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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features the doo-wop and r&b group The 5 Royales. Enjoy!

^{The 5 Royales - Think}

"People don't understand the pressure on me to look perfect."

-- Kim Kardashian

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News and Opinion

More Pressure for Congress to vote on New Authorization for Use of Military Force in Syria

In the battle against the Islamic State group, members of Congress talk tough against extremism, but many want to run for cover when it comes to voting on new war powers to fight the militants, preferring to let the president own the battle.

They might not be able to run for long.

The U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Syria is creeping forward, putting more pressure on Congress to vote on a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. It would be the first war vote in Congress in 13 years.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a leading force in the Senate for a new authorization, said the reluctance to vote runs deep and that many in Congress prefer to criticize President Barack Obama’s policy in Iraq and Syria without either authorizing or stopping the fight.

“There is sort of this belief that if we do not vote, we cannot be held politically accountable. We can just blame the president,” Kaine said.

As Mission Creeps in Iraq and Syria, Lawmakers Ask: Will We Ever Vote on War?

A group of 35 bipartisan House Reps. issued an open letter calling for a Congressional vote on war authorization "as quickly as possible."

Amid intensifying U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria, a group of 35 bipartisan House lawmakers issued an open letter on Friday calling for Congress to fulfill its responsibility by voting "as quickly as possible" on whether to authorize a war that is well over a year old.

The missive calls for new Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to immediately force a vote on Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) "that clearly delineates the authority and limits, if any, on U.S. military engagement in Iraq, Syria, and the surrounding region."

The letter is signed by stalwart war critics, such as Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), as well as members of the conservative Freedom Caucus, in what one reporter called an "unusual coalition." Reps. Lee, Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and John Lewis (D-Ga.) are leading the charge.

The only AUMF offered by the Obama administration was submitted in February and called for expansive presidential war powers, including a green-light for open-ended and geographically limitless military operations. Then in June, a bipartisan group of senators proposed another UAMF that also called for broad war powers, in some ways going beyond Obama's failed AUMF proposal.

As both of these efforts stalled, the Obama administration continued to escalate military operations in Iraq and Syria, claiming authority from two pieces of legislation passed in 2001 and 2002—a highly controversial position.

We Are Many: Global Feb. 15 2003 Protests Didn't Stop Iraq War, But May Have Changed the World

Oh yay! Obama is going to piss away American blood and treasure in a growing campaign that has "very little material impact."

US Escalates Syria Strikes, But Little Coalition Help

With plans to deploy a handful of ground troops in Syria, the Obama Administration has also moved to dramatically escalate the number of airstrikes that they carry out against ISIS targets inside the nation, despite growing concessions that those strikes are having very little material impact.

Those strikes are being couched as an escalation of the coalition’s air war against ISIS, but there appears to be little to no coalition involvement in Syria anymore, with the US increasingly amounting to materially all of the strikes carried out on Syrian soil.

Over the course of a year’s war, the US has amounted to 95% of the strikes in Syria, but the coalition that made up the other 5% is drying up rapidly, with Canada bailing on the war after their recent election and the GCC member nations mostly having abandoned the fight to commit more warplanes to bombing Yemen.

The Sham Syrian Peace Conference

The international conference on Syria that held its first meeting in Vienna on October 30 is a sham conference that is not capable of delivering any peace negotiations, and that the Obama administration knew that perfectly well from the start.

The administration was touting the fact that Iran was invited to participate in the conference, unlike the previous United Nations-sponsored gathering on Syria in January and February 2014. ... Iran’s participation in the Vienna conference represents a positive step. Nevertheless, the conference was marked by an even more fundamental absurdity: none of the Syrian parties to the war were invited. The 2014 talks at least had representatives of the Assad regime and some of the armed opposition. The obvious implication of that decision is that the external patrons of the Syrian parties – especially Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia – are expected to move toward the outline of a settlement and then use their clout with the clients to force the acceptance of the deal. ...

If the US-supported opposition forces facing the Syrian regime and its foreign allies had enough power to threaten the regime it might be an objective basis for peace negotiations. The Obama administration has tried to create the impression that the “moderate” forces – meaning those that are willing to work with the United States – are the primary military opposition to the Assad regime. In reality, however, those “moderate” forces have either been absorbed by or have become allied with the jihadists of the al-Nusra Front and its allies.

