Lo and behold, the Senate Intelligence Committee approves an appropriations bill that would permit the FBI to read your emails without a warrant. This is a giant middle finger to the American people, given that a Republican-held House just unanimously-as-in-everybody approved an email privacy bill that would require warrants for emails. Sadly, President Obama would probably prefer the Senate Intelligence Committee's approach, so we'll go to work on him; when I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.
Adam Johnson, writing at FAIR, takes issue with the notion that Bernie Sanders would wilt as a general election candidate because he hasn't been properly "vetted." Mr. Johnson does a exhaustive job cataloguing the multitudinous criticisms Mr. Sanders has received, but I think it's also true that Republican attack ads will bring those criticisms far more attention than they've received so far. Of course, the notion that Republicans wouldn't run a scorched-earth campaign against any other Democrat is absurd -- if Jesus ran as a Democrat, Republicans would run a million ads calling him a dirty hippie.
Jennifer Chaussee, writing at Wired, tells us how "Sugar’s Not Just Bad for You -- It’s Bad for Coca-Cola’s Business." You may have thought that corporate welfare handouts like the subsidies that make high-fructose corn syrup so cheap would be good for Coke's business, but Coke actually relies heavily on cheaply-produced foreign sugar that isn't always so well-backed by foreign governments. Hence their move to alternative sweeteners -- which may also benefit sugar workers, who may be the worst-treated workers in the history of the world.
Jodi Helmer, writing at TakePart, analyzes the evolution of indoor "vertical" farming by profiling a New Jersey operation operating in what used to be a laser-tag center. Strange, isn't it, that farming sometimes has to go indoors to avoid pesticide use? And with climate change progressing and urban populations growing, we're going to need solutions that aren't chained to arable land -- solutions that make land arable. It's still more promise than realization, as evidenced by the fact that the AeroFarms operation in Newark grows only 10 kinds of crops (it started out trying to grow 200!), but this is also the kind of thing that individuals can do. Which means those of us who do it in ten years or so will be singled out as terrorists by big ag.
Finally, Hillary Clinton has hit Donald Trump hard for saying he "sort of" hoped the housing market would collapse shortly before it did, because then cash-flush guys like him could make a killing, so to speak. Mr. Trump's counterpunch isn't bad, I suppose, but a statement like "I feel badly for everybody" really relies on you being very, very tuned in to his stream-of-consciousness style, and saying "(w)hat am I going to do? I'm a businessman" invites you to fantasize that someone even more powerful has a gun to his head, just making him benefit financially from good Americans losing their homes. And in re benefiting from crises: George W. Bush spent eight years as President creating crises so Republicans could benefit politically from them, and banksters still create crises all over the planet so they can get rich off them. And I think Americans understand this a lot better than they did a decade ago.
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