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FOCUS: What to Expect From These Final 48 Hours |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Monday, 07 November 2016 11:45 |
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Pierce writes: "I would guess the last 48 hours is going to be a frenzy of leaks, counter-leaks, charges, counter-charges, and energetic ratfcking of the professional and amateur varieties, all over a bullshit issue that never should have lasted longer than a single news cycle."
James Comey. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
What to Expect From These Final 48 Hours
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
07 November 16
Leaks, counter-leaks, charges, counter-charges, ratf*cking, etc.
 arly Sunday evening, as I was driving back from Harrisburg, Democracy left a voicemail on my cellphone. (I do not talk while I'm driving because I am a good little do-bee.) This was Democracy's message:
"Jesus H. Christ on a junket to the Northern Marianas, tell James Comey to stop trying to do me any favors."
On Sunday night, Comey, who at this point is wandering around the 2016 election like that guy in The Stand who drives into Vegas atop the nuclear missile, announced publicly that the FBI's inquiry into the new trove of e-mails has produced pretty much the same sizzling nothingburger that we've all been fed since the Illegal Private Server first hit the news. Via The Washington Post:
I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton's use of a personal email server. Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process. we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.
This all started with Comey's ill-considered passive-aggressive press conference last July, where he went out of his way to rip Hillary Rodham Clinton a new eye socket for all manner of recklessness and carelessness but, then, insisted that there was no crime there to prosecute. That bit of bureaucratic weirdness set off the subsequent chain of events. Nine days ago, Comey wrote that bizarre letter about this new trove of e-mails, which pretty much blew up the last two weeks of the campaign, turning it into a she-said-he-ranted affair.
Now, just as the whole thing seemed to be dying down in the final 48 hours of the campaign, here comes Comey again, talking about e-mails and announcing that, once again, he declines to prosecute the woman who likely will be the next President of the United States. What a guy.
During his long Sunday night ride on the midnight train to crazy, Donald Trump predictably lit the facts on fire and stuffed them down his pants. Assuming that he was speaking to an audience of not very bright people beamed in from 1973, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago explained that cyberspace is an airless realm in which nobody who's smarter than him can exist. From Bloomberg:
"You can't review 650,000 emails in eight days," Trump said Sunday in a campaign speech in Michigan hours after Comey's latest update to Congress came out. "You can't do it, folks. Hillary Clinton is guilty."
God, he thinks they're stupid.
But fortunately for Comey's eyesight—and for Clinton's presidential campaign—Trump is wrong: the FBI can review hundreds of thousands of emails in a week, using automated search and filtering tools rather than Lynn's absurd notion of Comey reading the documents manually. "This is not rocket science," says Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensics expert who's consulted for law enforcement and worked as a systems administrator. "Eight days is more than enough time to pull this off in a responsible way." One former FBI forensics expert even tells WIRED he's personally assessed far larger collections of data, far faster. "You can triage a dataset like this in a much shorter amount of time," says the former agent, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid any political backlash. "We'd routinely collect terabytes of data in a search. I'd know what was important before I left the guy's house."
OK, we'll leave how nervous this makes me in general for another day. (Like, say, Wednesday.) But, for the moment, we'll leave it here as proof that there's another entire field of knowledge in which Trump doesn't know dick. But, as far as Comey goes, he can't get out of his own way.
First of all, Comey devalued any decision not to prosecute back in July, when he seemed to run down a list of all the reasons why he should. (This got him hauled up before congressional committees full of the likes of Jason Chaffetz.) Second, the one thing that the Clinton campaign doesn't need at this point is any news report containing the words "e-mail," "investigation," "FBI," and "prosecute." Because American politics is fcked beyond all recall at this point, clearing HRC of this ginned-up nonsense is probably the worst thing Comey could do.
I would almost guarantee that this will re-ignite the rump faction of the FBI over which Comey demonstrably has no control. So, I would guess, the last 48 hours is going to be a frenzy of leaks, counter-leaks, charges, counter-charges, and energetic ratfcking of the professional and amateur varieties, all over a bullshit issue that never should have lasted longer than a single news cycle. Somebody get Comey off the warhead before he hurts somebody.
