Steve Bannon surrendered to authorities

“I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.

“I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.”

FDR at Madison Square Gardens, 1936

ELECT Bennet (CO) Warnock (GA) Kelly (AZ) Cortez Masto (NV) Hassan (NH) Fetterman (PA) Ryan (OH) Barnes (WI)
We win 7 of these races, and Manchin and Sinema become irrelevant.
If we get it done, Democrats can deliver transformative change — without being blocked by the filibuster.

Laurence Tribe@tribelaw
Judge Aileen Cannon’s bizarre decision endangers national security and attacks the rule of law. It is untethered from principle and purely results-driven. Its defense of the idea that the former president deserves privileged treatment is pathetic. She is a disgrace to the bench.

Blowhard dirtbag
Steve Bannon surrendered
to authorities and the
civil war didn’t start!!!

Alrighty then ……all’s well in America!

NY Attorney General and Manhattan District Attorney will announce indictment of Steve Bannon at 1pm
Steve Bannon is charged in NY with two counts of money laundering, three counts of conspiracy & one count of scheming to defraud.

Conservatism as hierarchy maintenance, competing visions of what America should be – a land of and for white Christians vs an egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy -, and how the Right is giving itself permission to embrace extremism and political violence.

Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse
Whenever originalism gets brandished in the Supreme Court, you can find right-wing ideology lurking in the shadows.
This isn’t “judicial philosophy” – it’s camouflage.
Here’s what’s going on in the Supreme Court: the right-wing dark money “fictitious name” front group “Honest Elections Project” is boosting a MAGA theory giving state legislatures virtually unchecked power over federal elections.

@RVAwonk·
Taking down Confederate monuments is not erasing history – it’s declaring that some parts of history belong in a museum, not on a pedestal.

WE ARE SICK OF WHAT “CHRISTIAN FASCISTS” SAY WE CAN AND CAN NOT DO!

Michael Flynn: From government insider to holy warrior
The emcee introduced him as “America’s General,” but to those in the audience, Flynn is far more than that: martyr, hero, leader, patriot, warrior.
The retired lieutenant general, former national security adviser, onetime anti-terrorism fighter, is now focused on his next task: building a movement centered on Christian nationalist ideas, where Christianity is at the center of American life and institutions.
Flynn brought his fight — a struggle he calls both spiritual and political — last month to a church in Batavia, New York, where thousands of people paid anywhere from a few dollars to up to $500 to hear and absorb his message that the United States is facing an existential threat, and that to save the nation, his supporters must act.

After the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, state-owned TV Russia One aired news anchor Eugeny Popov gloating that Russian officials already had the top secret nuclear documents that Trump had stolen and that Russia’s military and intel agents were reviewing them.

You think Neil Gorsuch is bad? Wait ’til you meet mommy. NEW FROM ME on my blog Armed With Reason! A 4-minute quick read. Sewergate: Anne Gorsuch Burford and the EPA. Apple meet tree >>>

As Ex-Uber Executive Heads to Trial, the Security Community Reels
Joe Sullivan, Uber’s former chief of security, faces criminal charges for his handling of a 2016 security breach. His trial this week has divided the security industry.

Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list

ADL also unveils interactive map displaying number of Oath Keepers members by state and position held

A lot of the recent policy debates around surveillance/encryption start from the frame of police *losing capability* but nobody ever talks about how quickly their capabilities have grown. Did we have a democratic debate about ubiquitous location surveillance?

Zuckernerd Facebook engineers admit that the company’s systems are so open and complex that they don’t know where user data is stored. “It would take multiple teams on the ad side to track down exactly the—where the [user] data flows.” We just updated the story with Facebook/Meta’s comment. Essentially the company is saying that the systems are so complex no one engineer can find where user data is.

@BeachBoomerDog3
Oh. Bull. Shit. !!! Of course Facebook engineers know where that shit is. They gave the Russians at Cambridge Analytica commented Facebook code *in Russian* so that they could more easily hack the 2016 election. Occam’s Razor suggests Facebook coders are fullosh.

US Life Expectancy Falls Again in ‘Historic’ Setback

 

copy /paste / send to all friends

ELECT Bennet (CO) Warnock (GA) Kelly (AZ) Cortez Masto (NV) Hassan (NH) Fetterman (PA) Ryan (OH) Barnes (WI)
We win 7 of these races, and Manchin and Sinema become irrelevant.
If we get it done, Democrats can deliver transformative change — without being blocked by the filibuster.

Library Futures @library_futures
“You shouldn’t need to have a credit card to be an informed citizen.” –Michael Blackwell of @ReadersFirst. We couldn’t agree more, and that’s one reason why we’re working for ebook licesnsing reform via state-level legislation.

The Wins Keep Coming
Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.

Federal student debt payments have been paused since March 2020. If you made any payments since then, YOU CAN REQUEST A REFUND through your student loan servicer. That money—quite literally—belongs to you.

