As MSNBC Makes Big Changes, Only One Scenario Remains for Brian Williams

By Joe Concha

As you may have heard, MSNBC has seen some big (and warranted) changes in 2015. Add it all up, and every program that existed from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT as recently as six months ago no long exists.

The alterations are swift: A national correspondent (Kate Snow) and a political director (Chuck Todd) will be joining and rejoining, respectively, the 19 year old cable network. Morning Blow will occupy 25 percent of live (or plausibly live) programming per day. Opinion-based programming––at least after the morning show and before prime time––has been cleared away as a more traditional news focus takes it place.

But of all the moves made by NBC President Andy Lack over the past six months, the most significant is Al Sharpton‘s move to Sunday mornings, thereby vacating the 6:00 PM time slot on weekdays. And with most of the chess pieces now in place, the elephant in the room (See: Williams, Brian) appears to finally have a home: 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday.

In the end, it only makes sense to give Williams his own program instead of simply having him on standby for breaking news stories, a la Shep Smith at Fox. Because while Shep will jump into the network’s opinion programming at 5:00 PM (The Five) or in prime time (particularly when Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity are in tape) when warranted, he still owns his own hour at 3:00 PM with Shepard Smith Reporting.

Know this: You don’t reportedly pay someone in the $10M/year range to only work a few times per month. And in the case of Williams per a must-read piece by the Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple back in June (Title: Will Brian Williams have anything to do at MSNBC?), the highly-compensated anchor would likely only be called upon (maybe) a handful of times per month. And with seasoned pros like Snow coming on board and more-than-capable anchors like Tamron Hall, Thomas Roberts, and Jose Diaz Balart already there, it’s doubtful they would be preempted to make way for Williams, as such a scenario would not only be somewhat insulting to them, but an awkward date for viewers at home.

Instead, all signs point to Williams serving as a bridge between Todd (5:00 PM) and Chris Matthews (7:00 PM) at 6 in the east. Prime time––particularly the vulnerable 8:00 PM slot––has been offered up in some media circles as a possible home for Williams, which he occupied on MSNBC in the pre-Olbermann days up until 2002 with The News with Brian Williams. But that was a different time… a time when a good chuck of the audience didn’t already get their news on their phones, computers and tablets during the day in the dominant way they do now.

And by the time 8:00 PM rolls around and the network and local newscasts complete, most folks know the basic meat of big stories of the day (who, what, when, where)… what many are looking for is perspective and analysis on those stories, particularly when the tremendous (and often ridiculous) theatre that is the race for the White House dominates the news cycle.

In the end, it appears the only true home–and true value–for Brian Williams at MSNBC is at 6:00 PM EDT.

Big changes with some fairly big NBC names in Kate Snow and Chuck Todd are coming. But the biggest name of them all still needs to be assigned.

Brian Williams, solely a breaking news anchor sitting around in a bullpen waiting to be called to the mound? Don’t think so.

Host of an hour-long traditional news program to set the table for the network’s editorial page in prime?

By all appearances, this is the only scenario left that makes sense.

Here's What the Earth Will Look Like After All the Ice Melts

By Ben Dreyfuss

Remember a few years ago when National Geographic came out with a map showing what the world would look like after sea levels rose 216 feet from all the ice melting? Well, it happened. (There was also some pushback that the data was too optimistic) Anyway, the guys over at Business Insider just put together this nifty video exploring our would-be watery world.

It would take a very long time indeed for all the ice on Earth to melt. I don't know how long. But long. Like a thousand years? Point is it's not like this is going to happen on Tuesday or even a thousand Tuesdays from now, but the arc of history is long and our descendants will never "sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings," if there is no longer any ground for them to sit on.



Global warming is bad, and every day we don't do anything about it we should feel bad.

5 Chinese ships seen off Alaska coast, Pentagon says

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34131429

Trump Could Ensure Democratic Dominance For Years

By Taegan Goddard

Politico: “Donald Trump knows the United States will never deport eleven million undocumented immigrants or do away with birthright citizenship. But what if we did—what would be the political impact if Trump and other angry nativists in the GOP actually achieved most or all the changes they desire, cutting immigration back sharply?”

“We already know, because something very similar happened once before in American history.

Ninety years ago, two Republican presidents—Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge—and a Congress dominated by Republicans enacted equally harsh policies against immigrants. Their success helped usher in the longest period of one-party rule in the 20th century.

But it was the Democrats, not the GOP, who benefited, in one of the most whopping instances of unintentional consequences in American political history.”

Unrelated strangers look like identical twins

By Mark Frauenfelder 

Ambra, 23, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Jennifer, 33, of Spring, Texas were brought together as part of the Twin Strangers project. "I did not want to take my eyes off her," said Ambra.

The Simulacron

Sarah Palin Interviews Donald Trump In A Weird Meeting Of Simpleton Political Minds

Palin manages to squeak out 15 more minutes of relevancy as she jumps on the Trump bandwagon.

 

By Adam Johnson

 

What the hell just happened?

Right-wing darling Sarah Palin evidently has a talk show, and she used this talk show to interview Donald Trump Friday night. The 10 minute segment aired on something called the One America News Network, a network that is hard to find, and whose production values are a cross between an ISIS propaganda video and a generic newscast you would see on an under-produced crime drama.

The segment started out with a crude montage about how terrible things are (of course, Obama), complete with populist filler involving infrastructure crumbling, stock video of unemployment, and, "millions of people flowing through our southern border."

Sarah Palin goes on to lob Trump a series of softballs about his recent experiences purging critical journalists and defending him from "gotcha questions" like "what's your favorite bible verse?" a question so tough its answer can easily be found in the crowd at any given football game.

"Since the day he made the sacrifice to hit the campaign trail," Palin sycophantically began, "voters crave the anti-establishment politician. They want results, they want a fighter. They want someone to fire all those politically correct police."

It's unclear if Trump has the authority to fire the "politically correct police" if such a thing even exists (it doesn't), but the rest of the bizarre interview went on like that: An unlettered Palin, giddy with praise, and an on-message Trump exchanging talking points and praising each other in a creepy dance of populist glee.

Watch the clip below, if you can manage:

Chris Christie Proposes Tracking Immigrants the Way FedEx Tracks Packages

Posted by timothy

 PolygamousRanchKid submits the news that New Jersey governor (and Republican presidential candidate) Chris Christie said yesterday that he would, if elected president, create a system to track foreign visitors the way FedEx tracks packages.

