Here we go again. Last night’s 11th Hour: BRIAN WILLIAMS: You and I keep having this conversation, but this president’s playing with house money. This is your political party, the ruling political party right now in this country. We’re going to see in short order, couple of months, if the president can take any of his… Continue Reading →
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie gave compelling testimony to UK MPs last week that he believes the EU referendum outcome could have been different “had there been no cheating”.
(I hope Americans are paying attention, because this should apply to Cambridge Analytica’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, as well.)
Wyle made a persuasive analogy. “When you are caught in the Olympics doping, there is not a debate on how much illegal drug you took,” he said. “Or, ‘well, he probably would have come in first anyone,’ or ‘he only took half of the amount,’ or… it doesn’t matter. If you are caught cheating, you lose your medal.
“Because if we allow cheating in our democratic process, and we allow this amount, then what about next time, and what about the time after that? This is a breach of the law. This is cheating, and the thing that’s really important to understand here is that this is not some council race or a by-election.
“This is an irreversible change to the constitutional settlement of this country. First of all, that’s why it matters. And if you cheat on an exam, you get a fail. If you cheat on the Olympics, you lose your medal. You should not win by cheating, first point.”
Second point, he said, was that Dom Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, said that AIQ, the Canadian company that developed the software used by Cambridge Analytical, won the election for them.
“They are incredibly effective,” he said. “I think it is completely reasonable to say there could have been a different outcome, had they not cheated.”
The FDA is trying to put kratom, a Southeast Asian plant, on Schedule 1, like heroin — just like they did with marijuana so long ago.
Here’s an interesting article from Rolling Stone. I strongly suggest you read it, because you’ll hear a lot of misleading information as the FDA gears up.
Read this typical post from the American Council on Science and Health, a pro-industry group that is famous for things like pushing formula over breast milk, for the kind of thing we can expect.
I’ve been using kratom for about a month for my knees. (My doctor offered me oxycontin; I said no thanks.) It also makes it possible for me to write without severe carpal tunnel pain — and my teeth don’t hurt.
And here’s the thing: Many, many people use kratom to get off heroin and other opioids. They say the withdrawal is mild, like quitting coffee. (It also helps people stop drinking.) But Big Pharma is gearing up to make a killing (ha ha!) on their own drugs, made especially to get people off their other drugs.
It would be just my luck to discover something really helpful right before they outlaw it.
https://twitter.com/KratomNurse/status/978384547476791296\
And yes, I know about salmonella and e.coli. Reputable distributors test their supply. I’d be more worried about a McDonald’s burger.
The nationwide #Salmonella #outbreak traced to #kratom products has more than doubled in less than a month, infecting people in 35 states and resulting in the hospitalization of 39 percent of the victims. #foodsafety https://t.co/9qJZRHO9Ku
— Outbreak Museum (@outbreakmuseum) March 28, 2018
Delaney and Bonnie:
Bonnie Raitt:
https://youtu.be/nWVLRyq_sOY
Stones:
Alex Jones is so afraid, so desperate, so angry, so filled with his own testosterone that he feels perfectly justified in painting swastikas on teenagers exercising their First Amendment rights. He might as well just paint a target on their backs. This irresponsible act on Jones’ part will bring more death threats, more hate, and more… Continue Reading →
A lot of people never believed the original story, and now we find out the real deal from Buzzfeed:
The FBI possesses a secret report asserting that Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was beaten to death by hired thugs in Washington, DC — directly contradicting the US government’s official finding that Mikhail Lesin died by accident.
The report, according to four sources who have read all or parts of it, was written by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who also wrote the famous dossier alleging that Russia had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump. The bureau received his report while it was helping the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department investigate the Russian media baron’s death, the sources said.
[…] The BuzzFeed News series also revealed new details about Lesin — including that he died on the eve of a scheduled meeting with US Justice Department officials. They had planned to interview Lesin about the inner workings of RT, the Kremlin-funded network that he founded.
Now BuzzFeed News has established:
- Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.
- The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.
- Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch.
- The Steele report is not the FBI’s only source for this account of Lesin’s death: Three other people, acting independently from Steele, said they also told the FBI that Lesin had been bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for the same oligarch named by Steele.
Lesin’s corpse was found in a Washington, DC, hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015. The coroner determined that he had died from blunt force injuries to the head and had also sustained blunt force injuries to his neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities. After an 11-month investigation, a federal prosecutor announced in late 2016 that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an “accident,” with the coroner adding acute alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause of death, and prosecutors closed the case.
