Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans singer, songwriter and guitarist Earl King. Enjoy!

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

-- John Lennon

News and Opinion

Syrian opposition left with nowhere to turn after Trump's victory

As Donald Trump was claiming victory on Wednesday, Syrian opposition leaders were wrapping up a meeting in Stockholm that was supposed to map a way out of the mire in Aleppo, but instead ended their hopes of winning the five-year civil war.

The group of political leaders and heads of militant groups had invested much hope in Hillary Clinton, who had suggested as secretary of state that robustly supporting the opposition could serve the US’s interests. ...

Opposition political leaders expect the US president-elect to frame his Syria policy as a fight against Islamic State in its last strongholds in the country’s north-east. The position is not completely dissimilar to that of the outgoing president, Barack Obama, although his administration had also spent several years trying to organise a cohesive opposition force – providing training and limited weaponry to 70 opposition units – and consistently demanded that Assad leave and cede power to a transitional government. Trump’s own transition team is reportedly skeptical of investing anything further in the opposition.

Well, heck, Trump is going to be president soon, so now Obama can tidy up his "legacy" by bombing al-Qaeda instead of supporting them.

Obama Orders Attacks on al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria

According to officials familiar with the situation, President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to begin conducting military strikes against the leadership of the al–Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, a major rebel faction operating within Syria.

The US has at times expressed concern about Nusra’s growing influence, but its reticence to target them cannot be understated. Indeed, the Obama Administration has spent much of the past two months railing against the Russian government for conducting airstrikes against Nusra targets. ...

Attacking Nusra has been seen as problematic for parts of the US government, notably the State Department and CIA, who believe that, as they are one of the few rebel groups successful at fighting the Assad government, they ought to leave them alone for the sake of eventually imposing regime change, even if it means that regime change is heavily al-Qaeda influenced.

Saudi Arabia owes billions to private firms after collapse in oil revenues

Saudi Arabia has admiited that it owes billions of dollars to private firms and foreign workers after oil revenues collapsed, the kingdom’s new finance minister said.

The arrears have left tens of thousands of foreign workers, chiefly in the construction sector, struggling for months while they await back pay.

“I don’t recall the exact amount now but its billions of dollars,” Mohammed Aljadaan told reporters on Thursday.

“The ministry is now every day seeking to make thousands of payment orders,” he said.

The country’s council of economic affairs and development, headed by powerful deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, said on Monday the kingdom would pay the outstanding amount by next month.

Payments were delayed because of “the sharp decline in oil revenue and the measures taken by the kingdom to reduce spending on a number of projects,” the official Saudi press agency reported.

Iraqi Army Struggles With ‘Waves’ of Jihadists in Mosul

Heavily armed and trained by the US, Iraqi troops were upbeat when they started the invasion of Mosul, and the quick advances with little resistance in the surrounding countryside only bolstered their confidence. The realities of the fight are starting to sink in, however.

A colonel in Iraq’s Ninth Armored Division describes his “elite” forces quickly stalling once they got into the area around the city itself, finding their columns of tanks useless in the environment, and woefully unprepared for urban warfare.

This has been a recurring problem for the Iraqi military, which can advance as well as any other when there is no real resistance. ... The offensive into Mosul was going just as well, until the resistance started in earnest. Indeed, some Iraqi troops even managed to get inside the city limits. Now, even keeping those troops there is proving a huge challenge, with ISIS attacking this small presence at all hours.

Snowden Q&A on how US Election affects your privacy, his pardon

Anti-Trump GOP Senators Want to ‘Work With Him’ on Iran Sanctions

Always hawkish on Iran, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) and John McCain (R – AZ) both made a big deal of opposing President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign, but now that he’s won, they’re trying to shoehorn him into the position of spoiler for the Iran nuclear deal.

