Stop the False Media Balance Between Trump and Clinton | US News Opinion

Stop the False Media Balance Between Trump and Clinton | US News Opinion:

After Clinton last week excoriated Trump for appealing to America's dark side, as Robert Kennedy called it, Trump hit back, saying she was the real bigot. Predictably, many in our media reported the news as tit-for-tat, a volley between equals.

But they are not.

One of these candidates hires as his head honcho a tax-evading, sex-harassing, power-abusing, vote-defrauding wife beater who profits from the largess of a rich Egyptian while defaming adolescent Jews. One of these candidates calls for the "extreme vetting" of Muslim immigrants, but can't properly vet people whose backgrounds would be deadly to any other candidacy.

That candidate is not Hillary Clinton.

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Matthew Chapman on Twitter: "I want to say, for the record, that I have never been more disgusted with the media than I am in this campaign cycle. Ever."

Matthew Chapman on Twitter: "I want to say, for the record, that I have never been more disgusted with the media than I am in this campaign cycle. Ever.": "They've done NOTHING to educate us on the candidates policy (especially Clinton's). They are only barely covering the candidates' records."



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The University of Chicago is the first place that made me feel safe – Medium

The University of Chicago is the first place that made me feel safe – Medium: "There are bad people in this world. There are bad ideas in this world. There are bad experiences in this world. The world is not a safe space, and real life trauma does not come with trigger warnings. Banning them from being spoken does not make them disappear; if anything it might give the temporary illusion that such bad ideas do not exist. Things cannot be corrected if they are not exposed and acknowledged. A university is not there to shield students from bad ideas in this world. A university cannot shield students from all bad ideas in this world, and cannot shield them forever from any bad ideas in this world. What a university can do is to teach its students how to identify bad ideas in this world by confronting as many ideas as possible, both good and bad, reject the bad ones, and hopefully in the best of circumstances, form more good ideas, till the good overwhelm the bad.
"



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Ximitar comments on Poll: Majority of GOP voters wish they chose another presidential nominee

Ximitar comments on Poll: Majority of GOP voters wish they chose another presidential nominee: "The Trumpists were just waiting in the wings until they had a figurehead to unite behind and they've done it by siphoning from the GUNS JESUS group, the CHRISTIAN group, the Tea Party and the like. They're RINO to the core, and they're flying under a flag of convenience when they call themselves Republicans. They've fully subscribed to Donald Trump's cult of personality. They're aggressively nationalistic, misogynist, fundamentally racist and sectarian, loud, uneducated, irrational, factblind (if not downright anti-fact) and delighted to have the backup and support of millions of like-minded howler monkeys now, after years of having to couch their language and views to make them more acceptable to the mainstream. They exalt ignorance. They draw on the worst dregs of the Redneck Republicans, the Tea Party, the CHRISTIAN Republicans and any other wide-eyed, spittle-flecked unaffiliated 'Republicans' out there. These are the lowest common denominators within the GOP. These are the people who will rant and rave about the US Constitution while never having read it. They're Breitbart in human form. They're The Brownshirts. They're The_Donald.
"



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Chance4e comments on I want a reboot centered around Senator Ainsley Hayes.

Chance4e comments on I want a reboot centered around Senator Ainsley Hayes.:

Total reboot with the exact same cast magically as old (and alive--we all miss you John Spencer!) as they were in 1998.

Donna: "Do spaces count?"

Josh: "It's a hundred and forty characters."

Donna: "Do spaces count?"

Josh: "I dunno, it's a hundred and forty characters."

Donna: "Josh--is a space a character?"

Josh: beat. "I dunno. Give me the article."

Donna: "I think you're a character."

[...]

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Heather Cross - Dear CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News,...

Heather Cross - Dear CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News,...: "Not one person I watched on the national news during the weeks following Alton Sterling’s death, or the murder of three police officers gave my friends, my family, my neighbors – any credit or the benefit of the doubt. Nope. The entire news media looked for someone to blame. Depending on what network you watched the target of blame was Sterling himself, the cops, the South, the guns, the whatever. Not one person I watched on the national news assumed that the whole city was by and large, and in good faith, just trying to wrap our brains around what happened, and trying to make our city whole again.



I think you people are stone cold silent about this flood, because really, there’s no agenda to push. There’s no side to take. There’s nobody to blame. So even though you don’t seem in the least bit curious, here’s what’s been happening around here since you left."



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Baton Rouge Woman Writes Letter to the Media Saying Everything Americans Have Been Waiting to Say

Baton Rouge Woman Writes Letter to the Media Saying Everything Americans Have Been Waiting to Say:

Not one person I watched on the national news during the weeks following Alton Sterling’s death, or the murder of three police officers gave my friends, my family, my neighbors – any credit or the benefit of the doubt. Nope. The entire news media looked for someone to blame. Depending on what network you watched the target of blame was Sterling himself, the cops, the South, the guns, the whatever. Not one person I watched on the national news assumed that the whole city was by and large, and in good faith, just trying to wrap our brains around what happened, and trying to make our city whole again.

I think you people are stone cold silent about this flood, because really, there’s no agenda to push. There’s no side to take. There’s nobody to blame. So even though you don’t seem in the least bit curious, here’s what’s been happening around here since you left.”

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We Need to Change the Psychology of Security | Motherboard

We Need to Change the Psychology of Security | Motherboard:

Why do we put up with all this noise? Why don’t we just tune most of it out? FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is the the fear that we might miss something, or the feeling of regret that comes afterward. I don’t know if this is the real cause, and I’m no psychologist, but I’ve seen it anecdotally during penetration tests:

-“What do you want me to look for, or focus on?”
-“Uncover everything. We want to know everything that’s wrong.”

