StupidiNews!

• Ex-Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is expected to plead guilty today to possession of child pornography after an FBI raid on his home last month.
• Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan says that his cancer is "95% gone" after two months of treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that his prognosis is good.
• The FDA has approved the first prescription drug for use in treating low sexual desire in women, but warns about side effects like dangerously low blood pressure.
• German lawmakers have approved an 86 billion euro bailout package for Greece after intense lobbying from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
• Hackers have published more than 10 GB of data taken from cheating website Ashley Madison, containing detailed information on 33 million users as well as internal company info.

Last Call For The Sound Of Trump Pets

The Donald continues to dominate the GOP field, and if a new CNN poll is any indication, the nomination is now his to lose as he's up to 24% and pulling away from the field on key issues.

Trump is the biggest gainer in the poll, up 6 points since July according to the first nationwide CNN/ORC poll since the top candidates debated in Cleveland on Aug. 6. Carson gained 5 points and Fiorina 4 points. Trump has also boosted his favorability numbers among Republicans, 58% have a favorable view of Trump now, that figure stood at 50% in the July survey. 

These nationwide findings follow recent polling in Iowa and New Hampshire showing Trump also leads the Republican field in those two key early states.

And what of Jeb Bush's fortunes?

Bush, who held the top spot in the field in most CNN/ORC polls on the race between last fall and Trump's entry into the race in June, has seen his favorability ratings drop alongside his standing in the contest. Overall, 56% hold an unfavorable view of the former Florida governor and 42% of Republican voters have a negative impression. That's an increase in negative views among all adults (up from 43% since July) and among Republican voters (up from 34% unfavorable).

But it's on the issues where Trump is winning in his role as the GOP's unrestrained id.

Still, Trump has quickly won the trust of Republican voters on several top issues. According to the poll, 45% say they trust Trump more than any other Republican candidate on the economy -- up 25 points since June, 44% say they trust Trump over the others on illegal immigration -- up 30 points since June -- and 32% trust him most to handle ISIS, no other candidate comes close on any of these issues.

Oh but it gets better.

On the economy and illegal immigration, Trump is far and away the top choice even among those Republicans who support someone else for the nomination (33% who say they will most likely vote for someone else say Trump is their most trusted on the economy, 29% say so on illegal immigration). Trump is also most trusted on social issues, 19% say he's their top choice to handle that. Bush follows at 15%. 

On two of these issues, Trump is more trusted among conservative Republicans than among moderate Republicans: When it comes to both the economy and illegal immigration, 50% of conservatives say they trust Trump, compared with 35% among moderates on each of those issues.

And what about his rampant sexism?  It only makes the GOP ladies love him even more.

But there is no gender gap among Republicans on favorable views of Trump: 60% of Republican women voters have a positive impression as do 57% of GOP men. Outside the Republican Party, women are less apt to hold a favorable view of Trump, just 17% of women voters who are independents or Democratic leaners see him favorably, compared with 29% of non-Republican male voters.

What can the RNC do, cut off Trump's donors?  He's a billionaire.  He's the archetype of the GOP candidate, a guy so rich he can't be bought by special interests.  They love him, and the rest of the GOP is in 100% panic mode.  Think about this: 3 out of 5 Republican women are perfectly OK with Trump's special brand of misogyny.  It's capitalism meets Dominionism.

And for very good reason.  Trump shows no signs of crashing and burning.  The longer he stays on top, the more likely he'll be the nominee.  Vox's Lee Drutman attempts an explanation:

The data on this is pretty clear. Put simply: While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he's speaking out for a lot people. 

By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I'll call "populist." No wonder folks are flocking to Trump — and to Bernie Sanders, who holds similar positions, though with more emphasis on the expanding Social Security part and less aggression on immigration.

Math seems pretty solid to me.  Both Trump and Sanders are holding at about 24% nationally among their respective primary polls right now and both are on the upswing.

Of course, in a MUCH more likely scenario, 24% is awfully close to 27%, too, and Trump people are just racist assholes.

Go figure.