The plan appears to be to portray Trump as having been on their side on Iran in the first place, with the expectation that he’ll go along with them instead of with his actual comments during the campaign. A flurry of new anti-Iran sanctions is the first goal, with the idea being for the US to overtly violate the already signed P5+1 nuclear deal.

It’s unlikely Trump will go along with the plan, however, both because he clearly doesn’t owe any political favors to Graham and McCain, and because despite his criticism of the Iran deal, he promised during the campaign to simply be as tough as possible in enforcing the pact.

Heh, Trump's election seems to have made somebody happy ...

‘Trump’s election heralds coming of Messiah’ says Israeli Interior Minister

Shas chairman and Interior Minister Arye Deri said Thursday that Donald Trump’s election could herald the coming of the Messiah due to the blow he expects the next president will strike against the “non-Orthodox Jewish hold on the US government.”

“There is no doubt that one can give thanks to God that all those who have damned the [Jewish] covenant and would wipe out Judaism, thinking they could take control over the Land of Israel here and lead reforms in order to cause destruction received their blow,” Deri said during an address to the local religious council of Ashdod.

“Their influence and the great threat they posed to us because they held [control over] the US government...

They understand that this power has disappeared and we can continue, God willing, to strengthen traditional religion and Judaism, transmitted down to us from generation to generation.”

Trump’s election, he added, presages the coming of the Messianic Age.

Trump Elected President

Why the Elite Wanted Trump To Lose

Elections pose a basic problem. Should the direction of a government be set by amateurs, by a majority or plurality mass of people who know nothing about policy detail, or should the best and brightest, the educated elite, make informed decisions for the good of everyone? Last night, the amateurs chose a new leader and a new direction for the country. Donald Trump is now president-elect. The elite thinkers of the media and policy realms are appalled. They spent months insisting that Trump was an ignorant bigot, a dangerously unstable fellow who could not be trusted with the kind of power that only they were fit to wield. The elite in both parties, among “conservative” journalists as well as “mainstream” ones, wanted Donald Trump to lose, and they confidently predicted he would. They were wrong. ...

Trump is prone to making off-the-cuff remarks and articulating his policy themes in sometimes shockingly blunt language. This plain-spokenness and tendency toward hyperbole is perhaps as objectionable to educated elites as his policies: a good, well-educated technocrat, a polished politician, simply doesn’t use that kind of rhetoric. He has violated “norms,” and those norms—the etiquette of the elite—are sacrosanct. ...

Clinton had credentials. She followed the prescribed etiquette. And many of her screw-ups, however lethal they proved to be, were screw-ups in which other leaders in both parties shared responsibility. What Republican could criticize Clinton for her Iraq vote? How different was Clinton’s involvement with, say, Goldman Sachs from that of other politicians? Clinton’s policy faults were not faults at all in the eyes of her fellow educated elites.

Indeed, as anyone who’s spent a bit of time in Washington, DC discovers, it’s professionally better to be wrong in a crowd than to be right by yourself. Clinton did not stick out. She did not make others of her class uncomfortable. George Will could have tea with her.

The best and brightest have assumed for twenty years that what every man and woman on earth most deeply desires is to become a liberal democrat. Steel workers in Pittsburgh and goat-herders in Afghanistan really in their heart of hearts yearn to be more like Washington Post op-ed columnists. What could be a higher human aspiration? The belief that comfortable, sexually satisfied consumerism, wedded to gauzy notions universal brotherhood (or sisterhood, or gender-nonspecific siblinghood), is all people want out of life has fueled the drive to integrate world markets, merge populations across borders, and dissolve the sovereignty of any state that falls short of the liberal-democratic ideal. Anyone who rejects this anthropology is irrational—much as Donald Trump is irrational—and requires education, if not medication.

Chris Hedges: The Surrender of the Liberal Left to Neoliberalism Gave Us Proto-fascism

The demonization of third parties misses the fact that roots of our current situation are austerity, deindustrialization, and the impoverishment of half the nation, says journalist Chris Hedges.