This seems like a noble approach — responsible even. In reality, it sets an impossible standard that few, if any defenders will achieve.

How bad is the problem? Independent analyses of the Target breach discovered that Target’s systems successfully detected the criminals several times during the attack. Most of these alerts weren’t seen until long after the attackers stole the payment data. None of them were acted upon. This is par for the course as data breaches go.

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When LBJ and Goldwater Agreed to Keep Race Out of the Campaign - POLITICO Magazine

When LBJ and Goldwater Agreed to Keep Race Out of the Campaign - POLITICO Magazine: "Yes, Goldwater went on to lose the 1964 election to Johnson by one of the biggest landslides in presidential history, but he did so with his dignity intact, knowing he hadn’t fanned the flames of bigotry. Trump may well be headed to a loss on a similar scale, which is an encouraging sign. In our hearts, it seems, we know he’s wrong.

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Donald Trump Losing by a Landslide Would Heal the Nation | TIME

Donald Trump Losing by a Landslide Would Heal the Nation | TIME:

The short-term goal is clear: namely, to win the immediate election. But the Republicans fail to appreciate that their tactics have a devastating long-term effect on society. As the Republicans create gridlock and play political games to seize power for themselves, their tactics gradually but conclusively erode public confidence in the underlying system of government itself. The relentless political bashing destroys not only the opposing political party, but it backfires and also destroys the attacking political party as well. In fact, it destroys the entire system. So these blistering attacks for short-term gain are extremely irresponsible and downright dangerous.

All the gridlock and fear-mongering causes the public to grow ever more frustrated and begin to lose confidence in the institutions of government. People eventually come to the conclusion that the government no longer works for anyone. The fabric of society begins to pull apart. This forces the public to lash out in unexpected ways. It leads to devastating consequences, such as the rise of horrendous political candidates like Donald Trump.

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How Hillary Clinton Adopted the Wonkiest Tech Policy Ever – Backchannel

How Hillary Clinton Adopted the Wonkiest Tech Policy Ever – Backchannel:

You say you’re going to convene a commission to study encryption. Obviously as a former secretary of state, Ms. Clinton is familiar with these issues. Doesn’t she already know where she stands on whether Apple should have to give the FBI its information? Why kick that can down the road?

This is one of the most complex issues that we’ve grappled with over the course of the campaign, and we’ve found that the proposal to create a commission where we can get the best minds from the tech sector and from the government working together on a range of solutions is the most appropriate place for us to be at this juncture.

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When Campaigns Smear Generals and Intelligence Officers - Defense One

When Campaigns Smear Generals and Intelligence Officers - Defense One: "Neither Morell nor Allen held political positions when they served in government. Their jobs were to provide for the security of the American people. Those criticizing them personally are doing so only to undermine their powerful endorsements of Clinton. Welcome to the 2016 presidential election campaign.

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What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet — Quartz

What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet — Quartz: "Harris isn’t railing against these things, though. He doesn’t prescribe fewer internet hours or complain much about “kids these days.” Instead he acknowledges that his worries stem mainly from his anxieties about his own behavior. Like many of us, Harris checks his email on his phone first thing in the morning. “When you wake up, you have this gift of a blank brain. You could fill it with anything. But for most of us, we have this kind of panic. Instead of wondering what should I do, we wonder what did I miss. It’s almost like our unconsciousness is a kind of failure and we can’t believe we’ve been offline for eight hours,” he says. It is habits like this that are insidious, not the internet itself. It is a personal thing.
"



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The Secret Justice System That Lets Executives Escape Their Crimes - BuzzFeed News

The Secret Justice System That Lets Executives Escape Their Crimes - BuzzFeed News: "Lawyers say that some governments, faced with a legitimate ISDS claim, will even trump up a criminal charge to deflect from their own wrongdoing. For example, arbitrators found there was evidence suggesting that Bolivia had launched a fraud case against mining-company executives as a ploy to get the company’s ISDS claim thrown out.
But even some members of The Club said they were concerned by how often credible allegations of criminality arise. Many ISDS lawyers say that the system helps promote the rule of law around the world. If ISDS is seen as protecting criminals, they fear, it could delegitimize a system that is working well for many others."



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Here's Hoping They Never Understand Why Bernie Sanders Happened | RedState

Here's Hoping They Never Understand Why Bernie Sanders Happened | RedState: "If her appointment is just temporary, then the DNC has the chance to begin separating itself from Clinton, who could very well be a one-term president. Her age and health, along with the demands of a job that is well known to suck the life out of its holders, will do a lot to make a second run at president extremely difficult. She will probably not see another challenger of note from her own side, but she will definitely face a well-rested opponent from the Republican Party, one eager to take advantage of every bad thing that can and will happen for the next four years.

"



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The Alt-Right Is Neither Christian Nor Conservative | The Resurgent

The Alt-Right Is Neither Christian Nor Conservative | The Resurgent: "The alt-right is not a part of and should be thoroughly condemned by conservatives. Additionally, it goes without saying that if conservatives do not, the left will and will inevitably paint intentionally with such a broad brush as to harm sound ideas. If we do not self-regulate our movement, it will be done for us by those who are not of like mind. We should not let hate groups try to put makeup on this Nazi, but instead work again to put it on the ash heap of history where its progenitors still smolder. We must also reject those politicians and candidates who stroke the egos of the alt-right and encourage it to come out of the shadows into polite society.