Yes, Black Lives Do Matter

Bernie Sanders has taken a lot of heat from BLM activists for his answers and for seemingly shrugging off meetings with people in the movement.  Hillary Clinton on the other hand has met with activists, but some of her answers aren't exactly making her seem all that much better than Sanders.

Clinton's exchange with the activists was respectful, but there were some tense moments. The first video starts with Jones spending three minutes going over America's history of violence toward black people, ending with Clinton's role in perpetuating mass incarceration. He concluded with a thoughtful question on what that means to Clinton personally — "Now, they may have been unintended consequences, but now that you understand the consequences, what in your heart has changed that's going to change the direction of the country?" he asked — and a Clinton aide interrupted before she could answer. 

Clinton started off with a standard politician answer, recapping her lifelong advocacy for minority children, then offered some insight into how she wants to frame the issue on the campaign trail. "Once you say that this country has still not recovered from its original sin, which is true, the next question by people who are on the sidelines, which is the vast majority of Americans, is 'So, what do you want me to do about it?'" she said. "I'm trying to put together in a way that I can explain it and I can sell it, because in politics if you can't explain it and you can't sell it, it stays on the shelf."

She added that a specific agenda is crucial because "you can get lip service from as many white people you can pack into Yankee Stadium and a million more like it who are going to say, 'We get it, we get it. We are going to be nicer.' That’s not enough, at least in my book." 

Now, she's 100% right about this. Changing the minds and the actions of white America is the key to stopping racism in this country, and Clinton is going to have to sell that change to people.

Things got more tense in the second clip, as Jones objected to Clinton suggesting that Black Lives Matter needs to have clearer policy goals to get the rest of the country onboard. "I say this as respectfully as I can: If you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do," Jones said, adding that "this is and has always been a white problem of violence" and there isn't much black people can do to stop it. 

"Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with the very real problems," Clinton snapped. Jones said it's a "form of victim blaming" for Clinton to tell Black Lives Matter what it "needs to do to change white hearts." While Clinton avoided opening up about her personal culpability in America's race problem, that provoked a passionate explanation of how she sees politics: 

Look, I don't believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You're not gonna change every heart. You're not. But at the end of the day we can do a whole lot to change some hearts and change some systems and create more opportunities for people who deserve to have them to live up to their own God-given potential ... You can keep the movement going, which you have started, and through it you may actually change some hearts. But if that's all that happens, we'll be back here in ten years having the same conversation.

She's right about some things, but wildly off-base on others.  Blaming white people who perpetrate violence against black lives isn't victim blaming when it's been happening for 400 goddamn years.

However, Clinton is right when she says unless laws and more importantly entire systems change in this country, the situation will not improve.  The issue has always been how to best go about catalyzing that change.  It's a revolutionary change that will require a revolutionary act.  My question is how BLM plans to get that done with a Republican Congress.  It's not going to happen until that ends. What policies can a Democratic president enact further that a Republican Congress won't destroy?  We've had seven years of that.  How do we win back Congress and the state legislatures and governor's mansions?

Yes, it's  important to ask if Clinton the best person to help bring that change about of the candidates available. Jury's still out on both her and Sanders.  I'm hearing a lot of why, but nowhere near enough on how, from anyone involved.  That goes for the Democrats as well as BLM.

Re-Birther Of The Fool

So what do you get when you combine rabid GOP nationalism with "I'm not a racist but..." mentality and throw in a healthy dollop of paranoia heading into 2016?  The revenge of the Birther movement as it finds some Republican candidates unacceptable.

In a column published last week on the conspiracy theory website WND, author Jack Cashill noted that questions had been raised about whether four of the 17 candidates in the GOP field were really "natural born citizens" and therefore eligible to run for President. 

Ted Cruz has already dealt with those questions publicly -- the Canadian-born senator from Texas renounced his citizenship with that country last summer in anticipation of a 2016 bid -- but Cashill also listed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) among those who were suspect. 

He even mentioned that Jindal's preferring to go by the name Bobby -- inspired by "The Brady Bunch" -- instead of his given name, Piyush, would make for interesting evidence in a court case focused on his eligibility to run for commander-in-chief. 

