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.

Protesters Drove Bernie Sanders From One Seattle Stage. At His Next Stop, 15,000 People Showed.

By John Wagner

Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Dallas in July. (Mike Stone/Reuters)

Bernie Sanders came to Seattle on Saturday with plans to give two speeches.

The first didn’t happen. An appearance by the senator from Vermont at an event celebrating the anniversary of Social Security and Medicare was scuttled after protesters from a local Black Lives Matter chapter took over the stage.

Hours later, Sanders, who has been drawing bigger crowds than any other presidential contender, drew his largest yet: about 15,000 at the college basketball arena where the Washington Huskies play.

Quite the reception for Sanders in Seattle. pic.twitter.com/dibVAOGd5x

— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) August 9, 2015

[The Bernie Sanders predicament: Where do you fit all those people?]

Aides said Sanders, who has emerged as the leading alternative to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, spoke to a full house of 12,000 inside the arena and to what police estimated to be an overflow of 3,000 people outside of it.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, was met with boisterous cheers as he decried the political influence of the “billionaire class” and pledged to raise the minimum wage, mandate family leave and push other policies that improve the lot of the working class.

"This is the country we can create," Sanders said during an hourlong stump speech was broadcast live on social media.

#BlackLivesMatter Protesters shut down Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle http://t.co/GT1KCqmsGQ pic.twitter.com/MoPYyl19MX

— Craig Newman (@craignewman) August 8, 2015

The first event — which was held at a city park and live-streamed by a Seattle television station — went less swimmingly.

Sanders was the final speaker on a long program held at a city park. Shortly after he took stage, a small group of protesters from a Seattle chapter of Black Lives Matter took the microphone and demanded  that the crowd hold Sanders “accountable” for not doing enough, in their view, to address police brutality and other issues on the group’s agenda.

[Why Hillary Clinton and her rivals are struggling to grasp Black Lives Matter]

After sharing a few local grievances with the crowd, including school disparities and gentrification in Seattle, the protesters asked for a period of silence to commemorate  the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown being shot and killed during a confrontation with a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

Event organizers allowed the period of silence, as some in the large crowd booed and shouted for the protesters to leave the stage. Afterward, Marissa Janae Johnson, who identified herself as a leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Seattle, asked the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his actions.” She motioned for Sanders to join her at the microphone.

After several minutes of frantic conversations, Sanders left the stage and greeted people in the large crowd who had turned out to see him. Many chanted his name.

In the hours that followed, several activists took to social media to question whether Johnson was speaking for the broader Black Lives Movement.

[O’Malley booed as he points out: ‘White lives matter. All lives matter.’]

The tense scene in Seattle was reminiscent of one July 18 in Phoenix, when a larger group of Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Democratic presidential forum at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering that featured both Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

At the Netroots event, both O’Malley and Sanders were able to continue speaking, though neither filled their allotted times.

At Saturday’s event, Johnson noted that O’Malley had since released a plan on criminal justice, which calls for several policing reforms, including widespread use of body cameras.

Though Sanders has not formally released a similar plan, he has been speaking out about policing issues, including during an appearance last month before a gathering in Louisiana of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations. In that speech, he called for the “demilitarization” of police forces, an end to privately run prisons and an effort to address the “over-incarceration” of nonviolent offenders.

[Bernie Sanders needs to court black voters. And he has started doing it.]

As Sanders left the event in Seattle on Saturday, he told reporters that he found the situation "unfortunate."

At Saturday night's rally, Sanders made a brief reference to the early episode, saying that "on criminal justice reform and the need to fight racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder than me.”

"Too many lives have been destroyed by the war on drugs," Sanders said. "Too many lives have been destroyed by incarceration."

Some of his biggest applause lines came when he declared that college education should be tuition free and that the United States should move to a single-payer, "Medicare for all" health-care system.

Saturday night's rally was the latest around the country where Sanders has filled arenas and convention halls. By contrast, Clinton's largest crowd, which her campaign estimated at 5,500, came at her formal kickoff in June in New York.

Sanders is in the midst of a three-day swing on the West Coast. Aides say the campaign is also expecting large crowds at events in Portland and Los Angeles.