"



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Making a Home for Black History - The New Yorker

Making a Home for Black History - The New Yorker:

In 2005, Lonnie Bunch was hired to be the museum’s founding director. Bunch, now sixty-three, previously served as the associate director for curatorial affairs at the National Museum of American History, and then spent five years as the president of the Chicago Historical Society. We spoke this past April, on a muggy day in Washington, in his office at the Capital Gallery Building. He told me the story of how, after being hired by the N.M.A.A.H.C., which had “no collection, no money, no staff, no site,” he was greeted at an earlier set of offices, at L’Enfant Plaza.



 “I go over there—door’s locked,” he said. “So I go to security and say to the guard, you know, ‘I’m the director of this new museum.’ He says, ‘We don’t know who you are—you can’t get in.’ So I go to the manager’s office: he won’t let me in. I call back to the Smithsonian and say, ‘What’s going on here?’ They say, ‘We don’t know.’ So I’m standing in front of the door, really ticked off, thinking, Why’d I take this job? But then this maintenance guy walks by, and in his cart he’s got a crowbar. So I take the crowbar and break into the offices.”



 I may have looked skeptical. “Nobody was ready for us,” he insisted. “I had to break in.”
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I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump's Biggest Fans. Here's What They Won't Tell You. | Mother Jones

I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump's Biggest Fans. Here's What They Won't Tell You. | Mother Jones: "You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black—beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you're being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see President Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He's on their side. In fact, isn't he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using the money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It's not your government anymore; it's theirs.

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I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump's Biggest Fans. Here's What They Won't Tell You. | Mother Jones

I Spent 5 Years With Some of Trump's Biggest Fans. Here's What They Won't Tell You. | Mother Jones: "When I asked people what politics meant to them, they often answered by telling me what they believed ("I believe in freedom") or who they'd vote for ("I was for Ted Cruz, but now I'm voting Trump"). But running beneath such beliefs like an underwater spring was what I've come to think of as a deep story. The deep story was a feels-as-if-it's-true story, stripped of facts and judgments, that reflected the feelings underpinning opinions and votes. It was a story of unfairness and anxiety, stagnation and slippage—a story in which shame was the companion to need. Except Trump had opened a divide in how tea partiers felt this story should end.

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A Family Matter — The Atavist Magazine

A Family Matter — The Atavist Magazine:

I spoke to Amber a couple of months ago by phone. She had recently gotten engaged, and her fiancé has a kid. As a new stepparent, she felt terrible about the way she had treated her father and Danyelle. “I think all my dad was trying to do was protect me, but I’m the kind of person who needs to find out for myself,” she told me. “If I had known they were going to take Kelly and Cory, I never would’ve talked to my counselor.” 

She told me that she, too, read the CPS petition and was stunned by how her words had been twisted. “Almost everything she put in there was a lie,” Amber now says. She told me that she never said to Thompson-Dunn that her father head-butted her or smashed her head into a wall; she never saw her dad abuse Danyelle. She does think that her father was too rough with her that night. “He grabbed me so hard he left finger marks on my arm,” she told me. But that was the only instance in which her dad had ever physically disciplined her.

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What Was Gawker?

What Was Gawker? : "Blogging is not a real job. Construction is a real job. Working in a restaurant is a real job. Being a teacher is a real job. Blogging is something you get to do. It is a quirky form of daily journalism, falling somewhere between live TV news and magazine writing, calling for sharp news judgment, an irrational taste for argument, and a complete absence of high standards. Anyone who made a living doing this for one single day is luckier than most. We are certainly grateful for the chance we had to type things for you all.

"



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What Was Gawker?

What Was Gawker? : "Blogging is not a real job. Construction is a real job. Working in a restaurant is a real job. Being a teacher is a real job. Blogging is something you get to do. It is a quirky form of daily journalism, falling somewhere between live TV news and magazine writing, calling for sharp news judgment, an irrational taste for argument, and a complete absence of high standards. Anyone who made a living doing this for one single day is luckier than most. We are certainly grateful for the chance we had to type things for you all.

"



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Catapult | Burj Khalifa: Alone at the Top of the World | Matt King

Catapult | Burj Khalifa: Alone at the Top of the World | Matt King: "In this world, everyone lives in the mountains, well-off individuals build their houses on stilts, and height has become the universal status symbol. “In time, people have forgotten the reason why higher is better,” Lightman writes. “Nevertheless, they continue to live on the mountains . . .” Man-made towers have always represented our longing to leave this world, or at least rise above it. Their sights inspire our shared sense of wonder, but they also fuel our delusional egos, stirring us to reach higher, work harder, move faster, get richer—but to what end? The voyage to the top of the world eventually reveals itself to be a mirage: We arrive and find ourselves alone, peering into the empty space above the clouds.

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Like. Flirt. Ghost: A Journey Into the Social Media Lives of Teens | WIRED

Like. Flirt. Ghost: A Journey Into the Social Media Lives of Teens | WIRED: "Then there is the rule about likes and comments. According to Lara and Sofia, when your friend posts a selfie on Instagram, there’s a tacit social obligation to like it, and depending on how close you are, you may need to comment. The safest option, especially on a friend’s selfie, is the emoji with the heart eyes. Or a simple “so cute” or “so pretty.” It’s too much work to do anything else. If there’s any deviation, “you have to interpret the comment,” Sofia says. “If it’s nice, you’re like, is this really nice or are you …” “… I don’t know,” finishes Lara. Is the comment sincere? Or slyly sarcastic? Formulaic responses breed zero confusion. Instagram is not a place for tone or irony.

