Dec 04 2016

The Breakfast Club (Clothes Off)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

photo 807561379_e6771a7c8e_zps7668d00e.jpg

 

AP’s Today in History for December 4th

Associated Press Correspondent Terry Anderson is released from captivity; American troops head to Somalia; General George Washington says farewell to his officers in New York; Frank Zappa dies.

 

Breakfast Tune Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (String Band Muzak Version)

 

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

 
Dispatch From Little Rock: A Local Win in the Ongoing Fight Against Police Violence
Flint Taylor, Truthout

It’s time to map out strategies to combat Donald Trump’s support for police violence. The president-elect has promised to redouble racist stop-and-frisk, to support reactionary police unions, to further militarize police departments, to attack Black Lives Matter activists, to round up undocumented workers and to support the oil and gas companies that are attacking Indigenous Water Protectors on the front lines in Standing Rock. Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Sessions — Trump’s pick for attorney general — will no doubt seek to dismantle the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and make the aggressive investigation of police departments for patterns of racially motivated violence a thing of the past.

Amid all this, much of the battle must be fought locally, in cities and towns across the country. Even as we back those who are on the front lines of acute, present-day struggles, we must also pursue ongoing struggles for reparations in the wake of injustice.

On the eve of the election, in a deeply red state, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, took a small but significant step in furtherance of this goal by dedicating a memorial bench to a victim of police violence named Eugene Ellison. …

 
Top Tories: hard Brexit stance could lose us next election
Toby Helm, Patrick Maguire and Daniel Boffey, The Guardian

The Tory party could lose the next general election if Theresa May alienates its core of moderate supporters by imitating Ukip and pushing through a hard Brexit, a group of former Conservative ministers and MPs says.

The warning to the prime minister from the party’s senior ranks comes after Tory voters turned to the pro-EU Lib Dems in droves in Thursday’s Richmond Park byelection, delivering one of the biggest electoral shocks of recent times.

As recriminations grew among Conservative and Labour supporters over the outcome – which saw the Lib Dems make their first parliamentary byelection gain in a decade with a 21.75% swing from pro-Brexit former Tory MP Zac Goldsmith – Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, told Conservatives that his party was now targeting dozens of Tory seats. …

 
Libraries promise to destroy user data to avoid threat of government surveillance
Sam Thielman, The Guardian

Public and private libraries are reacting swiftly to the election of Donald Trump, promising to destroy user information before it can be used against readers and backing up data abroad.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) changed its privacy policy on Wednesday to emphasize its data-collection policies. Last week, the NYPL website stated that “any library record or other information collected by the Library as described herein is subject to disclosure pursuant to subpoena, court order, or as otherwise authorized by applicable law”.

Now, the page reads: “Sometimes the law requires us to share your information, such as if we receive a valid subpoena, warrant, or court order. We may share your information if our careful review leads us to believe that the law, including state privacy law applicable to Library Records, requires us to do so.” …

 
Of 9 Tech Companies, Only Twitter Says It Would Refuse To Help Build Muslim Registry For Trump
Sam Biddle, The intercept

Every American Corporation, from the largest conglomerate to the smallest firm, should ask itself right now: Will we do business with the Trump administration to further its most extreme, draconian goals? Or will we resist?

This question is perhaps most important for the country’s tech companies, which are particularly valuable partners for a budding authoritarian. The Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no.

Shortly after the election, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty wrote a personal letter to President-elect Trump in which she offered her congratulations, and more importantly, the services of her company. The six different areas she identified as potential business opportunities between a Trump White House and IBM were all inoffensive and more or less mundane, but showed a disturbing willingness to sell technology to a man with open interest in the ways in which technology can be abused: Mosque surveillance, a “virtual wall” with Mexico, shutting down portions of the internet on command, and so forth. Trump’s anti-civil liberty agenda, half-baked and vague as it is, would largely be an engineering project, one that would almost certainly rely on some help from the private sector. It may be asking too much to demand that companies that have long contracted with the federal government stop doing so altogether; indeed, this would probably cause as much harm and disruption to good public projects as it would help stop the sinister ones. …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Unhappy Dog Wearing Pants And Sweater Found Roaming In Park
He’s in a better mood now.

A lost dog that police in Washington state picked up this week wasn’t wearing identification ― but he was wearing pants and a festive sweater.

“Is this your dog?” the Bellevue Police Department tweeted, noting that the pup “was wearing a sweater and blue pants, and was very angry.”

The photo has been retweeted thousands of times and has garnered plenty of theories to explain the dog’s attitude (and to make a few digs at Bellevue, a Seattle suburb that’s become increasingly wealthy).

Police initially brought the dog to VCA Alpine Animal Hospital. Kristen Ashton, an administrator there, said the canine had no immediately apparent medical issues. Staff estimated he was around three years old, and appeared to be a Jack Russell terrier and Chihuahua mix.

The dog has been at Regional Animal Services of King County since Wednesday, according to data on the shelter site. The shelter holds animals for 72 hours to see if anyone arrives to claim a missing pet, employee Chelsea Eykel told The Huffington Post. If no one comes forward, they can be put up for adoption.

While he may have been angry when police picked him up, the doggie fashion plate appears to have calmed down. Eykel said the shelter hasn’t given him a formal temperament test, but so far, “he’s been fine.” A much more mellow photo of the little guy is up on the shelter’s site.

He’s still wearing the pants and sweater in the photo, but Eykel assured HuffPost that they have since been removed.

adelaidecarandin

For a Sig line I can't decide between "Sanctimonious Purist", or "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing...after they have exhausted all other possibilities."