The ‘Stop Bernie’ movement tries to regroup

Bernie Sanders has shown that his popularity during the 2016 election is not ephemeral and is continuing this time around too. This has caused considerable consternation in the Democratic party establishment at this threat to the dominance of its neoliberal orthodoxy and they are scrambling to find ways to derail the Sanders campaign. The Center for American Progress and ThinkProgress, both closely affiliated with the party leadership, has made no secret of its desire to derail the Sanders campaign.
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Selfies

Recently I was at an airport waiting for a plane. I noticed a young woman a few seats down from me who was taking one selfie after another of just herself in a pretty ordinary waiting area. She had her back to me so I could see the photos she was taking on her camera and they seemed pretty much all the same but clearly she was seeking the perfect photo because she must have taken around 20 before she was satisfied.
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The US is a great country in which to be a conman

If I were a conman, the US is definitely the country in which to try my luck. It has plenty of gullible and fearful people who have lots of disposable income and are easy prey for any smooth-talking huckster. The only question is what kind of scam one should pull. Religion is of course an obvious one. It does not have to be even Christian which is a crowded field. You can claim to be some kind of vaguely spiritual eastern mystic, something that appeals to a certain kind of disenchanted person.
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The TurboTax ‘free’ tax software rip-off

According to the deal that the IRS has with the private tax preparation companies, the IRS will not develop its own free software provided that the companies offer free software to people earning less than $66,000 per year. Congress is now about to pass a measure making that agreement an actual law. But Justin Elliot and Lucas Waldron at ProPublica tried to file free and found that TurboTax has made it incredibly difficult for people to even locate the free service.
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How can this be allowed?

A church is offering a ‘miracle cure’ that consists of drinking a solution containing bleach.

A group calling itself Genesis II Church of Health and Healing plans to convene at a hotel resort in Washington state on Saturday to promote a “miracle cure” that claims to cure 95% of all diseases in the world by making adults and children, including infants, drink industrial bleach.
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The “church” is asking attendants of the meeting to “donate” $450 each, or $800 per couple, in exchange for receiving membership to the organization as well as packages of the bleach, which they call “sacraments”. The chemical is referred to as MMS, or “miracle mineral solution or supplement”, and participants are promised they will acquire “the knowledge to help heal many people of this world’s terrible diseases”.

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Turpins face life in prison

Some of you may remember my post from last year about David and Louise Turpin, the parents of 13 children who were found to be malnourished and shackled and beaten inside the home in which the parents ‘home-schooled’ their children. The children were so malnourished that they seemed much younger than their years and their knowledge of the world was highly deficient. It was all part of their ‘Christian upbringing’ because the Turpins were considered a ‘good Christian family’. It is a horrifying and tragic story of the absurd levels of discretion given to parents of children in the US under the umbrella of religious freedom, to determine how their children are brought up. This article describes the laws that enable this kind of abuse to exist.
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Jimmy Carter calls the US ‘the most warlike nation’

The former president said that this was true not just for the current time but in the history of the world and backed up his assertion with facts.

Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

Carter then said the US has been at peace for only 16 of its 242 years as a nation. Counting wars, military attacks and military occupations, there have actually only been five years of peace in US history—1976, the last year of the Gerald Ford administration and 1977-80, the entirety of Carter’s presidency. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”

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Update on Sri Lanka

I have been trying to keep abreast of the bombings in Sri Lanka that have led to global condemnation. There are reports of a armed stand-off at an apartment building where three police officers were killed. The government has reportedly made some arrests but they are not revealing the names of those taken into custody and have urged the media not to do so either. This is likely because in Sri Lanka one’s name is an almost certain indictor of one’s linguistic/ethnic group and they likely fear that there will be vigilante retaliation against innocent members of that community. One should also be wary of any early reports. Sri Lankan police tend to depend upon the ’round up the usual suspects and see if they confess’ method of investigation, not the best way of getting reliable information.


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