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The secret Hollywood procedure that has fooled us for years

The secret Hollywood procedure that has fooled us for years:

Hollywood has always carefully guarded its vanity magic tricks. Diet pills, plastic surgery and Botox were Beverly Hills’ pretty little secrets before they were accepted as the norm. But the entertainment industry’s latest glamour miracle — a technique so effective that nearly every movie star has started using it — has stayed underground for more than a decade.

It’s called “beauty work.” It's a digital procedure of sorts, in which a handful of skilled artists use highly specialized software in the final stages of post-production to slim, de-age and enhance actors’ faces and bodies.

This is the version of on-screen stars that we, the audience, see. And if this comes as any surprise, it’s because the first rule of beauty work is: Don’t talk about beauty work.

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Donald Trump breaks the conservative media - Business Insider

Donald Trump breaks the conservative media - Business Insider:

One of the chief problems, Sykes said, was that it had become impossible to prove to listeners that Trump was telling falsehoods because over the past several decades, the conservative news media had "basically eliminated any of the referees, the gatekeepers."

"There's nobody," he lamented. "Let's say that Donald Trump basically makes whatever you want to say, whatever claim he wants to make. And everybody knows it's a falsehood. The big question of my audience, it is impossible for me to say that, 'By the way, you know it's false.' And they'll say, 'Why? I saw it on Allen B. West.' Or they'll say, 'I saw it on a Facebook page.' And I'll say, 'The New York Times did a fact check.' And they'll say, 'Oh, that's The New York Times. That's bulls---.' There's nobody — you can't go to anybody and say, 'Look, here are the facts.'"

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The Biden Doctrine: The Geopolitical Therapist - The Atlantic

The Biden Doctrine: The Geopolitical Therapist - The Atlantic: "The third part of the Biden Doctrine—and I haven’t thought about it in this way before—would be proportionality. Terrorism is a real threat, but it’s not an existential threat to the existence of the democratic country of the United States of America. Terrorism can cause real problems. It can undermine confidence. It can kill relatively large numbers of people. But terrorism is not an existential threat."



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A Quiet Hero From the Greatest Generation - WSJ

A Quiet Hero From the Greatest Generation - WSJ:

This summer I was awarded the French Legion of Honor and I learned Mr. Holm had been nominated for the same honor because of his combat service in France. His namesake son said, “Dad was really excited but he died before the paperwork was completed.” Harlan Jr.also said the fetching Josephine served in the Coast Guard during the war.

I am so sorry I didn’t have an opportunity to say thank you, Mr. Holm, for the best year of junior high, for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Whitman’s poetry, for pushing us to become original thinkers, and, most of all for your heroic service framed by quiet modesty.

How I wish I could have told Harlan Holm and Josephine they were exactly the kind of citizens I had in mind when I wrote “The Greatest Generation” almost 50 years after we first met.

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The Conservative Intellectuals Who Support Trump - The Atlantic

The Conservative Intellectuals Who Support Trump - The Atlantic: "Miłosz called The Captive Mind “a debate with those of my friends who were yielding, little by little, to the magic influence of the New Faith.” Little by little, some American intellectuals are yielding to their faith in the supporters of Donald Trump. They must be challenged now, before that magic influence grows.

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Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart - The New York Times

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart - The New York Times: "Animating that resistance, beyond the traditional Kurdish antipathy for the regime in Baghdad, was what the Iraqi Army collapse in 2014 brought down on the K.R.G. The Iraqis, by abandoning their American-supplied heavy weaponry and vehicles to ISIS — in most cases, they didn’t even have the presence of mind to destroy it — had virtually overnight converted the guerrilla force into one of the best-equipped armies in the region, and it was the Kurds who paid the price.

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Chris Hadfield and students from coast-to-coast fill the sky with music (excerpt) - YouTube

Chris Hadfield and students from coast-to-coast fill the sky with music (excerpt) - YouTube:



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Kayla Mueller in Captivity: Courage, Selflessness as She Defended Christian Faith to ISIS Executioner 'Jihadi John' - ABC News

Kayla Mueller in Captivity: Courage, Selflessness as She Defended Christian Faith to ISIS Executioner 'Jihadi John' - ABC News: "American hostage Kayla Mueller was tortured, verbally abused, forced into slave labor for ISIS commanders in Syria and raped by the group's top leader, but her fellow hostages say she never surrendered hope, she selflessly put the welfare of fellow captives above her own and she even stood up to executioner "Jihadi John" to declare her Christian faith.

"



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Iama heroin addict, been clean now for 4 months. (Follow up) : IAmA

Iama heroin addict, been clean now for 4 months. (Follow up) : IAmA: "But heroin... Well the user might actually find they do better work on heroin. Instead of being sad or grumpy or depressed with his job... he is just... happy. Mellow. Content. Everything is fine and the world is beautiful. It's raining, it's dark, I woke up at 5:30AM, I'm commuting in traffic. I would have had a headache, I would have been miserable, I would have wondered how my life took me to this point. This point I'm at right now. But no, no, everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The rain drops are just falling and in each one I see the reflection of every persons life around me. Humanity is beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus I just found love and peace. Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin makes me who I wish I was. Heroin makes life worth living. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin builds up a tolerance fast. Heroin starts to cost more money. I need heroin to feel normal. I don't love anymore. Now I'm sick. I can't afford the heroin that I need. How did $10 used to get me high? Now I need $100. That guy that let me try a few lines the first time doesn't actually deal. Oh I need to find a real dealer? This guy is a felon and carries a gun--he can sell me the drug that lets me find love in the world."



