kpete
kpete's JournalThe origin Of Duck Dynasty’s free speech - by Matt Bors
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/25/1265151/-The-origin-Of-Duck-Dynasty-s-free-speech?
Local News Crew Captures Santa Claus Being Shot With Pellet Gun While Giving Out Presents In D.C.
ABC7 was reporting on a Christmas toy giveaway in Southeast D.C. on Tuesday when the subject of the segment — a man dressed in a Santa suit — was shot with a pellet gun.
The footage above shows the man realizing he’s been hit in the back while walking down the street in D.C.’s Berry Farm neighborhood. According to WUSA9, the man was shot twice.
ABC 7 said the man was treated at a hospital and is expected to recover. A man dressed as the Grinch reportedly took over the toy giveaway — police say they have no suspects.
Santa wanted to continue w/toy giveaway. Police looking for person responsible for pellet gun shooting of Santa
VIDEO& MORE:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/local-news-crew-captures-moment-when-santa-claus-was-shot-wi
Happy Hanukkah? Santorum holiday card mixes messages with New Testament quote
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/90819/happy-hanukkah-2
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/02/08/happy_hanukkah_from_rick_santorum.html
Conclusive Evidence: The NSA's expanded powers NEVER protected us from any terror plots.
The War on Terror's Jedi Mind TrickNational-security officials insist new violations of privacy are essential for keeping Americans safe from terror—but there's no evidence the programs have stopped any attacks.
JULIAN SANCHEZDEC 23 2013, 4:49 PM ET
A Republican-appointed judge and President Obama’s own handpicked Surveillance Review Group both came to the same conclusion last week: The National Security Agency’s controversial phone-records program has been of little real value to American security. Yet its defenders continue to insist that it is necessary, clinging desperately to long-debunked claims about foiled terror plots. Their stubbornness fits a decade-long pattern of fear trumping evidence whenever the word “terrorism” is uttered—a pattern it is time to finally break.
Since the disclosure of the NSA’s massive domestic phone-records database, authorized under a tortured reading of the Patriot Act’s Section 215 authority to obtain business records, intelligence officials and their allies in Congress have claimed it plays a vital role in protecting Americans from “dozens” of terror attacks. But as the expert panel Obama appointed to review the classified facts concluded, in a report released Wednesday, that just isn’t true.
“Our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks,” the report found, “and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.”
In other words, instead of vacuuming up sensitive information about the call patterns of millions of innocent people, the government could have followed the traditional approach of getting orders for specific suspicious numbers. As for those “dozens” of attacks, the review groups found that the NSA program “generated relevant information in only a small number of cases, and there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome would have been different without the section 215 telephony meta-data program.”
............................
MORE:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/12/the-war-on-terrors-jedi-mind-trick/282620/
WE ARE TWO NATIONS: A CHRISTMAS SERIAL - By Charles P. Pierce
WE ARE TWO NATIONS: A CHRISTMAS SERIAL
By Charles P. Pierce at 5:00pm
...............................
The Congress of the United States left town this week very proud of itself. It had reached an accommodation by which the Republicans agreed that they would allow the government to function in a minimal capacity over the next two years and the Democrats agreed that they would be grateful to the Republicans for doing that. And then they all wished themselves well and went home, many of them, the ones proclaiming themselves most loudly to be the followers of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, looking forward to being able to say "Merry Christmas" freely again, free from the liberals who have placed imaginary shackles upon their fictional freedom to keep the day in their own way.
....................
The Congress of the United States left town this week very proud of itself, and it left town with one serious matter left undone. They refused to vote to extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans whose benefits will expire at the end of this week. There were some promises about getting something done in January, but these were idly tossed out the windows of the town cars making tracks for the airport. But January is not the season. This is the season. All across America, Christmas dinners will be threadbare, if they happen at all. Hundreds of thousands of children will watch the commercials, the shiny and happy people at the shiny and happy malls, the horse-drawn homecomings from the beer companies, and wonder what place it is in which these things happen, and how it could be that they one day could get there, while their parents watch from the stairway and wonder how their lives had drifted so far from that same place.