Democrats have a hell of a lot to answer for.

Obama Went Unchallenged, Now Donald Trump Will Have a 'Kill List'

Powers that went largely unchallenged during the Obama administration are now in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump—and that's a frightening prospect.

The partisan Dems who gave Obama pass after pass on his hawkish policies helped create the surreal power Trump will now wield.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) November 10, 2016

From expanding mass surveillance to justifying drone kill lists, President Barack Obama "not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them," as commentator and law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in 2011.

And despite outcry from civil liberties groups, Democrats let it happen. "Even though many Democrats admit in private that they are shocked by Obama's position on civil liberties, they are incapable of opposing him," Turley wrote at the time. "Some insist that they are simply motivated by realism: A Republican would be worse. However, realism alone cannot explain the utter absence of a push for an alternative Democratic candidate or organized opposition to Obama's policies on civil liberties in Congress during his term. It looks more like a cult of personality. Obama's policies have become secondary to his persona."

Obama had a kill list. Now Trump will. Partisans who supported the kill list because it was Obama's have no leg to stand on.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) November 10, 2016

The president-elect, of course, has a different persona.

"The nightmare that civil libertarians have warned of for years has now tragically come true: instead of dismantling the surveillance state and war machine, the Obama administration and Democrats institutionalized it—and it will soon be in the hands of a maniac," wrote Trevor Timm at the Guardian on Wednesday, citing Obama-enshrined policies on torture, Guantánamo prison, government secrecy, surveillance, and drones.

"What horrors are in store for us during the reign of President Trump is anyone's guess, but he will have all the tools at his disposal to wreak havoc on our rights here at home and countless lives of those abroad," Timm continued. "We should have seen this coming, and we should have put in place the safeguards to limit the damage."

Many Democrats believed in holding only GOP presidents accountable. Now they are in a bed of their own making.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) November 10, 2016

Remember how you legalized
✔Assassinating anyone
✔NSA mass spying
✔Prosecuting publishers
✔CIA drones everywhere

It's all Trumps in 71 days

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 10, 2016

Nuclear weapons: how foreign hotspots could test Trump's finger on the trigger

On Donald Trump’s first day in office he will be handed the “nuclear biscuit” – a small card with the codes he would need to talk to the Pentagon war room to verify his identity in the event of a national security crisis. ... The “biscuit” and “football” are the embodiment of the awesome, civilisation-ending power that will be put in Trump’s hands on 20 January. ...

There is one such situation already in the in-tray Trump will find on his desk, on the Korean peninsula, where the North Korean regime is rapidly developing a long-range nuclear missile. Another could blow up at any time with Russia, whose warplanes are flying increasingly close to Nato planes and ships in a high-stakes game of chicken. And Trump could trigger a third crisis, with Iran, if he follows through with his threat to tear up last year’s agreement curbing its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Trump’s election has added a new layer of uncertainty to all these potential flashpoints.

“I have no idea what he would do, and neither I suspect, does he,” said James Acton, the co-director of the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Let’s not kid ourselves he has policies for these issues. He doesn’t have a team that has done deep dives into these questions.”

During the campaign, 10 former US nuclear launch officers, who once manned missile silos and held the keys necessary to execute a launch order, signed a letter saying Trump should not have his “finger on the button” because of his temperament.

'Fearful' national security officials prepare for major shift in US policy

A US intelligence officer operating in a dangerous part of the world prepared this week for Donald Trump’s presidency by making a pact with a colleague: they resolved to disobey any order to commit torture.

The two officers’ pledge reflects a wider debate within the national security bureaucracy, as some officials – concerned by Trump’s authoritarian inclinations – debate whether to quit in protest at his electoral victory or to remain at their post in the hope of checking impulses they consider dangerous. ...

Officials in the US military, intelligence services, diplomatic corps and federal law enforcement have told the Guardian that Trump’s suggestions represent such a departure from the norms of American governance that they are contemplating internal resistance or a career change.