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Mara Abbott: My Ride in Rio - WSJ

Mara Abbott: My Ride in Rio - WSJ:

At the Olympics, people like to say two things:

1) “This is once in a lifetime.”

then

2) “See you in four years?”

The reality is that road cycling is uniquely course-dependent. I am a climber—and there has never, in the history of modern women’s cycling, been a one-day race with a climb like Rio’s. I was fully aware of that rarity. Tokyo is slated to be one for the sprinters—effectively not the same sport for me, really. The road cyclist will never get the swim-off, the rematch. Each race is actually once in a lifetime.

This is either really beautiful, or really stupid.

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The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here - Rolling Stone

The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here - Rolling Stone: "Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.
"



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The Despair of Poor White Americans - The Atlantic

The Despair of Poor White Americans - The Atlantic: "Except they are now further out of sight than ever. As Isenberg documents, the lower classes have been disregarded and shunted off for as long as the United States has existed. But the separation has grown considerably in recent years. The elite economy is more concentrated than ever in a handful of winner-take-all cities—as Phillip Longman recently noted in the Washington Monthly, the per capita income of Washington, D.C., in 1980 was 29 percent above the average for Americans as a whole; in 2013, that figure was 68 percent. In the Bay Area, per capita income jumped from 50 percent to 88 percent above average over that period; in New York, from 80 percent to 172 percent. As these gaps have grown, the highly educated have become far more likely than those lower down the ladder to move in search of better-paying jobs.

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The Alternates | Victory Journal

The Alternates | Victory Journal: "Alternates never seem to bring home regret. Not a single athlete says they shouldn’t have done it, or that they’d be better off today having refused the offer. Because whether they know it or not, the experience has made each and every one of them a stronger person. Serving as an Olympic alternate might even build more character than winning an Olympic medal.

“I recently spoke to an alternate from the 1984 Games,” says Kintzer. “She told me that it’s a very small group of athletes who compete in the Olympics but it’s an even smaller number who are alternates. Not many people have the will, character, and strength to do it. So that makes us all part of a cool club that nobody understands unless they go through it themselves.”"



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‘You’re Asian, Right? Why Are You Even Here?’ - POLITICO Magazine

‘You’re Asian, Right? Why Are You Even Here?’ - POLITICO Magazine:

After trying unsuccessfully to defuse the situation, my colleague was flying down the street with a group of men chasing him. Wanting to help, but not knowing how, I decided to run after them. In order to run faster, my colleague dropped the two bulky cameras hanging around his neck. When I tried to retrieve them, and yelled at him to get out of the area, some in the group of rioters started chasing after me too. As a former back-of-the-pack runner in middle school gym class, I wasn’t surprised when they caught me. When they threw me to the ground, I reflexively curled up into a ball. Blows landed on my back, head and torso.

“Stop! He’s not white! He’s Asian!”

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How Things Work

How Things Work: "Indeed, Gawker’s record for accuracy is excellent. For a site as reckless as it is purported to be, there have been no Jayson Blairs, no conflict-of-interest or plagiarism scandals, no career-ending corrections. The chief rule of establishment journalism that it violated to its detriment, it seems, is the one that recommends against pissing off billionaires.

But Gawker did overextend itself, as an enterprise. We were internet exceptionalists, believing that that from blogs, forums and messaging would emerge a new world of unlimited freedom to associate and to express. We still believed we could, like the early bloggers, say everything. We believed that broader access to confidential information, to the real story, would constrain the powerful and liberate the oppressed."



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How Things Work

How Things Work: "Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era.

The staff will move to new jobs on other properties in Gawker Media Group, which are lively and intact, and the whole operation will continue under new ownership, after being acquired for $135 million by Univision. But I will not be going with my colleagues. The Gawker domain is also being left behind in bankruptcy. This is the last post."



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Why Americans Hate the Media - The Atlantic (from 1996)

Why Americans Hate the Media - The Atlantic:

 On August 16 last year Bill Bradley announced thap after representing New Jersey in the Senate for three terms he would not run for a fourth term. In interviews and at the news conferences he conducted afterward Bradley did his best to talk about the deep problems of public life and economic adjustment that had left him frustrated with the political process. Each of the parties had locked itself into rigid positions that kept it from dealing with the realistic concerns of ordinary people, he said. American corporations were doing what they had to do for survival in international competition: they were downsizing and making themselves radically more efficient and productive. But the result was to leave "decent, hardworking Americans" more vulnerable to layoffs and the loss of their careers, medical coverage, pension rights, and social standing than they had been in decades. Somehow, Bradley said, we had to move past the focus on short-term political maneuvering and determine how to deal with the forces that were leaving Americans frustrated and insecure.

That, at least, was what Bill Bradley said. What turned up in the press was almost exclusively speculation about what the move meant for this year's presidential race and the party lineup on Capitol Hill. Might Bradley challenge Bill Clinton in the Democratic primaries? If not, was he preparing for an independent run? Could the Democrats come up with any other candidate capable of holding on to Bradley's seat? Wasn't this a slap in the face for Bill Clinton and the party he purported to lead? In the aftermath of Bradley's announcement prominent TV and newspaper reporters competed to come up with the shrewdest analysis of the political impact of the move. None of the country's major papers or networks used Bradley's announcement as a news peg for an analysis of the real issues he had raised.

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Our French submarine builder in massive leak scandal

Our French submarine builder in massive leak scandal:

The French company that won the bid to design Australia’s new $50 billion submarine fleet has suffered a massive leak of secret documents, raising fears about the future security of top-secret data on the navy’s future fleet.

