5: Bernie Sanders Is the Most Popular Politician in America, Poll Says
A new poll found that among all other notable American senators, representatives, and even the president, Bernie Sanders reigns supreme as the most popular politician in the nation—the only one a majority of voters on both sides of the aisle view favorably, the Hill reports.
The Harvard-Harris Poll—an online survey conducted from August 17 to 22—culled responses from 2,263 voters who lean both left and right, along with those who identify as nonpartisan. It asked about their feelings on the Democratic and Republican parties, the biggest political moments of the past few weeks, and what issues matter most to them. It also quizzed them on America’s politicians, asking how favorably or unfavorably they viewed certain lawmakers.
Vice News
In Texas, tens of thousands of residents began evacuating coastal communities Thursday, as forecasters predicted Hurricane Harvey could make landfall late Friday as a major category-three storm, delivering a life-threatening 35 inches of rain to some parts of the Gulf Coast. Texas Governor Greg Abbott called out 700 members of the National Guard as several coastal counties ordered mandatory evacuations. Hurricane trackers expect the storm’s eye to come ashore near the city of Corpus Christi, where mayor Joe McComb called for a voluntary evacuation. For more we speak with Dan Kammen who just resigned as science envoy for the U.S. State Department.Democracy Now
3: Children learn in tent after Israel demolishes school
Jubbet adh-Dibh, occupied West Bank – Early in the morning, dozens of students assembled in columns outside the Jubbet adh-Dibh primary school. Encouraged by their teachers, they launched into a rendition of the Palestinian national anthem, Fidai.
It appeared to be a typical Palestinian scene, a morning ritual repeated outside thousands of school buildings across the occupied West Bank before students begin classes.
But when the students of Jubbet adh-Dibh finished singing the anthem, they had no classrooms to go to. There was only a single tent filled with wooden chairs and book-ended by two whiteboards.
Aljazeera
2: EVEN WIKILEAKS HATERS SHOULDN’T WANT IT LABELED A “HOSTILE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY”
IT USED TO be easy to cheer on WikiLeaks. But since 2010, many (myself included) have watched with dismay as WikiLeaks slid from the outlet courageous enough to host Chelsea Manning’s data dump to a murky melange of bad-faith propagandizing and newsworthy disclosures. At a time when WikiLeaks and its founder are willing to help push Pizzagate, and unable to tweet about sunglasses sans conspiracy-think, it’s not unfair to view Assange as being motivated as much by his various axes to grind as by a zeal for transparency. But even the harshest WikiLeaks critics should resist the Senate’s attempt to brand the website a “non-state hostile intelligence service” in the 2018 intelligence authorization bill.
Ron Wyden isn’t a friend of WikiLeaks. In May, the Oregon senator’s office tweeted that it was an “established fact” that “Trump actively encouraged Russians & WikiLeaks to attack our democracy,” and pointed out, with suspicion, Trump’s praise for WikiLeaks during the campaign. Like his Democratic colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wyden embraced the tough language on Russian meddling that had been folded into the nation’s spy budget, but unlike them he voted against the reauthorization bill because of this sentence: “It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.”
So, what’s a “non-state hostile intelligence service”? That’s a great question, given that an “intelligence service” is a spy agency, and spy agencies are the tools of governments, and therefore not stateless. That’s exactly why Wyden, despite his opposition to WikiLeaks and determination to investigate Russian electoral interference, came to its defense: Official resolutions are risky when no one’s really sure what’s being resolved. Perhaps the hostile agency language would be purely symbolic, but if the clause somehow proved to have some teeth, plenty of publishers not so easily written off as tools of foreign meddling could be at risk.
The Intercept
1: US central bank chief rebukes Trump over plan to lift regulations
Donald Trump has been rebuked by the US central bank chief, Janet Yellen, for planning to scrap tough banking regulations that made the system “substantially safer” and did nothing to restrict growth or lending.
Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, used a speech at the annual meeting of central bankers on Friday in the US ski resort of Jackson Hole to warn that policymakers might have forgotten the terrible damage wreaked on the global economy in 2008 when they seek to lift regulations that prevent risky behaviour.
“Already, for some, memories of this experience may be fading – memories of just how costly the financial crisis was,” she said.
“The core reforms we have put in place have substantially boosted resilience without unduly limiting credit availability or economic growth.”
The president, who has vowed to “do a big number” on the Dodd-Frank law at the centre of banker complaints, is backing calls from executives on Wall Street and Republicans in Congress for looser financial regulations to spur growth.
The Guardian