But who, exactly, was suspicious of these candidates? On what grounds could these four politicians' eligibility to be President be challenged? And why was Santorum, whose background as an Italian-American doesn't get mentioned nearly as frequently as Rubio's Cuban heritage or Jindal's Indian heritage, suspect? 

TPM called up Cashill to find out. Cashill notably co-wrote the 2012 book "Officer's Oath" with former Lt. Col. Terry Lakin, who was dismissed from the U.S. Army in 2010 and sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan amid his questions about President Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief.

And the interview is a goddman classic.

When the challenge was made against Barack Obama, people said “how dare you question he’s a natural born citizen because he was born in Hawaii." Even if he was born in Hawaii, that does not make him a natural born citizen. It’s a very strict term. I won’t say very strict -- there’s a real meaning to the term, it’s not that it’s perfectly defined but the understanding is well understood. The understanding is that you be born of American parents with unquestioned loyalty to the United States. So for instance, had Obama been born [somewhere] other than Hawaii he would not have been eligible to run for President. Even though his mother was an American, just like Ted Cruz’s mother was American, the difference is that according to the law you’d have to be an American citizen for five years after the age of 14. She simply wasn’t old enough to confer that status on Obama. If his mother had been a non-American citizen and his father had been a Kenyan, and neither had any allegiance to the United States, which in fact neither of them really did, he would not have been eligible no matter where he was born.

So the question comes up about Bobby Jindal’s parents. Both of them were in the United States on student visas. To me the real question is does the candidate have any divided allegiance. So if Jindal’s parents remained steadfastly identifying as Indians and he steadfastly identified as an Indian, even though he was born in the United States and was a citizen, he would not be eligible. Legitimately, he would not be eligible to be President. But given the fact that he changed his name after a character in “The Brady Bunch" -- as American as it gets -- I don’t think there’s any question in any of those candidates that there’s any dual allegiance. That’s what the law was designed to prevent, was people with dual allegiance. Especially in the early Republic when you had people who were from England or from France and who really reported back to the motherland first. Even if they were born here they might be children of a diplomat or something like that. The fact that you are a citizen doesn’t make you a natural born citizen.

These people are completely, certifiably bonkers. and now they are turning on each other.  It would be funny other than the fact that their votes count too, and they are much more likely to vote than your average Democratic voter.

StupidiNews!

• Thailand's military government is hunting for suspects in Monday's deadly bombing of a crowded shrine popular with tourists, with at least 14 dead so far and dozens injured.
• The NLRB has summarily dismissed a bid by Northwestern University college football players to unionize, no reason has been given so far for the decision.
• Indonesian investigators have confirmed no survivors were found at the crash site of Sunday's Trigana Air Service flight, all 54 people on board have been confirmed killed.
• Calls for the resignation of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff are increasing as investigation into a kickback scheme from state-run energy giant Petrobras has engulfed her administration.
• The IRS now says that identity thieves may have lifted more than 300,000 taxpayer transcripts online, three times initial estimates, and warns that number may still yet increase.

Last Call For Debasing De Blasio

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has done some pretty good things for the Big Apple, but he's made a lot of political enemies on the way.  Less than two years since he took office, the long knives are definitely out for him.

Mayor Bill de Blasio was already having a bad week. Then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called. 

Mr. Cuomo had cast the city as slow-footed in responding to a recent outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the Bronx. Fed up, Mr. de Blasio’s press secretary, Karen Hinton, issued a sharp retort. “What about the state’s performance?” she said to a reporter. “What has the state been doing to prevent this disease?” 

Taken aback, the governor quickly called Mr. de Blasio. Aides at City Hall, themselves startled by the remark, issued an unusual clarification: The mayor’s chief spokeswoman, the public face of the administration, had not been speaking for the mayor. 

The episode, recounted by several people familiar with the discussion, was an extraordinary public moment of discord, laying bare a host of challenges confronting the de Blasio administration in a messy second year: tension among aides; a perilous, often powerless relationship with Mr. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat; and the struggles of Mr. de Blasio, a political operative by training, to control the perception of his stewardship. 