Pennsylvania revises Confederate markers, recasts forces as “enemy” soldiers

Pennsylvania revises Confederate markers, recasts forces as “enemy” soldiers

The McConnellsburg changes are as follows:

  • A plaque commemorating the final Confederate encampment in Pennsylvania will no longer be displayed by the state, having been “accessioned into PHMC’s collection for interpretive purposes.” The plaque was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a neo-Confederate group widely known for venerating the Southern army and whitewashing Civil War history.
  • A historical marker with similar text and the same subject has been updated to include mention of the Union “routing” that followed for “the last Confederates to camp on Pennsylvania soil.”
  • A historical marker commemorating the first Confederate deaths in Pennsylvania has been edited to emphasize Confederate raids and property thefts. It also now mentions the Confederate Army’s “invasion of Pennsylvania” and describes the Confederates as “enemy” soldiers. A prior version mentioned only a neutral-sounding “skirmish.” The marker’s title has been changed from “Confederate Dead” to “Gettysburg Campaign.” (A six-foot-tall roadside monument to the Confederate dead — erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy nearby — is not property of the state historical commission and was not part of the commission’s review, Pollman said.)

Email Database Leak Reveals Members of Sons of Confederate Veterans

  • An email database for Sons of Confederate Veterans contained 71 military and 46 government email addresses, The Nation reported.
  • SCV has membership overlap with other white supremacist groups, per the Southern Poverty Law Center.
  • Several SCV members were sued for their participation in the violent Unite the Right rally.

Who Are the Sons of Confederate Veterans?

A database of more than 57,000 names reveals members of a neo-Confederate group in the military, government, and academia.

#DELETEFACEBOOK

#Facebook bans seven ‘cyber mercenary’ companies from its platforms
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/16/facebook-bans-surveillance-companies-warnings-malicious-activity

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL, K12 COVID, The Big Read

► ► @NetHappenings Newsletter ©1989
YOU CAN subscribe / unsubscribe FROM
► ► Blog CyberPlayGround.org@Cyberplayground
► ► Educational CyberPlayGround®, Inc. 1999 https://edu-cyberpg.com
► ► K12 School Directory@K12Playground
► ► RICH AS HELL™

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

On November 5, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation’s physical infrastructure and competitiveness.  This bipartisan legislation will rebuild roads, bridges, ports, and rail; expand access to clean drinking water; help ensure every American has access to high-speed internet; address the climate crisis and advance environmental justice; and support communities that too often have been left behind.  Combined with President Biden’s Build Back Better framework, it will also add, on average, 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years (fact sheets 1 and 2).

Among the highlights for education:

  • Clean water.  Currently, up to 10 million households and 400,000 schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water.  The legislation invests $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water, eliminate the nation’s lead service lines, and help clean up the toxic chemical PFAS.
  • Broadband access and affordability.  Reliable, high-speed internet is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, participate equally in school learning, and stay connected.  Yet, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds.  The legislation invests $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to reliable, high-speed internet through an investment in broadband infrastructure deployment.  It will also help lower prices for service and help close the digital divide.
  • Clean school buses.  The legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses, replacing the yellow school bus fleet.  Investments in zero- and low-emission public transit will drive demand for American-made batteries and vehicles, creating jobs and supporting domestic manufacturing.  It will also help the more than 25 million children and thousands of bus drivers who breathe polluted air on bus rides.  Air pollution is linked to asthma and other health issues that cause students to miss school.

PROMOTE DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

Destroying Democracy Is Central to the Privatization of Public Goods

COVID

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommends children ages 5- to 11-years-old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNtech pediatric vaccine.  This recommendation comes after months of rigorous review and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to authorize emergency use of the vaccine for children.  The COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to keep students safe and protect them against COVID-19, including the delta variant.

Starting this week, the pediatric vaccination program is fully up and running, and there are approximately 20,000 convenient locations where families can go to get their children vaccinated, with more sites coming online in the weeks ahead.  The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are supporting schools and communities with setting up vaccine solutions that work best for families, including hosting thousands of school-located vaccine clinics; matching school districts with local pharmacy providers; and supporting collaboration between schools, families, and local pediatricians and children’s hospitals.  A joint letter from the agencies delineates three requests of school communities and shares information and resources to help fulfill them.  (Note: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden recently visited a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia — which was the first school to administer the polio vaccine in 1954.)

The Department of Education and CDC are also providing resources to states and schools for testing and other mitigation efforts.  A partnership among the agencies and the Rockefeller Foundation specifically aims to accelerate school-based screening testing for students and staff.  It is making staff available to state health departments to coordinate, execute, and expand school-based testing, contact tracing/case investigation, and related public health activities; holding weekly “office hours” to help schools set up and sustain testing programs; and releasing guidance for districts on using American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to provide incentives to families to participate in testing programs.

Meanwhile, the Department, in collaboration with CDC, launched a COVID-19 data dashboard to help the public track the impact of COVID-19 on K-12 schools.  The dashboard aggregates — in one location — data on pediatric cases, youth vaccination rates, and schools operating in-person, remotely, or a hybrid of those two.  Data will be updated each week, and, where possible, the information is presented geographically, so that educators and families can understand the impact within their communities.