The NYT writes:

 Mr. Christie, who is far back in the pack of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in New Hampshire that he would ask the chief executive of FedEx, Frederick W. Smith, to devise the tracking system."At any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is. It's on the truck. It's at the station. It's on the airplane," Mr. Christie told the crowd in Laconia, N.H. "Yet we let people come to this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them." He added: "We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in."

Adds the submitter: "I'm sure foreign tourist will be amused when getting a bar code sticker slapped on their arm."

Trump Is A Racist And His Supporters Are Nuts

By Susie Madrak

So Chris Hayes invited Rep. Alan Grayson, who's running for the Florida senate seat left open by Marco Rubio's run for the Republican nomination, as someone "several people" have called "Trump of the Left."

Which is a pretty stupid premise, since Grayson actually gets things done and has a consistent political worldview, and Trump seems to be an utter anarchist, but hey. Whatever it takes to get the ratings up, right, Chris?

So it was fun watching Grayson grab the wheel and steer it where he wanted the conversation to go.



“People say about Trump that he’s saying what they’re thinking and nobody else is saying. They’re nuts," Grayson said.

"So that’s a pretty fundamental difference. Recognize how narrow his support base really is. Only 4 percent of the public votes in a Republican primary. He’s got 30 percent of 4 percent. We’re looking at the worst 1.2 percent in America.”

“He’s thrown away the dog whistle. It used to be you had to speak in metaphors, now you can just come right out and be racist. You know who likes that? The racists like that.”

Behind the Trump-stone split

Tonight on The Big Picture, Thom talks with Mark Ames, Senior Editor at Pando Daily about the Donald Trump and Roger Stone split. Mark breaks down the relationship between the two and reveals interesting points about the Trump campaign. Then lawyer and host of Ring of Fire Radio, Mike Papantonio joins Thom to talk about former KKK leader David Duke’s support for Trump. Is Trump the candidate for white supremacists?

And state and county officials in Kansas are blocking the release of voting machine logs to Wichita State University. Mathematician Beth Clarkson, who has requested these records under the Kansas Open Records Act, talks to Thom about this case and what could be wrong with voting machines in Kansas. In tonight’s Green Report, Patty Lovera talks to Thom about the use of pesticides and filmmaker Monica Ord tells us about her new film, “Chloe & Theo,” which highlights the story of Theo Ikummaq, who travels from his home in the Arctic to speak to world leaders about the impact of climate change.

The Labor Ruling McDonald's Has Been Dreading Just Became A Reality

By Dave Jamieson

WASHINGTON - McDonald's, Burger King and every other company that relies on a franchise business model just suffered the legal setback they've been fearing for years.

 The National Labor Relations Board ruled on Thursday that Browning Ferris Industries, a waste management company, qualifies as a "joint employer" alongside one of its subcontractors. The decision effectively loosens the standards for who can be considered a worker's boss under labor law, and its impact will be felt in any industry that relies on franchising or outsourcing work. McDonald's, for instance, could now find itself forced to sit at the bargaining table with workers employed by a franchisee managing one of its restaurants.  

That's a big deal. In the case of McDonald's, roughly 90 percent of its locations are actually run by franchisees, who are typically considered the workers' employers. One of the main reasons companies choose to franchise or to outsource work to staffing agencies is to shift workplace responsibilities onto someone else. But if a fast-food brand or a hotel chain can be deemed a "joint employer" along with the smaller company, it can be dragged into labor disputes and negotiations that it conveniently wouldn't have to worry about otherwise. In theory, such a precedent could even make it easier for workers to unionize as employees under the larger parent company.

The Democratic-majority board, whose members were appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled 3-2 along partisan lines, with the two Republicans dissenting.

© Bloomberg via Getty Images A McDonald's Corp. sign is illuminated at a restaurant in Shelbyville, Kentucky, U.S., on Friday, Jan. 23, 2015. 

Labor unions and worker advocacy groups have been hoping for just such a decision. In their view, since companies like McDonald's influence the working conditions in their franchised stores, they should be legally accountable to the workers who wear their logos, even if it's a franchisee that's technically signing the paychecks. Bringing companies at the top of the contracting chain to the table will help restore corporate responsibility in a "fissured" economy, advocates say.

The franchise lobby, meanwhile, has been warning for months that a ruling like this one would doom the business model. Franchisers argue that naming parent companies as joint employers would force them to take more control from their franchisees to contend with new liabilities. The lobby has worked hard to paint the "joint employer" standard as something that will hurt small business owners, not fast-food giants and other name brands.

The Browning Ferris case grew out of an organizing effort by the Teamsters. The union sought to have the waste management company named as a joint employer for workers employed by the staffing firm Leadpoint Business Services, a subcontractor for Browning Ferris. If Browning Ferris were deemed a joint employer, it would have to join Leadpoint in bargaining with the Teamsters. Such a determination could also make it easier for the Teamsters to organize workers at other staffing agencies that do work for Browning Ferris.

A regional director for the NLRB ruled that Browning Ferris did not exert enough control over Leadpoint workers to be considered a joint employer under current standards, but the Teamsters appealed that ruling to the federal board. Thursday's ruling will change those standards for future cases.

The decision will no doubt agitate some powerful business lobbies and Republicans on Capitol Hill. The ruling will likely spur congressional Republicans to renew their calls to defund an independent agency they view as having been too friendly to labor unions in the Obama era.

McDonald's and other franchisers have been bracing for a ruling like this for years. The board's general counsel, who functions as a kind of prosecutor, has already named McDonald's as a joint employer alongside some of its franchisees in several cases involving alleged unfair labor practices. Many observers took that move as a sign that the board would soon revise its standards for what makes a company a joint employer.

Who Hacked Ashley Madison?

By  Brian Krebs

AshleyMadison.com, a site that helps married people cheat and whose slogan is “Life is Short, have an Affair,” recently put up a half million (Canadian) dollar bounty for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the Impact Team — the name chosen by the hacker(s) who recently leaked data on more than 30 million Ashley Madison users. Here is the first of likely several posts examining individuals who appear to be closely connected to this attack.



It was just past midnight on July 20, a few hours after I’d published an exclusive story about hackers breaking into AshleyMadison.com. I was getting ready to turn in for the evening when I spotted a re-tweet from a Twitter user named Thadeus Zu (@deuszu) who’d just posted a link to the same cache of data that had been confidentially shared with me by the Impact Team via the contact form on my site just hours earlier: It was a link to the proprietary source code for Ashley Madison’s service.
Initially, that tweet startled me because I couldn’t find any other sites online that were actually linking to that source code cache. I began looking through his past tweets and noticed some interesting messages, but soon enough other news events took precedence and I forgot about the tweet.