When the mayor’s top political aide raised concerns about battling the car-service app Uber, saying it could be a tough fight, Mr. de Blasio pushed forward, prompting a public relations fiasco that ended with City Hall’s abruptly dropping a proposal to limit the company’s growth. 

Warned that rising complaints about homelessness could hurt him politically, Mr. de Blasio announced action on the issue this month, appearing reactive to negative headlines. 

And while federal authorities praised the mayor’s handling of the Legionnaires’ outbreak as “swift” and “robust,” the response was still questioned by some city Democrats. Frustrated, the mayor led a marathon weekend meeting with agency leaders, demanding details on their progress. 

In interviews, allies of the mayor said they deeply supported Mr. de Blasio and his efforts to combat inequality. But they expressed worry that his administration had not done enough to ensure New Yorkers recognize his accomplishments. 

“There are a lot of positive programs going in the right direction, and yet, it’s not being perceived because of so many other floundering situations,” Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president and a Democrat, said. “It’s not being presented in a way that people can see it.”

Now, de Blasio has taken his shots at Gov. Cuomo...oh yeah, and President Obama, too.  He definitely has issues making friends higher up, and yes, he's made some bad calls.  But the complaints leveled against him here by the NY Times tells me that he's making the right kind of enemies, too (namely Uber and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Cuomo.)

We'll see how he can hold up.  I think he can turn this to his advantage if he can show that what he's doing is working.  The problem is there's a lot of New Yorkers invested in making sure that doesn't happen.

Iran, Syria And Obama

Nancy LeTourneau, who has been writing for Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog on the weekends, gives us this important look at the second- and third-order positive effects of President Obama's diplomatic engagement with Iran.

As I wrote yesterday, I was particularly struck by President Obama’s description of his approach to the negotiations with Iran as a way to “find openings” that could lead to transformative change. I realized that I had missed how he talked about the same thing in an interview with David Remnick back in January 2014. 

Obama, who has pressed Netanyahu to muster the political will to take risks on his own, thinks he can help “create a space”—that is the term around the White House—for forward movement on the Palestinian issue, whether he is around to see the result or not.

Right now it looks like the possibility of a space for movement on the Palestinian issue is not likely during President Obama’s term. But in what I think is the major news story from last week, we are already beginning to see the possibility of an opening when it comes to the ongoing civil war in Syria.

Creating space in Iran is starting to lead to possibilities in Syria.  That's extremely important given the conflict there entering its sixth year.  If there is a solution to Syria, it's going to involve Iran, at least in part.

It is hard for a lot of Americans to grasp what a huge realignment is happening here. The main Sunni/Shia battle lines in the Middle East have traditionally been drawn between Saudi Arabia (a leading member of GCC) and Iran. As such, Iran has typically supported the Alawite (a branch of Shia Islam) government of Assad, while Saudi Arabia has a history of funding Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Furthermore, as we saw in the response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons a couple of years ago, Putin has not only supported the Syrian dictator, he has tremendous power and influence over him. If all of these countries begin to see it in their interests to negotiate a consensus on how to end this civil war, that would be groundbreaking - not just for Syria - but for the Middle East as a whole. It is exactly what President Obama laid out as his vision for that region of the world when he talked to Remnick.

And even better, President Obama understand that consensus diplomacy not only creates leverage for dealing with America's enemies, but with America's allies as well.

To the extent that these realignments are successful, what they accomplish is to further alienate the extremists - be they the hardliners in Iran or terrorists like ISIS. As that happens, the pressure mounts on Prime Minister Netanyahu to decide whether he will join in the realignment or further alienate himself as an extremist.

 People talk about how terrible Obama's foreign policy is, but that's because they're still measuring everything by the Bush yardstick.  This is a whole new ballgame here.

Berned Again And Again

I'm starting to think that Bernie Sanders is a bit resentful that black voters haven't fallen in love with him yet when the alternative is Hillary Clinton, and that he doesn't understand why that hasn't happened yet.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said on NBC’s Meet the Press that he doesn’t believe that he owes the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement an apology, even though his own staff already apologized to them.

