Ugly Gerry font of voting districts

SUBHEAD: A computer font made out of the shapes of gerrymandered voting districts.

By Rusty Blazenhoff on 2 August 20129 for Boing Boing -
(https://boingboing.net/2019/08/02/gerry-is-an-ugly-font-made-fro.html)


Image above: A message to Republicans on gerrymandering by someone using the UglyGerry type font. Of course Democrats have played their pert in this as well. From (https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1157070040816128006/gEPX-685?format=jpg&name=600x314).

Ooh, this is awesome. Activists have made a free font called Gerry that is made from the shapes of gerrymandered congressional districts. They encourage you to use it to write your representative.

The font’s creators, Ben Doessel and James Lee, made it to raise awareness and provide a method for disenfranchised voters to protest partisan gerrymandering. The duo, in a press release provided to the media, stated:

"After seeing how janky our Illinois 4th district had become, we became interested in this issue. We noticed our district’s vague, but shaky U-shape, then after seeing other letters on the map, the idea hit us, let’s create a typeface so our districts can become digital graffiti that voters and politicians can’t ignore."

For those unfamiliar with gerrymandering, it’s the process by which US voting districts use increasingly nonsensical borders to disenfranchise voters and limit who they can vote for by party lines instead of geography.

Congressional districts have a reputation for being downright ridiculous.

"North Carolina's 12th district resembled a severely broken snake until it was revamped in 2017. Pretty much all of Maryland's districts defy comparison to anything but abstract art. And then there are a few dozen districts that look like letters in the alphabet — so much so that an anonymous gerrymandering fighter turned them into a font.

A few of the letters in the Ugly Gerry typeface are a combination of side-by-side districts, while New York's 8th District is turned on its head to be both the "M" and "W" in the alphabet. But most of the districts don't even require much squinting to resemble letters, which are all downloadable in one file on UglyGerry.com."
From (https://theweek.com/speedreads/856423/someone-made-font-gerrymandered-congressional-districts)

Image above: The alphabet made of gerrymandered US voting districts. From (https://www.uglygerry.com/) (https://twitter.com/UglyGerry). Click to enlarge.





.https://www.uglygerry.com/

Brown woman divorces Democrats

SUBHEAD: I’m a brown woman who’s breaking up with the Democratic Party.

By Saira Rao on 16 December 2017 for Huffington Post -
(https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brown-women-democratic-party_us_5a31a32de4b07ff75b001456)


Image above: What appears to be a selfie of Saira Rao during her college days with Hillary Clinton. From original article.

Dear Democratic Party:

You were the love of my life. I fell in love early and hard. I have been the kind of party loyalist ― the kind of sappy, soapbox-y, clichéd devotee ― that makes Fox News moonwalk with glee.

The first vote I ever cast, at 18, was for Bill Clinton. The last vote I cast was for his wife, Hillary. My adoration for Hillary bordered on mania.

In college, I named my ficus plant after her. Twenty years later, I canvassed, held fundraisers, dragged my 8-year-old daughter door to door, proudly wore HRC’s face on T-shirts and housed campaign volunteers in my home.

I loved you so much that I cried each time I voted. Thinking about the women who died fighting for my right to vote did it every time. I cried when I voted for Bill. For Barack Obama. I wept when I voted for Hillary. You’ve been that kind of mad love to me.

And now I want to break up.

I realize now that the love has been one-sided, unrequited. You’ve never recognized me, as a brown woman. You’ve taken my love, my money, my tokenism, with nary anything in return. You married the white woman and hooked up with me on the side.

Black Lives Matter is a second ― or third ― thought. Where is your outrage over the national epidemic of police brutality against black people?

You continue to call angry white men who commit mass murder “lone wolves.” But if someone who looks like me screams “Allah” and fires a gun, it’s “terrorism.” And you wonder why angry white men are gunning down innocent brown men at bars, in their yards, on the street.

For all your talk about Dreamers, there’s been little action. You don’t seem to give a crap about kids of color who will be kicked out of this country, the only country they know.

What if all those Dreamers were white? I suspect there’d be a very different outcome.

You spend a lot of time and energy wooing white voters, while giving short shrift to voters of colors and assuming we’ll always show up for you.

To be fair, there’s no reason for you to assume otherwise. We always show up for you. Take, for example, the special election in Alabama on Tuesday. Had black people not shown up, an accused child molester would be our newest senator.

What will Doug Jones do for the black folks who put him in the Senate? If history is any indication, very little.

This past year, I held and attended numerous fundraisers for your candidates. I donated money every time I was asked. I marched: for women, for children, for reproductive rights, for science. I traveled across the country for the March for Women in Washington, D.C.

It was there that I got the first hint that you weren’t that into me. The giveaway? The sea of white women in pink hats with brown and black women dotting the waves like debris. I let it slide but I kept my eyes and ears open.

My fellow brown and black sisters started to notice, too — and the chatter began, in whispered hushes at first, then loud and clear. You are a party of white feminists. Of white feminism, the kind of feminism that focuses on the struggles of white women.

It was the first time I’d heard the term, most likely because self-awareness is hard and I was a brown woman trapped in a white feminist’s world.

But then I woke up. I saw you with clear eyes for the first time.

For every Kamala Harris and Pramila Jayapal sticking their brown and black necks out for me, there are dozens of white female Democrats who want me to shut my trap.

Your advocacy for reproductive rights zeros in on wealthy white women. Women of color and other marginalized women get sidelined.

The gender pay gap is worse for black and Latina women than it is for white women. Women of color make up 64 percent of women in U.S. jails. Why isn’t the Democratic Party talking about this and trying to fix it?

My own “liberal” white congresswoman in Colorado has given me a hint as to why.

At the congresswoman’s town hall in February, Neeti Pawar, the brown female founder of the South Asian Bar Association of Colorado, was one of the only people of color in a room of nearly a thousand. She asked about immigration and DACA protections.

The congresswoman scoffed. When Pawar pressed on, she was told to remain silent or she’d be asked to leave. During a follow-up, staffers told Pawar that civil rights weren’t the representative’s “issue.” Brown and black people don’t have the luxury of sidelining civil rights. It’s life and death for us.

And it didn’t stop there.

I was organizing a fundraiser for a U.S. senator earlier this month, and had planned to use the opportunity to highlight women of color by having black women introduce him.

The congresswoman’s staff caught wind of the event and asked if she could introduce the senator. I explained my position but invited her to come as a guest. No response. When pressed on her stance on racial inclusion, her staff didn’t respond to me directly but tattled on me to the white women co-hosting the event.

I know there are some good ones among you. But for every Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters and Pramila Jayapal sticking their brown and black necks out for me, there are dozens of white female Democrats who want me to shut my trap, and say please and thank you. 

I should be grateful for scraps while white women enjoy a proper marriage with you.

I’m done with all that. And if you don’t want to lose more women like me, there are a few basic things you can do.

Pay attention to the reproductive health of women of color and other marginalized women. Do something, anything, to protect Dreamers. Or, if you’re really feeling bold, move forward on some form of reparations for black people.