But neither the Islamic State nor the Nusra-Front-led Islamists were interested in the slightest in a peace conference. The military head of the Islamic Front, which is dominated by a close ally of al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, declared that he would consider the participation by any rebel troop in the peace talks as “treason”.

What the Obama administration has said it wants to see emerge from the Vienna conference is a “road map” for a transition in power. The administration has made it clear, moreover, that it wishes to preserve the institutions of the Syrian state, including the Syrian military structure. But both Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-led coalition are sectarian Sunni extremist organizations who have not hidden their intention to replace the Assad regime with an Islamic state that has no vestiges of the existing state apparatus.

The Assad regime obviously has no incentive, therefore, to even hint at any flexibility on the demand for Assad’s departure from Syria, when it knows there is no possibility of any ceasefire or settlement with Islamic State and al-Nusra Front. Similarly, neither the Russians nor the Iranians are likely to force Assad’s hand on the issue merely to negotiate with the weakest element in the armed opposition.

Angela Merkel’s stance on refugees means she stands alone against catastrophe

Less than 10 weeks ago, Europe’s front pages were dominated by the photo of a dead Syrian child who drowned as his family attempted to reach the shores of Greece. Once the tears dried, many of those same newspapers went back to their usual ways. The noble words of politicians were not followed by action. “Europe has a duty to help refugees – but not in our country” is still the prevalent view among most Europeans.

But one voice has not faltered during Europe’s refugee crisis: Angela Merkel’s. “We will cope,” she insists. As criticism grew louder, her popularity dipped to its lowest levels since 2011. For the first time in a long time, her position as chancellor no longer seemed impregnable. But the beat didn’t change: Wir schaffen das – “We will cope.” To the critics at home, as the number of asylum seekers swelled over the summer, she said Germany would continue to welcome refugees. Otherwise, she argued, it would “not be my country”.

But the chancellor’s resolve didn’t assuage the unease of her own party. Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union, the Christian Democratic Union’s Bavarian sister party, said that it was a mistake to welcome so many asylum seekers. He even threatened to take legal action. Some commentators ventured so far as to say that the end of the Merkel era was in sight.

They were wrong, again. After weeks of speculation and arguments, Germany’s coalition partners reached an agreement on a refugee policy last week. Like many previous deals struck by Merkel during her 10 years as chancellor, it was a compromise. She dropped plans for transit zones, a win for the Social Democrats. To placate the right wing of her party, she committed to speeding up procedures for deporting economic migrants, while some refugees will have to wait two years before their family members can enter the country. But these are details. On her most important principle, Merkel stood firm: there will be no upper limit to the number of refugees that Germany can take. Her “refugees are welcome” policy is intact.

Drip, drip, drip...

Two Americans and South African killed at police training centre in Jordan

Two Americans and a South African in Jordan have been killed in a shooting at a US-backed training centre for security officers from across the Middle East. ...

The US embassy confirmed in a statement on Monday that the incident occurred at the Jordan International Police Training Center in southeast Amman, refusing to provide details. In the statement, the US embassy urged US citizens to avoid travelling to the area “for the time being”.

Jordanian authorities have used the Jordan International Police Training Center to provide training to thousands of security services from across the Arab world, having trained over 68,000 Iraqi, 10,000 Palestinian and several thousand Libyan police forces over the past seven years.

The incident took place on the 10th anniversary of a series of co-ordinated attacks by al-Qaida in Iraq, and seemed to bear a similarity to incidents in Afghanistan in which guns were turned on US trainers.

Plane Bombing Proves Russian Airstrikes are Hurting ISIS

Once again the world has underestimated the strength and viciousness of Isis. The group has always retaliated against any attack by targeting civilians and killing them in a way that ensures maximum publicity. This happened most recently in Turkey on 10 October when Isis suicide bombers killed 102 people attending a pro-Kurdish peace demonstration. In Kobani in Syria at the end of June, Isis suicide squads avenged recent military defeats by the Syrian Kurds by murdering at least 220 men, women and children. In Iraq, the leader of the Albu Nimr tribe told this newspaper how 864 of his tribesmen had been killed over the previous year for resisting Isis advances.

