Newsbud Top News December 1- Losing Your Rights in the Name of Fighting Terror”

In this episode Spiro covers some of the stories available on Newsbud’s Daily Picks. Obama expanding US war powers allowing special forces to team up with the CIA and operate outside of conventional war zones. Boston Police Dept. Spending over one million in tax dollars to surveil the public. The FBI gains new authority to hack any suspect in the world. And the US and UK pass resolutions to target what is being called Russian propaganda. All this and more in today’s coverage of Newsbud’s Daily Picks.

Link: http://www.newsbud.com/2016/12/01/newsbud-top-news-december-1-losing-your-rights-in-the-name-of-fighting-terror/

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan recorded this message regarding justice, the shooting of Walter Scott and the Charleston Massacre.

A Woman Just Stood Up To Trump’s Latest Outburst On Twitter – And America Is Cheering Her On

Well – with that said – one woman by the name of Danielle Muscato ended up going off on Donald Trump in his twitter feed in response to this latest outburst of his.

It was such a glorious beat down – that we had to write about it and share with you.

Her message was instantly received by thousands and rose to the top of the Twitter feed for all to see. No doubt, by the time this article is received – hundreds of thousands of people will be receiving her message – and they should. It’s worth every bit of your time to read.

Danielle Muscato just said what half of America has been thinking for months now. 

A Yale history professor’s powerful, 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today:

1. Do not obey in advance.

Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

2. Defend an institution.

Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don’t protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

3. Recall professional ethics.

When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.

4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words.

Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.

When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our language.

Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don’t use the internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.

7. Stand out.

Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

8. Believe in truth.

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

9. Investigate.

Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.

10. Practice corporeal politics.

Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk.

This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world.

Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state.

The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.

14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can.

Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.

15. Establish a private life.

Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from others in other countries.

Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Watch out for the paramilitaries.

When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.

18. Be reflective if you must be armed.

If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)

19. Be as courageous as you can.

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.

20. Be a patriot.

The incoming president is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Hillary Clinton blew the most winnable election in modern American history. And it's her own fault.

It's been nearly a month since Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to an opponent that every knowledgeable political operative, strategist, and analyst considered the weakest major party candidate in modern American history. The time has come for Democrats to start taking responsibility for the loss.

I'm not talking about recriminations over the Big Picture direction of the party. We've had some of those, we're bound to see more, and they're welcome (no matter how much some would like to avoid them) — because political coalitions and policy platforms need regular self-examination to stay vital and competitive, and because the Democrats have suffered some dramatic losses over the past few years at all levels of government. Those losses need to be explained and responded to.

I'm talking about this year's presidential race specifically — and even more specifically, about the Clinton campaign's responsibility for flubbing an election that it should have won in a landslide. I don't care if the "fundamentals" favored the GOP. Trump was a fundamentals-defying opponent who should have landed flat on his face regardless of the baseline assumptions. I don't care if Clinton racks up a nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular tally by grabbing up gobs of electorally superfluous ballots in California. She lost the election because she failed to win where she needed to win and where Democrats had a long record of winning — the upper Midwest — as well as where they win when they're doing their jobs well (Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina). That's a sign of a campaign screw-up of monumental proportions.

Most of all, I don't want to hear about how unfairly Clinton was treated by the media. In comparison to whom? All the other candidates who've run for president while under criminal investigation by the FBI? (Maybe that substantial handicap should have overridden the party's presumption that she was owed the nomination because it was "her turn.") Or do you mean, instead, that she was treated badly in comparison to her opponent? Really? You mean the one whose 24/7 media coverage was overwhelmingly, relentlessly negative in tone and content? Either way, a halfway competent campaign should have been able to take advantage of the great good fortune of running against Donald J. Trump and left him bleeding in the ditch.

Why didn't it happen?

Let's start with the truly inexplicable (and underreported) way Clinton spent the crucial month of August. She'd just come off a highly successful Democratic convention and acceptance speech that produced a significant bounce in the polls. Instead of building on that momentum, she … disappeared, taking an enormous amount of time off the campaign trail less than three months from Election Day. Oh sure, she held frequent fundraisers to small groups of wealthy Democrats, where she placed large numbers of voters in a "basket of deplorables" and ultimately raked in the enormous one-month sum of $143 million.

