A Roomba is one of the cutest things the internet put a cat on. This article was delayed by an endless parade of cat playing with roomba videos, dog barking a roomba videos, and plain old cat videos because the author likes cats. Beneath the feline powered viral marketing campaign there is a hidden agenda and that agenda is as bad for you and your privacy as feeding a gremlin after dark or making bed from living tribbles.
Officer Zach Rosen shot Henry Green dead in cold blood on his own street last year. He was not indicted and the city and county cared little, waiting as long as they could and refusing to meet with his family. This year Zach Rosen was seen on video running from out of frame to kick a suspect in the head while he was held down by another officer. He got no punishment whatsoever until the video went viral. Then he got a short with pay suspension.
Donald Trump is demanding voting records from every state and being refused. His presidential commission on “voter fraud” is an obvious attempt a legalized and systematic voter suppression. Voter fraud, where someone votes twice or under another person's name, rarely actually happens. In terms of having a material effect on elections it is a statistical non-entity. Trump's efforts are clearly aimed at creating more hurdles and keeping more people from the polls.
Turning Point USA has been clawing it's way to the top of the campus conservative movement in the United States over the last year. As a an allegedly national “student” group it claims “We believe in free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility.” In reality, it seems more like a vehicle for political control of student life, a vehicle for a rising wave of Neo-McCarthyism, and increasingly a portal for training members of this country's growing neo-nazi movement. The group is having their statewide conference tomorrow, April 15th, at the downtown Crowne Plaza Hotel.
The shortest answer is very few new things at first glance. Second answer, there is at least one gem – which is there is still a domestic spying effort. Third answer, all of Uncle Sam's children share their toys with one another, work together, operate domestically and invited their British friends. The mainstream press, lead by the government owned NPR, was quick to say “The NSA collected American data; no evidence the CIA is doing so.” when discussing how the leak wast less revealing then being “Snowden 2.0.”
Since the public outing of Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin's mail drop on the 15th of last month, a great deal has been going on behind the scenes and in the back alleys of Columbus's white supremacist underground. Despite assurances from the FBI to people who have been threatened by Anglin and members of his neo-nazi website the Daily Stormer that he is overseas, likely in Germany, he has surfaced in Columbus Ohio on unknown business.
On January 29th over 1000 people descended on the Columbus International Airport to protest Donald Trump's ban on immigration and travel from seven countries. The brief protest was organized on a few hours notice and mirrored similar actions in New York, DC, LA, Denver, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Detroit and other cities. It set the stage for the largest protest in recent Columbus history.
Airports in Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Denver, Columbus, Seattle-Tacoma, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Dallas saw protests against Trump's recent executive order on the immigration status of Muslims from seven countries. The protests ranged in size from a reported 700 in Los Angeles to over 5000 at New York's JFK.
When an enemy comes from multiple directions, the target is where their lines of attack intersect. In the case of current round of executive orders causing grant freezes and gag orders the attacks from multiple directions take multiple lines and thus have multiple intersections. One intersection makes a cross-hair on the forehead of government sponsored science in the public interest. Another targets non-profit profit science in the public service sector and directly threatens the lhealth of low income communities and the livelihood of the people who work to improve that health.
In the beginning of the Obama Administration, there was a retreat from what Sarah Palin called “that hopey-changing thing” into a continuation and expansion of Bush era policies and norms. Bush's extraordinary rendition became Obama's normal drone strike, a weekly chore done on “Terror Tuesday.” As the revolving door spins at the entrance to the Oval office, Obama's tenure set the cornerstone of Trump's energy and economic policy.