kpete
kpete's JournalComforting the NSA and Afflicting Its Dissenters
Comforting the NSA and Afflicting Its DissentersNo serious defense of the surveillance state can ignores its anti-democratic abuses, its lawbreaking, and its record of punishing whistleblowers.
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Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, many U.S. officials in many different parts of the government have blatantly violated the Constitution, U.S. law, and duly ratified treaties. They've invoked national security to cover up their wrongdoing. At times, they've gone so far as to commit perjury to hide the truth. And almost none of them has ever been charged or prosecuted. As the national-security state engages in serial abuses to a degree that hasn't been equalled in the United States since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, it is abetted by commentators who proceed as if the most worrisome legal violations are actually being perpetrated by dissenters who expose illegal government behavior. These commentators invoke the rule of law as if whistleblowers violate and threaten it more than powerful officials, whose misdeeds they elide and ignore.
the rest:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/comforting-the-nsa-and-afflicting-its-dissenters/381947/?single_page=true
Derp Singularity, Observed in UK
David Cameron pushed by protester in Leeds
This is hilarious and happily innocent. But everyone involved truly deserves a big "Good Job, Everyone!" As you can see in this 'Vine' video, https://vine.co/v/OMmHqp07rxa British PM David Cameron is walking toward his car when all of a sudden some random dude comes flying into the picture either slams into Cameron or almost slams into him. The PM's security detail quickly grabs the guy and Cameron appears uninjured and a little stunned.
Now, unlike planes and projectiles, normal sized humans on foot can usually be observed at a distance. So this seems like a bit of a shortcoming on the part of Cameron's security detail. But actually, it gets better, or worse, as the case may be.
The apparent attacker wasn't some crazy person on par with the American subspecies homo fencejumperus, it was some guy sprinting on the way to the gym. So he seems to have been as startled and shaken up as Cameron was. So he's jogging along on the way to the gym but just because he's so hardcore he's sprinting and he plows into the Prime Minister's entourage.
So basically, oblivious doofus careens into British Prime Minister while hapless security guys in suits don't notice him sprinting at the protectee.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/derp-singularity-observed-in-the-uk
Heh. A winger reaches out with his bony hand from the very grave to Attack Shaheen In NH Senate Race
Op-Ed Authored By Dead Politician Attacks Shaheen In NH Senate Race
"As is usual with poll-driven politicians, Jeanne Shaheen is running television commercials and writing op-ed pieces addressing the dominant problem facing America — skyrocketing gasoline prices — but providing no real solutions," the piece began. "Evan worse, anyone who knows her history also knows that during her entire career she has been a big part of the problem."
There was an unusual wrinkle: Cobleigh died in February 2009. The op-ed was actually a reprint of when it was first published in July 3, 2008.
MORE:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/opinion-piece-marshall-cobleigh-jeanne-shaheen
Good old cost-cutters, not even the Ebola virus can deter them.
Wonderful little nugget in a NYT article this morning about the local company Bio-Recovery which has done the clean-up of Dr. Craig Spencer's apartment in Harlem, with the company's chief safety officer named Sal Pain:
In his line of work, Mr. Pain said, public officials are as often a
hindrance as they are a source of support. Bio-Recovery, which is based
on Long Island, had firsthand experience with such bureaucratic barriers
in Dallas a few weeks ago, when public officials offering them a
contract refused to pay for the most secure protective equipment, Mr.
Pain said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-new-york-hazmat-workers.html
via: http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/10/prond.html#comment-1655961665
How Smart Is President Obama? Very Smart.
Say whatever you’d like, cable newsers, President Obama is not watching. In an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources” Sunday, former Obama press secretary and current CNN political analyst Jay Carney described the president as “a voracious consumer of the printed word, even the electronic printed word, and but he doesn’t — he doesn’t watch cable news”:
STELTER: Is it true the president doesn’t watch any cable news?
CARNEY: It is true, which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get news, in a real time basis. He does. He’s a voracious consumer of the printed word, even the electronic printed word, and but he doesn’t — he doesn’t watch cable news. I have spent, you know, countless hours with him on Air Force One, especially, in the conference room where we always had the TV on, and it was never in any of the trips I ever took with him, tuned in to cable news.
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/jay-carney-president-obama-is-various-reader-of-print-does-not-watch-cable-news_b243577
CNN Host Hits Megyn Kelly's Ebola Hysteria: "Spencer did not have a 103 fever, he had a 100.3 fever"
CNN's Brian Stelter wagged his finger at Fox News on Sunday for what he described as premature condemnation of Ebola's first patient in New York City.
Rolling a clip from Thursday's edition of "The Kelly File," Stelter presented host Megyn Kelly ripping into Dr. Craig Spencer for not "self-quarantining" after he discovered he had a "103 fever."
"There was a lot of this—not just on Fox, there was a lot online too—people calling Dr. Spencer 'irresponsible,'" Stelter began. "But this is one of those excellent examples about why we should all avoid rushing to judgment."
"Spencer did not have a 103 fever, he had a 100.3 fever, " he said. "The decimal point is all that matters, here."
VIDEO & MORE:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cnn-stelter-megyn-kelly-ebola-coverage
And they wonder why people are afraid.....
And they wonder why people are afraid
by digby
They aren't afraid of ISIS or Ebola. They're afraid because these are the people at the head of the two major political parties in America:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/and-they-wonder-why-people-are-afraid.html
KRUGMAN: Our Inability To Invest "Reflects Destructive Ideology That Has Taken Over Republican Party
Ideology and Investment
OCT. 26, 2014
by Paul Krugman
America used to be a country that built for the future. Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer.
But nowadays we simply won’t invest, even when the need is obvious and the timing couldn’t be better. And don’t tell me that the problem is “political dysfunction” or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with “Washington”; it reflects the destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party.
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And it’s all about ideology, an overwhelming hostility to government spending of any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy.
You can get a sense of this ideology at work in some of the documents produced by House Republicans under the leadership of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee. For example, a 2011 manifesto titled “Spend Less, Owe Less, Grow the Economy” called for sharp spending cuts even in the face of high unemployment, and dismissed as “Keynesian” the notion that “decreasing government outlays for infrastructure lessens government investment.” (I thought that was just arithmetic, but what do I know?) Or take a Wall Street Journal editorial from the same year titled “The Great Misallocators,” asserting that any money the government spends diverts resources away from the private sector, which would always make better use of those resources.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/opinion/paul-krugman-ideology-and-investment.html?ref=opinion&_r=1
Yes. This is how racism begins. Parents passing on their hate to their children
:large
I think the amazing thing, is that this type of behavior no longer stuns me....
still disgusts me, but no, I am not shocked or stunned
- I did see some adult versions yesterday,
but this means the adults are passing their hate along to their children.
https://twitter.com/michaelwhitney/status/526361344153751553
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