Finally, mentor young people of color to run for office. Campaign for brown and black folks. Raise money for them. Show up for them. I’d come running back to you with open arms if you did even a few of these things.

In the meantime, I’ll be on the sidelines waiting, watching, hoping, praying. You broke my heart.

.

Warren on the Warpath

SUBHEAD: Centrist Democrats riled as Warren says days of 'Lukewarm' policies are over.

By Jake Johnson on 18 August 2017 for Common Dreams -
(https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/08/18/centrist-democrats-riled-warren-says-days-lukewarm-policies-are-over#)


Image above: From ().

She says;  "The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill."

In a wide-ranging and fiery keynote speech last weekend at the 12th annual Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) relentlessly derided moderate Democratic pundits calling for the party to move "back to the center" and declared that Democrats must unequivocally "fight for progressive solutions to our nation's challenges."

As The Hill's Amie Parnes reported on Friday, Warren's assertion during the weekend gathering that progressives are "the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party"—and not merely a "wing"—raised the ire of so-called "moderate" Democrats, who have insisted that progressive policies won't sell in swing states.

But recent survey results have consistently shown that policies like single-payer healthcare, progressive taxation, a higher minimum wage, and tuition-free public college are extremely popular among the broader electorate. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—the most prominent advocate of an ambitious, far-reaching progressive agenda—has consistently polled as the most popular politician in the country.

For Warren, these are all indicators that those pining for a rightward shift "back to the center" are deeply mistaken.

Specifically, Warren took aim at a recent New York Times op-ed by Democratic commentators Mark Penn and Andrew Stein, who argued that Democrats must moderate their positions in order to take back Congress and, ultimately, the presidency.

Warren ridiculed this argument as a call for a return to Bill Clinton-era policies that "lock[ed] up non-violent drug offenders and ripp[ed] more holes in our economic safety net."

"The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill," Warren said. "We're not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice.

We're not going back to the days when universal healthcare was something Democrats talked about on the campaign trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected."

"And," Warren concluded, "we're not going back to the days when a Democrat who wanted to run for a seat in Washington first had to grovel on Wall Street."

For months media outlets have speculated that Warren is gearing up for a 2020 presidential run, but she has denied the rumors.

Warren's remarks came as a large coalition of progressive groups is mobilizing during the congressional recess to pressure Democrats to formally endorse the "People's Platform," a slate of ambitious legislation that includes Rep. John Conyers' (D-Mich.) Medicare for All bill.


Video above: Watch Warren's full speech at Netroots Nation. From (https://youtu.be/Rc2D9pn8mjc).

.

Trump-Russia Timeline Perspective

SUBHEAD: Pres.Trump tweeted about thousands of stolen DNC emails the day Junior met Russians.

By Chuck Todd, M. Murry & C. Dann 10 July 3017 for NBC News -
(http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/putting-trump-russia-timeline-perspective-n781236)


Image above: Photo of Donald Trump Jr. by Leigh Vogel. From original article.

[IB Publisher's note: There is more of the material at in the source article, including videos. It is my opinion that the meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with Russian Natalia Veselnitskaya and a former Russian military officer was not "a nothing meeting". Three hours after meeting the President bragged about a speech he was planning for the following Monday about corruption in the Clinton campaign and he tweeted about 30,000 stolen emails. That speech was never given, and later WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of Clinton campaign related emails.]

The bombshell New York Times report from Sunday afternoon might not be the smoking gun in the Trump-Russia 2016 story, but it sure looks close to one. According to the Times, President Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in June 2016 after being promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton — “the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help.” To put this June 9, 2016 meeting into perspective, here’s a handy timeline of what happened before and after the meeting:

• June 7: The 2016 primary season essentially concludes, with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the presumptive party nominees
  
  
• June 9: Donald Trump Jr. — along with Jared Kushner and former campaign chair Paul Manafort — meets with Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
  
  
• June 9: Trump tweets about Clinton’s missing 33,000 emails
  
  
• July 18: Washington Post reports, on the first day of the GOP convention, that the Trump campaign changed the Republican platform to ensure that it didn’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces
  
  
• July 21: GOP convention concludes with Trump giving his speech accepting the Republican nomination
  
  
• July 22: WikiLeaks releases stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee
  
  
• July 25: Democratic convention begins
  
  
• July 27: In final news conference of his 2016 campaign, Trump asks Russia: “If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”
  
  
• August 4: Obama CIA Director John Brennan confronts his Russian counterpart about Russia’s interference. “[I] told him if you go down this road, it's going to have serious consequences, not only for the bilateral relationship, but for our ability to work with Russia on any issue, because it is an assault on our democracy,” Brennan said on “Meet the Press” yesterday.
  
  
• October 4: WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange says his organization will publish emails related to the 2016 campaign
  
  
• October 7: Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence release a statement directly saying that Russia is interfering in the 2016 election
  
  
• October 7: WikiLeaks begins releasing Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta’s emails
  
  
•  October 31: “This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove,” Trump says on the campaign trail
  
  
• November 4: “Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks,” Trump says from Ohio.

Bottom line: This timeline of what now know is circumstantial evidence itself of some kind of relationship that the Trump campaign had with Russian sources. The question: What else is out there? Is this just the tip of the iceberg?

The sourcing of the NYT story: It came from “three advisers to the White House”By the way, maybe the most interesting Washington parlor game right now is trying to guess the sources for the New York Times story above.

“President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.” (Emphasis is ours.)

So it’s coming from inside the White House – or from those who are advising it. Is this the beginning of every man and woman for themselves?

Here’s how Russia helped Trump in the 2016 election
In the last few days, President Trump has

1. downplayed Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,
2. criticized Barack Obama for not acting on that interference,
3. knocked U.S. intelligence officials, and
4. declared that it’s “time to move forward in working constructively with Russia.”

And to top it off, It all raises the question: So what, exactly, did Russia do in the 2016 election? Here is what the U.S. intelligence community publicly revealed six months ago:

• It stole Democrats’ emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to be released: “We assess with high confidence that the GRU [Russia’s intelligence agency] relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks. Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.”

• It didn’t do the same for Republican/Trump emails: “Russia collected on some Republican-affiliated targets but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign.”

• Its state-run media outlets portrayed Trump as a victim and constantly attacked Clinton: “RT and Sputnik … consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment… RT’s coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism.”

• Assuming Clinton was going to win, it tried to cast doubt on integrity of the U.S. election: “Before the election, Russian diplomats had publicly denounced the US electoral process and were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results. Pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory, judging from their social media activity.”

• And it will probably do this all again in future elections: “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts in the United States and worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.”

Josh Green on Trump and Steve Bannon Finally, don’t miss this except from Josh Green’s new book on Trump and Steve Bannon: “Why does Trump double-down every time it seems like he should retreat? Because Steve Bannon is back in his boss’s good graces.”

.

Do you, Mr Jones?

SUBHEAD: A sinister host of adversaries are coming after Trump and are going to get rid of him one way or another.

