Old Link Bundle: More Trumpiness

 My tabs are REALLY piling up...

A reminder that Trump has been using government agents to target opposition protests long before the current BLM protests.

"Mr. Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it," 2019 style.

And again. And again.

Remember, Trump's cabinet is just as corrupt and incompetent as he is.

 Reminders that Trump wants to shut down all immigration except rich white people permanently, law be damned: here, here.

Reminders that Trump loves him some white supremacist terrorists: here, here.

Reminders that Trump is himself a white supremacist: here, here. And that he surrounds himself with white supremacists and does nothing about them: here.

Trump on health care: let the corporations run wild, stick you with the bill. Hell, he even wants that to be the case in England.

Reminders that Trump is wholly corrupt not just morally but financially: here, here.

Reminder that Trump believes it's all right for him to make doing his job conditional on electoral support: here. 

Reminders that Trump's tax plan was designed specifically only to benefit people like himself: here, here.

Reminders that Trump uses his power to deliberately cover up his own scandals: here, here.

Reminders that Trump hates the poor: here, here, here.

Reminders that Trump is loading the federal courts with bigots and corrupt dealers wholly unqualified for their roles: here.

Reminder that Trump is absolutely incompetent at foreign policy: here. 

Reminder that Trump believes loyalty goes only one way: here.

Reminder that there is zero evidence that Trump will relinquish power voluntarily: here.

And, finally, reminders that Republicans and conservatives won't lift a finger to stop Trump: here. 

Because they had the chance to stop Trump once, for these reasons, and for others, and chose not to.

Because Trump is exactly what Republicans, as a group, are.

It's Not Just Trump: GOP Link Bundle

A reminder that there's a lot more evil in the Republican Party than just Trump...

A reminder that over a hundred GOP representatives backed the end of Net Neutrality... but none opposed it. (And bonus reminder: they generated millions of fake pro-repeal comments to astroturf support for the repeal.)

Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House, and all around Ayn Rand worshipping, Social Security cutting asshole.

The Republican Party is the party of choice for modern white supremacists arming for civil war- and they have the help of elected Republicans

Nepotism? It's the conservative way.

In Arkansas, they expect poor students to make bricks without straw

This despite the fact that studies show students learn better when they don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

Republicans see no problem in taking a public good and making it literally private property.

Money, blackmail and corruption- business as usual if you want to be Trump's toady.

Steven Menachi, white nationalist and homophobe, is a federal appeals justice now not just because Trump appointed him, but because fifty-one Republicans endorsed him. And he's not even remotely alone.

Republicans will admit that their leader committed crimes... and then acquit him.

And, finally, a reminder that, if these trends are not reversed, our fate will be that of the Weimar Republic.

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Link Bundle #5

Onwards.

"What you’re looking at here is a directed campaign of information warfare."  - True, and we now know a large part of that is a coordinated global destabilization campaign directed from Russia. But Russia is only one part, not even close to the main part, of a steady campaign of paranoia and conspiracy theory deliberately spread by the right in America. Limbaugh, Hannity and the like spread it. The Religious Right spreads it. Hell, this has been a thing since slaveowners claimed northern preachers were coming south to encourage violent slave revolts. There's a large part of America primed to believe in any conspiracy if the theory comes from the right source... and our president, as Mr. Wright points out, is one such person, easy for anybody to manipulate.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Republicans know Trump's racist, fascist followers are the true GOP base voters. That's why they're running scared.

Since this article ran, you can add a #7: all Republican incumbents (except Ted Cruz).

Trump leadership in action. (Bonus points for having Isaac "Girls Ruin Comics" Perlmutter as an advisor.)

More leadership in action. (Nothing seems to have come of this yet.)

One of many consequences of Trump's victory: a new FCC chair who seeks to dismantle Net Neutrality, remove all regulation from telecommunications, and prevent any effective enforcement of regulations not yet removed. Of course, he has allies in Congress.