Black Lives Matter activists push Sanders off stage at Seattle event http://t.co/nNUI42XVOW pic.twitter.com/SkPx7PhXZ0

— Xerox (@FatenXerox) August 9, 2015

John Wagner has covered Maryland government and politics for The Post since 2004.

The GOP's First 2016 Debate Showcases Its Right-Wingers And True Crazies

By Steven Rosenfeld

Fox News shows the nation how nuts the GOP has become.

The Republican Party’s first official debate of the 2016 presidential election showed the GOP’s leading candidates as not just all hard right-wingers, but different shades of crazy.

There was Donald Trump, who will doubtless draw the most press attention by declaring right off the bat that if he is not the nominee, he would seriously considering running as an independent—which, as Fox News’ debate moderator Bret Baier said, “would almost certainly hand over the race to Democrats and likely another Clinton.”

That brought boos from the crowd and a spontaneous attack by Sen. Rand Paul, who blared, “This is what’s wrong. He buys and sells politicans.” To which, Trump replied, “ Well, I’ve given him [Paul] plenty of money.”  

That feisty spree set the tone for much of the next two hours. Trump would go on to explain that, of course, he spends money to buy politicans’ attention, and failed to see anything at all wrong with that. When asked what he got in return from Hillary Clinton, he said that she came to his latest wedding. But beyond political gossip like that—or saying he was tired of being criticized for being politically incorrect after crude and sexist statements about women—the Fox News debate made it clear that most of the GOP’s leading candidates roughly fell into two right-wing camps: truly crazed extremists (Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee) or blandly presentable right-wingers, whose agenda is still remarkably out-of-synch with mainstream America (Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie).

The blander crazies are probably the more dangerous crew, because even though their policies are very far to the right—anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-government, anti-science—they will be portrayed by mainstream media as moderates. Take reproductive rights, just an example.

Bush answered a question about being on the board of ex-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s foundation, which has supported Planned Parenthood, by saying that his record as governor was to lead the country in restricting abortions, passing parental notification laws, outlawing late-term abortions, and being first in the nation to have pro-life license places. That was the quote-unquote, moderate response, when compared to Mike Huckabee, who said that the next president must declare that the Constitution’s 5th and 14th amendments protects the rights of the unborn “from the moment of conception.” Speaking of the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion rights, he said, “It’s time that we recognize that the Supreme Court is not the supreme being.”

Other social issues followed the same arc. Early in the debate, one Fox moderator pressed Ohio Gov. John Kasich for being a litte too much like St. Peter because he expanded his state’s Medicaid program under Obamacare, which Kasich defended. But when asked about same-sex marriage, he replied, “If one of my daughters happened to be that…” Kasich quickly followed up by saying, he’d love his daughters unconditionally, but such exchanges showed just how immoderate the GOP’s supposed moderates are.

The more serious exchanges were interrupted by moments that were astounding political theater, such as Trump sparring with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly who said, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals…’ Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Trump began his reply, saying, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct… I frankly don’t have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble.”

Exchanges like that quickly ended and were followed by other zany questions, such as asking Ted Cruz why he recently called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar? To which, Cruz replied, because he was one—and the country needed politicians who spoke the truth. “As Republicans, we keep winning elections. We have a Republican House. We have a Republican Senate, and we don’t have leaders who honor their commitments. I will always tell the truth and do what I said I would do.”

When it came to specifics of what the candidates would do, the template was roughly the same. The plan is to cut taxes and regulations to promote economic growth, build up the military—including sending troops overseas fight a new ground war with ISIS, and saying that this strategy worked for Ronald Reagan and would surely work again. Of course, there were small differences. On immigration, everyone objected to amensty for the undocumented already in America, but some—such as Jeb Bush—said a pathway to legalized status was needed, especially to ensure economic growth. Others were less charitable. Trump, of course, said a new border wall needed to be built—but with a large door in it for those following a legal process to enter.