By James Kunstler on 22 May 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/do-you-mr-jones/)


Image above: Portrait of Bob Dylan on LP record album cover of "Highway 61 Revisited" on which "Ballad of a Thin Man" was released in 1965. From (https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-ballad-of-a-thin-man-lyrics). Click to enlarge.

In case you wonder how our politics fell into such a slough of despond, the answer is pretty simple. Neither main political party, or their trains of experts, specialists, and mouthpieces, can construct a coherent story about what is happening in this country — and the result is a roaring wave of recursive objurgation and wrath that loops purposelessly towards gathering darkness.

What’s happening is a slow-motion collapse of the economy. Neither Democrats or Republicans know why it is so remorselessly underway. A tiny number of well-positioned scavengers thrive on the debris cast off by the process of disintegration, but they don’t really understand the process either — the lobbyists, lawyers, bankers, contractors, feeders at the troughs of government could not be more cynical or clueless.

The nation suffers desperately from an absence of leadership and perhaps even more from the loss of faith that leadership is even possible after years without it.

Perhaps that’s why so much hostility is aimed at Mr. Putin of Russia, a person who appears to know where his country stands in history, and who enjoys ample support among his countrymen. How that must gall the empty vessels like Lindsey Graham, Rubio, Schumer, Feinstein, Ryan, et. al.

So along came the dazzling, zany Trump, who was able to communicate a vague sense-memory of what had been lost in our time of American life, whose sheer bluster resembled something like conviction as projected via the cartoonizing medium of television, and who entered a paralysis of intention the moment he stepped into the oval office, where he proved to be even less authentic than the Wizard of Oz.

Turned out he didn’t really understand the economic collapse underway either; he just remembered an America of 1962 and though somehow the national clock might be turned back.

The industrial triumph of America in the 19^th and 20^th century was really something to behold. But like all stories, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of that story than the middle. It doesn’t mean the end of civilization but it means we have to start a new story that provides some outline of a life worth living on a planet worth caring about.

For the moment the fragmentary stories of redemption revolve around technological rescue remedies, chiefly the idea that electric cars will save the nation. This dumb narrative alone ought to inform you just how lost we are, because the story assumes that our prime objective is to remain car-dependent at all costs — when one of the main features in the story of our future is the absolute end of car dependency and all its furnishings and accessories. We can’t imagine going there. (How would you, without a car?)

The economy is collapsing because it was based on cheap oil, which is no longer cheap to pull out of the ground — despite what you might pay for it at the pump these days. The public is understandably confounded by this.

But their mystification does nothing to allay the disappearance of jobs, incomes, prospects, or purpose. They retreat from the pain of loss into a fog of manufactured melodrama featuring superheros and supervillains and supernatural doings.

Donald Trump could never be a Franklin Roosevelt or a Lincoln. These were figures who, if nothing else, could articulate the terms that reality had laid on America’s table in their particular moments of history. Mr. Trump can barely speak English and his notions about history amount to a kind of funny papers of the mind.

A sinister host of adversaries who ought to understand what is happening in this country, but don’t, or can’t, or won’t, are coming after him, and they are going to get rid of him one way or another. They have to. They must. And they will.

---

Ballad of a Thin Man
by Bob Dylan - 1965

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Well, what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel to be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible!" as he hands you a bone
And something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You have many contacts among the lumberjacks
To get you facts when someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect, anyway they already expect you to all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations.

Ah, you've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well-read, it's well-known
But something is happening here and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice, he asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan"
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Now, you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word "Now"
And you say, "For what reason?" and he says, "How"
And you say, "What does this mean?" and he screams back, "You're a cow!
Give me some milk or else go home"
And you know something's happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, you walk into the room like a camel, and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you comin' around
You should be made to wear earphones
'Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

.

The curse of the Thinking Class

SUBHEAD: I would like to join the party dedicated to getting our house in order. Anybody else out there feel that way?

By James  Kunstler on 27 March 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/curse-thinking-class/)


Image above: Karl Lindberg, Senior artist at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), provided some remarkable concept artwork for Kong: Skull Island, the latest in the franchise. From (http://www.scified.com/news/kongskull-island-concept-art-karl-lindberg).

Let’s suppose there really is such a thing as The Thinking Class in this country, if it’s not too politically incorrect to say so — since it implies that there is another class, perhaps larger, that operates only on some limbic lizard-brain level of impulse and emotion. Personally, I believe there is such a Thinking Class, or at least I have dim memories of something like it.

The farfetched phenomenon of Trumpism has sent that bunch on a journey to a strange land of the intellect, a place like the lost island of Kong, where one monster after another rises out of the swampy murk to threaten the frail human adventurers.

No one back home would believe the things they’re tangling with: giant spiders, reptiles the size of front-end loaders, malevolent aborigines! Will any of the delicate humans survive or make it back home?

This is the feeling I get listening to arguments in the public arena these days, but especially from the quarters formerly identified as left-of-center, especially the faction organized around the Democratic Party, which I aligned with long ago (alas, no more).

The main question seems to be:
Who is responsible for all the unrest in this land.

Their answer since halfway back in 2016:
The Russians.

 I’m not comfortable with this hypothesis. Russia has a GDP smaller than Texas. If they are able to project so much influence over what happens in the USA, they must have some supernatural mojo-of-the-mind — and perhaps they do — but it raises the question of motive.

What might Russia realistically get from the USA if Vladimir Putin was the master hypnotist that Democrats make him out to be?

Do we suppose Putin wants more living space for Russia’s people? Hmmmm. Russia’s population these days, around 145 million, is less than half the USA’s and it’s rattling around in the geographically largest nation in the world.

Do they want our oil? Maybe, but Russia being the world’s top oil producer suggests they’ve already got their hands full with their own operation. Do they want Hollywood? The video game industry?

The US porn empire? Do they covet our Chick-fil-A chains and Waffle Houses? Our tattoo artists? Would they like to induce the Kardashians to live in Moscow? Is it Nascar they’re really after?

My hypothesis is that Russia would most of all like to be left alone. Watching NATO move tanks and German troops into Lithuania in January probably makes the Russians nervous, and no doubt that is the very objective of the NATO move — but let’s not forget that most of all NATO is an arm of American foreign policy.

If there are any remnants of the American Thinking Class left at the State Department, they might recall that Russia lost 20 million people in the dust-up known as the Second World War against whom…? Oh, Germany.

Altogether last January the US military deployed thousands of soldiers and heavy weaponry to Poland, the Baltic states and southeastern Europe in its biggest build-up since the Cold War(Reuters).

As they used to say in old film noir Bogart movies: What’s the big idea?

The State Department would say they big idea was cautioning Russia against annexing anymore neighboring states or regions, as they did in Crimea a few years back.

Apparently the public is supposed to forget that the State Department sponsored and engineered the conversion of Ukraine into a failed state, prompting Russia to retain its naval bases in Crimea, its only warm-water outlet to the world’s oceans.

Ask yourself: if for some reason the state of Virginia were plunged into anarchy by foreign mischief, do you think the US would batten down our naval station in Norfolk?