We already know about Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Stephen Miller, (more on Miller) among others. Now meet Michael Anton, yet another racist and bigoted White House inner advisor. What does it say about Trump himself that he routinely and consistently gathers people like this to him? (To say nothing of his supporters, who are openly and shamelessly racist.)

Here was the first sign that the Trump administration didn't give a rat's ass about cybersecurity- especially not its own. Far from the last.

How Trump's America looks from outside the US and from the perspective of European history.

 Yet another observation of a basic truth: back in the 1980s we had all sorts of dystopian futures warning us of the consequences of conservative economic policies. And the conservatives took those movies and books as HOW-TO guides.

Conservatives are cowards. Evidence. Evidence.

A very rare case of justice. (And this sort of thing is why Richard Spencer tells his lie that he advocates "non-violent" ethnic cleansing.)

Another rare case of justice. If Kennedy retires while Trump retains power, we can kiss this kind of justice goodbye in favor of Roberts and Gorsuch's white supremacy.

I've read many Democratic Party fans saying that Bernie Sanders is nothing but a glory hog, finding any pulpit he can to extend his fifteen minutes of fame. Possibly. But what he's doing, EVERY GODDAMN DEMOCRAT OUGHT TO BE DOING, here and here and elsewhere. A politician unwilling to fight for what he or she believes in is worthless.

And that's all for today.

Oh, it is ON now.

He opposes prosecutions for torture, and has gone out of his way to make sure those who committed, ordered, or enabled torture never face justice.

He opposes restrictions on executive power, defending warrantless wiretaps and other searches and maintaining the imprisonment of accused terrorists without legal recourse. Apparently forever.

He opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians. I mean, really, REALLY opposes equal rights.

He killed the public option and instituted the same individual mandate he promised during the campaign would never be a part of his health care reform.

He opposes immigration reform.

He punishes people who tried to stop the federal government from breaking the law.

He opposes separation of church and state.

He supports the continuation of the failed and counterproductive war on drugs.

In addition to all that, he effectively killed American manned spaceflight for the foreseeable future once the Shuttle shuts down; he pulled the plug on hydrogen energy research in favor of more ethanol, nuclear, and above all offshore oil drilling; and, as a matter of routine, he surrenders to Republicans on drafting legislation, on nominations to office, and on procedure.

And now the man Obama picked to run the FCC is going to cave in on net neutrality- basically allowing the big telecoms, the same ones Obama let off the hook for helping Bush break the law and spy on you and me, to control what you see on the Internet.

The author of the above article has even more to say elsewhere, according to ZDNet:

We simply cannot believe that Julius Genachowski would consider going down this path. Failing to reclassify broadband means the FCC is abandoning the signature communications and technology issues of the Obama administration. Such a decision would destroy Net Neutrality. It would deeply undermine the FCC’s ability to ensure universal Internet access for rural, low-income and disabled Americans. It will undermine the FCC’s ability to protect consumers from price-gouging and invasions of privacy.

If Chairman Genachowski fails to re-establish the FCC authority to protect Internet users, he will be allowing companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to slow down, block or censor content at will. They can block any website, any blog post, any tweet, any outreach by a political campaign — and the FCC would be powerless to stop them. Without reclassification, nearly every broadband-related decision the agency makes from here forward will be aggressively challenged in court, and the FCC will likely lose. The phone and cable companies know this, which is why they’re going all out to keep the FCC from doing so.

Genachowski should not buckle to phone and cable industry pressure, but it will take courage to stand up to one of the biggest lobbying juggernauts in Washington. It’s not too late — and the public is watching. This decision facing the FCC chairman is about more than one single issue, or even a broken promise to the American people. If the FCC fails to stand with the public, it will be the end of the Internet as we know it.

But he will cave- under, no doubt, direct orders from his boss.

If I had wanted Republican policies, I would have voted for John McCain.

But no- I voted for Barack Obama...

... a mistake I will never, ever make again.

Post-Convention Cull Day

Wow, a LOT apparently happened while I was busy at, or recovering from, the convention I worked at this past weekend. Too much for me to keep track of, or research, or comment in detail on.