The debate did showcase the candidates' political skills and that might shake up their ranking in the polls. Chris Christie had a good night, feistily dismissing questions about New Jersey’s lagging economy under his watch—it was worse before he got there, he said—and eagerly attacking Rand Paul for his opposition to NSA spying on Americans. Marco Rubio, who has the best smile of anyone on the stage, didn’t say anything that was truly cringe-worthy, even though he was fervently pro-life and almost libertarian on federal oversight—on the environment and education. John Kasich appeared almost grandfatherly on stage, projecting himself as a seasoned hand on budget and national security issues. And Jeb Bush, when pressed on being the heir to a political dynasty, replied he had a higher bar to prove himself with voters, which came across as both insecure and honest. In contrast, Scott Walker, who didn’t make any mistakes, came across with answers that seemed a bit too canned—practiced and unengaging.

The crazies, however, may have won the night’s battle but set themselves back in the longer war. Trump clearly distinguished himself as someone who really doesn’t care what people think about him—he’s a businessman who will do whatever it takes. The other outlying ideologues—Cruz, Huckabee, Carson, Paul—all seem to be in narrower silos where their followers will love what they said, and how they said it, but they’re less likely to break through to a larger base.

You can be sure that the Republican Party will declare their first debate a great success. Millions of people watched. They saw candidates up close and personal. Their remarks will surely shake up the race. And, to be sure, the night will also be seen by Democrats as pure political manna from heaven—because the modern GOP was on display in vivid color, and because it is not a party of mere establishment right-wingers, but also out-and-out crazies running for the presidency.

Related Stories

• The 10 Biggest Lies and Cliches Spouted So Far by the Top 10 Republicans Debating Tonight
• WATCH: Fox News Focus Group Goes Hilariously off the Rails Fighting Over Donald Trump

Bernie Sanders: Tonight's GOP debaters don't care about working people

By Eliza Collins

There may be 10 candidates in Thursday night’s prime time Fox debate, but Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders thinks they will all be talking about the same thing.

“When you watch that debate just imagine if you are one of the wealthiest people in this country and extremely greedy and selfish, and you’re going to have 10 candidates more or less talking about your needs and not the needs of working people,” Sanders said in a recorded interview with Ari Rabin-Havt on SiriusXM’s Progress Channel.

Sanders believes he knows the agenda the GOP candidates will break down and it is in strong contrast with the one espoused by the Vermont senator.

Sanders, whose policies have associated him with socialism for decades, knocked the Republican focus on tax cuts and government spending.

Also on POLITICO

The GOP debate: 5 things to watch

ALEX ISENSTADT

“They want to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires at a time when the rich are getting much richer,” Sanders said. “They want to cut or privatize Medicare, cut Medicaid, cut education, cut the environmental protection agency.”

Sanders, who is one of the biggest Senate opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline — and who has criticized Hillary Clinton on not doing enough to combat climate change — knocked the GOP for its views on the issue.

“There may be one or two on there who actually have listened to the scientific community and think that climate change is real. Most of them refuse to accept that, and none of them are prepared to act aggressively to transform our energy system,” he said.

The top 10 polling Republican candidates will take the stage Thursday night for a two-hour debate in Cleveland, Ohio. A “happy hour” debate will take place at 5 p.m. for the candidates who didn’t make the top 10.

TPP Copyright Chapter Leaks: Website Blocking, New Criminal Rules On the Way

Posted by timothy

An anonymous reader writes:  

Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) [Wednesday] morning released the May 2015 draft of the copyright provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership (copyright, ISP annex, enforcement). The leak appears to be the same version that was covered by the EFF and other media outlets earlier this summer. 

Michael Geist unpacks the leaked documents, noting the treaty includes anti-circumvention rules that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties, new criminal rules, the extension of copyright term for countries like Canada and Japan, increased border measures, mandatory statutory damages in all countries, and expanding ISP liability rules, including the prospect of website blocking for Canada.

Scott Walker Tricked Into Posing In Front Of $900 Million Check Signed By Kochs

Student dupes Walker into posing with check illustrating he's bought and paid for by the Koch brothers.

 

By Sophia Tesfaye 

It was supposed to be a routine meet-and-greet at a local New Hampshire pizza parlor, but today’s campaign stop turned into a “Punk’d” episode for Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker, after he was tricked into posing with a phony check from the Koch brothers made out to him for $900 million.

