Hedy Lamarr’s Forgotten, Frustrated Career as a Wartime Inventor (New Yorker, December 3, 2017)
US politicos wake up to danger of black-box algorithms shaping all corners of American life (The Register, December 2, 2017))
Senate GOP tax bill passes in major victory for Trump, Republicans, and the wealthy (Washington Post, December 2, 2017)
Senate Republicans' push for massive tax cuts bill has become surreal (Daily KOS, December 1, 2017)
The Men Who Cost Clinton the Election (New York Times, December 1, 2017)
"When one of the best-qualified candidates for the presidency in American history and the first woman to get close to the Oval Office loses to an opponent who had not dedicated a nanosecond of his life to public service and ran a blatantly misogynist campaign, it's hard to conclude that gender didn't play a role."
What does Michael Flynn's plea deal mean for Trump? Here are 4 big questions. (Washington Post, December 2, 2017)
Michael Flynn grew up breaking the rules. It caught up to him as Trump's national security advisor (Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2017)
Robert Mueller Has a Plan. How the special counsel's deal with Michael Flynn neutralizes Trump's pardon power. (Slate, December 1, 2017)
Flynn pleads guilty, is cooperating in Trump campaign probe (AP News, December 1, 2017)
Read Jimmy Kimmel's scathing response to Roy Moore after their 'Twitter war' (Washington Post, December 1, 2017)
Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years (NASA, December 1, 2017)
Rising sea level threatens U.S. nuclear waste dump in Pacific (Digital Journal, November 30, 2017)
Controversial Study Claims 'Smartphone Addiction' Alters the Brain (Inverse, November 30, 2017)
A President Made for a Zombie Apocalypse Media World, by Tom Engelhardt (TomDispatch, November 30, 2017)
Flynn flips, Kushner talks, and Trump posts Nazi snuff films (Daily KOS, November 30, 2017)
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