Summer Dystopia: 75% of Americans Unhappy with Nation’s Direction

◼ Don’t Trust Congress or Media Either - CNS

“Three-quarters of Americans are now dissatisfied with the nation’s course, up from 68 percent in July,” an ◼ August 12 Gallup poll found.

The Gallup results were echoed by ◼ a Rasmussen poll, which found that only 29 percent of likely voters believe “the country is heading in the right direction.”

And Americans don’t trust Congress or the news media to help turn things around.

In modern political history, the GOP has won when it has embraced its conservative principles and articulated a message of freedom and enterprise. Freedom is the most inclusive message in politics. As the late Andrew Breitbart used to say, "If we can't sell Freedom, we suck."

◼ POLITICO MISDIRECTS FROM OBAMA'S COLLAPSING NUMBERS - Mike Flynn/Breitbart

Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei stretched their writing wings and penned ◼ an editorial Thursday night on the looming collapse of the Republican party. Allen and VandeHai, whose day jobs are to undercut the GOP and its candidates, feign concern that the party isn't doing enough to appeal to voters who don't support the party. A more interesting story for the democrats-with-by-lines is the precipitous drop in support for Obama on every major issue.
According to Gallup, just 35% of Americans support Obama's handling of the economy. In early June, before Obama embarked on an extensive tour of speeches about the economy, 42% approved of his efforts. In other words, the more he talked about the economy, the less Americans approved of how he was handling it.
It isn't just the economy, though. Americans don't support how Obama is handling virtually every issue. Only 26% support Obama's handling of the federal deficit. Taxes? 36% approve. Foreign Affairs? 40%. Immigration? 39%. Health Care? 39%. Only on fighting terrorism (50%) and race relations (51%) does Obama win the backing of a majority, just, of Americans.
Obama basically has the backing of the Democrat base and no one else....

Allen and VandeHei would rather the GOP adopt the Democrat playbook and make explicit appeals based on identity politics. An healthy dash of racial politics with a pinch of feminist rhetoric. It is a recipe for disaster for the GOP. Which is, of course, why Politico is pushing it.

What’s behind Wikileaks’ latest release of “insurance” files?

◼ Wikileaks has been known to release insurance files from time to time. These are dumps of encrypted files that can only be opened by those who hold the encryption key to do so. For one, it makes certain that information reaches the public in the event those who hold the information aren’t available to release it themselves. It can also be sort of a secret holder’s way of saying, “back off, or I’ll go all secret-exposing nuclear on you…” - Mandy Nagy/Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

But Wikileaks’ latest release of such files has everybody talking. That’s because they’re almost 400 gigabytes large. That’s large.

So, folks are all wondering, what could possibly be in there?

In Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood Cancels Protests

◼ Muslim Brotherhood claims snipers had been placed along routes of anti-military protests planned for capital. - Al Jazeera
Drudge:
Army Chief: New clashes won't be tolerated...
Cabinet to debate fate of Muslim Brotherhood...
Saudi prince fires celebrity TV preacher for Brotherhood link...
EU will 'urgently review' ties...
Egypt Stocks Tumble...
McCain: US has 'no credibility' in Arab world...
American al-Qaeda terrorist urges attacks on US diplomats...
Egyptian security forces arrest brother of al-Qaeda's top leader...
Iran says it has 18,000 nuclear centrifuges...
CAIRO MARCH CANCELLED
EGYPT UNREST THREATENS OIL ROUTES
Saudi King Backs Egypt's Military...
Army Chief: New clashes won't be tolerated...
Report: Dozens killed in attempt to escape custody...
Cabinet to debate fate of Brotherhood...
Saudi Prince Alwaleed fires celebrity TV preacher for link...
U.S. Lawmakers at Odds Over Aid...
Christian homes and shops marked with red graffiti before attack...

◼ The Brotherhood’s Currency of Blood - Sultan Knish

Like all terrorist organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood has only one commodity to trade in. Blood. In the war of ideas for the future of Egypt, the Brotherhood had nothing to offer but the blood of its followers and victims. It has no new ideas. It has no record of accomplishments. It has no vision for the future except the same old corruption and authoritarianism cloaked in a deceptive Islamist garb....

For the wealthy titans of the Brotherhood, their followers are pawns to be disposed of, human shields for their political ambitions. The Muslim Brotherhood spent their blood generously during the clashes with Egyptian police the same way that Hamas and Hezbollah spill the blood of their own people.

What it bought with their blood is the outrage of the world. Terrorist organizations are one-trick ponies. They unleash horrifying violence, blame it on the brutality of the authorities and wait for the world to step in and apply pressure on whatever government they are trying to overthrow....

Egypt has only had peace by suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood. It will only have peace when the Muslim Brotherhood is suppressed once again. The last two years have shown that there can be no peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. In or out of power, the Brotherhood is murderous, intolerant and ruthlessly bent on absolute power.

Responding to the carnage with new calls for an end to foreign aid is an explicit form of collaboration in the Muslim Brotherhood’s atrocities and the surest way to ensure that they will be repeated. Egypt may deserve to lose its foreign aid, but issuing such calls now is handing a victory to the world’s worst terrorist organization and giving it every incentive to up the body count next time around....