It was always likely that Isis would retaliate against the Russian air campaign in Syria that is targeting its forces and al-Qaeda clones such as the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. But the carefully planned destruction of a Russian plane with 224 people on board by a bomb on 31 October has presented Western governments and media with a publicity problem. They had been relentlessly pursuing a propaganda line that the Russian air strikes in Syria have avoided hitting Isis and are almost entirely directed against “moderate” or “Western-backed” Syrian opposition forces seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The fact that Syrian armed opposition in north-west Syria is dominated by al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham is seldom mentioned.

Isis evidently does not have any doubts about the Russian air strikes being aimed at itself and cannot have done so since the raids started on 30 September, because an operation such as getting a bomb on to a plane at Sharm el Sheikh airport would take weeks to set up. There is a further misunderstanding about the Russian attacks on Isis and other salafi-jihadi armed groups in Syria. They are much heavier than anything being carried out by the US-led coalition, with 59 Russian strikes on one day recently compared to the US launching just nine.

Early ‘US, UK Intel’ on Sinai Plane Bombing Came From Israel

In the hours after the downing of a Russian airliners over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, there was little to no intelligence comment from Western nations. It was only a few days later that they started giving credence to the idea that ISIS, who immediately claimed credit, was actually responsible.

It now appears that the intelligence they suddenly had on the bombing wasn’t internally gathered, as US diplomatic sources say Israel actually provided the two nations with intelligence of their own about the matter. Israel is so far not offering additional details.

Uh-oh, Egypt may be the next of Israel's neighbors to descend into chaos...

Report: Israel worried Egypt's Sisi might fall to jihadist insurgents

Israeli officials are reportedly growing concerned over the long-term viability of the current Egyptian regime in light of gains made by Islamists in their insurgency.

Bloomberg News quoted a former Republican lawmaker on Friday as saying that Israeli government figures are beginning to wonder whether Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, can successfully overcome the threats posed to his rule by Islamic State-inspired Salafist gunmen.

Egypt's tourism industry - a key source of revenue for the cash-strapped Arab giant - is expected to take an even bigger hit in the wake of Saturday's crash of a Russian airline in the Sinai Peninsula. ...

"We encountered a lot of people in Israel and elsewhere that don't think that he is going to survive his term," Vin Weber, a former Republican member of Congress, told Bloomberg. ...

"[Sisi] is under constant death threats," Weber told Bloomberg. "Many people said we're not sure where he sleeps every night. And I think there is that question mark in the minds of the Israelis about whether or not the government can succeed."

An insurgency based in Sinai and mounted by Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate has killed hundreds of soldiers and police. In recent months, it has expanded to Western targets in Egypt.

Years Into Scheme, Pentagon Tries to Use Russia Tensions to Justify New Nukes

Speaking over the weekend at a defense forum, US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter talked up the massively expensive plan to revamp the entire US nuclear weapons arsenal, presenting it as something wholly about “Russian aggression” and the dispute over the status of Ukraine.

Far from a sudden reaction to Ukraine, however, the Obama Administration has been pushing this scheme, and its ever-growing price tag, since early 2010, several years before Ukraine, and amid some of the better US-Russia ties in a generation. ...

That Russia is a sudden excuse likely reflects the Pentagon’s growing desperation to avoid serious debate about bankrupting another generation with more and more advanced nuclear arms decades after the Cold War’s conclusion.

Brennan Hackers may have breached FBI-run site, email account of top bureau official

Hackers who breached the AOL email account of CIA Director John Brennan have not only evaded arrest, but now are suspected of another embarrassing set of intrusions, including accessing a sensitive FBI-run law enforcement portal and a private email account of the FBI's No. 2 official.

The hackers, who call themselves Crackas With Attitude, on Friday posted personal data of law enforcement officials that appears to have been stolen from the Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal. The site connects local and federal law enforcement officials and allows local, state and federal agencies to share information, including of ongoing investigations.

Three U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed the site, also known as LEO.gov, was breached and user personal data was stolen. Law enforcement users of the portal received notices that their data may have been compromised, according to one such notice reviewed by CNN. ...

In the week after the Brennan hack, which was revealed last month, FBI officials were confident they would quickly make arrests within days. But the investigation has proved more complicated than first thought.

