Obama Administration clears Mohamedou Ould Slahi -- author of the famous Guantánamo Diary, describing the extensive torture he received during his dozen-plus years in detainment -- for release. Without charges, naturally; how splendid, that our government can torture a guy for more than a dozen years but can't even file a freaking charge. Good for you if you advocated for his release, but just remember that going from "being cleared for release" from Guantánamo to actually being released can be yet another long road.
In a peripherally-related note, Adam Johnson at FAIR catches the New York Times discussing the recently-deposed Roger Ailes "direct(ing) (Fox News) to break with classic journalistic detachment to get fully behind the war efforts of the George W. Bush White House" -- as if the New York Times's own pro-war reporting didn't also signify a "break with classic journalistic detachment." You'll remember Judith Miller's "reporting" and the pervasive drum-beat for war among most Times columnists as well as I do; I suppose the Times would respond that Mr. Ailes gave an actual order to support the Iraq war, while the Times editorial board was too smart to do that out loud or in writing. Then again, I'm not even sure that's true -- Our Glorious Elites are really sick, immoral, and decadent.
Government Accountability Office (or GAO) will look into Central States Pension Fund management, after Teamster activists point out that bankster fund managers have endangered the fund's ability to pay future retirees. Of course, as the Fund was losing billions of dollars on risky investments in Russian banks and low-rated mortgage bonds, firms like Goldman Sachs (of course!) made a crapload of money off their "management" in fees. As we know, of course, the whole point of a pension fund is not to outperform some other fund, but to be there for retirees, which is why pension funds used to put their money in safe investments. But bold thinkers continue to have too much say about everything in America.
Yet another Congressional hopeful seems to think slurs against Chinese folks will get him into office. Former Democratic Governor/Senate hopeful Ted Strickland has passed out fortune cookies whose fortunes say "Rob Portman. The Best Senator China's Ever Had." This brings back such happy memories of that awful Peter Hoekstra ad, that awful DSCC ad against Pat Toomey, and that awful Jack Conway ad. You can criticize "free" trade without being racist, but you shouldn't pander to the worst in people just to get them to vote against bad candidates.
Finally, you may have heard about Donald Trump's big speech the other night, and FactCheck gets you up to speed on its many fabrications and distortions. Sadly, I must report that it was, as written, a fairly effective speech -- converting the Hillary slogan "I'm with her" to "I'm with you" was particularly brilliant -- but of course he shouted the whole thing, and people really do get tired of that. And Mr. Trump is, of course, just another loudmouth who talks about law and order as if that never, ever has anything to do with polluters or corporate crime, when polluters can destroy clean air and clean water forever, and we still haven't recovered from what the banksters did to us in 2008.
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