The McClatchy group does pretty good work, so there may be something to the notion that Russian hackers were able to target specific voters in swing states with fake stories about Hillary Clinton -- and possibly even the notion that the Trump campaign colluded with them in this effort. Of course, if Democrats had nominated Bernie Sanders (or, indeed, anyone who's not a dull corporate centrist), we might be having a very different conversation about all of this today. To paraphrase Phil Jackson: when the referees oppose you, you play above them.
Matt Stoller at the New Republic talks about "The Return of Monopoly," largely in the context of the rise of Amazon, Google, Monsanto, and Facebook. If you're still thinking we shouldn't "punish success," then attend the words of Justice Douglas, who said economic power "should be scattered into many hands so that the fortune of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men." I'd hate to think our descendants will tell the tale of how we gave away our freedoms in exchange for free same-day shipping.
The Consumerist laments that the FCC apparently doesn't care very much about those fake anti-net neutrality comments "filed" by people whose personal info got hacked in data breaches. To suggest (as the FCC does) that weeding out fake comments "undermines" their ability to do their job is well beyond absurd and into evil. Of course I'm terribly unsurprised to learn that when Mr. Pai was a Commissioner he raised his hackles over every little perceived procedural mistake during the 2014/2015 net neutrality process. Oh, well, this is going to wind up in court, and the courts haven't exactly smiled on the Trump Administration.
Former U.S. House Rep./Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough announces he's leaving the Republican Party. I wish this meant more -- not only is Mr. Scarborough known better to Beltway types than to the vast majority of Americans, but this'll also look like he's bolted the party because President Trump insulted his fiancée, though he's been a fairly trenchant critic of Republicans since at least 2006. (He probably doesn't want that well-known, either, since many folks will then say what took you so long, as if it's so easy to discard that big a part of your identity.)
Finally, four Chinese students enter a bunker designed to mimic living-on-the-moon conditions, and hope to live there self-sufficiently for 200 days. And you're wondering why it's the Chinese that send people into space and build mock space stations and not us, all you have to do is look at our President, the apotheosis of the greed-is-good-and-fuck-the-little-people ethos that has strangled this nation for almost 40 years.
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