The stunning leak, which runs to 22,400 pages and has been seen by The Australian, details the ­entire secret combat capability of the six Scorpene-class submarines that French shipbuilder DCNS has designed for the Indian Navy.

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Trump Time Capsule #72: 'Most Reckless President in American History' - The Atlantic

Trump Time Capsule #72: 'Most Reckless President in American History' - The Atlantic: "The sympathetic view of the failures by Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Rob Portman, and others to separate themselves from Trump is that they can’t “take the risk.” The people signing this latest letter are taking a quite definite personal and career risk. For the ones still interested in appointive office, the next Republican administration is their next realistic chance for a job. But they’re saying: that’s not worth tolerating Trump. As someone with comparable experience, but mainly with Democratic politicians, wrote me about the letter: “Their bravery in warning about Trump—at personal risk and sacrifice—deserves to be remembered and honored.”
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Worst of McMansions — McLean, Virginia

Worst of McMansions — McLean, Virginia:

In all seriousness, this house was built cheap. 2003 was smack dab in the middle of the speculative housing boom, and bad mortgages fueled by investment bank gambling produced thousands of houses built just like this one. I tried to find data on how long this house has been in the bank’s possession, but alas my search came up empty. 

The best part about this house? EVERY SINGLE ROOM IS BEIGE. (yes, that includes “honey beige.”) 

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Trumpism is a Politics of Loss and Revenge

Trumpism is a Politics of Loss and Revenge: "That brings us to the second key point: Trumpism is about loss. And that loss is real. It's not just about being haters or uneducated or stupid. The fact that what's being lost is in most respects something that wasn't legitimate to have in the first place - status, centrality and racial privilege - should not blind us to the fact that the loss is real and that it will have political consequences. As I mentioned when I wrote up that mortality study last December, I think this demographic and actuarial marker - an almost unprecedented reversal of a particular group's mortality statistics - is hugely significant to understanding our contemporary politics. It almost unquestionably points to some acute socio-cultural stress. It's just a matter of discovering what it is.

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Jenna Johnson on Twitter: "Donald Trump tells Ohioans to vote, recruit their friends and "watch." He explains: "When I say 'watch,' you know what I'm talking about.""

Jenna Johnson on Twitter: "Donald Trump tells Ohioans to vote, recruit their friends and "watch." He explains: "When I say 'watch,' you know what I'm talking about."": "Donald Trump tells Ohioans to vote, recruit their friends and "watch." He explains: "When I say 'watch,' you know what I'm talking about."
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How Donald Trump Exposed America’s White Identity Crisis - POLITICO Magazine

How Donald Trump Exposed America’s White Identity Crisis - POLITICO Magazine:

Living in the South has taught me that it is all too easy to take your eyes off the prize, to become distracted by the shining object, away from what’s truly important. I don’t care how many times Trump supporters declare they aren’t racist, don’t care if they are or not. I don’t care how many times a J.D. Vance or a Ross Douthat reminds us to not be too hasty in labeling them. In fact, I agree with such attempts; it serves no one well to build caricatures of fellow Americans or to pretend that they don’t have real concerns that need to be remedied, no matter how much we disagree with them.

I just know that no matter who wins this economic angst-vs.-racism debate 151 years from now, one fact would not have changed: They tried to put a bigot in the White House. That’s why the primary focus between now and November should be about making sure that bigotry doesn’t win the country’s biggest political prize. Only afterward will debating and dealing with the motives of Trump supporters and teasing out real hurt and harm from baseless fear make sense.

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Letters of Note: Farewell, my dear brother

Letters of Note: Farewell, my dear brother: "Mother and Father are telling religious parables to K.S. about the inevitability of destiny. Mathild is sitting next to us and listens. Sorele is outside and I am writing. I am relatively calm, facing death my thoughts are coherent. (Yesterday at dawn I even wrote a steno-composition, you might find it in my notebook.) It is not fear that I feel but the terribly considered bitter and painful realization of things to come. I hope I’ll get it over with quickly, only it will be terrible to see each other’s agony. God will help us and we will be over it.
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Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart - The New York Times

Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart - The New York Times:

In prelude to his execution, however, the chief interrogator thought to look through Majd’s cellphone. With each phone number and photograph he flipped to, he demanded that Majd finally give up the identity of his “controller.” The 20-year-old’s continued professions of innocence brought more kicks, more punches. The interrogator came to the stored photograph of one young man in particular and stopped.

“Why do you have this guy’s photo?” he asked.

“Because he’s my best friend,” Majd replied.

The F.S.A. commander slowly turned to his captive. “We will call him.”

The commander left the room, and for a long time Majd remained on his knees, the knife to his throat and the gun to his head. Quite unbeknown to Majd, his best friend was also an acquaintance of the F.S.A. commander, and he came to the base to assure the militiaman that Majd Ibrahim was no regime spy. Majd learned this only when the commander returned to the interrogation room and told him he would be set free.

“So that is what saved my life,” Majd said, “that photograph.”

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The Humiliating Practice of Sex-Testing Female Athletes - The New York Times

The Humiliating Practice of Sex-Testing Female Athletes - The New York Times: "Though those claims were never substantiated, in 1966 international sports officials decided they couldn’t trust individual nations to certify femininity, and instead implemented a mandatory genital check of every woman competing at international games. In some cases, this involved what came to be called the “nude parade,” as each woman appeared, underpants down, before a panel of doctors; in others, it involved women’s lying on their backs and pulling their knees to their chest for closer inspection. Several Soviet women who had dominated international athletics abruptly dropped out, cementing popular conviction that the Soviets had been tricking authorities. (More recently, some researchers have speculated that those athletes may have been intersex.)