One source said he was “fearful” of Trump in a way he has never been of an American national security figure, out of concern that Trump does not understand the “tertiary consequences” of decision-making on a global stage.

U.S. intelligence officials “dread” Donald Trump’s presidency

In August, 50 former senior national security and foreign policy officials who worked in administrations from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush signed a letter vehemently opposing a Donald Trump presidency. He would be, they said, “a dangerous president and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

On Thursday, less than two days after Trump beat Hillary Clinton in one of the ugliest and most contentious presidential campaigns in memory, an intelligence analyst will sit down with Trump and begin to share the nation’s most coveted secrets with the president-elect.

Several U.S. counterterrorism officials told VICE News there’s a sense of dread in the intelligence community about Trump’s victory, and disgust over his harsh criticisms of their assessments on Syria and Russia, particularly the finding that Russia is responsible for cyberattacks in the U.S.

Deeply troubling for the intelligence community is the possibility that Trump will indeed follow through with things he proposed while on the campaign trail, such as “bombing the shit out of ISIS” and perhaps putting boots on the ground in Syria. Policies like this, officials said, will undermine U.S. counterterrorism efforts around the world.

“We didn’t realize this was a real possibility,” one intelligence official told VICE News. Like others, the official requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about Trump. “There’s a whole slew of things we don’t have a firm sense of at this point.”

'Hello darkness': Social media reflects a divided America

Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected?

“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They are the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.”

Many Guardian readers will have seen this quote, attributed to a 1998 interview with Donald Trump in People magazine, in their Facebook news feed.

It’s a great quote, but he never said it. It typifies the kind of fake news and misinformation that has plagued the 2016 election on an unprecedented scale. ...

Currently, the truth of a piece of content is less important than whether it is shared, liked and monetized. These “engagement” metrics distort the media landscape, allowing clickbait, hyperbole and misinformation to proliferate. ... These information bubbles didn’t burst on 8 November, but the election result has highlighted how mainstream media and polling systems underestimated the power of alt-right news sources and smaller conservative sites that largely rely on Facebook to reach an audience. The Pew Research Center found that 44% of Americans get their news from Facebook.

Yet fake news is not a uniquely Republican problem. An analysis by BuzzFeed found that 38% of posts shared from three large rightwing politics pages on Facebook included “false or misleading information” and that three large leftwing pages did the same 19% of the time.

African-American support for Clinton waning

Trump Won Because Democratic Party Failed Working People, Says Sanders

Adding his voice to the chorus of condemnation heaped on the Democratic Party in the wake of Donald Trump's election victory, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday attributed the Republican win to the failure of the liberal elite to represent working people.

"It is an embarrassment, I think, to the entire of [the] Democratic Party that millions of white working-class people decided to vote for Mr. Trump, which suggests that the Democratic message of standing up for working people no longer holds much sway among workers in this country," the progressive senator and one-time presidential candidate told the Associated Press.

"You cannot be a party which on one hand says we're in favor of working people, we're in favor of the needs of young people but we don't quite have the courage to take on Wall Street and the billionaire class," he continued. "People do not believe that. You've got to decide which side you're on."

Sanders—who, according to hypothetical polls conducted during the primary, would have posed a more formidable challenge to Trump than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton—told the news outlet that he is "not ruling out" another presidential bid in 2020. But, the 75-year-old senator from Vermont said that, for now, he is focused on rebuilding the party.

Among the potential changes to be made, Sanders told AP that he would recommend Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to lead the Democratic National Committee (DNC), a position that Ellison has been reportedly vying for.

Where Do We Go from Here? Former Bernie Sanders Adviser & Chicana Organizer Call for Mass Organizing

Immigrants fear Trump deportations: ‘This election changed my optimism'

It was not clear how Trump would implement many of his campaign promises, but one of his clearest targets for destruction as president was Daca. [Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) policy which granted temporary deportation relief to more than 741,500 people] He promised to “immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties” and to ensure that “anyone who enters the US illegally is subject to deportation”.