So... it's Cull Day!

First off: Oklahoma becomes the first state to begin organizing its secessionist army.

Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

. . .

"Is it scary? It sure is," said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?"

Incidentally, folks, it should be borne in mind that, just before the Civil War, most newspapers in the South were agents of the fire-eating secessionist wing of the Democratic Party, deliberately ginning up fear, hatred and paranoia among their readership. Today... we have Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, NewsMax.com, Drudge, National Review... so, yeah.

The Tea Parties are trying to unite... except, well, it's only those tea party groups funded and run by Republican Party activists that are uniting:

Mark Skoda, a Tea Party leader from Memphis (and a founder of the recent Tea Party Convention), is serving as the chief spokesman for the effort, and appears to have played a leading role in putting it together. Skoda, working closely with Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, had helped organize and promote February's convention, at which Sarah Palin delivered the keynote speech and which enjoyed widespread media coverage. Also part of the new coalition is the Tea Party Express, the brainchild of a team of California Republican political consultants.

But one prominent group, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP), doesn't appear to be joining the party. Jenny Beth Martin, a leader of TPP noted to TPMmuckraker that her group already considers itself the largest grassroots Tea Party organization, and said it hadn't been involved in planning the new federation. TPP had also stayed away from February's convention.

It should be noted that Tea Party Nation is the group founded and led by former Republican leader Dick Armey. This is a clear case of the Republican Party trying- and failing- to co-opt the teabaggers, who are definitely much more radical and bigoted than the national average. Even Fox News is calling the teabaggers out on their lunacy, now that they realize they won't be controlled.

Even as Virginia Governor McConnell apologizes and backtracks on his leaving slavery out of the Civil War, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour brushes slavery off as unimportant:

CROWLEY: You know what I'm trying to get at here is that there's a sort of feeling that this is insensitive. But you clearly don't agree?

BARBOUR: To me, it's a sort of feeling that it's a nit, that it is not significant, that it's not a -- it's trying to make a big deal out of something doesn't amount to diddly.

So, yeah: slavery was wrong, "everybody knows that," but apparently it wasn't important at all to the Confederacy. Riiiiight.

Matthew Yglesias cuts right to the heart of both the Republican desire to celebrate the CSA, and the core of teabagger support:

... something that links the mentality of today’s right to the mentality of the slaveowners and segregation proponents is the white southern political tradition’s very partial and selective embrace of majoritarian democracy. As long as national institutions are substantially controlled by white southerners, the white south is a hotbed of patriotism. But as soon as an non-southern political coalition manages to win an election—as we saw in 1860 and in 2008—then suddenly the symbols of national authority become symbols of tyranny and the constitution is construed as granting conservative areas all kinds of alleged abilities to opt out of national political decisions. Even if you think opposition to the Affordable Care Act has nothing whatsoever to do with race, the underlying political philosophy by which a George W Bush or James Buchanan is a national president but an Abraham Lincoln or a Barack Obama merely a sectional one remains incoherent and pernicious.

Meanwhile, if you haven't had enough reminders of innate Republican evil, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff in the State Department, testified that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld knew full well they were imprisoning- and torturing- innocent people in Guantanamo and elsewhere:

I came to understand that there were several different reasons for the refusal to release detainees in Guantánamo, even those who were likely innocent. These reasons continued to the time of my departure from the Department of State in 2005. At least part of the problem was that it was politically impossible to release them. The concern expressed was that if they were released to another country... the leadership of the Defense Department would be left without any plausible explanation to the American people...

. . .

Another part of the political dilemma originated in the Office of Vice President Richard B. Cheney, whose position could be summed up as “the end justifies the means”, and who had absolutely no concern that the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent, or that there was a lack of any useable evidence for the great majority of them. If hundreds of innocent individuals had to suffer in order to detain a handful of hardcore terrorists, so be it. That seemed to be the philosophy that ruled in the Vice President’s Office.