  1. Coronavirus and the Heart | Harvard Medical School
  2. Like Venom Coursing Through the Body: Mechanism Driving COVID-19 Mortality Identified
  3. Creating dangerous viruses in the lab is a bad way to guard against future pandemics
  4. Study of 6.2 Million Patients Reveals No Serious Health Effects Linked to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines
  5. FDA approves pill with sensor that digitally tracks if patients have ingested their medication

Biden administration orders federal agencies to fix hundreds of cyber flaws
The federal government has been told to go on a security patching spree. Thanks to a new CISA directive out this week, agencies have six months to fix hundreds of bugs across their networks — and just two weeks to fix bugs from 2021. Each agency patches their own stuff, so some agencies may have fewer bugs to fix than others. The full catalog of vulnerabilities are here (which might also be useful for folks in the private sector).

COVID-19 conspiracy theories thrive on social media platforms, EXCEPT Twitter

#DELETEFACEBOOK
500 doctors demand Facebook disclose data about COVID misinformation

Facebook spent $23.4 million in 2019 on Zuckerberg’s security, private air travel Facebook released its latest regulatory filing that shows executive compensation for 2019.#DeleteFacebook

MILITARY  – NO SHOT NO PROMOTION 

WON’T ALLOW YOU TO REUP CAUSE YOU’LL BE OUT.

Navy prepares to begin discharging sailors who refuse COVID-19 vaccine

Oklahoma Guard goes rogue, rejects COVID vaccine mandate after sudden change of command

U.S. Cyber Command, the NSA sister agency that carries out offensive cyber operations, hijacked the servers of the REvil ransomware group earlier this year. But the compromise wasn’t detected until Cybercom blocked its website traffic a month ago. The operation wasn’t a hack or a takedown but crucially “deprived the criminals of the platform they used to extort their victims.” Well that’s one way to make sure they don’t get paid. One of the group’s leaders confirmed domains were “hijacked from REvil,” and that the authorities were looking for them. “Good luck everyone, I’m off,” the hacker wrote. REvil was behind the ransomware attacks on JBS, Travelex, and Kaseya. The AP has a detailed interview with deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, who said following the U.S.-Russia tensions over cyberattacks that the U.S. has “not seen a material change in the landscape.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/18/revil-ransomware-group-goes-dark-after-its-tor-sites-were-hijacked/

AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN

Last week, the Department announced approval of two more American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund state plans — California and Colorado — and distributed remaining ARP ESSER funding to those jurisdictions.  The plans detail how states are using and intend to use ARP ESSER funds to safely reopen and sustain the operations of schools and classrooms and address the essential needs of students, including by equitably expanding educational opportunities for students disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.  Earlier this year, the agency distributed two-thirds of ARP ESSER funding, or $81 billion, to all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The remaining funding is being made available to states once plans are approved.  To date, 46 plans have been approved (see state-by-state press releases and highlights online).

THE BIG READ

The National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) The Big Read, established in 2016, supports Americans reading and discussing a single book in their communities.  Local governments, libraries, school districts, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations are encouraged to apply for one of an estimated 75 grants to be awarded for programming occurring between September 2022 and June 2023.  Besides the grant, communities will receive resources, including reader’s guides, teacher’s guides, and audio guides featuring commentary from artists, educators, and public figures, and publicity materials.

For this cycle, communities will choose from 15 titles:

  • The Bear(novel) by Andrew Krivak
  • The Best We Could Do(graphic memoir) by Thi Bui
  • Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?(graphic memoir) by Roz Chast
  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude(poetry) by Ross Gay
  • Circe(novel) by Madeline Miller
  • The Cold Millions(novel) by Jess Walter
  • Deaf Republic(poetry) by Ilya Kaminsky
  • Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth(memoir) by Sarah Smarsh
  • Homegoing(novel) by Yaa Gyasi
  • Infinite Country(novel) by Patricia Engel
  • Interior Chinatown(novel) by Charles Yu
  • Nothing to See Here(novel) by Kevin Wilson
  • Postcolonial Love Poem(poetry) by Natalie Diaz
  • Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body(memoir-in-essays) by Rebekah Taussig
  • There, There(novel) by Tommy Orange

The application deadline is January 26, 2022.

JOB FREE EDUCATION

IBM will offer free COBOL training to address overloaded unemployment systems

Jazz Study Looks for the Source of Creativity in the Brain | Technology Networks

533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online.

Are you still on Facebook? Have fun with your phishing scheme or fraud personal data breech.

#DeleteFacebook

Facebook makes it very obvious how to deactivate your account; it’s under

Account Settings > Security > Deactivate your account.

Don’t be fooled! Deactivation isn’t deletion, and when you chose this option, Facebook holds on to all your bits and pieces just in case you change your mind. (baloney they want your info forever)

533 million Facebook users’ phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online.

https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Now, the entire dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free, making it widely available to anyone with rudimentary data skills.

In 2019 allowed millions of people’s phone numbers to be scraped from Facebook’s servers in violation of its terms of service.

In 2016 mass data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped the data of 80 million users in violation of Facebook’s terms of service to target voters with political ads in the 2016 election.