I revisited Zu’s tweet stream again this week after watching a press conference held by the Toronto Police (where Avid Life Media, the parent company of Ashley Madison, is based). The Toronto cops mostly recapped the timeline of known events in the hack, but they did add one new wrinkle: They said Avid Life employees first learned about the breach on July 12 (seven days before my initial story) when they came into work, turned on their computers and saw a threatening message from the Impact Team accompanied by the anthem “Thunderstruck” by Australian rock band AC/DC playing in the background.

After writing up a piece on the bounty offer, I went back and downloaded all five years’ worth of tweets from Thadeus Zu, a massively prolific Twitter user who typically tweets hundreds if not thousands of messages per month. Zu’s early years on Twitter are a catalog of simple hacks — commandeering unsecured routers, wireless cameras and printers — as well as many, many Web site defacements.

On the defacement front, Zu focused heavily on government Web sites in Asia, Europe and the United States, and in several cases even taunted his targets. On Aug. 4, 2012, he tweeted to KPN-CERT, a computer security incident response team in the Netherlands, to alert the group that he’d hacked their site. “Next time, it will be Thunderstruck. #ACDC” Zu wrote.

The day before, he’d compromised the Web site for the Australian Parliament, taunting lawmakers there with the tweet: “Parliament of Australia bit.ly/NPQdsP Oi! Oi! Oi!….T.N.T. Dynamite! Listen to ACDC here.”

I began to get very curious about whether there were any signs on or before July 19, 2015 that Zu was tweeting about ACDC in relation to the Ashley Madison hack. Sure enough: At 9:40 a.m., July 19, 2015 — nearly 12 hours before I would first be contacted by the Impact Team — we can see Zu is feverishly tweeting to several people about setting up “replication servers” to “get the show started.” Can you spot what’s interesting in the tabs on his browser in the screenshot he tweeted that morning?

Twitter user ThadeusZu tweets about setting up replication servers. Did you spot the Youtube video he’s playing when he took this screenshot?

Ten points if you noticed the Youtube.com tab showing that he’s listening to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”

A week ago, the news media pounced on the Ashley Madison story once again, roughly 24 hours after the hackers made good on their threat to release the Ashley Madison user database. I went back and examined Zu’s tweet stream around that time and found he beat Wired.com, ArsTechnica.com and every other news media outlet by more than 24 hours with the Aug. 17 tweet, “Times up,” which linked to the Impact Team’s now infamous post listing the sites where anyone could download the stolen Ashley Madison user database.

ThadeusZu tweeted about the downloadable Ashley Madison data more than 24 hours before news outlets picked up on the cache.

WHO IS THADEUS ZU?

As with the social networking profiles of others who’ve been tied to high-profile cybercrimes, Zu’s online utterings appear to be filled with kernels of truth surrounded by complete malarkey– thus making it challenging to separate fact from fiction. Hence, all of this could be just one big joke by Zu and his buddies. In any case, here are a few key observations about the who, what and where of Thadeus Zu based on information he’s provided (again, take that for what it’s worth).

Zu’s Facebook profile wants visitors to think he lives in Hawaii; indeed, the time zone set on several of his social media counts is the same as Hawaii. There are a few third-party Facebook accounts of people demonstrably living in Hawaii who tag him in their personal photos of events on Hawaii (see this cached photo, for example), but for the most part Zu’s Facebook account consists of pictures taken from stock image collections and do not appear to be personal photos of any kind.

A few tweets from Zu — if truthful and not simply premeditated misdirection — indicate that he lived in Canada for at least a year, although it’s unclear when this visit occurred.

Zu’s various Twitter and Facebook pictures all feature hulking, athletic, and apparently black male models (e.g. he’s appropriated two profile photos of male model Rob Evans). But Zu’s real-life identity remains murky at best. The lone exception I found was an image that appears to be a genuine group photo taken of a Facebook user tagged as Thadeus Zu, along with an unnamed man posing in front of a tattoo store with popular Australian (and very inked) model/nightclub DJ Ruby Rose.

That photo is no longer listed in Rose’s Facebook profile, but a cached version of it is available here.

Rose’s tour schedule indicates that she was in New York City when that photo was taken, or at least posted, on Feb. 6, 2014. Zu is tagged in another Ruby Rose Facebook post five days later on Valentine’s Day. Update, 2:56 p.m.: As several readers have pointed out, the two people beside Rose  in that cached photo appear to be Franz Dremah and Kick Gurry, co-stars in the movie Edge of Tomorrow).

Other clues in his tweet stream and social media accounts put Zu in Australia. Zu has a Twitter account under the Twitter nick @ThadeusZu, which has a whopping 11 tweets, but seems rather to have been used as a news feed. In that account Zu is following some 35 Twitter accounts, and the majority of them are various Australian news organizations. That account also is following several Australian lawmakers that govern states in south Australia.

Then again, Twitter auto-suggests popular accounts for new users to follow, and usually does so in part based on the Internet address of the user. As such, @ThadeusZu may have only been using an Australian Web proxy or a Tor node in Australia when he set up that account (several of his self-published screen shots indicate that he regularly uses Tor to obfuscate his Internet address).

Even so, many of Zu’s tweets going back several years place him in Australia as well, although this may also be intentional misdirection. He continuously references his “Oz girl,” (“Oz” is another word for Australia) uses the greeting “cheers” quite a bit, and even talks about people visiting him in Oz.
Interestingly, for someone apparently so caught up in exposing hypocrisy and so close to the Ashley Madison hack, Zu appears to have himself courted a married woman — at least according to his own tweets. On January 5, 2014, Zu ‏tweeted:

“Everything is cool. Getting married this year. I am just waiting for my girl to divorce her husband. #seachange

A month later, on Feb. 7, 2014, Zu offered this tidbit of info:

“My ex. We were supposed to get married 8 years ago but she was taken away from me. Cancer. Hence, my downward spiral into mayhem.”

To say that Zu tweets to others is a bit of a misstatement. I have never seen anyone tweet the way Zu does; He sends hundreds of tweets each day, and while most of them appear to be directed at nobody, it does seem that they are in response to (if not in “reply” to) tweets that others have sent him or made about his work. Consequently, his tweet stream appears to the casual observer to be nothing more than an endless soliloquy.

But there may something else going on here. It is possible that Zu’s approach to tweeting — that is, responding to or addressing other Twitter users without invoking the intended recipient’s Twitter handle — is something of a security precaution. After all, he had to know and even expect that security researchers would try to reconstruct his conversations after the fact. But this is far more difficult to do when the Twitter user in question never actually participates in threaded conversations.