According to the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, who shared an image of Walker posing with the prop check, Walker appeared to believe he was posing with a sign reading “Walker 4 President” before the sign was turned to the cameras to expose its true sentiments:

Click to enlarge.

Walker appeared to have been trolled by a member of 350 Action, an environmental group which has led the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline and is calling on 2016 presidential candidates to refuse campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies.

In a blog post on July 15, one day before the date on the phony check presented to Walker, 350 Action’s Jong Chin outlined the group’s efforts to push 2016 candidates on the issue of climate change in the early voting state of New Hampshire before promising, “We have some time to work with, and a lot of events to go to, including a couple Clinton and a couple Walker events on Thursday."

But as 360 Action fellow Tyler McFarland explained on Twitter, the check was finally delivered to Walker today in Manchester:

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the Koch brothers have spent upward of $11.6 million to support Scott Walker since he became governor of Wisconsin in 2011. And David Koch reportedly said that the Republican nominee “should be Scott Walker” earlier this year, although he and his brother Charles have yet to formally endorse a candidate.

Things Trump could do...

Shinewave Gamecube Controller Reacts To Smash Brothers

By Elliot Williams

Garrett Greenwood plays Smash Brothers, and apparently quite seriously. So seriously that he needed to modify his controller with five Neopixels so that it flashed different color animations according to the combo he’s playing on the controller; tailored to match the colors of the moves of his favorite character, naturally.

All of this happens with an ATtiny85 as the brains, which we find quite ambitious. Indeed, Garrett started out thinking he could simply read each of the inputs from the controller directly into the micro-controller at the heart of the whole thing, but then counted up how many wires that would be, and looked at how many pins he had free (six), and thought up a better solution.

Garrett’s routine instead reads the single line that the GameCube controller uses to send back to the console. The protocol is well understood, using long-short and short-long signals to encode bits. The only trick is that each bit is sent in four microseconds, so the decoding routine has to be fairly speedy. To make it work he had to do quite a bit of work. More about that, and the demo video, below.



Garrett’s current post only covers the hardware and use of the thing. We’re waiting with baited breath for the software writeup. To whet your own whistle, check out Garrett’s Github and browse through the code yourself. Our cursory read-through includes the following highlights:

• GameCube protocol handled in an interrupt routine written in assembler
• Animations handled using the Protothreads library for lightweight micro-controller threads
• Generally sexy coding, including a nice hand-built Makefile (the way we like ’em)

We don’t know how much free space you have, Garrett, but we think it’d be cool if you could squeeze a serial bootloader into the chip, so that you can update it more easily without opening and closing the case. TinySafeBoot or (going old-school) Peter Dannegger / “Danni”’s fastboot might do you well.

Oh, and Garrett emailed us to say he’s looking around for a plastics company to manufacture transparent backs for GameCube controllers like his, and is thinking of running a Kickstarter if he can find one. Keep your eyes out.

Thanks Bigjosh2 for the tip!

How To Be Filmed Murdering A Man, Cover It Up, Be Free On Bail, And Ask For Your Job Back

Privilege at a whole new level.

 By Shaun King

How to achieve what's posed in the headline? Be a police officer.

Only in America could a man do what Officer Ray Tensing did — be filmed blowing a man's head off, be filmed telling at least 21 lies about what led to him blowing said man's head off, be charged with murder, strongly condemned by the prosecutor, and then be free in a few hours to ask for his job back. Yes, he asked for his job back.

That's exactly what has happened in this case.

Because it is incredibly gruesome, the Hamilton County District Attorney's Office chose not to release, at first, the full video of the murder of Sam Dubose by Officer Ray Tensing. I understand that, but by ending the video after the fatal shot was fired, we were all deprived of the opportunity to see something truly heinous — the outrageous fictional story concocted by Ray Tensing to justify a completely avoidable murder. See for yourself below.



It is this video, and this video alone, that caused Officer Ray Tensing to be charged with murder.

He was not caught in the vehicle. He was not dragged. He was not about to be run over.