Daca recipients are able to go to school and work in the US for two years. After that, they can re-apply for the program, paying a fee each time.

“Trump’s election must serve as a wake-up call for everyone who shares our vision for a more inclusive America that treats everyone with dignity and fairness,” [executive director at the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) Marielena] Hincapié said.

National Council of La Raza president and CEO Janet Murguía felt similarly a day into America’s new political reality. “We want to reassure our community and our fellow Americans that if the new administration continues to be steeped in the politics of division and blame, then we will continue to stand up and defend the 58 million Latinos in this country, along with the values our nation holds dear: tolerance and inclusion.”

Advocates have been critical of Obama’s immigration policy, which saw 2.4 million deportations between 2009 to 2014 – more deportations than under any other administration in this country’s history. But Trump presents a new, uncertain threat.

Portland, Oregon Anti-Trump protests turn into mayhem

What started out as a peaceful protest against President-Elect Donald Trump in downtown Portland, Oregon Thursday night erupted into mayhem. Dozens of protestors smashed car windows at an auto dealership and chased a Jeep that was flying both an American flag and a Trump campaign flag. The protestors succeeded in partially destroying the vehicle.

Thousands of people from the LGBTQ community, an anarchist collective, Black Lives Matter, and other groups took to the streets for the second night at around 5 p.m. for a vigil to talk about the outcome of the election and their fears about a Trump presidency. ...

Oak Sonfist, who joined the LGBTQ protesters earlier in the evening, told VICE News she felt compelled to join the Portland march because she has had nightmares for the past two nights.

“We’re not OK with our president,” Sonfist said. “I don’t even know if I want to call him our president. We’re not OK with Donald Trump representing us. I feel not safe in my country as someone who is a part of the LGBTQ community. I felt I just had to do something and I’m going to keep going out until something changes. This is not OK. I’m so terrified that my rights are going to be stripped over the next four years.” ...

At 11:30 p.m., police blocked off Southwest 6th Street and prohibited the protesters from continuing to demonstrate, saying it was time for everyone to go home. But the protesters refused and, emotions flaring, many in the crowd went toe to toe with the police, who then used flash bangs and smoke projectiles to disburse the crowd. There were several arrests and one person was injured.

Pfffftttt!!! Professional protesters? I'd grant him the "incited by the media" as trivially true, but Trump is making the same mistake that Democrats did by ignoring the anxiety and opinions of real people.

Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016

More anti-Trump action planned after second night of protests across US

Tens of thousands of Americans are planning further protests and acts of dissent against the election of Donald Trump, after a second night of action in cities across the US that followed a wave of demonstrations on Wednesday in which dozens were arrested.

Hundreds took to the streets on Thursday in Denver, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Portland, Oakland, and dozens more US cities, as well as Vancouver, Canada. The protests – smaller and more muted than Wednesday’s actions – were for the most part peaceful and orderly, though there were scattered acts of civil disobedience and damage to property.

The rowdiest scenes were in Portland, where about 4,000 people marched into the city centre late on Thursday. ... In Minneapolis, dozens of people marched on to Interstate 94, blocking traffic in both directions for at least an hour as police stood by. A smaller band of demonstrators briefly halted traffic on a busy Los Angeles highway before police cleared them off. Baltimore police reported that about 600 people marched through the Inner Harbor area, with some blocking roadways by sitting in the street. ... One of the largest demonstrations was in Denver, where a crowd estimated to number about 3,000 gathered on the grounds of the Colorado state capitol and marched through the city centre. ...

A private Facebook group planning a protest march on Washington had gathered 30,000 members by Thursday afternoon, with thousands joining every hour. Trish Gilbert, the creator of the group, said the march would be a “peaceful style show of force” against Trump’s most extreme policies.