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Caster Semenya controversy 2016 Rio Olympics | SI.com

Caster Semenya controversy 2016 Rio Olympics | SI.com: "Harper, who testified in the Chand hearing, believes that a ceiling is necessary. "Who are you trying to be fair to?" she says. "Are you trying to be fair to billions of potential female athletes? Or are you trying to be fair to a very small minority of people who live a truly marginalized existence? It's difficult. In my opinion, the least unfair solution is that if you want to be a female athlete, the key is testosterone. If your testosterone is below certain levels, we're going to let you compete. As a female."

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More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead - The New York Times

More of Kremlin’s Opponents Are Ending Up Dead - The New York Times:

No other major power employs murder as systematically and ruthlessly as Russia does against those seen as betraying its interests abroad. Killings outside Russia were even given legal sanction by the nation’s Parliament in 2006.

Applied most notoriously in the case of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a Putin opponent who died of polonium-210 poisoning in London in 2006, murders and deaths under mysterious circumstances are now seen as such a menace that Kremlin critics now often flee the country and keep their whereabouts secret.

Russia has never acknowledged using the authority under the 2006 law and has specifically denied any government ties to high-profile cases, including the Litvinenko murder.

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The Virtues of Reality - The New York Times

The Virtues of Reality - The New York Times: "The men in that research lack college degrees, which is particularly telling. It wasn’t so long ago that people worried about a digital divide, in which online access would be a luxury good that left the bottom half behind. But if anything, the virtual world looks more like an opiate for the masses. The poor spent more time online than the rich, and it’s the elite — the Silicon Valley elite, in some striking cases — that’s more likely to limit the uses of devices in their homes and schools, to draw distinctions between screen time and real time.

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nymphosymphony comments on Flexible Furniture

nymphosymphony comments on Flexible Furniture: "But if you know a little bit about the history behind it and a little bit about Piet Mondrian's artistic progression, you'd be able to see that Mondrian developed an algorithmic system for boiling things down into their most basic visual elements. For example, this shitty 8-bit Mario pic has juuuuuuust enough pixels for you to figure out that that's a picture of Mario jumping. Mondrian wanted to see how far you could pixellate reality before you couldn't tell what it was anymore. Mondrian was asking, "Is there still Mario-ness left in that shitty pixelated madness if I push it even further into the realm of the abstract?" You're all spoiled because you've seen this shit all over the place bc Mondrian's influence has spread a lot. But it was something of a novel concept to ask these sort of questions in 1942.
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Oil Rig Workers Get Vulnerable To Make The Job Safer : Shots - Health News : NPR

Oil Rig Workers Get Vulnerable To Make The Job Safer : Shots - Health News : NPR:

And the men themselves changed. "They're opening up and becoming more themselves," says Art Kleiner, an author who has studied corporate cultures for decades. He says the men let go of the self-image of a steely rig hand and embraced a different version of themselves.

"[Fox] did it," says Floyd Guidry, one of the Ursa workers. "Built a new kind of person. Maybe not a new physical man, but a new mental man."

The men are glad for the change.

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Statement by UGA swimmer Gunnar Bentz | Online Athens

Statement by UGA swimmer Gunnar Bentz | Online Athens: "“After attending an event with several swimmers from different nations, I left in a taxicab along with U.S. swimmers Jack Conger, Jimmy Feigen and Ryan Lochte around 6 a.m. On the way back to the Olympic Village, we pulled into a convenience store to use the restroom. There was no restroom inside, so we foolishly relieved ourselves on the backside of the building behind some bushes. There was a locked door out back and I did not witness anyone breaking it open. I am unsure why, but while we were in that area, Ryan pulled to the ground a framed metal advertisement that was loosely anchored to the brick wall. I then suggested to everyone that we needed to leave the area and we returned to the taxi.
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Teen Trump fan says racial profiling was behind his ejection from a Charlotte rally for Donald Trump. | The Charlotte Observer

Teen Trump fan says racial profiling was behind his ejection from a Charlotte rally for Donald Trump. | The Charlotte Observer:

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An 18-year-old Charlotte college student who was ejected from Thursday’s Donald Trump rally says he went from avid backer to disillusioned opponent after Trump’s security staff accused him of being a known protester.

Jake Anantha, who registered as a Republican and planned to cast his first presidential vote for Trump, was wearing a Trump shirt when police removed him from the Charlotte Convention Center before the rally began. He and his father, Ramesh Anantha, say they believe he was profiled because of his dark skin.

“It’s unbelievably ironic,” said Ramesh Anantha, whose parents immigrated from India. He says his son, as a young person of color appearing at a rally where the Republican presidential nominee touted his support for people of color, “should have been looked at as a perfect Trump supporter. He should have been somebody they’re putting up on stage.”

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article96648367.html#storylink=cpy

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U.S. women’s water polo playing Italy for Olympic gold | SI.com

U.S. women’s water polo playing Italy for Olympic gold | SI.com:

At 5' 7" she is the shortest player on the team and one of the slowest swimmers, but she makes up for it with an iron will; Matthewson has had two shoulder surgeries and is currently playing with torn ligament in her elbow that will likely require Tommy John surgery. The kind of respect Matthewson commands was evident during the tense third quarter against Hungary. Krikorian sets the scene: “The energy in the building was off the charts. The game had gotten kind of hectic. I call timeout and everyone has something to say.  I don’t think anyone is making sense, including myself.”