Rejecting U.S. Claims, MSF Details Horrific Bombing of Afghan Hospital & Demands War Crimes Probe

Glenn Greenwald names and quotes the ubiquitous fools on media soapboxes:

U.S. Journalists Who Instantly Exonerated Their Government of the Kunduz Hospital Attack, Declaring it an “Accident”

Shortly after the news broke of the U.S. attack on a Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, there was abundant evidence suggesting (not proving, but suggesting) that the attack was no accident: (1) MSF repeatedly told the U.S. military about the precise coordinates of its hospital, which had been operating for years; (2) the Pentagon’s story about what happened kept changing, radically, literally on a daily basis; (3) the exact same MSF hospital had been invaded by Afghan security forces three months earlier, demonstrating hostility toward the facility;  (4) the attack lasted more than 30 minutes and involved multiple AC-130 gunship flyovers, even as MSF officials frantically pleaded with the U.S. military to stop; and, most compellingly of all, (5) Afghan officials from the start said explicitly that the hospital was a valid and intended target due to the presence of Taliban fighters as patients. ...

Nonetheless, many U.S. journalists immediately, repeatedly and authoritatively declared this to have been an “accident” or a “mistake” despite not having the slightest idea whether that was true, and worse, in the face of substantial evidence that it was false.

What possible motivation would the U.S. government have for submitting to an independent investigation when — as usual — it has an army of super-patriotic, uber-nationalistic journalists eager to act as its lawyers and insist, despite the evidence, that Americans could not possibly be guilty of anything other than a terrible “mistake”? Indeed, the overriding sentiment among many U.S. journalists is that their country and government are so inherently Good that they could not possibly do anything so bad on purpose. Any bad acts are mindlessly presumed to be terrible, uintended mistakes tragically made by Good, Well-Intentioned People (Americans). Other Bad Countries do bad things on purpose. But Americans are good and do not.

They cling to this self-flattering belief so vehemently that they not only refused to entertain the possibility that the U.S. government might have done something bad on purpose, but they scornfully mock anyone who questions the official claim of “mistake.” When you’re lucky enough as a government and military to have hordes of journalists so subservient and nationalistic that they do and say this — to exonerate you fully — before knowing any facts, why would you ever feel the need to submit to someone else’s investigation?

[Click the link above for a long list of government journalists propagandists and the stuff they've spewed. - js]

American Journalism is the ultimate accountability-free profession, as demonstrated by the fact that every journalist not named “Judy Miller” who uncritically regurgitated and advocated false government claims about Iraq not only paid no price but has thrived. So needless to say, none of the people who instantly acquitted the U.S. in the Kunduz hospital attack have in any way accounted for their early proclamations or attempted to reconcile them with all of this evidence.

Israel and US look to heal relationship as Netanyahu visits Washington

Israeli and US government officials are hoping to patch up battered relations between the two countries when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visits Washington this week, for meetings with Barack Obama and leading Democrats.

In contrast to recent fiery clashes over the Iranian nuclear deal, the leaders will hold discussions over a $30bn military aid package to Israel and try to put their increasingly bitter disagreements behind them. ...

Unusually, the focus of the trip is less likely to be two leaders’ meeting at the White House on Monday than a visit by Netanyahu to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a leading liberal thinktank, on Tuesday.

CAP, which has extremely close ties to both the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign team, represents the heart of a Democratic policy establishment that Netanyahu needs to win back after his divisive speech to Congress in March.

The Empire Files: The Distortion & Death Behind Israel/Palestine Coverage

Catalonia Has Just Launched Its Official Secession Process From Spain

Catalonia's regional government today voted in favor of a resolution to split from Spain, launching a so-called roadmap towards independence which the central government in Madrid has vowed to block.

The declaration on secession, the first step which pro-independence parties hope will lead to the northeastern region splitting from Spain within 18 months, was backed by a majority in the regional parliament.

Republicans Push to Privatize Disability Insurance Despite 99.9% Payment Accuracy

Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if the NFL players went on strike for social justice.

Missouri governor expresses racism concerns as black college players strike

Black players from the Missouri Tigers football team say they will not participate in team activities until the university president, Tim Wolfe, resigns. ...