In the video, Tensing claims these things, over and over and over again, and even feigns injury and pain from the dragging. His two fellow officers can be heard saying that they saw it as well. All lies. Incredibly, the DA decided not to press charges against these two additional officers, claiming that they participated fully in the investigation.

So incredible are Tensing and his union that they are actually claiming, in spite of the glaring video evidence, that he was fired from his job "without cause."

The grievance said, "Officer Tensing was terminated on 7/29/2015 without just cause for an on-duty fatal shooting. While Officer Tensing was indicted on a charge of murder, the indictment is not a conviction. Officer Tensing was also denied his due process rights of a pre-disciplinary hearing under the contract."

The grievance asked for Tensing to be reinstated immediately and "is to be made whole for all back pay and benefits including but not limited to sick time, vacation time, holidays, shift differential, pension contributions etc. afforded under the current contract."

But the truth is even uglier than this. Officer Ray Tensing is receiving support and monetary pledges from all over the country. Somehow, in spite of his heinous crime and unethical attempts at covering it all up, he is now some type of folk hero.
Ray Tensing is now free on bail, after only a few hours in jail. This is despicable.

This is America. 2015.

At Least 6 Ways To Hack The 2016 Election

By Brad Friedman

While we have, for more than a decade, covered the extreme vulnerabilities of voting machines and electronic tabulators and broken numerous exclusive stories about it on both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast, my guest on today's show offers a number of additional ways - some of which had largely never even occurred - by which bad actors could disrupt U.S. elections.

Michael Gregg, IT security expert and COO of the private, Houston-based computer security firm, Superior Solutions wrote about some of those concerns recently at Huffington Post. He joins me today to discuss several of the ways that U.S. democracy could be disrupted by political hacktivists, election insiders or even foreign entities and how we might not ever even know about it if they did - thanks to the type of electronic voting systems we now use in all 50 states and the different ways in which the public is now being blocked from overseeing our own elections and election results.

"Attackers could potentially get in and do these things and it would be very hard to prove. The scary part is, by the time any of this is worked out, the election is over with, so it's too late," he tells me. I ask him how elected officials in his home state of Texas - much of which forces voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems - react when he points out these concerns. "We've brought that up multiple times, but that seems to be the powers that be, how they want to do things."

Gregg, who I've never spoken to previously, concludes, as I have, that paper ballots (hand-marked and hand-counted, in my case) are the most secure way to run elections. "I agree with you 100%," he says. "If you have a paper-based system, it's very very hard to attack, it's very much easier to be able to detect those types of things."

As to Internet Voting, well, you'll want to tune in for this computer security professional's opinion on whether or not the Internet can ever be secure enough to use for the most important aspect of our representative democracy.

Also today: New York Times digs deeper still on their inaccurate Hillary Clinton reporting (as we covered in great detail on yesterday's show); Incurious global warming trolls fall, once again, for the old "Earth is cooling" scam; The racist Charleston, SC church shooter pleads "not guilty"; And Shell Oil evades activists to try and begin drilling in the Arctic...

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The State Department Just Released a New Batch of Hillary Clinton Emails. Read Them Here.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/new-batch-of-hillary-clinton-state-department-emails

NVIDIA Shield Tablet Recall

NVIDIA has announced a recall of its SHIELD tablets, sold between July 2014 and July 2015. 

NVIDIA has determined the battery in these tablets can overheat and pose a fire hazard. As part of this recall, NVIDIA will be replacing the tablet.

NVIDIA is asking customers to submit a claim for a replacement device. NVIDIA is also asking consumers to stop using the recalled tablet, except as needed to participate in the recall and back up data. Consumers will receive a replacement tablet after registering to participate in the recall.

The recall does not affect any other NVIDIA products.

NVIDIA is coordinating with appropriate governmental agencies to ensure that the recall follows established industry practices.

Return Process
 

Follow these instructions to see if your tablet is included in this recall.

Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah Just Got Indicted. Here's What He's Accused Of.

The Department of Justice finally makes its move, after years of circling the Pennsylvania Democrat.