I think the sad truth of the American predicament these day, including the ascension of a narcissistic ninny to the White House, is that we’re responsible for our own problems due, most of all, to the destruction of boundaries in virtually all realms of American behavior from the things we put in our bodies to the ridiculous ways that we occupy our waking hours at the expense of getting our own house in order.

I would like to join the party dedicated to getting our house in order. Anybody else out there feel that way?

.

A Hole in the Head

SUBHEAD: America has a hole in its head. It’s the place formerly known as The Center. Normal is no more.

By James Kunstler on 27 February 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-hole-in-the-head/)


Image above: Squabbling Democratic and Rebublican parties. From (http://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/13031002/tea-party-squabbling).

We need a new civil war like we need a hole in the head. But that’s just it: America has a hole in its head. It’s the place formerly known as The Center. It didn’t hold. It was the place where people of differing views could rely on each other to behave reasonably around a touchstone called the National Interest.

That abandoned place is now cordoned off, a Chernobyl of the mind, where figures on each side of the political margin fear to even sojourn, let alone occupy, lest they go radioactive.

Anyway, the old parties at each side of the political transect, are melting down in equivalent fugues of delusion, rage, and impotence — as predicted here through the election year of 2016. They can’t make anything good happen in the National Interest.

They can’t control the runaway rackets that they engineered in legislation, policy, and practice under the dominion of each party, by turns, going back to Lyndon B. Johnson, and so they have driven themselves and each other insane.

Trump and Hillary perfectly embodied the climactic stage of each party before their final mutual sprint to collapse. Both had more than a tinge of the psychopath. Trump is the bluff that the Republicans called on themselves, having jettisoned anything identifiable as coherent principles translatable to useful action.

Hillary was an American Lady Macbeth attempting to pull off the ultimate inside job by any means necessary, her wickedness so plain to see that even the voters picked up on it. These two are the old parties’ revenge on each other, and on themselves, for decades of bad choices and bad faith.

The anti-intellectual Trump is, for the Right, the answer to the Intellectual-Yet-Idiots (IYIs) that Nassim Taleb has so ably identified as infesting the Left. It is a good guess that President Trump has not read a book since high school, and perhaps never in his entire life.

But are you not amazed at how the IYIs of the Left have savaged the life-of-the-mind on campus, and out in the other precincts of culture where free inquiry once flourished? From the craven college presidents who pretend that race-segregated “safe spaces” represent “inclusiveness,” to The New York Times editors who pretend in headlines that illegal immigrants have done nothing illegal, the mendacity is awesome.

Something like this has happened before in US history and it may be cyclical. The former Princeton University professor and President, Woodrow Wilson, dragged America into the First World War, which killed over 53,000 Americans  (as many as Vietnam) in only eighteen months. He promulgated the Red Scare, a bit of hysteria not unlike the Race and Gender Phobia Accusation Fest on the Left today.

Professor Wilson was also responsible for creating the Federal Reserve and all the mischief it has entailed, especially the loss of over 90 percent of the dollar’s value since 1913. Wilson, the perfect IYI of that day.

The reaction to Wilson was Warren Gamaliel Harding, the hard-drinking, card-playing Ohio Main Street boob picked in the notorious “smoke-filled room” of the 1920 GOP convention.

He invoked a return to “normalcy,” which was not even a word (try normality), and was laughed at as we now laugh at Trump for his idiotic utterances such as “win bigly” (or is that big league?).

Harding is also known for confessing in a letter: “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.”

Yet, in his brief term (died in office, 1923), Harding navigated the country successfully through a fierce post-World War One depression simply by not resorting to government intervention.

Something like the same dynamic returned in 1952 when General Eisenhower took over from Harry Truman and the defeated Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson quipped, “The New Dealers have been replaced by the car dealers.”

Ha! If he only knew! After all, who was on board as Ike’s Veep? None other than Tricky Dick Nixon, soon to be cast as America’s quintessential used car salesman.

Well, those were the days, and those days are over.

So much has gone wrong here in the past thirty years and the game of salugi being played by the Dems and the GOP is not helping any of it.  [IB Publisher's note: "Salugi" or "Saloogie" is unorganized game among NYC area children in which an article is snatched away from a victim and tossed back and forth among the tormentors; also used as a call in the game.]

And that is why the two parties are heading toward extinction. We’re in the phase of intra-party factional conflict for now. Each party has its own preliminary civil war going on.

The election of Obama era Labor Secretary and party hack, Tom Perez, as DNC chair yesterday has set the Bernie Sanders Prog troops into paroxysms of animadversion. They’re calling out all up-and-down the Twitterverse for a new party of their own.

Trump faces his own mutineers on the Right, and not just the two cheerleaders for World War Three, John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Coming out of the Conservative CPAC meeting last week, just about his whole agenda was written off as (cough cough) politically impractical by the poobahs in attendance: reform-and-replacement of the Affordable Care Act, tax reform, the promised massive infrastructure-building stimulus orgy, the border wall, the trade blockages.

Anon, comes the expiration of the current debt ceiling, at around $20 trillion, in mid-March. Do you imagine that the two parties warring with each other in congress will be able to come to some resolution over that? Fuggeddabowdit. The Democrats have every incentive to let President Trump stew in this fatal brine like a Delancey Street corned beef.

What it means, of course, is that the US Treasury runs out of ready cash in mid-summer and some invoices just don’t get paid, maybe even some bigly ones like Social Security checks and Medicare bills. Won’t that be a spectacle? That’s where Trump becomes a political quadriplegic and the voters start jumping off the dying parties like fleas off of two dead dogs.

By then, plenty of other mischief will be afoot in the world, including the fractious outcome of elections in France and the Netherlands, with the European Union spinning into its own event horizon, and currency instability like the world has never seen before. Enjoy the remaining weeks of normality.

.

Made for Each Other

SUBHEAD: Red team and the Blue team are just playing a game of “Capture the Flag” on the deck of the Titanic.

By James Kunstler on 13 February 2017 for Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/made-for-each-other/)


Image above: Illustration of the Red vs the Blue team. From (http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2015/02/red-vs-blue-which-should-you-choose/).

Don’t be fooled by the idiotic exertions of the Red team and the Blue team. They’re just playing a game of “Capture the Flag” on the deck of the Titanic. The ship is the techno-industrial economy. It’s going down because it has taken on too much water (debt), and the bilge pump (the oil industry) is losing its mojo.

Neither faction understands what is happening, though they each have an elaborate delusional narrative to spin in the absence of any credible plan for adapting the life of our nation to the precipitating realities.

The Blues and Reds are mirrors of each other’s illusions, and rage follows when illusions die, so watch out. Both factions are ready to blow up the country before they come to terms with what is coming down.

What’s coming down is the fruit of the gross mismanagement of our society since it became clear in the 1970s that we couldn’t keep living the way we do indefinitely — that is, in a 24/7 blue-light-special demolition derby.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish with accounting fraud, but in the end it is an affront to reality, and reality has a way of dealing with punks like us. Reality has a magic trick of its own: it can make the mirage of false prosperity evaporate.

That’s exactly what’s going to happen and it will happen because finance is the least grounded, most abstract, of the many systems we depend on. It runs on the sheer faith that parties can trust each other to meet obligations.

