General Atomics Funded Think Tank That Promoted Increased Drone Exports - CorpWatch

With spending dropping from a high of $187 billion in 2008 to a projected $58.7 billion for 2015, the company realized that it faced a sharp drop off in sales.

A report by the New York Times and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting shows that General Atomics helped fund the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major think tank in Washington DC, when it recommended that the Obama administration loosen export rules to allow the company sell more drones.

General Atomics manufactures the Predator and Reaper drones, the two main aircraft used by the U.S. military for surveillance and targeted killing in wars around the world from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq and Syria.

But with spending on such wars dropping from a high of $187 billion in 2008 to a projected $58.7 billion for 2015, the company realized that it faced a sharp drop off in sales.

"Think tanks are seen as independent, but their scholars often push donors’ agendas, amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington," wrote Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams in the New York Times in article about Brannen's work.

The full article is available here

The Rio You Won't See Watching Olympics On TV - Act TV

The Law Trump Violated With His "2nd Amendment People" Comment About Hillary

from http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/41/879

18 U.S.C. § 879 : US Code - Section 879:

Threats against former Presidents and certain other persons

Whoever knowingly and willfully threatens to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon -
(1) a former President or a member of the immediate family of a former President;
(2) a member of the immediate family of the President, the President-elect, the Vice President, or the Vice President-elect;
(3) a major candidate for the office of President or Vice President, or a member of the immediate family of such candidate;
or
(4) a person protected by the Secret Service under section 3056(a)(6);

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Did Trump Just Suggest Gun Nuts Should Shoot Hillary Clinton? - Common Dreams

Yes he did.  He most certainly did. And in doing so, he violated the law ...http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/41/879

Abusive people say horrible things and then say "just kidding." They aren't kidding.  He's just tossing stuff against the wall to see what sticks. There's not much room on the wall anymore.

The full article is available here

Film Review - Hillary's America: Conspiratorial Talking Points - AV Club

Polemicist Dinesh D'Souza's revisionist history appeals to the conspiratorial, persecuted conservative mindset. 

Conservative polemicist Dinesh D’Souza presents a series of conspiratorial talking points, a freewheeling parade through American history that is comically grotesque.

D’Souza is a master of historical elisions and ideological inversions, but his most impressive trick is his idea that the Republican and Democratic parties have not changed at all in 180-plus years.

This allows him to say that the Democratic Party has always been rotten, a band of thieves little changed from Andrew Jackson to the Clintons. His sustained attack on Hillary Clinton is a fever dream, which is entirely typical of D’Souza’s realm: malignant fantasy.

If you scratch the surface any deeper than “Yeah go team GOP!!!!!”—much less run his historical summaries by Wikipedia—D’Souza’s arguments implode like a bad soufflé. It’s of a piece with the kind of blind Manichaeism Fox News is so into.

Yet at the same time, he presents himself as a “scholar” who is giving you the true version of American political history. In this way, he’s pretty savvy about tapping the conspiratorial, persecuted conservative mindset. His revisionist history appeals to these people precisely because it flatters them and doesn’t demand fact-checking.

The film’s fundamental claim is that Hillary Clinton steals things. And because Clinton steals, the entire Democratic Party is all about stealing, and it has been from its inception.

D’Souza doesn’t even make a credible argument that Bill and Hillary are corrupt, even though in many ways it’s low-hanging fruit. Instead, like many a fringe weirdo who has come after the Clintons over the years, he overreaches and invents an absurd conspiracy.

The full article is available here

Human Rights Abuse and Violence - The Olympics You Don't See On Television

Rio Olympics linked to widespread human rights violations, report reveals.

Residents, including thousands of children, are victims of violence and evictions stemming from building projects for 2016 Games.