People who engage in this way of tweeting also do not readily reveal the Twitter identities of the people with whom they chat most.

Thadeus Zu — whoever and wherever he is in real life — may not have been directly involved in the Ashley Madison hack; he claims in several tweets that he was not part of the hack, but then in countless tweets he uses the royal “We” when discussing the actions and motivations of the Impact Team. I attempted to engage Zu in private conversations without success; he has yet to respond to my invitations.

It is possible that Zu is instead a white hat security researcher or confidential informant who has infiltrated the Impact Team and is merely riding on their coattails or acting as their mouthpiece. But one thing is clear: If Zu wasn’t involved in the hack, he almost certainly knows who was.

KrebsOnSecurity is grateful to several researchers, including Nick Weaver, for their assistance and time spent indexing, mining and making sense of tweets and social media accounts mentioned in this post. Others who helped have asked to remain anonymous. Weaver has published some additional thoughts on this post over at Medium.

PS4 Code Execution: Some Details

by wololo · August 25, 2015

Hacker CTurt announced a few days ago that he has “code execution on the PS4“. Many asked for clarifications on this statement, others told me this wasn’t CTurt’s exploit to release… details were obviously needed.

CTurt has contacted me lately to share a few details

PS4 Code Execution: Firmware 1.76 only

I had the hope this would mean some cool stuff down the road for users on current PS4 firmware. CTurt confirmed the exploit is 1.76 only. Now, this could lead to additional information being found in the system for owners of more “up to date” firmwares, but for now don’t expect anything from this if you’re not on PS4 1.76

PS4 Code execution: for devs only

CTurt mentions he was given information by flat_z for this. It was strongly hinted to me that they are not the two only ones who know about the trick used to get code execution on PS4 1.76. What CTurt told me is that this is useful for devs only at this point. I assumed the trick is shared between hackers (although I’m not sure it’s that much of a secret at this point, people who’ve been following up on twitter can easily find leads on the technique used – and yes, this goes through the webkit exploit -) who are helping with the PS4 SDK.

CTurt mentioned however, that if they reach a point where a homebrew launcher can be made, he’ll consider doing a public release.

Black pitmasters left out of US barbecue boom

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33994947

Barbecue is an American tradition – of enslaved Africans and Native Americans
 
By Michael W Twitty
 

The traditional holiday cookout has its roots in the cooperation between black and indigenous peoples struggling to get or keep their freedom from colonialists

Barbecue is a form of cultural power and is intensely political, with a culture of rules like no other American culinary tradition: sauce or no sauce; which kind of sauce; chopped or not chopped; whole animal or just ribs or shoulders. And, if America is about people creating new worlds based on rebellion against oppression and slavery, then barbecue is the ideal dish: it was made by enslaved Africans with inspiration and contributions from Native Americans struggling to maintain their independence.

The common cultural narrative of barbecue, however, exclusively assigns its origins to Native Americans and Europeans; the very etymology of the word is said to derive from both Carib through Spanish (barbacoa – to roast over hot coals on a wooden framework) or from western European sources (barbe-a-queue in French – “head to tail” – which fits nicely with contemporary ideas of no-waste eating and consuming offal). Some American barbecue masters have taken to attributing the innovation of barbecue to their German and Czech ancestors.

If anything, both in etymology and culinary technique, barbecue is as African as it is Native American and European, though enslaved Africans have largely been erased from the modern story of American barbecue.

At best, our ancestors are seen as mindless cooking machines who prepared the meat under strict white supervision, if at all; at worst, barbecue was something done “for” the enslaved, as if they were being introduced to a novel treat.

In reality, they shaped the culture of New World barbecuing traditions, from jerking in Jamaica to anticuchos in Peru to cooking traditions in the colonial Pampas. And the word barbecue also has roots in West Africa among the Hausa, who used the term “babbake” to describe a complex of words referring to grilling, toasting, building a large fire, singeing hair or feathers and cooking food over a long period of time over an extravagant fire.

In the earliest colonial days, the West Indies served as a seed colonies for the presence of enslaved Africans in the New World especially because, within 10 years of European arrival, indigenous Americans endured mass, genocidal losses due to the introduction of diseases common in Europe. With only a few remaining Carib and Arawak indigenes, Africans quickly became the majority on the islands and, eventually, the Southeastern coast (where many island colonists resettled in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, often with their enslaved people in tow).

In Jamaica, maroon rebels who resisted slavery and formed their own settlements forged ties with rebellious indigenous islanders in the West Indies and Latin America (leading, eventually, to the modern form of barbecue known as jerking). Similar ties were established in the first areas of the United States to see the arrival of enslaved Africans, which occurred in 1526, after Spaniard Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon died in an effort to establish a colony in what we know now as South Carolina. Ayllon’s political successors abandoned the area, leaving behind the enslaved Africans and the Native Americans who had guided them there. With the Spanish had come pigs, which became feral and to this day infest Southern woodlands. It was in that context that barbecue made its debut on what is now American soil.

Enslaved Africans and Native Americans had a lot in common, culinarily-speaking: they had been cooking and eating in similar ways. despite an ocean between their civilizations. It only makes sense that, when their food ways, crops, cooking methods and systems of preservation, hunting, fishing and food storage collided, that there would be deep similarities and convergences of technique, method and skill. And West and Central Africans had always had their own versions of the barbacoa and spit roasting of meat. While living in a tropical climate, salting, spicing and half-smoking meat upon butchering was key to ensuring game would make it back to the village with minimal spoilage. Festivals were marked by the salting, spicing and roasting of whole animals or large cuts of meat.

Thus, in colonial and antebellum North America, enslaved men became barbecue’s master chefs: woodcuts, cartoons, postcards and portraits from the period document the role that black chefs played in shaping this very American, and especially Southern staple. Working over pits in the ground covered in green wood – much as in West Africa or Jamaica – it was enslaved men and their descendants, not the Bubbas of today’s Barbecue Pitmasters, that innovated and refined regional barbecue traditions. If anything, German, Czech, Mexican and other traditions in South Carolina, Missouri and Texas were added to a base created by black hands forged in the crucible of slavery.

In some ways barbecue is true Independence Day food. As European Americans acclimated themselves to the custom of forsaking utensils and even plates to eat more like enslaved Africans and Native Americans – from spareribs to corn on the cob – they used their hands in an unprecedented break with Old World formalities. It is not without some irony that enslaved people, the earliest barbecue pitmasters, were called upon to avail slaveholders and politicians with Fourth of July barbecues meant to win over neighbors and constituents. When they obtained their own freedom, the formerly enslaved celebrated Juneteenth with none other than their favorite freedom food – barbecue.