When that conceit crumbles, and banks can’t trust other banks, credit relations seize up, money vanishes, and stuff stops working. You can’t get any cash out of the ATM. The trucker with a load of avocados won’t make delivery to the supermarket because he knows he won’t be paid.

The avocado grower will have to watch the rest of his crop rot. The supermarket shelves empty out. And you won’t have any guacamole.

There are too many fault lines in the mighty edifice of our accounting fraud for the global banking system to keep limping along, to keep pretending it can meet its obligations.

These fault lines run through the bond markets, the stock markets, the banks themselves at all levels, the government offices that pretend to regulate spending, the offices that affect to report economic data, the offices that neglect to regulate criminal misconduct, the corporate boards and C-suites, the insurance companies, the pension funds, the guarantors of mortgages, car loans, and college loans, and the ratings agencies.

The pervasive accounting fraud bleeds a criminal ethic into formerly legitimate enterprises like medicine and higher education, which become mere rackets, extracting maximum profits while skimping on delivery of the goods.

All this is going to overwhelm Trump soon, and he will flounder trying to deal with a gargantuan mess. It will surely derail his wish to make America great again — a la 1962, with factories humming, and highways yet to build, and adventures in outer space, and a comforting sense of superiority over all the sad old battered empires abroad.

I maintain it could get so bad so fast that Trump will be removed by a cadre of generals and intelligence officers who can’t stand to watch someone acting like Captain Queeg in the pilot house.

That itself might be salutary, since only some kind of extreme shock is likely to roust the Blue and Red factions from their trenches of dumb narrative. If the Democratic Party had put one-fiftieth of the effort it squanders on transgender bathroom privileges into policy for mitigating our tragic misinvestments in suburban sprawl, we might have gotten a head-start toward a plausible future.

Instead, the Democratic Party has turned into a brats-only nursery school, with the kiddies fighting over who gets to play with the Legos. The Republican Party is Norma Desmond’s house in Sunset Boulevard, starring Donald Trump as Max the Butler, working extra-hard to keep the illusions of yesteryear going.

All of this nonsense is a distraction from the task at hand: figuring out how to live in the post techno-industrial world.

That world is not going to operate the ways we’re used to. It will crush our assumptions and expectations. Lying about everything won’t be an option. We won’t have the extra resources to cover up our dishonesty.

Our money better be sound or it will be laughed at, and then you’ll starve or freeze to death. You’d better hope the rule of law endures and work on keeping it alive where you live. And nobody will get special brownie points for the glory of sexual confusion.

I look for the financial fireworks to start around March – April, as the irresolvable debt ceiling debate in congress grinds into a bitter stalemate, and it becomes obvious that there will be no voucher for the great infrastructure spending orgy that Trump’s MAGA is based on. Elections in France and the Netherlands have the potential to shake apart the European Union, and with that the footing of European banks.

Pretty soon, everybody in all parties and factions will be asking: “Where did the glittering promises of Modernity go…?” As we slip-side into the first stages of a world made by hand.

.

Ms Gabbard goes to Syria

SUBHEAD: After "secret trip", Gabbard derided as ‘Stooge,’ and praised as ‘Courageous’.

By Kristin Downey on 27 January 2017 for Civel Beat -
(http://www.civilbeat.org/2017/01/after-secret-trip-gabbard-derided-as-stooge-praised-as-courageous/)


Image above: Tulsi Gabbard explaining her journey this week to meet President Assad in Syria. From still frame from CNN video stream.

No stranger to the national stage, the Hawaii congresswoman is getting international attention after meeting with Syrian President Assad.

Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s secret fact-finding trip to Syria and Lebanon — and especially her meeting with a brutal dictator, Syrian President Bashar Assad — continues to garner attention here and abroad.

Gabbard, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, has declined to share many details about the week-long visit to the war-torn nations, which has only added to the mystery and heightened the suspicions of people questioning her motives.

On Friday, her office said again that Gabbard would not discuss the trip.

In statements, Gabbard has characterized the trip as a peace-making effort aimed at trying to better understand the on-the-ground realities in the region, where horrific violence has caused millions of refugees to flee to Europe and the United States.

She said she was surprised by an invitation to meet with Assad, and acted on the opportunity, sharing no further details.

Anger And Praise Critics say that a meeting with a member of Congress enhanced Assad’s credibility and that it was naïve, or even treacherous, for her to go there.

Gabbard’s trip “raised alarms,” wrote The Guardian, a British news site. “Tulsi Gabbard’s Fascist Escorts to Syria,” was the headline on a piece by The Daily Beast. The Daily Kos called her a “stooge” for the Syrian president, who has killed thousands of dissidents, allegedly including by poison gas.

The secret trip angered some of her congressional colleagues, according to The Hill, a political news site.

Gabbard, a combat veteran who served in Iraq, has also been praised in some circles for making the trip. A group of Syrians posting on a website called Progressive Democrats of America called the visit “courageous.” A story about the trip on AntiWar.Blog attracted applause from people who oppose U.S. military intervention and high levels of military spending.

Gabbard, a Hindu of Samoan descent, has also been lauded by white supremacists David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Richard B. Spencer. In a tweet, Spencer said Gabbard is “brave and the kind of person we need in the diplomatic corps.”

Syria, once a bastion of multiculturalism and religious tolerance, the home of picturesque and historic antiquities, has become a bloodbath since a civil war erupted in 2011 amid the uprisings known as the Arab Spring.

Assad’s regime is backed by Russia. His opponents, who are backed by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, include many Islamic militant groups. Some of the rebels who are viewed as more moderate have received American support.

Syrian government forces are also battling the Islamic State on Syrian soil.

Former President Barack Obama was a vocal opponent of Assad, and contemplated sending U.S. troops to Syria to help topple his regime. President Donald Trump has endorsed a more hands-off approach to military intervention in the Middle East.

His position on Syria is a work in progress, but there have been some suggestions in leaked documents that he plans to step up U.S. involvement there.

Gabbard has long opposed U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying that overthrowing Assad would allow Islamic militants to gain control of the country.

Center Of Attention — Again
This isn’t the first time the representative of Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District has been a lightning rod.

She has been at odds with the Democratic Party establishment since she endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for president instead of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Gabbard resigned her position as vice-chair of the Democratic National Party to underscore her disapproval of what she said the party had done to undermine Sanders’ candidacy.

Gabbard went to Syria during the transition week, as Obama was departing office and Trump was being inaugurated. She said she could not reveal details of her travel plans for security reasons.

She did not inform Democratic Party officials she was going, and did not tell the Republican leaders of the Foreign Service or Armed Service committees. She said she did tell the Defense Department she was planning to make the trip, and got approval from the House Ethics Committee.

She said she did not inform Trump.

“The Trump administration was not aware or involved in the trip in any way, and the congresswoman has not been in touch with them since returning regarding this trip or anything else,” her office said in a statement.

Gabbard’s relationship with Trump has also raised eyebrows in Democratic circles. Shortly after he won the election, Gabbard visited him at his New York home in Trump Tower. She said she went to talk about her concerns about military intervention in Syria; some observers speculated she might be looking for a job in his administration.