Claims of hate crimes possibly linked to Trump's election reported across the US

There was a spate of claims of hate crimes in the US on Thursday made on social media and to police, in which the alleged victims said abusers had in some way cited Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

Social media was rife with accounts of sometimes violent incidents of hate targeted at Muslims, Latinos and African Americans.

Muslim students in campuses across the country reported incidents of hate. At San Diego State University, a Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab told campus police that two men pulled up next to her and jumped out of a car, then made comments about Muslims and Trump before robbing her of her purse, backpack and car keys. The woman could then not locate her car.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center who monitors hate in extremism, said that he’s seen a spike in hate crimes including attacks on women wearing hijabs and racist graffiti – and that suicide prevention hotlines were receiving high numbers of calls.

“I think this is absolutely clearly a result of Trump’s election,” Potok told the Guardian. “Donald Trump has ripped the lid off Pandora’s box.”

Twitter also painted a picture of divided high schools across the country as students shared incidents that ranged from African Americans being called cotton pickers to Latinos being told to leave the country. Last week, one principal at Southern Lehigh high school in Pennsylvania held a special assembly after reports of students yelling homophobic slurs, calling black students cotton pickers and using Hitler salutes.

Trump Presidency Could Be Worth $14 Billion to His Troubled Lender

Donald Trump's election has likely given a massive lifeline to Deutsche Bank, the German financial firm that has been rocked recently by rumors that they would have to pay a $14 billion fine to the Justice Department over crisis-related mortgage abuses.

That money is unlikely to ever be imposed, now that one of Deutsche Bank’s biggest borrowers – Trump – will soon be sitting in the White House.

That conflict of interest is one of the innumerable ones facing Trump as he leaves his life of grifting behind and becomes the nation’s chief executive. While the Justice Department is nominally independent of the White House, I had to stop writing this sentence because of constant laughing. Trump could easily move to protect his personal investments by aiding his business partner Deutsche Bank. ...

Deutsche Bank vowed to negotiate over the proposed fine, and within the past couple weeks they’ve said that they’ve made good progress. But Trump’s election throws the negotiations into confusion.

There’s simply no good reason for Deutsche Bank to agree to DOJ’s terms now, when a new administration will take over in a couple months, headed by a man who owes Deutsche Bank a lot of money. Trump’s debt with Deutsche is also negotiable in its own right, giving each side plenty of incentive to make a deal. Deutsche could get a free pass on its legal cases – of which the mortgage securities fraud is just one – while Trump could get better terms for his debts.

Lawyers ask for Trump University trial to be delayed until next year

Donald Trump’s attorney told a federal judge on Thursday that he’s open to settlement talks in a class-action fraud lawsuit involving the president-elect and his now-defunct Trump University.

Attorney Daniel Petrocelli also asked during a hearing that the trial be delayed until early next year because Trump needs time to work on the transition to the presidency.

The lawsuit alleging Trump University failed on its promise to teach success in real estate is currently set to begin 28 November in San Diego.

Petrocelli said he agreed to an offer by US district court judge Gonzalo Curiel to have US district judge Jeffrey Miller work with both sides on a possible settlement.

“I can tell you right now I’m all ears,” Petrocelli told Curiel.

Petrocelli said he planned to file a formal request for a delay by Monday.

Curiel didn’t say how he would rule but encouraged efforts to settle.

Trump and GOP Set to Eviscerate Warren's Consumer Protection Agency

The nation's consumer protection agency, a brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), could be imperiled by Donald Trump's presidency, observers are warning.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), established under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that passed after the 2007-09 financial crisis, has cracked down on predatory payday lenders; set new standards for the mortgage market; recovered and sent back billions of dollars for consumers harmed by illegal practices of credit card companies, banks, and debt collectors; and generally "worked on behalf of working families," as Warren put it in a video marking the bureau's five-year anniversary in July.