Barbecue is now widely recognized as a staple of the American culinary canon – so much so that at least three national holidays (Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day) are associated with it. Barbecue is laced with the aspiration of freedom, but it was seasoned and flavored by the people who could not enjoy any freedom on Independence Day for almost a century.

Sparky's Inferno

Bernie Sanders may be more of a Democrat than the Democrats

By PatrickforO

He is talking about issues that at one time formed the core of the Democratic ideal. If you read some old speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt and other New Deal Democrats, you'll see that Bernie has come back to that core message; it is a message that saved America from going Communist in 1933, and created a powerful middle class that helped this nation become great. It created a 'great prosperity' from about 1950 to 1980 when the deterioration began.

So, you see, if you take a little longer view of history, you will see that beginning in the 1980s, the Democratic Party began its evolution toward the right as the Republicans 'evolved' even further right.

In the context of history, Obama and Clinton are what used to be called 'Eisenhower Republicans.' In fact, if you read Ike's brilliant 1963 essay, "Why I'm a Republican," and compare what he says in it, you'll see that Obama and Clinton are a little to the right of the ideas espoused therein, particularly on so-called 'free trade.'

So, what I'd say to you is that in Bernie, we have a reversal of the destructive neoliberal/neoconservative 'evolution' of Dems throughout the 80's, 90's, and 00's. Bernie is taking us back to the New Deal, which is basically a set of policies to strengthen the American middle class. Bernie does one better, though. He's got a good platform on racism and reform of the correctional system.

This is why so many of us are responding to Bernie. The American people are angry at how the game has been rigged against us, at how hard it is to get ahead now, at how dim the futures of our children are compared to ours. We are ripe for another New Deal - a Real Deal where our interests are once again put front and center. 

Trump, Alabama and the ghost of George Wallace

The South rises for Trump, but only 20,000 of them.

By Ben Schreckinger

AP Photo

MOBILE, Ala. — It was immigration, not segregation, that brought some 20,000 southerners — far fewer than predicted — out for Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed large.

Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of expectations.

Wallace carried five Southern states, and Trump, who is leading early national polls in the race for the Republican nomination, touted his leads in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and Texas.

Trump also panned birthright citizenship as a bad deal for the U.S., saying, “We’re the only place just about that’s stupid enough to do it.” Trump’s recently released immigration plan calls for ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, according to the legal consensus, though Trump disputes that point.

Trump invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress’s most ardent immigration hardliners who helped the businessman craft his immigration plan, to the podium, where the two embraced.

He also attacked his favorite punching bag, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, on the issue. “ Jeb Bush, ugh,” said Trump, pausing for dramatic effect, before calling the former governor “totally in favor of Common Core, weak on immigration.”

Praising a woman who had brought Trump’s book “Art of the Deal” to the rally, he said, “I’ve got to get her the hell out of here, she’s so beautiful.”

He went on to say, “I will protect women. It’s so important to me”

There were also vestiges of Wallace’s Alabama, including on the sample editions of “The First Freedom” newspaper one man handed out to drivers as they entered the parking lot. The paper’s front page included a story about “black-on-white crime in South Carolina” and an editor’s note about German media’s silence about “the actual programs these peaceful ‘neo-nazis’ stand for.”

The vast majority of supporters where white: of over 1,000 people waiting to enter on the east of the Ladd Peebles Stadium at 5 p.m., eight were black.

A black pastor opened the rally with an invocation, asking, “What if we could replace hate with love?” He was followed by an all-black middle school student council that led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Marty Hughes, 47, wore a camouflage hat with Confederate flag detailing and said he liked Trump’s stances on immigration and taxes. He called the removal this year of Confederate flags from government property across much of the South “stupidity” and said he didn’t think a President Trump would stand for it. He named Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and neurosurgeon Ben Carson as other candidates who appealed to him.

Trump’s appeal to Leo Renaldo, is, “That he’s going to send them packing,” explained the 65-year-old, who drove four hours from Mississippi for the event, before his wife interjected, telling him, “Don’t say that.”

“Legal immigration is fine,” added Renaldo.

“He tells it like it is,” said Bob House, 57, a maintenance manager, of Trump’s appeal. “None of this political correct stuff.”

Earlier, the city said it expected 40,000 supporters at the rally, but various media outlets estimated that the total was in the ballpark of 15-20,000, leaving the stadium looking less than half full. Police officers at the rally said they would not be providing a crowd estimate.

The Trump campaign, which had said it expected 36,000 attendees, referred POLITICO to Colby Cooper, chief of staff to the mayor of Mobile, who said the city’s estimate was 30,000 attendees. “It’s an approximate number,” he said.

'He tells it like it is,' said Bob House, 57, a maintenance manager, of Trump’s appeal. 'None of this political correct stuff.' | Getty

“This is one of the largest events Mobile has successfully pulled off, next to our Mardi Gras,” Cooper added. “We’re grateful to the Trump campaign.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that 15,000 people attended a rally he held at a convention center in Phoenix, Arizona, in July, but the room’s capacity was just over 2,000 people. A convention center staffer at that event told POLITICO that the fire marshal had permitted just over 4,000 people to enter the room for the rally.

Trump continued to show a flare for showmanship, as he has at previous rallies. “If it rains I’ll take off my hat and prove once and for all that it’s real,” he said toward the outset of the rally, before following through and showing the crowd his hair, to loud cheers.

Before the event, his plane circled the stadium, eliciting a standing ovation.

Voter outreach

China Protects Its Workers, America Doesn't Bother

By Leo W. Gerard 
International President, United Steelworkers

Confronted with a dire situation, a world power last week took strong action to secure its domestic jobs and manufacturing.

That was China. Not the United States.

China diminished the value of its currency.  This gave its exporting industries a boost while simultaneously blocking imports. The move protected the Asian giant’s manufacturers and its workers’ jobs.

Currency manipulation violates free market principles, but for China, doing it makes sense. The nation’s economy is cooling. Its stock market just crashed, and its economic powerhouse – exports – declined a substantial 8.3 percent in July ­– down to $195 billion from $213 billion the previous July. This potent action by a major economic competitor raises the question of when the United States government is going to stop pretending currency manipulation doesn’t exist.

When will the United States take the necessary action to protect its industry, including manufacturing essential to national defense, as well as the good, family-supporting jobs of millions of manufacturing workers?