Assad’s military alliance with Russia added to the controversy over Gabbard’s trip. Russia is widely believed to have intervened in the U.S. presidential election by hacking the email of the Democratic National Committee, exposing messages that put Clinton and her supporters in a bad light and undermined her candidacy.

Gabbard has said that the trip was sponsored by an organization called the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, part of an organization known as ACCESS, which says on its website that it is a philanthropic group that assists Arab-Americans.

She said was accompanied by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a progressive pacifist who ran for president in 2008.

Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams, also traved with her. He posted video of the trip on Gabbard’s facebook page, which has drawn 102,000 views, 2,640 shares and dozens of comments.

Most of them are complimentary, with some urging her to run for president in 2020.

.

America versus the Deep State

SUBHEAD: The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases.

By James Kunstler on 9 January 2017 for Kunstler.com-
(http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/america-versus-deep-state/)


Image above: NYT headquarters. Home of the "Gray Lady" and Deep State news outlet. From (https://globalelite.tv/2016/page/23/).

The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80 percent of Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State’s own intel department.

They’re still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all “fake news” stories turns out to be… “Russia Hacks Election.” It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The New York Times, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:

Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds
WASHINGTON — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing Donald J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation’s top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.

You can be sure that this is now the “official” narrative aimed at the history books, sealing the illegitimacy of Trump’s election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated “assertions” that it was so. In fact, it’s just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda. It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president.

The second civil war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself. Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America’s new town square. (WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.)

Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself?

The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was.

The story may have climaxed with Trump’s Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State’s power.

Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and hollowly as possible and promising to “look into the matter” after January 20^th — when he can tear a new asshole in the NSA.

I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic.

Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act?

Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we’ve been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can’t do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself.

What we’re actually seeing in the current ceremonial between the incoming Trump and the outgoing Obama is the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party (which I’m still unhappily enrolled in), and flames spreading into the Republican party — as idiots such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain beat their war drums against Russia.

The suave Mr. Obama is exiting the scene on a low wave of hysteria and the oafish Trump rolls in on the cloudscape above, tweeting his tweets from on high, and perhaps it’s a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity.

.

Standing Rock & the Ballot Box

SUBHEAD: The Standing Rock Sioux supporters are putting their bodies on the line to protect their land.

By Asher Miller on 31 October 2016 for Post Carbon Institute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/standing-rock-ballot-box/)


Image above: Indigenous Americans defending what is sacred - water! From (https://denelecampbell.com/tag/oil-spills/).

After 18 months, the U.S. Presidential election is just a week away and, with one notable exception, we at PCI have remained largely silent on it.

That’s not because we deem it unimportant or are worried about upsetting readers on one side or another (or both) of the political divide, but because it’s frankly hard to find anything new or constructive to add—something that doesn’t just feed the antipathy or apathy that dominates the political climate.

And that’s because, by any objective measure, this election is bone-achingly, mind-numbingly depressing. Who among us is excited to vote for one of the candidates on the presidential ballot, rather than voting against another?

If “none of the above” or “I wish I had another candidate to support” were on the ballot, what percentage of the electorate would check that box?

[IB Note: We disagree with this position, and believe we have a great candidate in Jill Stein]

In Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects, Dmitry Orlov compared the U.S. electoral system to that of the former Soviet Union (where he was born and whose collapse he personally witnessed) in this way:

The Soviet Union had a single, entrenched, systemically corrupt political party, which held a monopoly on power. The US has two entrenched, systemically corrupt political parties, whose positions are often indistinguishable and which together hold a monopoly on power. In either case, there is, or was, a single governing elite, but in the United States it organizes itself into opposing teams to make its stranglehold on power seem more sportsmanlike. It is certainly more sporting to have two capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little token of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos… It is a tribute to the intelligence of the American people that so few of them bother to vote.

I find his characterization too dismissive of meaningful differences between the Democratic and Republican parties or, in the case of this particular campaign, the two candidates as individuals.

But Orlov touches on something that I believe is true—namely, that the narrowing of the U.S. political landscape down to a battle between two teams fighting over fairly limited ground creates conditions where no truly radical or systemic changes can take place.

Systemic change is not only needed but is unavoidable, sliding as we are to the edge of an abyss caused by the confluence of climate change, energy constraints, the end of growth, inequity and racism, the influence of corporations and the military, overpopulation, and ecological collapse.

And yet the U.S. presidential campaign is dominated by controversies about email servers, walls that will never get built, misogynistic comments, and which candidate is less trustworthy—valid concerns in their own way, but frankly of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.

In the Collapse of Complex Societies, anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter details how advanced civilizations of the past responded to crises of their own making by doubling down on the complexity that got them into the mess in the first place, thus ensuring their own collapse.

One might see a parallel to how our political institutions are responding to the crises we face– by doubling down on the divisiveness, short-term thinking, and the financing of the corporate oligarchy that helped get us where we are.

All this is not meant to dismiss the importance of voting or the very real consequences of who is elected as the 45^th President of the United States.

But I think it is incumbent on all of us to remember that the outcome of this election is unlikely to address the existential crises we face. Though it may sound like a cliché, real change rests on our shoulders as citizens, community members, and even as consumers. Voting is not the beginning and end of our responsibilities.

In this, it may be instructive and even inspirational to look towards the actions of the Standing Rock Sioux and their #NoDAPL supporters who are literally putting their bodies on the line to protect their land, health, and sovereignty.

Blocking one pipeline won’t by itself solve climate change, resource depletion, or a history of political and economic exploitation and inequality.

But the example empowers us to think about what we can do in our own lives to help stop the rapacious machine of destruction and instead plant the seeds of regenerative culture—and then to actually go out and do it.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16  

.

TruthDigger of the Week

SUBHEAD: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks publisher of the Clinton Campaign emails.

By Alexander Reed Kelly on 22 OCtober 2016 for Truth Digger -
(http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/truthdigger_of_the_week_julian_assange_20161022)


Image above: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reads from a U.N. report as he speaks from London’s Ecuadorean Embassy in February. Photo by Frank Augstein. From original article.

Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a group or person worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we’re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.

Should we condemn Julian Assange for his recent interventions in U.S. politics?

The Australian hacker-turned-journalist became an international hero for free speech and government transparency in 2010 when he published through WikiLeaks, an organization he co-founded, a quartet of award-winning disclosures revealing the U.S. military behaving far worse in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than it had admitted and U.S. State Department officials speaking frankly about their allies and intentions around the globe.

Under threat of exposure, the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clinton’s State Department, leapt into action, opening a criminal investigation into Assange and pursuing him through its international allies to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2012, where he remains to this day, functionally imprisoned under asylum.

This week, while he was still coordinating his work with others, the Ecuadorean government suspended his internet access.

Now, after publishing searchable databases of thousands of emails over the summer hacked or leaked from the servers of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta (messages that include transcripts of Clinton’s paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and give further substance to allegations of duplicity, disdain for activists and compromising self-interest that have followed her and her circle for more than a decade), Assange is under fresh attack from familiar adversaries representing the establishment and taking hard criticism from erstwhile allies.