But in that same video, Warren noted, "in spite of that success, or perhaps because of it, the agency has a huge bulls-eye on its back." Banking lobbyists and their allies in Congress have been working to dismantle and weaken the CFPB since the moment it was established.

And under President-elect Trump—whom Yahoo reports "consistently announced his plans to dismantle Dodd-Frank and indirectly bashed the CFPB on his website"—that bulls-eye just got bigger.

Hat tip to divineorder. This is an excellent article, far too detailed to fairly excerpt here. Here's a taste:

“Don’t Touch My Medicare!”

Soon after it was signed into law, Medicare gained favor with the general public. “Polls repeatedly show that Medicare is one of the most popular domestic programs,” says Robert Blendon, the director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program. “It’s seen as highly important to people’s lives.”

Medicare’s popularity, however, comes with almost no understanding of what the program is and how it works. “I don’t want government-run health care,” a woman wrote to President Obama in 2009. “I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare!” That confusion has made it hard to defend Medicare against Washington’s slash-and-burn campaigns aimed at killing the country’s social programs. Under discussion now in the halls of Congress and in the opinion columns of the news media is a plan to transform Medicare into a more privatized system. Not only would this break apart the social compact and render Johnson’s promises a distant memory—it would also pass more of the program’s expenses on to the elderly and disabled.

Johnson’s social compact, however, began to erode as far back as the 1970s, when oil shocks, a stagnant economy, and inflation came to dominate the national agenda. The liberals’ goal of rounding out LBJ’s vision by expanding Medicare to all Americans disappeared. ... By the 1990s [attacks on Medicare] were being taken seriously in Washington, and policy discourse around Medicare was soon reframed. Now the virtues of the marketplace—competition, individual choice—were touted over the virtues of social insurance, especially as a means to contain costs.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, had his own vision for Medicare. If private alternatives were available, he predicted, people would voluntarily switch. Medicare would “wither on the vine.” Persuaded by Gingrich, along with other Republicans and many Democrats, the government began to make that happen, using a combination of salami tactics and stealth. ... By 2009, Congress was doling out 12.4 percent more to private insurers than it would have spent to provide the same benefits via traditional Medicare. “For most of the program’s history, Congress has thrown money into the pot to assure a robust expansion of private plans and provide extra benefits for beneficiaries signing up,” says Robert Berenson, an institute fellow at the Urban Institute. ...

The conservative assault on Medicare is two-pronged. On the one hand, there is a drive to privatize. On the other, critics hope to rebrand Medicare as a variety of welfare. The former Hill staffer says that the Republicans have “been on a very consistent march for decades now. They basically want to get rid of the entitlement and want everything means-tested.” Means-testing—that is, basing eligibility for benefits on whether a person has the means to do without that help—saves billions for the government. But it would also make Medicare into the equivalent of food stamps or Medicaid. And that, of course, is the objective.

Donald Trump Ran on Protecting Social Security But Transition Team Includes Privatizers

Donald Trump campaigned on protecting Social Security. At the Miami GOP presidential debate in March, he said he would “do everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is; to make this country rich again.” In August, his campaign told CNNMoney that “We will not cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, but protect them both.”

But two of the people said to be helming the president-elect’s Social Security Administration (SSA) transition team have a record of hostility to the program. ...

Mike Korbey is a long-time right-wing activist who has argued incorrectly that Social Security is “broken and bankrupt.” Dorcas Hardy, a Reagan administration SSA veteran, has also called for privatizing the program — in 1995, she took part in a press conference at the libertarian Cato Institute to advocate for that idea.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012

Donald Trump presidency a 'disaster for the planet', warn climate scientists

The ripples from a new American president are far-reaching, but never before has the arrival of a White House administration placed the livability of Earth at stake. Beyond his bluster and crude taunts, Donald Trump’s climate denialism could prove to be the lasting imprint of his unexpected presidency.