By Russ Choma

Matt Rourke/AP

The Department of Justice dropped 29 federal racketeering charges on Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) and a handful of close associates this morning, claiming that he diverted campaign and charitable funds to cover the cost of a failed mayoral run and to pay off his son's student loans. Investigators have been circling Chattah for years. Last year, a top aide pleaded guilty to helping Fattah divert the money towards his son's student loan debt, and Fattah's son is awaiting trial on federal charges of his own in connection to the scheme.

Fattah is the second Democratic member of Congress to be indicted on corruption charges by the Department of Justice this year. New Jersey's Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted in April, stemming from accusations he helped a campaign donor obtain benefits from the federal government in exchange for favors. Fattah, who was first elected in 1995, is the third sitting member of Congress to be indicted on corruption charges in the last two years. Former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), who represented Staten Island, was charged with fraud and tax evasion in April 2014 and was sentenced to eight months in prison earlier this month.

In this case, Fattah and his associates face a slew of charges, including mail fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. In announcing the charges, the DOJ assembled a laundry list of alleged misdeeds, including:

• Using a secret $1 million loan from a wealthy supporter to back his 2007 run for mayor of Philadelphia.
• Repaying the donor's loan through a nonprofit Fattah controlled that had received funding from the federal government.
• Attempting to steer a $15 million federal grant to a political consultant who Fattah's campaign owed $130,000.
• Using campaign funds to pay a consulting company, which then paid off $23,000 in  student loans for Fattah's son.
• Taking an $18,000 bribe from an associate in exchange for attempting to secure him an ambassadorship and masking the bribe in the form of a fake car sale.

Fattah and his alleged co-conspirators could face decades in prison if convicted.

Fattah represents Pennsylvania's 2nd congressional district, an overwhelmingly Democratic district that encompasses much of the city of Philadelphia and its close suburbs. Despite his son's indictment and the guilty plea by his aide last summer, Fattah easily won reelection last fall with 88 percent of the vote.

Despite Recent Scientific Findings On Dangers of GMO's, U.S. House Passes DARK Act

By Ernest A. Canning

By a vote of 275-150 (including the support of 45 Democrats), the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Safe and Accurate Food Act" this past week.

Don't be fooled by the name.

The Act, which would prevent state and local governments from mandating the labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs), has alternatively been described by opponents as the "Deny Americans the Right to Know" or "DARK Act", as well as the "Monsanto Protection Act".

Disturbingly, the House vote comes on the heels of a new, peer-reviewed scientific report finding an "accumulation of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, and a dramatic depletion of glutathione, an anti-oxidant necessary for cellular detoxification, in GMO soy, indicating that formaldehyde and glutathione are likely critical criteria for distinguishing the GMO from its non-GMO counterpart."

The study, published in Agricultural Sciences this month, used "a new biology method to integrate 6,497 in vitro and in vivo laboratory experiments, from 184 scientific institutions, across 23 countries." It is critical of the U.S. government's current standard for GMO assessment which, the report concludes, are "outdated and unscientific for genetically engineered food since it was originally developed for assessing the safety of medical devices in the 1970's."

Peer review of the study cited its new methods and findings to conclude that "until such Standards are developed for testing, we believe it premature to approve GMOs and to consider them safe." The study's lead author, MIT-trained biologist Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D, adds: "This is not a pro- or anti-GMO question. But, are we following the scientific method to ensure the safety of our food supply? Right now, the answer is 'no'."

The Environmental Working Group (EWG), one of 300 organizations opposing the "DARK Act", has vowed to fight the measure in the U.S. Senate.

Although the legislation would deprive U.S. citizens of a right to know possessed by citizens in 64 other nations including China and most of Europe, there is a silver lining, of sorts. No doubt final passage would furnish comedian Bill Maher with the material needed to repeat the hilarity he offered following California's rejection of a GMO labeling initiative last year.

"If you’re one of the millions of Californians who voted against labeling genetically modified foods," Maher said, "you can’t complain when it turns out there’s horse meat in your hamburger and your sushi is made out of lost cats and condoms. You said you didn’t want to know. Now lap that shit up!"
* * * Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam Vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). Follow him on Twitter: @cann4ing.