There have been several incidents of racial harassment in recent weeks on the college campus and Wolfe has come under criticism for his handling of the situation. In one recent incident, excrement in the shape of a swastika was smeared on a dormitory wall while other students have complained that racist slurs are common at the university. Jonathan Butler, a black graduate student at the college, is currently on hunger strike over the issue. ...

The Missouri athletics department issued a statement on Saturday that supported the athletes’ right to protest. “The department of athletics is aware of the declarations made tonight by many of our student-athletes,” it said. “We all must come together with leaders from across our campus to tackle these challenging issues and we support our student-athletes right to do so.”

Tigers cornerback John Gibson III said the protest was backed by the team’s coaching staff. “Has nothing to do with our coaches. Our coaches are 100% behind us. Including the white ones,” he tweeted.

With Mass Civil Disobedience, Young Activists March Against 'Broken System'

More than 2,000 youth shut down intersections in march to the White Hous

Under the banner Our Generation, Our Choice, millenials from a range of grassroots advocacy organizations—including 350.org, Million Hoodies, Working Families, and the Fossil Fuel Student Divestment Network—blocked traffic and shut down intersections as they marched to the White House, risking arrest to "inspire urgency and courage from our elected leaders." ...

The activists are demanding that Congress takes immediate action to "keep fossil fuels in the ground, protect and respect the dignity and lives of immigrants, and black, brown, and poor communities; reinvest in healthy jobs, renewable energy, and an economy that works for all of us," as organizers Yong Jung Cho, Waleed Shahid, Devontae Torriente, and Sara Blazevic wrote in a piece published last week.

But more than that, they're presenting themselves as the stewards of a just future.

"Politicians aren’t the only voices with power," the young activists state. "We have power, too. And we have more power when we act together. Young people don’t live single-issue lives. We live at the intersection of the most pressing problems today. Our movements are connected and our purpose is huge."

Full Text of TPP Trade Deal Revealed -- and Critics Say It's Even Worse Than They Thought

This article is well worth reading, it's probably the best simple explanation of what the ISDS will do to crush our ability to defend ourselves from corporate governance through traditional political channels.

TPP Trade Pact Would Give Wall Street a Trump Card to Block Regulations

Banks and other financial institutions would be able to use provisions in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership to block new regulations that cut into their profits, according to the text of the trade pact released this week.

In what may be the biggest gift to banks in a deal full of giveaways to Hollywood, the drug industry and technology firms, financial institutions would be able to appeal any national rules they didn’t like to independent, international tribunals staffed by friendly corporate lawyers. ...

The TPP, a 12-nation pact with countries in Asia and the Americas that requires congressional approval, includes an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. This allows foreign companies operating in TPP member countries to enforce the agreement without using that country’s court system. Instead, corporations can sue for monetary damages in independent tribunals before corporate lawyers who can rotate between advocating for investors and judging the cases themselves.

The lawyers have an inherent incentive to encourage more challenges with favorable rulings, so they can be paid to arbitrate them. Labor unions who allege violations of the trade deal cannot use ISDS directly; only international investors, i.e. large corporations, can.

Hundreds of past trade deals have included ISDS, usually as a special insurance policy for countries operating in emerging markets. But language in the TPP could be directed to target American financial laws and regulations.

Chris Hedges: The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History

The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.

“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon, convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.

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"Destroying Us From the Inside": Retired Politicians Launch Attack on Big Money Politics

A bipartisan group of 108 retired high-level politicians called for fairly ambitious reforms of the U.S. campaign finance system at an event on Capitol Hill on Thursday. The “ReFormers Caucus,” a project of the advocacy organization Issue One, includes 23 former senators, 82 representatives, 16 governors, 8 cabinet secretaries, 10 ambassadors and one vice president, Walter Mondale. (The numbers add up to more than 108 because many of the caucus members have held more than one office.)

In its own words, the ReFormers Caucus endorses:

• greater transparency measures, such as an executive order mandating federal contractors reveal their political contributions
• stricter enforcement of laws, including reforming the broken Federal Election Commission
• lobbying and ethics reform that ensures everyone plays by the same common-sense rules and
• giving Congress and state legislatures broader abilities to oversee money flowing through politics.