“A Trump presidency might be game over for the climate,” said Michael Mann, a prominent climate researcher. “It might make it impossible to stabilize planetary warming below dangerous levels.”

Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, added: “This is an unmitigated disaster for the planet.”

Trump has vowed to sweep away the climate framework painstakingly built over Barack Obama’s two terms. At risk is the Paris climate accord, which only came into force last week, and Obama’s linchpin emissions reduction policy, the Clean Power Plan.

At a pivotal moment when the planet’s nations have belatedly banded together to confront an existential threat, a political novice who calls global warming a “bullshit” Chinese-invented hoax is taking the helm at the world’s foremost superpower.

'Turning Point' in Climate Fight as Judge Rules Youth Can Sue U.S. Government

In a powerful late Thursday ruling, a U.S. judge dismissed all attempts by the federal government and Big Oil to block a landmark trial brought by young people on behalf of the environment, in a case that advocates say could be a "turning point in United States constitutional history."

"Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it," wrote (pdf) U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken as she moved to reject all arguments to dismiss raised by the Obama administation and fossil fuel industry.

The case, brought by youth plaintiffs aged 9-20 as well as renowned climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, argues that the federal government is failing to protect their constitutional right to a stable climate.

In her ruling, Aiken determined that the youth complaint is valid, reasoning, "Although the United States has made international commitments regarding climate change, granting the relief requested here would be fully consistent with those commitments."

Further, she noted the defendants' claims that the suit is invalid because "plaintiffs likely could not obtain the relief they seek through citizen suits brought under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or other environmental laws," but said "that argument misses the point."

"This action is of a different order than the typical environmental case," Aiken wrote. "It alleges that defendants' actions and inactions—whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty—have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs' fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty."

Facing Class-Action Lawsuit from Investors, Exxon Threatens to Depose 17 State AGs

Exxon investors filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the oil giant for its failure to disclose climate change risks—the world's first lawsuit of its kind.

The suit came the same day that Exxon threatened 17 state attorneys general, who are investigating the oil giant for such climate fraud, with depositions. Such a move would pull the attorneys general into costly legal fights that would go on for years, according to InsideClimate News.

The lawsuit's claim is over Exxon's recent swift drop in value, which followed the company's disclosure that it had been overvaluing about one-fifth of its oil and gas assets. The shareholders allege that "information disclosed to the market by Exxon was materially false and misleading," writes UK-based environmental law firm ClientEarth.

ClientEarth senior corporate lawyer Alice Garton said:

This development should be taken very seriously by all fossil fuel companies. It's no longer feasible to say the low oil price environment is temporary. The Paris Agreement is now in effect. Fossil fuels are in structural, and not cyclical decline—contrary to the rosy picture proffered by the industry. ClientEarth is investigating how far UK companies should also be reflecting this structural decline in their accounts and, where we find shortcomings, will bring legal challenges.

Indeed, analysts have warned that Exxon's finances are extremely precarious, partly as a result of investigations over the company's years-long failure to disclose climate risks, and that shareholders should take Exxon to task.

Also of Interest

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

Facebook, I’m Begging You, Please Make Yourself Better

Overzealous Prosecutors Ousted Across the Country, Showing There Is Still Hope for Reform

Leonard Cohen – he knew things about life, and if you listened you could learn

The music world mourns the death of iconic singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen

A Little Night Music

Earl King with Bobby Radcliff Blues Band - Lonely, Lonely Nights, It all went down the drain

Earl King with Bobby Radcliff Blues Band - Always A First Time

Earl King - You'll Remember Me

Earl King - Baby You Can Get Your Gun

Earl King - The Panic's On

Earl King - A Man And A Book

Earl King - You Can Fly High

Earl King - Darling Honey Angel Child

Earl King + Roomful of Blues - Mr Bad Luck

Earl King - Time For The Sun To Rise

Earl King - Make A Better World