Why the Obama-Clinton axis is supporting Perez over Ellison

Today in Atlanta, the Democratic party will vote for a new party chair to replace the neoliberal party hack Donna Brazile who replaced another neoliberal party hack Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. One question is why Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton urged Tom Perez to challenge Keith Ellison to run for the chair of the Democratic National Committee even though Ellison had declared first, had garnered wide support, and he and Perez share broadly similar political positions.
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The McCarthy propaganda system is alive and well

I have written before about legendary journalist I. F. Stone who took on both the Washington establishment and its complicit media. In an essay, Glenn Greenwald says that there is much we can learn from perusing Stone’s writings, even though they were written over a half-century ago, because they illustrate that the Cold War McCarthyite tactics that Stone endeavored to counter are alive and well today.
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More ghastly details of US torture practices revealed

That excellent news source ProPublica has published internal CIA cables that outline the torture that was done to Abu Zubaydah when he was picked up following the 9/11 attacks. The article describes in detail what he was subjected to as well as his own account of his reactions during the process, and it makes for sickening reading. To make it worse, the person who oversaw this barbarous treatment is Gina Haspel, who has just been named by Donald Trump to be deputy head of the CIA.
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Who’s a good boy?

Apparently Donald Trump’s campaign advisors had supposedly ‘cracked the code’ for keeping him off Twitter and are passing on the idea to the White House staff. They believe that he feels compelled to tweet when he thinks he is being criticized for something, and so they seek out praise of him by looking on friendly sites like Fox, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Washington Times. and Infowars and feeding those comments to him.
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Is the bar for conservative acceptance really this low?

It has long been obvious that raising the banner of ‘fighting political correctness ‘ gives conservatives the freedom to attack marginalized groups without fear of being called bigots or racists. Add the bonus of attacking liberals and Democrats, season it with some good old American jingoism, and and you become a darling of the right-wingers.
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John Oliver on Trump and Russia

The one thing that Donald Trump is doing right is that he does not want to escalate conflicts with Russia. Those who are ramping up the antagonism towards Russia may not remember how bad and dangerous the Cold War was, with mainly the arms manufacturers benefiting from it. But we should not confuse a good relationship between the two countries, which is a good thing, with a personal friendship between the two leaders, which may or may not be good depending on what common interests they share.
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More on the strange Trump press conference

This was the first solo press conference given by Donald Trump. Normally the president makes a few remarks about some issues that he wants to highlight and then asks for questions. Trump used his opening time to deliver a long, rambling, incoherent monologue largely praising himself and blasting the media for painting his administration in a bad light, before combatively engaging with the press and his ‘answers’ to the questions consisted of more self-praise and press-blasting.
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