Wars aren’t won through de-escalation, but through escalation. America lost in Afghanistan because it wasn’t willing to fight harder and bloodier than the Taliban. The Egyptian government has shown that it is willing to match the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthlessness without backing down.

To reward the courage of the Egyptian soldiers and police who fought the Muslim Brotherhood in the streets by forcing their government to stand down and surrender to the terrorists who nearly turned Egypt into a second Iran is an unmitigated crime. It is a crime whose consequences will not only be felt by the women and Christians of Egypt, but by all of us.

◼ Muslim Brothers Retreat in the Face of Challenge - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

The Snowden story, they both said, was a battle they were waging together, a fight against powers of surveillance that they both believe are a threat to fundamental American liberties. UPDATED

◼ How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets - New York Times

She is not as expansive or carefree as Greenwald, which adds to their odd-couple chemistry. She is concerned about their physical safety. She is also, of course, worried about surveillance. “Geolocation is the thing,” she said. “I want to keep as much off the grid as I can. I’m not going to make it easy for them. If they want to follow me, they are going to have to do that. I am not going to ping into any G.P.S. My location matters to me. It matters to me in a new way that I didn’t feel before.”

There are lots of people angry with them and lots of governments, as well as private entities, that would not mind taking possession of the thousands of N.S.A. documents they still control. They have published only a handful — a top-secret, headline-grabbing, Congressional-hearing-inciting handful — and seem unlikely to publish everything, in the style of WikiLeaks. They are holding onto more secrets than they are exposing, at least for now.

“We have this window into this world, and we’re still trying to understand it,” Poitras said in one of our last conversations. “We’re not trying to keep it a secret, but piece the puzzle together. That’s a project that is going to take time. Our intention is to release what’s in the public interest but also to try to get a handle on what this world is, and then try to communicate that.”

The deepest paradox, of course, is that their effort to understand and expose government surveillance may have condemned them to a lifetime of it.

“Our lives will never be the same,” Poitras said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live someplace and feel like I have my privacy. That might be just completely gone.”

◼ Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow for 9 hours - The Guardian
◼ HELD UNDER UK TERRORISM ACT - NYT

“What’s amazing is this law, called the Terrorism Act, gives them a right to detain and question you about your activities with a terrorist organization or your possible involvement in or knowledge of a terrorism plot,” Mr. Greenwald said. “The only thing they were interested in was N.S.A. documents and what I was doing with Laura Poitras. It’s a total abuse of the law.” He added: “This is obviously a serious, radical escalation of what they are doing. He is my partner. He is not even a journalist.”

◼ 'Profound attack on press freedoms' - Glenn Greenwald/The Guardian

This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.

If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.

◼ Britain forced Guardian to destroy copy of Snowden material - Reuters

...In an article posted on the British newspaper's website on Monday, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said that a month ago, after the newspaper had published several stories based on Snowden's material, a British official advised him: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back."

...The Guardian reported, and UK authorities subsequently confirmed, that David Miranda, Greenwald's Brazilian partner, was detained by British authorities under an anti-terrorism law as he was in transit from Berlin to Brazil and was changing planes at London's Heathrow Airport....

Greenwald told the New York Times that Miranda went to Berlin to deliver materials downloaded by Snowden to Poitras and to acquire from Poitras a different set of materials for delivery to Greenwald, who lives with Miranda near Rio de Janeiro.
Greenwald said British authorities seized all electronic media, including data memory sticks, which Miranda was carrying. But Greenwald told the Forbes website that "everything" Miranda had "was heavily encrypted."

THE CLINTONS' LEGACY OF LIES

◼ Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions - Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick/New York Times
◼ DOWD’S STOPPED CLOCK GETS IT RIGHT - Steven Hayward/Powerline
◼ Money, Money, Money, Money, MONEY! - Maureen Dowd/New York Times
◼ It is difficult to explain to Americans, particularly young Americans, what was wrong with the Clinton era, and why we ought not want to re-live it. - Joel Pollak//Breitbart

The 1990s are sealed into our national memory as a time of great prosperity and expectation--killed off, in Democrats’ rewriting of history, by the 2000 recount and all that followed.
The truth is that by 2000, Democrats could not run away from Clinton quickly enough. It’s worth revisiting why....

Hillary Clinton has all of the fakery, and none of the charm, of her husband. From her comical ◼ pandering to the black community, to her ◼ cover-ups at the State Department, she has done little of substance to redeem her duplicity.

After Obama’s many failures, Americans may be content to embrace someone they never trusted anyway. But those lies do make a ◼ "difference," and opponents ought to remind Americans of that, constantly.

◼ NBC: Hillary Miniseries Might Never Go To Production
- Noel Sheppard/Newsbusters

It was also announced Friday that Fox TV Studios would not be producing the miniseries.

Are the wheels beginning to fall off this project, and if so, is it because the Clintons don't want either of these shows to go forward for fear they might harm Hillary some way?

Stay tuned.