Host Chuck Todd began by asking about a Buzzfeed piece revealing that his campaign had reached out to #BlackLivesMatter protesters after they stormed the stage of a Sanders rally and took his mic. “I apologize it took our campaign so long,” the campaign’s African-American outreach director Marcus Ferrell told them in an email.

“Well, that was sent out by a staffer, not by me,” Sanders said. “Look, we are reaching out to all kinds of groups. Absolutely I met with folks at Black Lives Matter.”

“I understand that you said a staffer put it out, but you felt an apology was necessary?” Todd asked.

“No, I don’t. I think we’re going to be working with all groups. This was sent out without my knowledge,” Sanders said.

I'm sorry Senator Sanders that black voters asking questions about you or wanting to hold you accountable for your 25 year record in Congress are starting to annoy you.  I'm sorry that we're too stupid to figure out that you're the obvious candidate for saving black America from itself.  I'm sorry that we made you look bad on television and stuff.

On second thought, I'm not sorry at all, asshole.

You don't owe BLM an apology, great.

I don't owe you my primary vote, either.  You've got to earn that and you're still doing a terrible job of it.

StupidiNews!

• Civil Rights icon, long-time NAACP president and Southern Poverty Law Center founder Julian Bond passed away Saturday at the age of 75 after a brief illness.
• FAA officials say a software upgrade at an air traffic control center in Virginia may be responsible for over 400 flights being canceled in the Washington DC area on Saturday.
• A lost Trigana Air Service plane presumed to have crashed on Sunday with 54 people aboard had been carrying nearly half a million dollars in aid for remote Indonesian villages.
• Authorities in Burundi have arrested members of the army for involvement in a rocket attack that killed an intelligence adviser to President Pierre Nkurunzia two weeks ago.
• AT&T has been providing assistance to the NSA in monitoring internet traffic in the US for 30 years, according to a report published Friday.

Last Call For Dump Trump

Just another reminder, gentle reader, that Donald Trump''s success in the GOP right now stems from his honesty over the GOP's brutal positions.

Donald Trump would reverse President Obama's executive orders on immigration and deport all undocumented immigrants from the U.S. as president, he said in an exclusive interview with NBC's Chuck Todd.

"We're going to keep the families together, but they have to go," he said in the interview, which will air in full on NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday.

Pressed on what he'd do if the immigrants in question had nowhere to return to, Trump reiterated: "They have to go."

"We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we don't have a country," he said.

Speaking on Trump's gilded private plane as it idled on a runway in Des Moines, Iowa, the real-estate mogul and Republican presidential frontrunner offered the first outlines of the immigration policy proposals he'd implement from the Oval Office.

Trump said, to begin, "we have to" rescind Obama's executive order offering those brought to the U.S. illegally as children — known as DREAMers — protection from deportation, as well as Obama's unilateral move to delay deportation for their families as well.

"We have to make a whole new set of standards" for those immigrating to the US.

He doesn't sugarcoat anything.  Trump's position is "round them up and ship them out."  This is what the Perpetual Outrage Machine demands.  And right now the only two things standing between the Trump GOP and total domination of the country are Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg's workout routine.

But the people telling you there's no difference between the parties and that your vote is meaningless?  They're why Trump is loose in the china shop wrecking everything. Nationalism and protectionism certainly isn't new in American politics (especially during periods of economic downturns) but the people that say to themselves "Hey you know he has a couple of points" are the problem here.

Job Misplacement

The Lexington Herald-Leader editorial board is making it pretty clear where they stand on the issue of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis's refusal to issue marriage certificates and the right-wing firm Liberty Counsel representing her, and that position is "do your job or quit".

No doubt county clerks and their staffs over the decades have often looked at people applying for marriage licenses and questioned both the wisdom and the likely sanctity of the proposed union. Certainly they've often known things about the couple that many religions would frown upon. But we've never heard of a clerk denying a license to a divorced person, a philanderer, someone who's abused a partner or neglected children. It's easy to imagine the outrage and chaos that would ensue if clerks began morality-testing prospective opposite-gender spouses. But that's exactly the right that Davis is demanding. She wants to pick and choose, based on her beliefs, which legally qualified couples will get marriage licenses.