Of course, with Dawn Johnsen's nomination to the Office of Legal Counsel scuttled, the last faint hope of Obama ever following up on this testimony has long since flown away.

And finally, a recent federal court ruling puts a major kink in plans for net neutrality regulations. That said, it was almost certainly the right ruling:

If “ancillary jurisdiction” is enough for net neutrality regulations (something we might like) today, it could just as easily be invoked tomorrow for any other Internet regulation that the FCC dreams up (including things we won’t like). For example, it doesn't take much imagination to envision a future FCC "Internet Decency Statement." After all, outgoing FCC Chairman Martin was a crusader against "indecency" on the airwaves and it was the FCC that punished Pacifica radio for playing George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” monologue, something you can easily find on the Internet.

Of course, this ruling can- and probably will- lead to more direct and stringent regulation of telecoms and internet providers by the FCC, since they won't be allowed to do spot-checks on egregious incidents. This issue is by no means settled.

Cull Day, After a Long Time

My web browser's running slow, possibly due to all the news articles I've been holding onto the past few days. Let's get rid of some of those, shall we?

First, Hillary Clinton. The last couple days Hillary has been singing John Edwards' praises, but it's worth remembering that the Clinton campaign ran negative robo-calls the day of the South Carolina primaries. Granted, I agree with the content of the calls: I'm glad as hell John "Got Rich on Malpractice Suits Using Junk Science" Edwards is out of the race. But the transcript of these calls shows more and more what kind of people the Clintons are: burn your bridges now, mend them later after the battle's won. I'm hoping that Obama represents a bridge too far...

The rump FEC commission rules that two people pooling their money to attend a political convention or do anything else constitute a PAC... and thus must file with the FEC and abide by spending and donation limits and reporting. Thank God the Democrats are blocking four replacement members of the FEC against Bush's board-packing scheme, otherwise this piece of garbage would actually act as law. As it is, this ruling would quite effectively prevent any new or small groups from getting anywhere in the political arena, while old established PACs and the two big political parties can keep trundling on. Anyone who thinks the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act was a good idea and that "public funding" of elections is a better one, beware... this is what your policies result in- the silencing of individual free speech.

You've probably heard this one again and again... Bush Administration Lied Nearly 1,000 Times About Iraq. My response: no shit, Sherlock.

Ezra Klien debunks Republican claims that the Bush years have been good for the economy. In truth, Dubya, who claims an economic record "other Presidents would envy", only beats out his father. All other Presidents back to JFK had greater economic growth in their Presidencies... even Jimmy Carter. (Shocker: Carter had the same rate of economic growth in his Presidency- four years- that Reagan had in his Presidency- eight years.)

The day after the State of the Union, the Bush administration kills the largest clean-coal experimental project. Apparent reason: the FutureGen project had chosen a site in Illinois for construction... rather than any of several proposed sites in Texas. Irony: this was done the day after Bush said, on worldwide television, that America needed to invest in new, experimental clean-coal technology. Apparently not unless those investments benefit Bush's buddies, huh?

Well, that seems to have sped up my browser. Let's look through a few of the O-L-D news bookmarks from last year and see if there's anything I can dispose of, hm?

From May of last year: Jim MacDonald writes about how the FBI and CIA actually creates domestic terror cells. Specifically, he talks about how agents act as provaceteurs and encourage nitwits to become terrorists for the promise of money. As soon as the nitwits begin botching together a plan- usually with the help of those undercover FBI agents- the Feds bust them, then brag about how they're protecting us from those evil horrible Islamo-fascists. And this helps us remain secure... how?

As was mentioned by Hillary Clinton last night- so this is still current eight months after this was written- the Pentagon has drawn up no contingency plans for leaving Iraq. They have contingency plans to invade Canada, in the event that a communist beaver regime takes over in Ottawa, but they're not even considering getting out of a nation which, more and more, is expressing its wish to be shed of us.