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Saving Private Clinton |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=63"><span class="small">Marc Ash, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Monday, 07 November 2016 08:58 |
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Ash writes: "Like it or not, we are on a mission to save Private Clinton. Succeed we must."
Tom Hanks playing Captain Miller in the movie, Saving Private Ryan. (image: Saving Private Ryan)
Saving Private Clinton
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
07 November 16
 teven Spielberg, in his epic World War II saga Saving Private Ryan, painted a stark portrait of men under fire, raw human drama, tragedy, and a reaffirmation of life amid the hell-on-earth that enveloped mankind in the mid-20th century.
The plot revolves around Army Private James Ryan, one of four brothers serving in the war. All of Ryan’s siblings have been killed in action. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, played by Harve Presnell, orders that Ryan be located somewhere in the sprawling war-torn region and kept from harm, so that his mother might have one son left alive.
In texturizing his characters, Spielberg explores the emotional conflicts that the mission lays bare. Not all the men under Tom Hanks’ character Captain Miller are thrilled with the idea of being behind Nazi lines to save one man.
Private Reiben, played by Edward Burns, sums it up in this line from the movie: “You wanna explain the math of this to me? I mean, where’s the sense of riskin’ the lives of the eight of us to save one guy?” In fact by story’s end, most, including Miller, would be dead. Ryan however would indeed be saved.
Not everyone on America’s left is thrilled with saving Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Some of the troops are in fact in open rebellion. Clinton seeks not the role of a mere private but rather that of Commander in Chief. Nonetheless, if she is to assume that role rather than Donald J. Trump, then she and her candidacy must now be saved, in significant measure by her critics on the left who still have deep doubts.
The alternative is risking a repeat of the Bush years, this time with someone perhaps even more reckless at the helm. While Clinton appears to have her own fascination with militarism, she is by orders of magnitude better prepared, more stable, and better disciplined.
Like it or not, we are on a mission to save Private Clinton. Succeed we must.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Anti-Abortion Activists Are Trying to Oust State Judges Who Voted for Abortion Rights |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38548"><span class="small">Mark Joseph Stern, Slate</span></a>
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Monday, 07 November 2016 08:55 |
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Stern writes: "This election cycle, anti-abortion activists have launched a campaign urging voters to vote against those judges who ruled in favor of abortion rights - and to vote in favor of retaining judges who ruled against abortion rights."
Pro-choice advocates and anti-abortion advocates rally outside of the Supreme Court, March 2, 2016 in Washington, DC. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Anti-Abortion Activists Are Trying to Oust State Judges Who Voted for Abortion Rights
By Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
07 November 16
 o the great detriment of our judicial system, a majority of states put their judges up for a vote—many in retention elections, which allow voters to periodically expel from the bench judges whose rulings they oppose. Retention elections were used most infamously in 2010, when conservatives led a successful campaign to oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices who overturned the state’s same-sex marriage ban—and, before that, California Supreme Court justices who restricted capital punishment. Now anti-abortion activists are using the same strategy in an effort to remove state Supreme Court justices in Kansas and Alaska who voted in favor of abortion rights. The tactic remains underhanded and nasty; unfortunately, it may also prove to be effective.
Kansas is an abortion rights battleground. In 2015, the state banned the safest and most common procedure used to abort pre-viable fetuses in the second trimester. A state judge blocked the law from taking effect, holding that the Kansas Constitution protects a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy before viability. An appeals court affirmed that ruling; the issue is now pending for the state’s relatively independent Supreme Court. This election cycle, anti-abortion activists have launched a campaign urging voters to vote against those judges who ruled in favor of abortion rights—and to vote in favor of retaining judges who ruled against abortion rights. The campaign’s goal is to rid the Kansas judiciary of judges whose judicial philosophies include support for women’s bodily autonomy, including the right to terminate a pregnancy.
A similar crusade is under way in Alaska. In July, the state Supreme Court struck down a law requiring minors to notify their parents before obtaining an abortion, holding that it violated the state constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. Two justices who voted to invalidate the parental notification law face retention elections this year. Alaska Family Council, a conservative organization that opposes abortion rights, is imploring voters to remove both justices from the bench, insisting that their “judicial philosophies” render them unfit for service.