Latest National Poll Shows Bernie Sanders Beating Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush

Polling on both sides shows voters are not happy with the status quo.

By Zaid Jilani 

Of all of the arguments the Democratic establishment has thrown out against the Bernie Sanders candidacy, perhaps the most reoccurring one revolves around electability. “Sure, you agree with him,” they argue, “but he can't win.”

A just released CNN poll finds Sanders out-polling all of the GOP's major candidates, though pretty much tied with Jeb Bush. Here's how Sanders stacks up:

SANDERS: 48%
BUSH: 47%

SANDERS: 48%
WALKER: 42%

SANDERS: 59%
TRUMP: 38%

If you limit the poll sample to just registered voters, Bush defeats Sanders by a single point.

Either way, this credible poll suggests that Sanders is not just some pie in the sky general election candidate. His more uphill battle may be the primary. But even there, he has some strengths. Polling out last week shows he's the only candidate from either side who has a net favorability rating.

For the Republicans, too, the race is being turned upside down. Celebrity billionaire Donald Trump is now beating his rivals in national polls – the aforementioned CNN poll has him at 18 percent to Jeb Bush's 15 percent. In the state polling, Trump is the leader in New Hampshire in the Marist poll, at 21 percent with Jeb Bush at only 14 percent. In Iowa, Trump is at 17 percent and Scott Walker is at 19 percent.

The race on both sides is slowly in the process of being turned on its head – a sign that voters are frustrated at the status quo.

Obligatory Donald Trump Cartoon

Jeb Bush Is Flirting With Disaster: Why His Latest Anti-Medicare Fearmongering Could Sink His Campaign

Much of the GOP base loves medicare. Bush should tread lightly.

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

 

It’s been a good week for economic reports. For example, we heard that the jobless claims for June were lower than they’ve been in 40 years. Take it from someone who remembers 1975 — it was a long time ago. The job market is finally looking up. And we also found out that Medicare is on stronger footing than anyone could have imagined just a few years ago. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones wrote it up:

Ten years ago, Medicare was a runaway freight train. Spending was projected to increase indefinitely, rising to 13 percent of GDP by 2080. This year, spending is projected to slow down around 2040, and reaches only 6 percent of GDP by 2090.

Six percent! That’s half what we thought a mere decade ago. If that isn’t spectacular, I don’t know what is.

Drum points out that this is largely being driven by the fact that medical costs overall have slowed dramatically. This is due to a number of factors, but one of the most significant has to be the Affordable Care Act’s cuts to provider payments, which you will certainly recall had the Republicans whirling like tops with claims that President Obama was planning to turn the elderly into Soylent Green — or submit them to ghoulish “death panels” at the very least. It was one of the primary motivating factors that drove the white elderly Republican base to invade town hall meetings by the hundreds and storm the voting booths in November of 2010 to decimate the Democratic congressional majority.

Ads like these ran all over the nation:

Republicans have run similar ads in every election since. Indeed, it’s their most potent argument against Obamacare. And there’s been every reason to believe that the Republicans would use this message again in 2016. After all, the Medicare constituency is their bread and butter, and they are, quite reasonably, protective of the program. They may selfishly not want anyone else to have health care but they damned sure want to make sure that seniors have the program. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, the elderly have a lot of health problems. It has always made perfect sense for the GOP to demagogue any and all changes to the program.

This represented a very dramatic change in the demographic make-up of the two parties. Since their inception in the New Deal and Great Societies, Social Security and Medicare had made loyal Democratic voters out of the elderly. They were fiercely protective of the programs and the Republicans were caught by the trap their ideology forced them into. Ronald Reagan’s GOP may have looked congenial to many older people — but they knew that he wanted to end the programs that made it possible for them to live with dignity in their old age. So when they heard his famous recording railing against Medicare — in which he said,”one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project, most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it” — it sounded abstract and irrelevant to their very practical needs. (Not to mention obtuse; a medical program is a humanitarian project.) It’s likely that many of them were just as staunchly anti-communist and anti-statist as Reagan, but few were willing to die prematurely to make that particular political point.