Citing rationales that U.S. intelligence agencies have not made available to the public, Clinton and her aides assert—and their media allies uncritically report—that Assange is working with the Russian government to help Donald Trump win the presidency by strategically timing the release of the emails—the authenticity of which the Clinton camp has not denied—to cause maximum damage to her presidential campaign.

Relative newcomers to the critique of Assange are NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, journalist, author and activist Naomi Klein and Harvard Law professor and civil liberties advocate Lawrence Lessig.

They take issue with the failure of Assange and his colleagues to strip the leaked documents of information that is not essential to the business of informed democracy and which unnecessarily spotlights the personal lives of the people involved.

In a conversation with The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald (who maintains that public interest requires that powerful people, especially officials, forfeit a measure of their privacy), Klein eloquently expressed her concern “about the subjectivity of who gets defined as sufficiently powerful to lose their privacy,” adding that she is “absolutely sure there are plenty of people in the world who believe that you and I are sufficiently powerful to lose our privacy.”

“I’m not comfortable with anybody wielding that much power,” Klein said. “I’m not comfortable when it’s states, but I’m also not comfortable when it’s individuals or institutions.”

As a high-profile role model to journalists and activists for his role in bringing Snowden’s NSA leaks to the public, Greenwald has a special responsibility to protect the ethics that underpin his efforts in public service.

And that means criticizing Assange (whom Greenwald, a trained lawyer, ably defended in the press during WikiLeaks’ initial burst of activity in 2010) when Assange fails to meet his own ethical standards, or those he once claimed and practiced.

In 2010, Greenwald explained, “WikiLeaks, contrary to the way they were being depicted by the U.S. intelligence community and their friends, was not some reckless rogue agent running around sociopathically dumping information on the internet without concern about who might be endangered.

And in fact, if you look at how the biggest WikiLeaks releases were handled early on—the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, as well as the State Department cables—not only did they redact huge numbers of documents on the grounds that doing so was necessary to protect the welfare of innocent people, they actually requested that the State Department meet with them to help them figure out what kind of information should be withheld on the grounds that it could endanger innocent people.”

But, “[s]omewhere along the way, WikiLeaks and Julian decided, and they’ve said this explicitly, that they changed their mind on that question—they no longer believe in redactions or withholding documents of any kind.”

Similarly, after WikiLeaks released a batch of DNC emails in July, Edward Snowden tweeted:

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

Following Assange’s writings in 2010, when he stated that he seeks to tip the balance of power away from powerful institutions and actors by depriving them of the ability to operate behind closed doors without fear of being exposed and terminally and legally reckoned with by the public, Assange, in his work this summer, clearly targeted Clinton, whom he regards as an enemy of the public for championing U.S. hegemony and a personal antagonist for pursuing his prosecution.

“There is clearly a vendetta element going on,” Klein told Greenwald, “which is understandable, because Hillary Clinton is massively responsible for his lack of freedom.” But Klein “is very disturbed by [Assange’s] seeming willingness to burn it down” and “by the ego of seeing this election through one’s personal lens when the stakes are so incredibly high.”

Here’s a question few are asking: Would Assange, who set out to perform the honorable service of exposing government corruption, behave as he does today if he, a single individual with limited resources, had not been relentlessly pursued into the corner of a single room for 5½ years by people atop the most powerful state in civilized history?

And can he, under burden of stress and loss of staff, associations and resources, be expected to fulfill the ethical obligations he once honored and still perform the service of making essential, willfully concealed information public?

History is full of people who undertook to do good and were reshaped for the worse by the opposition they confronted. I’ve heard more than a few of Clinton’s progressive supporters casually justify her record of capitulation in the face of corporate and Republican forces in this way.

Do honesty and decency not require that we regard people, including Clinton and Assange, complexly?

The difference between the two, of course, is that Clinton wields tremendous wealth and state power, whereas at terrific cost to himself, Assange succeeds in performing the essential service of revealing what leaders do in secret in our name.

Because of Assange, we know that Clinton said politicians like her “need both a public and private position” when handling controversial matters, a comment that is as close to an admission of lying as we have heard from an official in recent years, and which should cast into doubt everything she has said or will say to voters.

Clinton’s supporters seem to expect that she’ll wield this trickiness in their interests. We hope they’re right. In the meantime, Julian Assange is our Truthdigger of the Week.

.

Jill Stein shreds Shriver

SUBHEAD: Asking the wrong questions for the same-old answers will get the same disastrous consequences.

By Staff on 10 October 2016 for Jill Stein for President -
(http://www.jill2016.com/debates)


Image above: Still from video interview below. Maria Shriver can't put down the cellphone that's telling her what ridiculous questions to ask to Stein. Most backfire on her.  From (http://www.jill2016.com/debates).

Last week Jill stopped in for an interview with Maria Shriver, corporate media icon and heir to one of the great establishment political families.

To be blunt, Maria tried to ridicule, mock and undermine Jill. And just as at Standing Rock -- Jill stood strong, powerful and unwavering.

What you'll see is a candidate who will not bow down and will not give in. What you'll also see is a so-called “journalist” attempting to trivialize real issues to defend Hillary Clinton. Maria Shriver used  every “gotcha” tactic in the book, and Jill was nothing short of phenomenal!

It was particularly galling to hear Maria Shriver try to shame Jill (and her supporters) for not supporting Hillary Clinton, and strongly implied that YOUR vote automatically belong to Hillary. Be sure to listen to Jill's fearless answer.


Video above: Maria Shriver interviews Jill Stein. From (https://youtu.be/eNAUW2KzjKk).

Jill's days are filled with back-to-back interviews and last night, at the second Presidential Debate, Democracy Now! Was prepared to allow Jill's answers to be heard after Hillary and Donald's non-answers to each question.

But for the first time in their history, technical difficulties prevented them from being able to do a live show from a different location.

But Jill’s team turned on a dime, and created a Facebook stream to allow Jill to respond in real time. Over 2 million people were reached this way!

Please check out that recording on the website, and you will see that Jill always comes back to the issues that are literally killing us: climate disaster (Matthew being just the latest superstorm), wealth inequality, access to medical care, student debt, institutional racism, police brutality, and so much more.

The Green Party has the answers that Americans are desperate to hear. We will continue to take to the “people's media”, social media like Facebook and Twitter, to make our case and spread the Green movement.

The establishment media is trying to silence us. But the great wind of change is blowing …

This movement will not be stopped - it will be heard, and it will grow. The work we do this year will directly translate into more Green candidates in the next election cycle, and a 2020 presidential campaign that will be immediately well-funded, organized, and effective.

But we can't keep up this work, especially our 50-state Get Out The Vote campaign, without your financial help. Please, will you chip in $29 for Stein today, or any amount you can give up to $2700 per person.

Hillary and Donald don't have bold, breakthrough answers. You know that. The Maria Shrivers of the world don't have brilliant, incisive questions. You also know that.

If you ask the wrong questions and put forth the same-old, same-old answers, all you get is the same disastrous consequences.


.