But large campaign rallies? Not so much. And this lost month was of course followed in mid-September by pneumoniagate, which added to her down time. The result? From the end of July up until the eve of the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, just six weeks from the election, the Democratic nominee was largely out of the public eye.

But at least Clinton had all that money! Surely she and her Democratic allies used it wisely for strategic, devastating ad buys against her opponent. Right?

Wrong. As Simon Dumenco argued in Ad Age on the day after Clinton's defeat, the Democrat's approach to advertising was all wrong — and predictably so. Ad after ad "was simply a variation on the theme that Donald Trump is a big jerk," very much including the spot I saw more than any other in the Philadelphia suburbs during the final two weeks of the campaign: innocent kids listening to outrageous Trump comments followed by the tag line, "Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?" That might have worked if voters weren't already well aware of Trump's behavior by that point — and if the message wasn't more than a little condescending, as if Clinton was telling voters that all Trump supporters are bad parents.

But even if Trump's vile statements and behavior had been less widely known and the condescension could have been dialed back, focusing so lopsidedly on Trump's character (while saying so little about policy and the future of the country) was both foolhardy and sharply divergent from past norms of campaigning. As an analysis by The Upshot's Lynn Vavreck has shown, "More than three-quarters of the appeals in Mrs. Clinton's advertisements … were about traits, characteristics, or dispositions…. Since the start of presidential campaign television advertising in 1952, no campaign has made 76 percent of its television ad appeals about any single topic. On average, traits typically garner about 22 percent of the appeals. The economy typically generates about 28 percent of the appeals. There's usually much more balance."

And not only in ads. Nearly the entire vice presidential debate was an awkward, repetitive exercise in Democrat Tim Kaine attempting to pin Trump's most offensive statements on his running mate Mike Pence. Do it once. Do it half a dozen times. But over and over again for 90 minutes straight? Clinton did much the same thing in her three debates with Trump, deflecting policy questions whenever possible, avoiding broad appeals to the country as a whole, and pivoting as often as she could to the myriad glaring defects of her opponent.

To those who scoff at the suggestion that Clinton would have benefited from talking at greater length about policy, I'd point out that the idea isn't that she needed to plunge into greater specifics. On the contrary, an over-abundance of specificity on small-ball proposals that micro-targeted the panoply of groups in the Democratic Party's identity-politics-basedelectoral coalition was precisely the problem.

Where was the overarching vision for the country and its future? The closest Clinton came to articulating one was in the leaked transcript of a speech to a private audience of bankers, in which she dreamed of a hemisphere-wide free-trade and open-border zone. That clashed with the populist mood of the moment, but a full-throated defense of that dream — or a passionate repudiation of it — would have been better than what Clinton did instead, which was attempt to coast to victory on an air of inevitability and an undertow of Trump hatred.

Clinton narrowly lost, but she should have massively won. It's in the interest of the Democrats to figure out precisely where things went so wrong — so they can make sure that it never happens again.

Joe McKnight's killer, Ronald Gasser, released from custody

Ronald Gasser, the man authorities say shot and killed former NFL player Joe McKnight, was released from custody overnight without being charged, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office authorities said Friday morning (Dec. 2).

Gasser, 54, has not been formally charged, said JPSO spokesman Col. John Fortunato. Investigators are consulting with the district attorney's office on the decision whether to formally charge Gasser, Fortunato said.

As the investigation into McKnight's death continues, Fortunato asked anyone with information about the shooting to contact department homicide detectives at 504-364-5393.

McKnight, 28, was shot about 3 p.m. Thursday (Dec. 1) at the intersection of Behrman Highway and Holmes Boulevard in Terrytown. A witness, who declined to give her name, said she saw a man at the intersection yelling at McKnight, who was trying to apologize. The man shot McKnight more than once, the witness said. She said he shot McKnight, stood over him and said, "I told you don't you f--- with me." Then the man fired again, she said. 

Authorities named the shooter as Ronald Gasser, 54, and said he stayed at the scene and turned his gun in to officers. Gasser was in custody and was being questioned, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand said. The sheriff said McKnight did not have a gun, and deputies did not find a gun outside McKnight's vehicle.

US Senate passes 10-year renewal of anti-Iran sanctions

They(US Government)  Promise Only To Deceive..........