While China lowered the value of its currency on three consecutive days last week, for a total of 4.4 percent, the largest decline in two decades, a respected Washington think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, released a report detailing exactly how the United States lost 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000.

The report, “Manufacturing Job Loss: Trade, Not Productivity is the Culprit,” clearly links massive trade deficits to closed American factories and killed American jobs. U.S. manufacturers lost ground to foreign competitors whose nations facilitated violation of international trade rules. China is a particular culprit. My union, the United Steelworkers, has won trade case after trade case over the past decade, securing sanctions called duties that are charged on imported goods to counteract the economic effect of violations.

In the most recent case the USW won, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) finalized duties in July on illegally subsidized Chinese tires dumped into the U.S. market. The recent history of such sanctions on tires illustrates how relentless the Chinese government is in protecting its workers.
Shortly after President Obama took office, the USW filed a complaint about illegally-subsidized, Chinese-made tires dumped into the U.S. market. The Obama administration imposed duties on Chinese tire imports from September 2009 to September 2012.

Immediately after the tariffs ended, Chinese companies flooded the U.S. market with improperly subsidized tires again, threatening U.S. tire plants and jobs. So the USW filed the second complaint.
Though the USW workers won the second case as well, the process is too costly and too time consuming. Sometimes factories and thousands of jobs are permanently lost before a case is decided in workers’ favor. This has happened to U.S. tire, paper, auto parts and steel workers.

In addition, the process is flawed because it forbids consideration of currency manipulation – the device China used last week to support its export industries.

By reducing the value of its currency, China, in effect, gave its export industries discount coupons, enabling them to sell goods more cheaply overseas without doing anything differently or better.

Simultaneously, China marked up the price of all imports into the country. American and European exporters did nothing bad or wrong, but now their products will cost more in China.

Chinese officials have contended that the devaluation, which came on the heels of the bad news about its July exports, wasn’t deliberate. They say it reflected bad market conditions and note that groups like the International Monetary Fund have been pushing China to make its currency more market based.

Right. Sure. And it was nothing more than a coincidence that it occurred just as China wanted to increase exports. And it was simply serendipity that in just three days, “market conditions” wiped out four years of tiny, painfully incremental increases in the currency’s value.

If the value of the currency truly is market based and not controlled by the government, then as Chinese exports rise, the value should increase. That would eliminate the artificial discount China just awarded its exported goods. Based on past history, that is not likely to happen. So what China really is saying is that its currency is market based when the value is declining but not when it rises.

China did what it felt was right for its people, its industry and its economy. The country hit a rough spot this year. Though its economy is expected to grow by 7 percent, that would be the slowest rate in six years. Its housing prices fell 9.8 percent in June. Car sales dropped 7 percent in July, the largest decline since the Great Recession. Over the past several months, the Chinese government has intervened repeatedly to try to stop a massive stock market crash that began in June.



In the meantime, the nation’s factories that make products like tires, auto parts, steel and paper continue to operate full speed ahead and ship the excess overseas. As a result, for example, the international market is flooded with under-priced Chinese steel, threatening American steel mills and tens of thousands of American steelworkers’ jobs.

This is bad for the U.S. economy. The U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods rose 15.7 percent ­– by $25.7 billion ­– in the first quarter as imports increased and exports slipped. In the first half of this year, the trade deficit with China rose 9.8 percent, a total of $15 billion.

As EPI points out, that means more U.S. factories closed and U.S. jobs lost. If China had bombed thousands of U.S. factories over the past decade, America would respond. But the nation has done virtually nothing about thousands of factories closed by trade violations.

The United States could take two steps immediately to counter the ill-effects of currency manipulation. Congress could pass and President Obama could sign a proposed customs enforcement bill. It would classify deliberate currency undervaluation as an illegal export subsidy. Then the manipulation could be countered with duties on the imported products.

The second step would be to include sanctions for currency manipulation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that the administration is negotiating with 11 other Pacific Rim countries. The deal doesn’t include China, but it could join later. The deal does, however, include other countries notorious for currency interventions.

American manufacturers and American workers demand rightful protection from predatory international trade practices.

Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger 

Julian Bond, 1940-2015

Posted by sallybrown

"He advocated not just for African-Americans, but for every group, indeed every person subject to oppression and discrimination because he recognized the common humanity in us all." Goodbye to Horace Julian Bond, freedom fighter and lifetime champion of civil rights.

Bond co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Community, served as the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center at its founding, and led the NAACP for a decade.

"Bond was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, but his white colleagues in the House refused to let him take his seat because of his opposition to the Vietnam war. A year later, the Supreme Court accused the legislature of violating his freedom of speech, and ordered it to seat him."

Bond went on to serve for 20 years. He was a public opponent of the Vietnam War and a public supporter of the fights for women's rights and gay rights. He taught a generation of college students the history of the civil rights movement, including at American University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.

SPLC Statement from Morris Dees.
New York Times.
Washington Post.

Jeb Just Can’t Help Himself: The Myth of His Electability Continues to Fade

By Joan Walsh

Calling Saddam's ouster a 'pretty good deal' and name-checking Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb keeps rivals' hope alive.

I’m running out of ways to describe the awfulness of Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. If or when he fails, his jocular Thursday comment about the Iraq war — “Taking down Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal” – will be in every highlight reel.

Not only is Jeb! now fully embracing his brother’s disastrous, bloody war of choice. He’s talking about it in a glib salesman way, reminding us that the war was in fact “a pretty good deal” for his cronies: for Halliburton spinoff KBR, the entire defense industry, and a metastasizing web of private security contractors including disgraced giant Blackwater. The families of the dead and wounded in Iraq might disagree.

Things got worse in his speech Friday, where he volunteered that “Paul Wolfowitz is giving some advice.” Wolfowitz, the scowling face of the smug neocons.

I’ve asked this before: Does Bush even want to win?

Donald Trump claimed Bush had his “47 percent moment” – the comment that doomed Mitt Romney — when he suggested we’re spending too much on women’s health. But his dumb remark about toppling Saddam being “a pretty good deal” could rival that. Then again, there are so many contenders for the inconvenient, inadvertent truth-telling moment that could doom Bush: suggesting underpaid American workers “need to work more hours;” that “the federal government shouldn’t be doing this” when asked about the minimum wage; arguing that we should be “phasing out” Medicare.

Of course he walked all of those remarks back. Let’s see if he tries to do the same with this one.