Nonpartisan groups like the Alaska Judicial Council argue that judges shouldn’t be removed from the bench based on political disagreements with their votes. That position flows from the vision of the judiciary espoused by the framers of the Constitution, who hoped that judges would remain independent from the political process and therefore serve as a check on its excesses. But in Alaska and Kansas today, those notions of impartial justice have been tossed out the window. To anti-abortion groups, a vote in favor of reproductive rights disqualifies judges from the bench altogether. That is an utter perversion of the judiciary’s role in American democracy. But it also consistent with the modern Republican Party’s platform, which increasingly views the courts as little more than a scullion of the party in power.
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Here's How to Send a Message to Big Pharma |
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Sunday, 06 November 2016 14:02 |
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Sanders writes: "Today no laws prevent drug companies from doubling or tripling prices. So they just do it - and get away with it. The soaring cost of medicine is a major crisis and a moral issue."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Karen Bleier/Getty Images)
Here's How to Send a Message to Big Pharma
By Bernie Sanders, The Sacramento Bee
06 November 16
 uring this election season, Californians have been relentlessly carpet-bombed by TV ads paid for by three dozen super-rich drug companies to defeat Proposition 61.
The drug industry has raised an obscene amount – at least $109 million – to fight Prop. 61, the biggest war chest ever amassed in a ballot measure battle in California’s history.
Normally, numbers like these would be cause for pessimism for those of us who believe that drug industry price-gouging is a blight on our nation and that Prop. 61 is a strong prescription for treatment.
But in my visits to California. I’m finding much reason for hope. I am encouraged to believe voters will embrace Prop. 61 on Tuesday and send a powerful signal across the nation that the days of unchecked drug company greed are numbered.
Today no laws prevent drug companies from doubling or tripling prices. So they just do it – and get away with it. The soaring cost of medicine is a major crisis and a moral issue. A survey just released by the Kaiser Family Foundation found high drug prices were the No. 1 health-care concern of 74 percent of Americans.
We pay the highest drug prices in the world. Last year, nearly one in five Americans between the ages of 19 and 64 – 35 million people – did not get their prescriptions filled because they did not have enough money. Many of those patients will get sicker and some will die.
Meanwhile, the five largest drug companies made more than $50 billion in profits last year. And in 2015, the top 10 drug company executives received $327.4 million in compensation.
The EpiPen, a staple in the medicine cabinets of tens of millions, became a symbol of this avaricious cycle. Its manufacturer, Mylan Inc., increased its price by 461 percent between 2007 and 2015. Mylan CEO Heather Bresch’s pay increased 671 percent in the same period. Outrageous
But this whole system – despite a lot of hand-wringing by less-than-courageous editorial page writers and politicians – doesn’t just survive, it thrives.
How is this possible?
Currently the drug companies have 1,266 lobbyists on their payrolls in Washington, D.C., and 118 in Sacramento. They’ve made hundreds of millions in campaign contributions. Just this year, massive pharma lobbying efforts killed two bills in the Legislature that would have made modest steps toward drug-pricing transparency.
Fortunately, California has activist organizations such as the California Nurses Association, the California AARP and Consumer Watchdog that have taken a reform agenda directly to the voters through Prop. 61.
Prop. 61 is a common-sense reform. It ties the prices that the state of California pays for drugs for about 6 million patients, including Medi-Cal recipients and active and retired state employees, to the prices that the Department of Veteran Affairs pays. The department pays about 20 to 26 percent less than what most government agencies pay. Those are significant savings that will make drugs more affordable and accessible to more people.
The drug industry argues that only about 12 percent of Californians will benefit from Prop. 61. Not true. All taxpayers will save about $1 billion a year. One of the industry’s biggest lies about Prop. 61 was debunked – that it would it would increase what veterans pay for drugs.
The nation is watching California. When Prop. 61 passes, I predict the revolution against drug industry price-gouging will sweep across the country like a prairie fire.
Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this year and will be appearing at rallies in Los Angeles and Sacramento on Monday. He can be contacted at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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