In the late 1980's, when a virulent strain of deficit fever invaded the swamps around the nation’s capital, the government raised premiums on Medicare to provide some new coverage that many people didn’t need and which didn’t cover the one thing they need need, long term care. Seniors rebelled and they rebelled vociferously:

This summer’s bitter struggle over the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 has damaged the credibility of one of the nation`s largest lobbies, both in Congress and among the 28 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons.
From his retirement home in Las Vegas, Daniel Hawley, a 64-year-old former airline pilot, has helped organize the stunning grass-roots protest that has shaken AARP and pushed this largest expansion of Medicare benefits to the brink of congressional repeal.
“They thought retired people were sitting around doing their ceramics and their little aerobics classes in senior centers and wouldn’t give any fight,” said Hawley. “Well, they found out differently.”

Indeed they did. This infamous (and hilarious) video of seniors chasing the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means committee perfectly captures the power the medicare constituency has over the U.S. Government:

They repealed the law in November 1989.

For a lot of reasons, older people began to vote for Republicans over the ensuing couple of decades. But the “Mediscare” campaigns continued to have potency for the Democrats. It wasn’t until they came up with the Obamacare scare ads that the Republicans were able to turn the argument back on the Democrats. And it worked beautifully. It was a strong motivation for seniors to turn out in both recent mid-term elections, and while it wasn’t enough to offset the Obama coalition’s turn out in presidential years, it undoubtedly helped keep elderly white people in the Republican column. It’s a darned good strategy.

So, what in the world is Jeb Bush up to? Has he been asleep for the past three election cycles? Did somebody forget to tell him that old white people are the GOP’s most loyal voters and the new scheme is to say you’re saving Medicare? He must not have gotten the memo because he’s just spent the last couple of days telling audiences that Medicare is on its last legs and will have to be killed in favor of some new program, which will probably be along the lines of Paul Ryan’s “shop for health care ’til you drop” voucher proposal.

Get a load of this commentary he made at a Koch Brothers sponsored Americans for Prosperity event on Wednesday:

“The left needs to join the conversation, but they haven’t. I mean, when [Rep. Paul Ryan] came up with, one of his proposals as it relates to Medicare, the first thing I saw was a TV ad of a guy that looked just like Paul Ryan … that was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. That’s their response.

“And I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”

That’s the kind of braindead doofus “policy” talk you might expect from Donald Trump, not one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination. Sure, he uses some weasel words about fulfilling the commitment to people “who’ve already received benefits, are receiving the benefits,” but he apparently didn’t get the other memo that says seniors don’t buy that line when Republicans say it about Social Security, and they aren’t going to buy it when they say it about Medicare.

The idea of telling anyone that the program “must be phased out” for something “new” because they’re not going to have anything is just daft. Even Paul Ryan’s privatization plans never said that he planned to phase out the most popular health care program in America (even though he did plan exactly that). Even more daft is the idea that Bush would say this at a time when the projections for Medicare solvency are, as Kevin Drum said, “spectacular.”

But Jeb didn’t misspeak. He meant it.  He actually doubled down on that claim in New Hampshire yesterday, saying “we have a Medicare program that’s not going to be around 30 years from now in form that is.” Apparently, the last time he looked at the numbers was back when  he was stumping for his brother in 2004. Somebody needs to fill him in on what’s been happening in the last decade.

Once again, you see the Republicans stuck in their ideological corner. Medicare costs are leveling out and there is no crisis in funding it. The people who have Medicare love it. In fact, they love it so much that they irrationally oppose anyone else having something like it to prevent their beloved program from somehow being diluted. Republicans have struggled with this problem for a long time: They just do not believe in government health care, no matter how well it works.

But they had, for a time, found a way to finesse that by saying the Democrats were threatening their program by giving similar health care to other people. It was a sweet obfuscation that played into everyone’s worst instincts. It was conservative perfection. Jeb, however, seems to be stuck in 2005, when George W. made his kamikaze attempt to destroy Social Security. And we know what happened in 2006. 

Has anyone told Jeb that when he left office his brother had a 25 percent approval rating?  It’s probably not a great idea to remind people of why that happened.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.