The Liberty attorneys have asked Bunning to delay his order while they appeal it.

Bunning should deny that request.

Davis can resign if she's morally unable to issue the marriage licenses while the appeal is pending. Law-abiding, taxpaying Rowan County citizens have been denied their constitutional rights for almost two months while Davis has kept her job and Liberty has ginned up its marketing machine.

 And this case may still be heading for the Supreme Court, it only takes four Justices to grant cert. In the meantime the Justices have already decided on the question of same-sex marriage itself, and Davis should either follow that law or resign and be replaced by someone who can.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Sunday Long Read: School Dazed

This week, Tampa Bay Times gives us this truly depressing example of what Republican misrule in Florida has wrought: the systemic abandonment of elementary schools in black neighborhoods with the goal of siphoning off education resources to the affluent white neighborhoods that vote Republican.

In just eight years, Pinellas County School Board members turned five schools in the county’s black neighborhoods into some of the worst in Florida. 

First they abandoned integration, leaving the schools overwhelmingly poor and black.
Then they broke promises of more money and resources. 

Then — as black children started failing at outrageous rates, as overstressed teachers walked off the job, as middle class families fled en masse — the board stood by and did nothing. 

Today thousands of children are paying the price, a Tampa Bay Timesinvestigation has found. 

They are trapped at Campbell Park, Fairmount Park, Lakewood, Maximo and Melrose — five neighborhood elementary schools that the board has transformed into failure factories. 

Every year, they turn out a staggering number of children who don’t know the basics.
Eight in 10 fail reading, according to state standardized test scores. Nine in 10 fail math. 

Ranked by the state Department of Education, Melrose is the worst elementary school in Florida. Fairmount Park is No. 2. Maximo is No. 10. Lakewood is No. 12. Campbell Park is No. 15. 

All of the schools operate within six square miles in one of Florida’s most affluent counties. 

All of them were much better off a decade ago.

This is just one county, in one red state, but it's an example of the Republican mindset: education resources are finite, we can never raise taxes for better schools, so we're going to improve schools for the kids that matter -- affluent white kids -- at the expense of everyone else.  What are those people going to do about it anyway?  We've made sure they have no political power. These are our neighborhoods and our kids.

Let those black and Latino kids burn, right?

You have to look no further than Pinellas County for evidence of that.

Public education is no longer a right for American kids.  It's a weapon to be used to keep them in poverty, to keep them weak, to keep them down.

Welcome to local government in Red State America.

Last Call For The Company Men

What happens when you take the worst, win-at-all-costs aspects of "boiler room" era Wall Street, the byzantine "sausage factory" politics of being a Capitol Hill legislative aide, the high-pressure spotlight of billion-dollar professional sports, and the cutthroat "publish or perish" world of academia, and then combine them with the cult of personality of "techbro" Silicon Valley?

Welcome to being a white-collar Amazon employee.

Tens of millions of Americans know Amazon as customers, but life inside its corporate offices is largely a mystery. Secrecy is required; even low-level employees sign a lengthy confidentiality agreement. The company authorized only a handful of senior managers to talk to reporters for this article, declining requests for interviews with Mr. Bezos and his top leaders.

However, more than 100 current and former Amazonians — members of the leadership team, human resources executives, marketers, retail specialists and engineers who worked on projects from the Kindle to grocery delivery to the recent mobile phone launch — described how they tried to reconcile the sometimes-punishing aspects of their workplace with what many called its thrilling power to create.

In interviews, some said they thrived at Amazon precisely because it pushed them past what they thought were their limits. Many employees are motivated by “thinking big and knowing that we haven’t scratched the surface on what’s out there to invent,” said Elisabeth Rommel, a retail executive who was one of those permitted to speak.

Others who cycled in and out of the company said that what they learned in their brief stints helped their careers take off. And more than a few who fled said they later realized they had become addicted to Amazon’s way of working.

