Arthur Bruzzone | BEHIND THE WALL

DC's Dueling Echo Chambers, On Fire

A fiction writer and former Obama Administration strategist changed tactics of DC spin

 

 

Echo chambers — a media phenomena in which information, ideas, or allegations are amplified and reinforced by repetition — have been with us as long as there’s been party politics.

Before radio, television and the Internet, when printed newspapers issued news, the editors and news syndicates had monopoly power to embrace allies and destroy opponents. As Aled Jones noted in Powers of the Press, newspapers then “had been securely implanted into the cultural landscape as an essential reference point in the daily lives of millions of people”.

That changed with social media and journalism’s democratization.

Voters Should Decide 'Sanctuary' for Undocumented Dangerous Felons

Sixty-five percent of Hispanics, 70 percent of independents, 73 percent of Democrats agreed that “local authorities should not be able to ignore a federal request to hold a detained person who is in the country illegally".

 

When it comes to dangerous and violent unauthorized-immigrant felons, California voters, not lawmakers, should decide sanctuary policy. This is first and foremost a crime issue and secondarily an immigration issue.

Sacramento lawmakers, provoked by the Trump administration’s defunding threats, are considering new legislation, SB54. The bill’s requirements make San Francisco’s sanctuary city ordinance look moderate in comparison. The California Values Act would effectively prohibit all California cities, schools, including charter schools, and public hospitals, from cooperating with federal immigration authorities — including with regard to violent felons in the country illegally. The bill prohibits “detaining an individual on the basis of a hold request” issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection as well as any other federal immigration authorities.

Technology has Disrupted the Leak Tradition

How instant leaks, using encrypted messaging apps, are expanding the deep state beyond shadowy CIA operatives

 

Early in episode four of Showtime’s “Homeland”, an angry President-elect Elizabeth Keane (Elizabeth Marvel) faces CIA Director Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham) and says, “if you think it’s wise to tie the President’s hands so publicly, what’s not wise is peddling unverified and politically motivated horseshit to the press. And if you can’t find me the ‘career officers’ responsible, I’ll get someone who can”.

Pure synchronicity. Since, at the time of the airing, President Trump was facing a similar situation that would lead to the termination of his National Security advisor, Michael T. Flynn.

Not since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has the mainstream media been so focused on the deep state

“’’Deep state’ has historically been associated with countries like Turkey, where sophisticated shadow governments allegedly control or influence key aspects of state policy,” notes Amanda Taub in the New York Times. Winston Churchill referred to the state within the state as the “High Cabal”.

Technology has disrupted the leak tradition. Completely transformed it, in fact, with a mobile app called Confide.

Wall Street cynicism fuels Occupy (and before, tea party) demonstrators

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- I had an existential "Occupy" moment last Friday.

While walking to a meeting in San Francisco's Financial District, I passed near a big demonstration in front of Wells Fargo Bank's California Street Headquarters. I knew something was up when I saw police were congregating three blocks away.

Obama outsmarts the republicans, for now

SAN FRANCISCO, CA --- The overriding goal of every first term president is be a two-term president.  or this President, much more is at stake than personal achievement.  

As a former Harvard University constitutional law professor, he knows that a second term offers him the opportunity to change the Supreme Court for decades.  That would provide him a second major victory.  To stem off legal attempts to repeal his health care initiative—the measure which would mark his place in U.S. history.   But he has a third priority of winning re-election:  To use the fiscal crisis – which will only exacerbate in the next 24 months – to accomplish his pervasive goal, distributive justice.  

As Obama’s poll numbers drop, the stock market rises

SAN FRANCISCO, CA --- It’s not a perfect correlation.

But throughout this year, as President Obama’s polls numbers have dropped, the stock market has been rising.

Could the recent spike in the Dow Jones Industrial average (“the Dow”) off its June bottom portend the November elections.

I averaged two Obama-friendly polls – the NBC and Gallup polls --- and graphed them based on monthly numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial monthly average samplings are pictured on the second graph.

Again, there’s no direct correlation. But as Obama’s numbers started dropping the Dow began rising. Note that both starting tanking as the health care battle reached its climax in this summer.

Prominent billionaire Obama supporter turns on the President--like a lover scorned

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” --William Congreve

For a majority of American voters– those who voted for Barack Obama-- burns a hell fury. Namely, betrayal. One prominent American has unleashed that fury in a scathing commentary. Mort Zuckerman, the wealthy businessman and commentator for US News & World Report, in “Obama Is Barely Treading Water,” shows no mercy in his indictment for Obama -- for whom he voted and admits wrote a speech.