This covers much but not all of an extremely strong campaign finance reform agenda released this summer by twelve U.S. public interest groups. The biggest difference between the two frameworks is that the ReFormers Caucus does not call for a national public system of national matching funds, such as that advocated by current Rep. John Sarbanes, D.-Md, and endorsed by Hillary Clinton. ...

The success of the ReFormers Caucus in signing up members suggests that many politicians do in fact recognize how big money thwarts democracy, as well as how the pursuit of it is personally degrading for them — but until they leave office they’re naturally loathe to change the system that put them in power in the first place.

'It's very white': Las Vegas audience exposes Bernie Sanders' Latino problem

A mariachi band, a Latino neighbourhood, Spanish language posters and bold immigration pledges: Bernie Sanders was pulling out the stops for Nevada’s Hispanic vote.

Short of dancing salsa, the Democratic candidate did all he could to woo this crucial constituency at a rally on a soccer field in Las Vegas on Sunday night.

He surrounded himself with Latinos on stage and promised to fight for agricultural workers and to shelter families from deportation. It signalled the start of an effort to narrow Hillary Clinton’s wide lead with the state’s Latinos.

There was just one problem: the audience at the Cheyenne sports complex was mostly white.

Latinos largely shunned the call to “feel the Bern”, leaving the crowd to dance stiffly to the Mexican music and a question mark over the campaign’s prospects in Nevada.

Martin O'Malley vows to clear military records of those discharged for being gay

Democratic presidential underdog Martin O’Malley will lay out his plan for veterans on Monday, the latest attempt by the former Maryland governor to boost his chances by emphasizing his policy bona fides.

O’Malley – who lags far behind both former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in the polls – outlined plans to clear the service records of members of the US military who had been discharged for being gay, make it easier for veterans to get occupational licenses as well as to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health system through technocratic computer programs that he pioneered in Maryland.

'New Democrats' sound alarm over Sanders and Clinton's leftward march

Leading architects of the “New Democrat” movement are sounding the alarm over a lurch to the left in the party, after candidates at the latest presidential primary debate confirmed a resurgence of more populist economic policies. ...

How committed Clinton is to her new anti-establishment agenda remains a matter of fierce debate, not least among Sanders supporters, but Guardian interviews with leading activists on both sides of the party’s divide suggest the lurch to the left is not limited to presidential politics.

“The battle for the soul of the Democratic party is coming to an end,” claims Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a champion of Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren.

“It’s not just Sanders and O’Malley [who are pushing Clinton]; there is an entire Warren wing of American politics that includes certain politicians, think tanks and advocacy groups [and] has fundamentally shifted the national debate in an economic populist direction.” ...

Yet signs are growing of a backlash within what remains of the party’s more business-friendly and economically conservative New Democrat wing.

At Columbia University in New York this weekend, the Progressive Policy Institute, which helped Bill Clinton and Tony Blair pioneer so-called third way politics in the 1990s, held a closed-door strategy session for congressional staffers that was designed to find ways of promoting growth. ...

["Growth" is apparently their new code word for corporate dominance and increased inequality. Looks like the Frank Luntz playbook works for fake Democrats, too. - js]

But despite PPI’s Columbia summit and a burst of recent policy papers from another centrist group, Third Way, the influence of the New Democrat Coalition and a similar grouping of moderate southern Democrats known as the Blue Dogs is widely seen as in terminal decline.

Heh, blind hog finds acorn, film at 11...

Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton are 'neoconservatives', says Rand Paul

Rand Paul has fired a surprise shot across Marco Rubio’s bows two days before the next Republican primary debate, calling the Republican rising star “a neoconservative”.

Until now, Paul has not attacked Rubio by name on the campaign trail. Asked on CNN on Sunday how he saw Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, the Kentucky senator repeated a charge he made earlier when he said: “I see her as a neoconservative.”

He added: “I see her and Rubio as being the same person.”

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Earth's climate entering new 'permanent reality' as CO2 hits new high

UN experts urge immediate action to cut emissions as CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are on track to hit historic high, up 43% on pre-industrial times

The Earth’s climate will enter a new “permanent reality” from next year when concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are likely to pass a historic milestone, the head of the UN’s weather agency has warned.

The record concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere were up 43% since pre-industrial times, said the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), prompting its secretary general Michel Jarraud to say immediate action was needed to cut CO2 emissions.

