FUTBOL: “Messi Banned Four Matches” / TYT Sports / Francis Maxwell and Jason Rubin ☮

Lionel Messi has been handed a four match ban for cursing at a referee during Argentina’s World Cup qualifying match with Chile over the weekend. Messi will miss today (Tuesday’s) match with Bolivia, along with the next three. While Argentina are a loaded squad, Sergio Aguero will likely find his way back into the starting xi after it was rumored he would be dropped to a bench role. Francis Maxwell and Jason Rubin discuss Lionel Messi’s ban.

PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM: “The Feuding Kleptocrats” / truthdig / Chris Hedges / 03.26.2017 ☮

The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit.

They ineptly have set themselves on fire over Obamacare, but this misstep will do little to halt the drive to, as Stephen Bannon promises, carry out the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Donald Trump’s appointees are busy diminishing or dismantling the agencies they were named to lead and the programs they are supposed to administer. That is why they were selected. Rex Tillerson at the State Department, Steven Mnuchin at the Treasury Department, Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry at the Department of Energy, Tom Price at Health and Human Services, Ben Carson at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Betsy DeVos at the Department of Education are eating away the foundations of democratic institutions like gigantic termites. And there is no force inside government that can stop them.

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