"I've been forced into these benefits and now they're going to cancel the benefits," Ham said. "I just think it's wrong." Ham was laid off in April after working for a private contractor at Fort Bliss for four and half years. "I've been unemployed for eight months now and I haven't had one interview," Ham said. "I had heard stories about people being unemployed for a long time. I thought that's what I was headed towards. It's been a lot harder than I thought though." Ham said he needs those benefits to get by. "I need them to pay for groceries, food, my bills, power and rent," Ham said. But Ham said more than anything he just wants to get back to work. "I'm leaning on my dad, but I'm 34 years old," said Ham. "I just keep applying and don't give up."
This decision was consciously taken by a Congress soaked in electorally convenient religiosity. This decision was consciously taken by a Congress so soaked in electorally convenient religiosity that its members believe that people -- other people, naturally, and their children -- will be strengthened in their moral character by completely avoidable deprivation. That the mothers and fathers out there, avoiding the gazes of their children because of the simple expectations there that they cannot meet, will be better, stronger, and moral people for the pain that causes them to look away as the lights on the tree begin to blur with their tears. That, in 2014, these people will thank the Congress of the United States for forging this completely unnecessary crucible in which their souls can be forged into sterner stuff. This is what this Congress believes, as it goes home proud of itself and its members dress themselves to sing the midnight carols with no conscience sounding in counterpoint, and this is Christmas in America, and it is the year of our Lord, 2013.
All right then we are two nations.
-- John Dos Passos
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Christmas_In_Two_Nations_Part_One
Updated to add Part Two:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/christmas-serial-part-2-122413
LOL - David Gregory's NSA Source=His Wife
New York Times columnist David Brooks was on the Meet the Press panel to say that there's probably a need to rein in some of the NSA's activities. But he made clear that this should not "legitimize" whistleblower Edward Snowden, who Brooks derides as a "narcissist"– a familiar media smear against Snowden.
But then, later on in the show came this from host Gregory:
So the mass collection of everyone's phone metadata is actually a good thing. because the government is grabbing everything in order to protect us. At least, that's what Gregory's high level source tells him.
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/12/23/david-gregorys-nsa-source-his-wife/
Florida church's marquee reads, "Christmas — Easier to spell than Hanukkah."
Church signs roll the dice getting hip with quips
December 24, 2013
Associated Press
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Pastor Mike Butzberger insists he only had holiday spirit in mind when his Florida church's marquee read, "Christmas — Easier to spell than Hanukkah."
But after a passer-by told him she found the message offensive and a local television station inquired about it, the Lighthouse Baptist Church preacher hustled to blunt any uproar by begrudgingly changing the sign to: "Jesus Loves You."
"By no means would I as human or Christian ever put anything on the sign with the intention of hurting or insulting," Butzberger told The Associated Press from his church in North Palm Beach, Fla. "The purpose of the sign is to draw people to God, which is, in our 'business,' what we're selling."
Welcome to the challenge for pastors eager to update the age-old practice of luring in worshippers with messages on marquees out front of the church. Long the place for Gospel quotes and Christmas Eve sermon hours, now the signs are often clever, pithy or funny. But pastors are finding that joking about religion is serious business, and it's easy to cross a line.
http://www.nujournal.com/page/content.detail/id/430146/Church-signs-roll-the-dice-getting-hip-with-quips.html?isap=1&nav=5032
Edward Snowden: 'I Already Won'-“If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public”
Edward Snowden: 'I Already Won'
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/edward-snowden-i-already-won
“If I defected at all,” Snowden said, “I defected from the government to the public.”
.................................
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”
“The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy,” he said. “That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not.”
“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”
Much MORE: (very,very insightful):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html
*********************
MORE!!!!:
“That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model,” he said.
“They elected me. The overseers.”
He named the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.
“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. .?.?. The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/12/24/edward-snowden-says-his-mission-is-accomplished/
These ongoing disclosures provide a detailed map of a shadow realm that spans the globe. We now know how technology is destroying privacy — and what steps governments and communications companies must be pressured to take in order that privacy survives.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-edward-snowden-was-the-person-of-the-year/2013/12/23/34551caa-6c13-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html?hpid=z2
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Sep 17, 2004, 03:59 PMNumber of posts: 71,985