All of these campaign flubs are occurring against the backdrop of the strangest presidential primary of our lifetimes, in which Donald Trump has taken the lead nationally, as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire, with 16 lackluster rivals trying to catch up. For a while Bush strategists were pretending the Trump candidacy benefited Bush, by depriving his rivals of the attention they need to gain traction, and predicting Bush would consolidate support as some of the bloated GOP field dropped out. I used to think that myself, to be honest. But now I’m not so sure.

Whose support does Jeb! think he will consolidate as the campaign goes on? Which of the non-Trump candidates is likely to throw him support? Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson are surging after last week’s debate, and neither man’s supporters seem a likely match for Bush. Cruz is second so far in fundraising, so he isn’t going anywhere, and if Carson stumbles, his voters won’t flock to Bush.

Among the current bottom-tier candidates, who might be expected to leave the race early — Governors Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, plus Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum — all are to Bush’s right and seem unlikely to throw him their support (which is a collective 9.5 percent right now, anyway). Sen. Rand Paul is flailing: he’s averaging 4.5 percent in national polls and has fallen from third to ninth place in Iowa (once a stronghold, thanks to his dad) and from third to sixth in New Hampshire. But his supporters aren’t a natural for Bush, either.

Of the candidates who are closer to the Bush wing of the party – Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, Governors John Kasich, Chris Christie and Scott Walker, former Gov. George Pataki and perhaps Carly Fiorina – only Pataki, Christie and Graham seem like contenders who aren’t contending, and probably won’t. But by definition, that means none of them has much support he can turn over to Bush if he leaves the race, since they’re each polling between 0 and 3.8 percent.

For now, Fiorina and Kasich are rising, so they’re not going anywhere soon. Walker is sinking, but I have a hard time thinking that the ambitious Wisconsin governor and his moneyed backers will pull the plug quickly (although if Walker loses his neighboring state of Iowa, where he’s now dropped from a persistent 1st place to 3rd, the humiliation might drive him back to Madison). Rubio shares a natural constituency with Bush, and you can imagine a scenario in which he could be persuaded by mutual friends to step aside. But with Bush so weak, and with a decent war chest, he might think it should be Jeb who steps aside. And he might find others in the GOP establishment who agree.

Even if Trump fades, who fattens up on his voters? It’s probably not Bush. Trump fading or even dropping out would certainly shake up the race, and it’s certainly possible, if not likely, that will happen. Trump skeptics comfort themselves by saying his frontrunner status reflects his celebrity as well as the crowded field – and that the 20-25 percent support he’s getting in polls isn’t a commanding lead anyway.

But that’s where Mitt Romney rode out much of the 2012 campaign: from June 2011 to February 2012, according to Real Clear Politics, Romney hovered between 20 and 28 percent in the polls. For most of that time he was ahead of the pack, though he did surrender the polling lead to Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, briefly. He only began to break away once he’d won some early primaries, and some rivals dropped out.

Romney benefited from candidates to his right splitting the Tea Party vote, while he chased out moderates like Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty early. Conceivably Bush could benefit from the same split on the right, especially if Trump stumbles. But Bush was supposed to chase away a lot of his rivals with his presumed electability and large war chest. With every gaffe and stumble, the myth of his electability dissipates. He’s still got that war chest, though, so we can’t count him out.

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor-at-large, and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America." Read more of her work at Salon.

Market for rare and vintage console video games is booming

By David Pescovitz 

CNN Money investigates the crazed market for the video games of yore, fueled by the likes of RetroLiberty, a YouTube channel about finding vintage video games at swap meets or parking lot deals, and Videogamesnewyork, a shop specializing in vintage game gear from the last century.
From CNN Money:

Prices skyrocketed almost overnight, says JJ Hendricks, whose site Video Games Price Charting tracks the going rate for vintage games. He estimates the market for retro games is now worth about $200 million annually. Hendricks once spent months negotiating with a mysterious source in Canada to buy one of only two Powerfest 94 prototypes known to exist (seen at right). He ultimately made the deal -- for $12,000 in cash. It's the perfect storm. Just as kids who grew up in the '80's and '90's are reaching their thirties, the supply of vintage games is shrinking.

"I think it's just a nostalgia for when they were younger," says David Kaelin, who runs the Classic Game Fest in Austin, Texas, and owns a chain of shops, Game Over Videogames. "It was a more innocent time in gaming. They were easier to pick up and play, less violent, more universally accessible than they are now...."

"For retro gamers, one of the most important things is reliving that experience you had when you were a kid," says (RetroLiberty's Aaron) Stapish, who plays retro games about 30 hours a week. "So you want to have the actual game, you want to actually put the game in the system and hold it with the original controller."

"Your old video game could be worth $12,000" (CNN Money)

ANOTHER Woman Dies In Police Custody

Another week and another unnecessary and extremely tragic death of an African American woman in police custody. The incident occurred in late July in Cleveland, when Ralkina Jones was denied her medicine by authorities. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola (Think Tank), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"A black Cleveland woman who died in police custody pleaded with jail officials to properly administer her prescription medications in the hours before her death.

“I don’t want to die in your cell,” she told officers in video released Tuesday.”



http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/video-shows-ralkina-jones-chilling-words-before-dying-in-police-custody-i-dont-want-to-die-in-your-cell/

Jeb Bush Provided Distorted Version of Iraq History

By Taegan Goddard

Jeb Bush, in his speech this week that was billed as a major foreign policy address, “provided a distorted version of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and an incorrect account of the origins of the Islamic State,” according to McClatchy.

“Bush vowed that if elected he would expand U.S. military intervention in the Middle East significantly. His version of events, however, seemed intended to absolve his brother, President George W. Bush, of blame in destabilizing the region while trying to pin the region’s current bloodshed on President Obama and his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.”

“Bush’s account of the withdrawal as a ‘case of blind haste’ omitted the fact that it was his brother who’d set the withdrawal date of Dec. 31, 2011, in an agreement that he signed with the Iraqi government in 2008. He also neglected to note that the Iraqi government strongly opposed the continued presence of U.S. forces.”

What Bernie Sanders' Campaign Is Doing to the Democratic Party

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomsky-what-bernie-sanders-campaign-doing-democratic-party

The Slow Political Death Of Chris Christie

Posted By Rude One

On 8/2/15 at Monmouth racetrack in New Jersey, the crowd was there to cheer home state horse American Pharaoh after the Triple Crown winner won another race. Stepping into the Winner's Circle, presidential candidate and Governor Chris Christie must have thought it would be his moment to bask in the glory of another large farm beast and receive a bit of adulation himself.