“A lot of people who work there feel this tension: It’s the greatest place I hate to work,” said John Rossman, a former executive there who published a book, “The Amazon Way.”

Amazon may be singular but perhaps not quite as peculiar as it claims. It has just been quicker in responding to changes that the rest of the work world is now experiencing: data that allows individual performance to be measured continuously, come-and-go relationships between employers and employees, and global competition in which empires rise and fall overnight. Amazon is in the vanguard of where technology wants to take the modern office: more nimble and more productive, but harsher and less forgiving.

“Organizations are turning up the dial, pushing their teams to do more for less money, either to keep up with the competition or just stay ahead of the executioner’s blade,” said Clay Parker Jones, a consultant who helps old-line businesses become more responsive to change.

On a recent morning, as Amazon’s new hires waited to begin orientation, few of them seemed to appreciate the experiment in which they had enrolled. Only one, Keith Ketzle, a freckled Texan triathlete with an M.B.A., lit up with recognition, explaining how he left his old, lumbering company for a faster, grittier one.

“Conflict brings about innovation,” he said.

And in conflict, there are always winners and losers. In Jeff Bezos's world, lose too much or too often and you're out.  You're micro-managed to within an inch of your limits, and then shoved over that line in order to use the push to fly into success or plummet like Icarus to crash on the rocks below.  Either way, you belong to the company.

While the Amazon campus appears similar to those of some tech giants — with its dog-friendly offices, work force that skews young and male, on-site farmers’ market and upbeat posters — the company is considered a place apart. Google and Facebook motivate employees with gyms, meals and benefits, like cash handouts for new parents, “designed to take care of the whole you,” as Google puts it.

Amazon, though, offers no pretense that catering to employees is a priority. Compensation is considered competitive — successful midlevel managers can collect the equivalent of an extra salary from grants of a stock that has increased more than tenfold since 2008. But workers are expected to embrace “frugality” (No. 9), from the bare-bones desks to the cellphones and travel expenses that they often pay themselves. (No daily free food buffets or regular snack supplies, either.) The focus is on relentless striving to please customers, or “customer obsession” (No. 1), with words like “mission” used to describe lightning-quick delivery of Cocoa Krispies or selfie sticks.

As the company has grown, Mr. Bezos has become more committed to his original ideas, viewing them in almost moral terms, those who have worked closely with him say. “My main job today: I work hard at helping to maintain the culture,” Mr. Bezos said last year at a conference run by Business Insider, a web publication in which he is an investor.

Of all of his management notions, perhaps the most distinctive is his belief that harmony is often overvalued in the workplace — that it can stifle honest critique and encourage polite praise for flawed ideas. Instead, Amazonians are instructed to “disagree and commit” (No. 13) — to rip into colleagues’ ideas, with feedback that can be blunt to the point of painful, before lining up behind a decision.

“We always want to arrive at the right answer,” said Tony Galbato, vice president for human resources, in an email statement. “It would certainly be much easier and socially cohesive to just compromise and not debate, but that may lead to the wrong decision.”

What does that say about America when one of its most successful companies has the philosophy of beating failure out of you at all costs, and where debate and agreement is not only frowned upon, but actively and aggressively discouraged?

We who are about to innovate, salute you.

The Clinton E-Mail Story Is Still Nothing

And until she's indicted, like say, Gov. Rick Perry, it's a nothingburger and I'll keep pressing that fact.

F.B.I. agents investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server are seeking to determine who at the State Department passed highly classified information from secure networks to Mrs. Clinton’s personal account, according to law enforcement and diplomatic officials and others briefed on the investigation.

To track how the information flowed, agents will try to gain access to the email accounts of many State Department officials who worked there while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the officials said. State Department employees apparently circulated the emails on unclassified systems in 2009 and 2011, and some were ultimately forwarded to Mrs. Clinton.

They were not marked as classified, the State Department has said, and it is unclear whether its employees knew the origin of the information.

So somebody clearly did not handle sensitive information correctly.  That somebody is not Hillary Clinton.