Jack Markowitz writes that we already have socialized medicine on the state level: the wasteful bureaucratic morass that is Medicaid. Although a ton of people are technically eligible, the paperwork requirement to prove you qualify is enormous... and yet the states, in particular Texas, have funded and expanded the program until it constitutes between a quarter and a third of all state budgets. All, according to Markowitz, in order to get votes and Federal matching funds. There may be an argument in favor of national health care, but Medicaid certainly isn't it.

One of the bad laws that passed the Texas legislature last year: now, if fifteen or more students request a bible study class, your local school district must provide it. Don't know if Perry signed it, but I don't see him not signing it, to be honest. There's no guarantee that the "religious studies" classes won't be used for Christian prosletyzing... and considering my home state, every reason to expect they WILL be used that way.

And finally... some of the richest people in the new Internet economy got that way by cyber-squatting. Have you ever typed in a URL and got, instead of what you expected, a page full of spam ads? These are the guys responsible. The leader, Kevin Ham, makes no bones about his plans: he wants to be one of a handful of people to control the Internet. It's time to drop a heavy boot on cybersquatting and misleading URLs and reopen domain name registry to the common man.

That's plenty of trouble for now...

Immunity for Spying Telecoms: Not Just to Cover Bush's Ass

Tomorrow debate resumes on the new FISA bill to replace the Protect America Act, which expires Friday. The Protect America Act, if you didn't know, gave George W. Bush six months of authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps on American citizens for whatever reason he sees fit to give. George W. Bush has promised to veto any replacement bill which does not give immunity from lawsuit to any of the telecomm companies who have cooperated with the Bush Administration in the spy operation during the period when it was NOT authorized by the Protect America Act- when, in short, it was a blatant violation of the FISA laws and the Fourth Amendment.

The odds are very good that the Democrats will fragment, with enough crossing the aisle to give the President what he wants rather than be seen as "weak on terrorism."

It's been said time and again by the pundits that the lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and other telecomm corporations are pretty much the last chance to find the smoking gun to prove George W. Bush's criminal activity as President. As such, the Bush White House wants immunity for one purpose: to prevent their lord and master from being impeached while in office or prosecuted in criminal court once out of office.

But this new item out Friday opens up a new aspect of this scandal. It seems AT&T wants to spy on its users' Internet use for its own purposes- not for any national security advantage.

Consider: what happens if the immunity provisions are passed intact by the Senate, as they already have been in the House version of the bill? The immunity won't just be retroactive- it'll be total. Congress will make it impossible for anyone to sue to prevent their Internet provider or the telecomm corporation that owns any part of the network from violating their privacy. The telecomms will be able to monitor all Internet traffic for content- the first vital step on the road to regulating and censoring the Internet for content.

This is by no means new. Recently retired AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, who once told stockholders he intended to re-create the old Ma Bell monopoly on all electronic communications, made clear his wishes to screen out content providers who didn't pay a toll for access to AT&T users. His replacement, Randall Stephenson, is even more determined to make his wires pay-for-play. Whitacre, as CEO of AT&T, was a major supporter of Bush and the Republican Party. The ultimate goal, of course, is to return the Internet to its pre-1995 state: domination by a handful of online companies with limited services, content strictly controlled by those services, and virtually no crossover from one service to another.

Heretofore their efforts have been stymied by Net Neutrality activists, the remnants of common-carrier laws (gutted by Bush and his Republican Congress), and certain of their Internet competition such as Google. The lawsuits pending over the illegal NSA spying program, if they end in defeat for the telcomms, could set the firm precedent that telecomms have no right to restrict content on their networks, any more than they have the right to eavesdrop on private telephone calls.

Such rulings wouldn't just cost the telcomms massive amounts of money in damages. They wouldn't just expose George W. Bush for the lying, power-mad dictator he is. They would knock the idea of an Internet censored by corporate extortion and intimidation in the head, kill it deader than the XFL.

So count on the telecomms to lean heavily on every candidate they've donated campaign funds to, and don't count on them to settle out of court if they lose their fight in the Senate. This isn't just about politics: this is about naked, boundless greed.