At this point Matthewson spoke up: “Everyone take a deep breath and calm down.” The huddle went utterly silent, and the Americans showed great poise in closing out the game.

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Statement from Evan Dunfee on today's 50km race walk | Athletics Canada

Statement from Evan Dunfee on today's 50km race walk | Athletics Canada: "Not many people can understand the pain athletes are in three and a half hours into such a grueling race. I believe that both the Japanese athlete and myself got tangled up but what broke me was that I let it put me off mentally and once I lost that focus, my legs went to jello. Contact is part of our event, whether written or unwritten and is quite common, and I don’t believe that this was malicious or done with intent.  Even if an appeal to CAS were successful I would not have been able to receive that medal with a clear conscience and it isn’t something I would have been proud of.

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UNSUNG HEROES: The Heroic Last Stand Of 2 Marines In Ramadi

UNSUNG HEROES: The Heroic Last Stand Of 2 Marines In Ramadi: "“By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside,” Kelly said in the speech. “They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. … Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight — for you.”

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Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy

Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy: "The company’s new strategy primarily involves shifting employees within stores—moving them from the storeroom and aisles to store exits, where some of them spot-check receipts. It’s also stationing people at self-checkout areas, installing eye-level security cameras in high-theft areas (particularly electronics and cosmetics departments), and using data analytics to detect when people try to get credit for things they didn’t buy (thieves love to find discarded receipts in the parking lot, then go into the store, gather up items on the list, and “return” them for cash). "



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A Full Revolution - The New Yorker

A Full Revolution - The New Yorker: "“People say I’m the best, but I still don’t think that,” Biles said. “I guess if I go to the Olympics and do well, maybe I’ll believe it.” It was surprising to hear a top athlete admit to doubt, but Nellie Biles said that the uncertainty went back to Simone’s complaint that she couldn’t watch herself do the things that she does. If only she could see what the crowd sees—her body flying farther and higher than anyone else’s—there would be little left to doubt."



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Who are Trump voters? A new portrait emerges

Who are Trump voters? A new portrait emerges: "“Constant support for Trump is highly elevated in areas with few college graduates,” writes Rothwell, “far from the Mexican border, and in neighborhoods that standout within the commuting zone for being white, segregated enclaves, with little exposure to blacks, [Asians], and Hispanics.”

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Glenn Greenwald on Donald Trump, the DNC hack, and a new McCarthyism.

Glenn Greenwald on Donald Trump, the DNC hack, and a new McCarthyism.: "Just take a step back for a second. One of the things that is bothering me and bothered me about the Brexit debate, and is bothering me a huge amount about the Trump debate, is that there is zero elite reckoning with their own responsibility in creating the situation that led to both Brexit and Trump and then the broader collapse of elite authority. The reason why Brexit resonated and Trump resonated isn’t that people are too stupid to understand the arguments. The reason they resonated is that people have been so fucked by the prevailing order in such deep and fundamental and enduring ways that they can’t imagine that anything is worse than preservation of the status quo. You have this huge portion of the populace in both the U.K. and the US that is so angry and so helpless that they view exploding things without any idea of what the resulting debris is going to be to be preferable to having things continue, and the people they view as having done this to them to continue in power. That is a really serious and dangerous and not completely invalid perception that a lot of people who spend their days scorning Trump and his supporters or Brexit played a great deal in creating.

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PELOSI warns Dem staffers on hack -- RNC considers cutting off cash to Trump -- HABERBURNS’ TRUMP tick-tock on A1 -- TREND ALERT: 20k-plus-word stories on the rise! - POLITICO

PELOSI warns Dem staffers on hack -- RNC considers cutting off cash to Trump -- HABERBURNS’ TRUMP tick-tock on A1 -- TREND ALERT: 20k-plus-word stories on the rise! - POLITICO:

Donald Trump responded (via the unbelievably helpful CBS embed, @sopandeb): “We have a newspaper that’s failing badly. It’s losing a lot of money. It’s gonna be out of business very soon. The New York Times, OK? I love it. And they wrote a story today -- anonymous sources have said -- three anonymous sources, anonymous this, anonymous that. They don’t use names. I don’t really think they have any names, OK? ... There are no anonymous, you know, with my campaign, I’ll be honest with you, it’s me. It’s me.”

--NOTE TO DONALD: That’s what the story said, man! That it is you. You’re controlling the campaign, and not really listening to people!

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Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’ | World news | The Guardian

Joseph Goebbels’ 105-year-old secretary: ‘No one believes me now, but I knew nothing’ | World news | The Guardian: "“Those people nowadays who say they would have stood up against the Nazis – I believe they are sincere in meaning that, but believe me, most of them wouldn’t have.” After the rise of the Nazi party, “the whole country was as if under a kind of a spell,” she insists. “I could open myself up to the accusations that I wasn’t interested in politics but the truth is, the idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken.”

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Rio 2016 organizers are confident everything is fine. I’m not reassured. - The Washington Post

Rio 2016 organizers are confident everything is fine. I’m not reassured. - The Washington Post: "RIO DE JANEIRO — There is a lot of official confidence here at the Rio Games, and behind it a lot of flat-out evasion. There are robberies and snapped cables, but the International Olympic Committee and local organizers are “confident” that all is safe. There is rampant theft inside of what are supposed to be restricted venues, but they are “confident” all is secure. Athletes have gotten sick, but they are “confident” all is healthy. They are positively, adamantly, confident.

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Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief - The New York Times

Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief - The New York Times: "Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.


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