Now, your average horse race fan is not generally a bleeding heart liberal, but they do know how to cheer for winners and how to treat losers. So they booed Christie, loudly, the kind of boo that only a large percentage of a crowd of 61,000 can make. Then they cheered the horse's trainer and owner who said Christie's name, which led to more boos.

This really happened. The governor of New Jersey was given a huge, audible hooting of derision from the crowd. Because the people of the Garden State now fucking hate Chris Christie. He is the big-mouthed motherfucker who promised to give a shit but turned his back on his state for the chance to lose a presidential race. He was supposed to be the straight-talking teller of hard truths, but he turned out to be just another vindictive bully.

It worked for a little while, when Jersey wanted him to take lunch money from the feds for Sandy relief. But once Bridgegate and every other (so far minor) scandal took their toll, he went from being the bruiser Jersey loved to the Bluto it wanted Popeye to beat the shit out of. Christie was always a myth. He was always 300 pounds of shit in a 100 pound bag. Mythic images, though, are like Icarus (and sometimes they are exactly Icarus), and this motherfucker flew way too close to the sun.

So in Jersey, the state Christie has all but abandoned, the citizens are alternately amused and disgusted at his flailing campaign. Here's Christie, whose staff closed the George Washington Bridge as political retribution and who himself canceled a new rail tunnel that would have vastly improved life for the state's citizens, trying to say he's on the side of commuters when it comes to the incredible failure of his administration to do dick about the decaying mass transit infrastructure: "Here's the way we fix it. If I am president of the United States, I call a meeting between the president, my secretary of transportation, the governor of New York, and the governor of New Jersey."

You might think, "Hey, he's governor of New Jersey. Why doesn't he get a meeting with the other parties?" But then you're thinking with your rational brain and not your political pandering brain, which must calculate how many blow jobs the Koch brothers will require for every statement you make.

Christie the bully, the man who probably doesn't remember giving David Wildstein shit swirlies in the locker room at their high school, emerged again yesterday on This Week with Jake Tapper's Resting Asshole Face.  Tapper asked, "During your first term as governor, you were fond of saying that you can treat bullies in one of two ways — quote — 'You can either sidle up to them or you can punch them in the face.' You said, 'I like to punch them in the face.' At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?"

Without missing a beat, Christie said, "Oh, the national teachers' union," going on to explain, "They are the single most destructive force in public education in America. I have been saying that since 2009. I have got the scars to show it. But I'm never going to stop saying it, because they never change their stripes."

Drama queen rhetoric aside, a reflective man wouldn't readily admit that he wants to punch in the face a group that represents significant numbers of women.  A thoughtful man might have said, "Democrats in Congress," just to spread the pain. A wise man might have said, "Well, I don't actually want to punch anyone in the face." Christie is neither. And asking a bully who he thinks the bullies are is like asking a public masturbator who the perverts are.

In Jersey, the citizens are gonna pop a cold one and sit on the shore and bask in the last month of summer.  They will watch Christie's political death with the kind of joy one gets from seeing the asshole who revs his engine blow it out.  They will await their chance to boo him again, ready to be in another arena and give a thumbs down.

A message for Bernie Sanders (NSFW)

Contains limited profanity.

Most 2016 GOP Presidential Candidates Would Push Seniors Into Poverty By Cutting Social Security

Meanwhile, Democratic candidates favor expansion.

 

By Nancy Altman

 

In the first nationally televised 2016 presidential debate, Americans got a glimpse at what their economic future might hold if one of the Republican candidates becomes president -- and the picture wasn't pretty.

Social Security is essential for workers and their families who want to retire with dignity and independence and want to be protected in the event of death or a disabling illness or accident. Given the Social Security views of those who took the debate stage Thursday night, Americans should be very worried.

Governor CHRIS CHRISTIE doubled down on his destructive proposal to turn Social Security into a means-tested welfare program. On top of that, he proposed raising Social Security's full retirement age to 69, a thirteen percent, across-the-board benefit cut. Like President George W. Bush before him, Governor Christie will, if elected president, seek to destroy Social Security, while claiming to be just "saving" it.

Christie's views on Social Security are extreme, fringe and totally out of touch with the American people. Polling released last week by Social Security Works shows that Americans across the board-- including majorities of Republicans and Independents-- oppose cuts to Social Security and say they are less likely to vote for candidates who support cuts to the program.

To his credit, MIKE HUCKABEE stands firmly against benefit cuts, and with the American people. He wrongly seems to believe that Social Security contributions have been stolen, not merely lent and so must be paid back. But he is light years ahead of all the other Republican candidates on this issue, with the exception of DONALD TRUMP, who in April remarked, "Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And it's not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut." He made clear, "I'm not gonna do that!"

Since the others did not offer their views last night, here they are (with the exceptions of Ben Carson and Jim Gilmore who haven't made their views known.)

PRIME TIME DEBATE

JEB BUSH: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age As High as 70,End Medicare

SCOTT WALKER: Raise the Retirement Age

TED CRUZ: Privatize Social Security, Raise the Retirement Age, Cut Benefits

MARCO RUBIO: Raise the Retirement Age, May Cut Benefits, Privatize Medicare

RAND PAUL: Raise the Retirement Age to 70, Means-Test Social Security

JOHN KASICH:Privatize Social Security, Cut benefits

SECOND TIER DEBATE

RICK PERRY: Social Security is a "Ponzi Scheme," "Monstrous Lie"

RICK SANTORUM: Raise Retirement Age,Means Test Social Security, May cut cost of living adjustments for current and future beneficiaries

BOBBY JINDAL: Privatize Social Security

CARLY FIORINA: May Raise Retirement Age

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Cut Social Security Benefits for People who are unmarried and have no children.

GEORGE PATAKI: Raise Retirement Age, Shift More Medicare Cost to Seniors and People With Disabilities

With a looming retirement income crisis and growing wealth and income inequality, expanding Social Security, not cutting it, is the right policy. It is also what the overwhelming majority of Americans want. It sounds like everyone but Huckabee and Trump are taking their Social Security advice from their billionaire donors.

Last election, voters didn't realize that they had a choice, since President Obama, inexplicably and inaccurately, asserted in a presidential debate against Mitt Romney, "I suspect that, on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position," This time around, with Democratic Presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both advocating expansion, voters are likely to have a clear choice. For the sake of their families' economic security, they should exercise it wisely.

Nancy Altman is author of The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision to Bush's Gamble (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) is president of Social Security Works and Chair of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition. She is co-author, with Eric R. Kingson, of Social Security Works! Why Social Security Isn't Going Broke and How Expanding It Will Help Us All (The New Press, 2015), and has written the forward to a new release of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice.