FAST FIVE FOUR: * "Basically, in this analysis there are four especially powerful and pernicious overarching economic and political mechanisms operating. These are privatization, financialization, militarization, and criminalization , which together are producing a steadily creeping authoritarianism—a new authoritarianism—to fit our times." * Solid read: Kevin Drum on the latest attempt to cut food benefits for the poor. * The ' school reform ' types are wrong. It all comes down to economics. * Japanese Twin Peaks coffee commercials.