Mainstream Media loses election

SUBHEAD: The Mainstream Media bet the farm on Hillary - and lost American democracy.

By Charles Hugh Smith on 16 September 2015 for Of two Minds -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept16/voters9-16.html)


Image above: Montage of Dr. Drew Pinsky with Hillary and CNN logo. From (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/hillarys-health-drew-pinsky-cnn-mafia/).

The Mainstream Media (MSM) has forsaken its duty in a democracy and is a disgrace to investigative, unbiased journalism.

The mainstream media bet the farm on Hillary Clinton, confident that their dismissal of every skeptical inquiry as a "conspiracy" would guarantee her victory. It now appears they have lost their bet.

Let's do something radical and be honest for a moment: the mainstream media has smoothed the path to Hillary's coronation in countless often subtle ways.

MSM "Opinion" hacks have unleashed unrelenting attacks on legitimate inquiries with accusations of "conspiracy" and obsequious kow-towing headlines such as "Can we please stop talking about Hillary's health?"

Suggestions that the Clinton Foundation engaged in "pay to play" during Hillary's term as secretary of state are glossed over; yes, it looks bad, the MSM reluctantly admits, they they hurry to add that no impropriety can be proven in court.

Given the foundation is run by attorneys who obfuscate the meaning of the word "is," do you really think they're going to leave tracks that can make it to court?

The Democratic National Committee's corruption was downplayed, and the mainstream media's pathetic lack of inquiry was of a piece with old Soviet "news": a scapegoat or two is cut out of the leadership photo, and the DNC corruption machine moves on untouched.

This Is How Much It 'Costs' To Get An Ambassadorship: Guccifer 2.0 Leaks DNC 'Pay-To-Play' Donor List

Consider the subtle Orwellian play of The New York Times sidebar headline after Hillary's collapse on 9/11: "Hillary leaves 9/11 event early." Oh really? This was the substance of what happened, that the candidate "left early"?

All through the primaries, when Hillary won the NYT et al. splashed huge headlines declaring her victory. When Bernie won, headlines read "Hillary gains ground," not "Bernie wins another primary."

Rampant election fraud in the Democratic primaries was left uninvestigated, calling to mind the way Too Big To Fail banking fraud was left untouched by the mainstream media, which happily swallowed whole suspect official pronouncements that "subprime is contained" even as the financial system was veering into complete collapse in 2008.

There is an easy way to identify bias that we can all play at home: substitute "Sanders" or "Trump" for "Hillary" or "Clinton".

 If Donald Trump collapsed on the sidewalk and had to be tossed in the van like a sack of rice, do you think the mainstream media would be bleating, "can we please stop talking about Trump's health?" Please don't even try to claim that oh, yes, the MSM would rush to run that headline.

Do you honestly think CBS would edit out a reference to Bernie Sander's fainting "frequently"? Get real, people: the MSM only edits out negative stuff on Hillary.

Zero Hedge: CBS Caught Editing Clip - Bill Clinton Said Hillary Fainted "Frequently"
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-13/cbs-caught-editing-clip-transcript-which-bill-clinton-says-hillary-fainted-frequentl)

Do you honestly think a medical doctor with a TV program on CNN who questioned Donald Trump's health would find his show immediately taken off the air? Rather being dropped for questioning the MSM's scheduled coronation of their candidate, the doctor's show would have been pushed into prime-time and placed in rotation.

The mainstream media has failed:

• It has failed its sacred duty in a democracy to report the facts and let the voters decide what is or isn't important, it has engaged in orchestrated deception, refusing to report facts that cast a shadow over their chosen candidate,
  
• It has failed to cast a skeptical eye on its chosen candidate's actions and private accumulation of wealth,
  
• It has attempted to block legitimate inquiries into Hillary's wealth and health with crass, propagandistic attacks and smear campaigns against anyone who dares question Hillary's MSM-granted "right" to be coronated president in January 2017.

Look, we understand your fear of crossing the Clintons. Their "Enemies List" makes Richard Nixon's infamous list look like a squabble over seating at a church social. The body count of those who were in a position to rat-out the Clintons reminds observers of the way an astonishing number of eyewitnesses to JFK's assassination turned up dead under mysterious circumstances.

Once again, substitute names. Would the mainstream media be so incurious if Bernie Sanders had accumulated a $100 million fortune via foreign "donations" to his foundation while he was serving as Secretary of State?

If acquiring $100 million in "donations" from overseas dictators and corrupt officials is "normal" for the secretary of state, then where is John Kerry's $100 million in "donations"?

Look, if you love Hillary to death, that's your right. But we as a nation cannot afford to blind ourselves to blatant media bias and propagandistic suppression of legitimate inquiry, even on behalf of politicos we favor.

---

And Furthermore

SUBHEAD: How about presenting the facts and letting voters decide who's "Fit to Serve"?
By Charles Hugh Smith on 16 September 2016 for Of two Minds -
(http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept16/voters9-16.html)

This simple two-step process would greatly diminish the Ministry of Propaganda's influence.

Here's a radical idea: how about presenting the facts and letting voters decide who is "fit to serve"? Consider the context of this presidential election and the judgment call as to who is "fit to serve":

1. Americans' Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low (Gallup"Americans' trust and confidence in the mass media 'to report the news fully, accurately and fairly' has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history."
   
2. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates have highly unfavorable ratings; they may well be the most disliked nominees in American history.
   
3. The status quo in which voters are supposed to rubber-stamp the decisions made at the top of the wealth/power pyramid is falling out of favor.
   
4. Personal physicians are not disinterested parties; they serve the candidate, not the voting public. Their public claims of "fit to serve" suffer from irreconcilable conflicts of interest.

To best serve the interests of the nation and the voters, I propose that all candidates for the presidency submit to a thorough medical exam at an Army or Navy hospital that immediately releases the full results to the public. The attending physicians' names will be drawn from a pool of qualified staff at the start of the exam, making it impossible for anyone to threaten or buy off the attending physicians prior to the exam.

The exam will include chest x-rays, CT scans, neurological tests and the usual blood work.

The examinations will be overseen by healthcare/medical journalists to insure that the exams adhere to stardard practice and the results are posted immediately without any tampering.

The principles at work here are:

1. The public has a right to know the facts relating to each candidates' health.
   
2. Each candidate is given the exact same tests and treated exactly the same.
   
3. The public will decide who is "fit to serve" after reviewing the facts of the matter.
   
4. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

If any candidate prefers to keep the results of the health exam private, they can do so by exiting the race for the presidency.

In addition to the medical exam, each candidate will hold a two-hour press conference every week until election day. Representatives of the entire media, not just the handful of mainstream networks and newspapers, will be invited to attend. To secure the room, the public will not be admitted.

Candidates will be invited to sit in comfortable chairs and answer any and all questions on any subject. They will not be allowed to wear sunglasses or be attended by aides. Since the room will be secured (all media reps will be screened for weapons, all entrances properly sealed, etc.), there is no need for Secret Service personnel to hover over the candidates.

Why should any candidate object to these very transparent and uncontroversial demands? Why should any candidate object to a routine battery of medical tests and a weekly press conference?

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

.