Law enforcement officials have said that Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, is not a target of the investigation, and she has said there is no evidence that her account was hacked. There has also been no evidence that she broke the law, and many specialists believe the occasional appearance of classified information in her account was probably of marginal consequence.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton said in a statement on Friday that she “took the handling of classified information very seriously.”

“She always received classified materials in secure settings, either by phone, videoconference, on paper or in person,” said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. “If, however, some material unknowingly ended up somewhere on the State Department’s unclassified email system, we want to continue to be as helpful as possible in getting to the bottom of that.”

But of course, it's not like the media players in this game have a 20 year history of witch hunts against the Clintons or anything.  John Cole notes Ron Fournier (of all people) nailed this earlier this week:

Furthermore, a thorough autopsy of the deleted email might lead to details about other embarrassing topics, such as Benghazi (a GOP fetish), or the intersection of Clinton Foundation donors and State Department business (“Follow the money,” a Democrat close to Clinton told me in March). Though this is pure speculation, her closest allies worry about what might be found. 

That's the whole point of this, to stoke a detailed fishing expedition to look through her email and find some sort of "smoking gun" that ends her presidential run.

That's the entire ballgame, and never forget it for a second.

Code Red Moscow

On Monday in the car on the way home, I heard an NPR story on Kaspersky Labs, the Russian anti-malware firm (which, as NPR host Melissa Block pointed out, is a sponsor of NPR).  The story was a piece about how Kaspersky's ties to Moscow and Vladimir Putin made it something of a boogeyman in the anti-virus world, but that the firm was dedicated to beating viruses.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: So the U.S. government doesn't buy from Kaspersky, or other foreign companies, but American consumers can buy whichever anti-virus software they'd like. Joining me to talk about how these computer security companies do their work is NPR tech reporter Aarti Shahani. And, Aarti, let's start with Kaspersky, which, as we mentioned earlier, is a corporate sponsor of NPR News. We heard Corey say that people have raised concerns about the work that this company has done for the Russian security services. Does that mean American consumers should be wary of Russian spying? 

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: (Laughter) No. That's really not what it means at all. Kaspersky has millions of users, and their software is a published product, which means that outsiders can reverse engineer it. Plenty of people are pouring over Kaspersky and all the other major anti-virus software trying to find weaknesses so they can be fixed. It's not in the business interest of the company to leave in some obvious backdoors as a favor to hackers, you know, Russian intelligence or otherwise. Researchers in the community would find it and fry them for it. That's pretty much the consensus among the experts I've interviewed.

I thought the timing was rather odd for NPR to go out of its way to say that Kapersky was one of the good guys.  Aarti Shahani's explanation made sense: if nobody trusted Kapsersky, nobody would use the product.

Turns out "not trusting Kaspersky" is a pretty good idea.

Beginning more than a decade ago, one of the largest security companies in the world, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, tried to damage rivals in the marketplace by tricking their antivirus software programs into classifying benign files as malicious, according to two former employees. 

They said the secret campaign targeted Microsoft Corp, AVG Technologies NV , Avast Software and other rivals, fooling some of them into deleting or disabling important files on their customers' PCs. 

Some of the attacks were ordered by Kaspersky Lab's co-founder, Eugene Kaspersky, in part to retaliate against smaller rivals that he felt were aping his software instead of developing their own technology, they said. 

"Eugene considered this stealing," said one of the former employees. Both sources requested anonymity and said they were among a small group of people who knew about the operation. 

Kaspersky Lab strongly denied that it had tricked competitors into categorizing clean files as malicious, so-called false positives. 

"Our company has never conducted any secret campaign to trick competitors into generating false positives to damage their market standing," Kaspersky said in a statement to Reuters. "Such actions are unethical, dishonest and their legality is at least questionable." 

Executives at Microsoft, AVG and Avast previously told Reuters that unknown parties had tried to induce false positives in recent years. When contacted this week, they had no comment on the allegation that Kaspersky Lab had targeted them.

 If this is true, Kaspersky may not be spying on you for Putin, but he's just a colossal asshole instead.  Either way, I'm still not using his products.