The WMO’s latest greenhouse gas bulletin comes just three weeks before world leaders including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping and David Cameron meet in Paris in a bid to reach a new deal on cutting emissions.

Concentrations of CO2 stood at a global annual average of 397.7ppm in 2014, up from about 278ppm in 1750, and the UN said the global annual average is likely to pass the symbolic 400ppm milestone in 2016. Scientists say that the ‘safe’ level of CO2 to avoid dangerous global warming is more like 350ppm. ...

Jarraud said that each year he announced new records for CO2 concentrations and that to keep temperatures within manageable levels, CO2 emissions from factories, cars and power plants needed to be cut now. “The laws of physics are non-negotiable,” he said.

Climate Crisis Poised to Push 100 Million into Extreme Poverty

Adding urgency to the call for bold emissions cuts and a radical rethinking of the global economy, a new report from the World Bank warns that human-caused climate change could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty within just 15 years.

Entitled Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty (pdf), the World Bank's study differs from previous efforts by looking at the poverty impacts of climate change at the household level, rather than at the level of national economies.

Already, global warming is sparking higher agricultural prices; increasing "natural hazards" such as heat waves, droughts, and floods; and exacerbating public health issues, the report states. Without "immediate" adoption of mitigation, adaptation, and emission-reduction policies, the World Bank cautions that rising greenhouse gases—and temperatures—will continue to ravage vulnerable populations, dragging them further into poverty.

The bank's most recent estimate puts the number of people currently living in extreme poverty at 702 million, or 9.6 percent of the world’s population. ...

Noting that "there is still too often a disconnect between Bank research and its own practices," the head of Oxfam International's Washington office, Nicolas Mombrial, on Monday urged the global financial institution "to heed its own warnings and support equitable, low carbon development" and "promote community resilience to climate change through its policies and programs."

Exxon Set to Be Investigated in the Philippines as Well as New York

A few weeks ago the first ever human rights legal action seeking the accountability of the 50 big polluters was launched. Filed by Filipino typhoon survivors and several environmental organisations, it demands that the Philippines Human Rights Commission (CHR) investigate and acknowledge the complicity of 50 investor-owned fossil fuel companies in causing extreme weather events.

This comes from a consensus that the typhoons and catastrophic storms that annually batter the Philippines, and many other small island nations, are exacerbated by climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels by distant and faceless energy companies. People in the Philippines know that they are at the end of a terrible chain reaction that destroys homes, ruins health and takes lives and livelihoods. It violates their basic human rights, so they, like many others, are starting to seek climate justice.

They are part of a growing number of people that will no longer stand for companies – despite knowledge of the harms associated with their products – continuing to engorge themselves on profit at the expense of the climate and human lives. These companies are morally bound to help communities at the frontline of climate change while financing a just transition to a 100% renewable energy future.

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Giving Intelligence Contractors Whistleblower Protections Doesn’t Have to Be “Complicated”

How Law Enforcement Can Use Google Timeline To Track Your Every Move

Were There Norms Dick Cheney Wasn't Prepared to Transgress?

America's 'Establishment' Has Embraced 'Deep States'

Crypto Is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

She Never Had a Chance: a Premortem Eulogy for Jill Stein

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A Little Night Music

The 5 Royales - Please Please Please

The 5 Royales - Tears Of Joy

The 5 Royales - I Got To Know

The 5 Royales - I Like It Like That

The Five Royales - Laundromat Blues

The Five Royales - Dedicated To The One I Love

The 5 Royales - Catch That Teardrop

The 5 Royales - Messin' up

The 5 Royales - Say It

The 5 Royales - Don't Let It Be In Vain

The 5 Royales - Right Around The Corner

The 5 Royales - Crazy, Crazy, Crazy

The 5 Royales - They Don't Know

The 5 Royales - Slummer the Slum

The 5 Royales - Baby Don't Do It

The 5 Royales - Take Me With You Baby

The 5 Royales - Too Much of a Little Bit

The 5 Royales - Monkey Hips and Rice

The 5 Royales - I Want it Like That

The 5 Royales - The Real Thing

The 5 Royales - All Righty!

The 5 Royales - I'd Better Make A Move

The 5 Royales - Goof Ball

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