You might wonder who. You might call for a list, which can't be provided. Mainly because it's not politicians we are purging.

Who then? The young voter and the poor.

I can hear the cries of bullshit, now, but if you really stop and think for a moment, that is who isn't coming to us.

As long as our politicians allow banksters to go unpunished.

As long as we don't fight to fix a rigged system that keeps the poor in poverty.

As long as we don't fight for making it easier to vote.

As long as we allow insurance companies to rape us financially to pay for a part of required health care.

As long as we allow the government to continue to profit off of student loans.

As long as our tax code is structured to funnel the money to the top.

As long as we continue to militarize the police.

As long as prisons are profit centers for private concerns.

As long as we continue to spy on our population wholesale.

As long as we keep accepting a slice of bread instead of half of a loaf (forget the whole loaf).

As long as our message is we are slightly less evil than those other guys.

We will continue to languish.

One of two things will happen in the next ten years. Either the party will go back to its FDR inspired roots and start fighting to make an actual difference in the lives of the poor which will shore up the middle class, or a new party will come along and capture the demographic.

I can't think of much of anything named for the President who brought us so much.

In this age of Raygun this and Raygun that.

For that matter not much is named for Johnson either.

After the mid-terms it makes me wonder about the real values at play here in this nation.



-=-=-=-=-=-
P.S. this might seem like a drive by, but I'll be back eventually.

Why can't we make it the root of all good?

Lately, I have the notion that we have been going about things all wrong for a very long time. Yeah, I know, go figure. Bear with me for a minute, I'm going to attempt to think big and communicate at the same time, so it may take a bit to get to the point.

Seems to me that the major problem isn't wealth per se`it's more that the currency the wealth expresses is based on exploitation. The old Nationalize risk and privatize profit sort of applies here. It's even in the language of the Industrial Era that resources were exploited. The exploitation of humans has long been the staple of the rich getting richer, I suspect probably since the dawn of the human race.

What if we could create a different currency? One where units of exchange are created by helping humanity survive? If BitCoin can be created why can't we create such a thing?

One where corporations can make money by waging peace, or cleaning up superfund sites rather than by building drones, or coatings tat scrub chemicals from the atmosphere.

If we could turn greed loose on a currency that reflects a contribution to humanity, which includes maintenance of the biosphere, humanity might just survive in the long term.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

Will we as a nation mellow out a little? Start helping people before corporations?

Will it raise our consciousness as a Nation?

Could it enable us to fulfill the promise of a government "Of the people and for the people?"

No, this isn't about GD turning into Gender Dysfunction, or is it?

I just waded through the Cannonfire blog's take on Greenwald's latest reveal from the Snowden papers.

It's worse, way worse than I had even imagined when in my paranoid fantasy land. Yes I know there is another thread, but it doesn't link the Cannonfire presentation and is fine for general discussion of this stuff.

The point I'm trying to focus on here, isn't about anonymous or even about internet persona management, but the spooks are choosing winners and losers in the market:



Let that one soak a few minutes, stop deals / ruin business relationships. It would seem that we have found one connection to counter-intuitive results in the marketplace when the invisible hand moves.

Holy shit. Talk about something that should be illegal. This is illegal, right? Choosing business winners and losers? Choosing political winners and losers?

Well I guess it's no worse than the CIA selling crack.

Oh, and feel free to apologize for the shit stirring surrounding Snowden.

It's gonna cost us billions for fix what Snowden did. Heard that from more than one guest. That one is new and it was mixed in with the more familiar claims like it's just phone numbers, etc.

Do they not realize it wasn't Snowden who's actions need fixing? The NSA's actions need fixing, that is not Snowden's fault. I think that if they didn't need fixing we wouldn't even know Snowden's name.

Back in the day, I'm a graybeard developer who can turn the knob on the WABAC quite a ways, there was always the notion of Agent Mike monitoring open communications. This usage of Agent Mike in my memory goes back to the UUCP usenet days, in the dark times of bang path addressing before IP and DNS. That's not the point, but if you want to reminisce, feel free.

Anyway, this year, we got total confirmation that not only is there an Agent Mike, but damn, some of the recent shit that's out, hat's off! The Dude has mad skills. It's kind of funny if you google "agent mike" you get all kinds of real FBI and assorted other agents who happen to be named Mike. But not much on the notion of Teh intertubes own Agent Mike.

So Happy new year Agent Mike. I'll be doing my best to ensure that you don't have the ability to run amuck over the 4th this time next year. I'm thinking there are a few others who would like to see that also. Enjoy it whist ya got it.

You know while you're reading this Mike, I can call you Mike, right? Anyway Mike if you would actually like to do something that ensures the Constitution is all Protected and Defended, feel free there are a lot of us out here who would have your back.

So Happy New Year Agent Mike, and Happy New Year DU.

It seems to me that the troubling, most contentious, issues we see blossom and fade in GD are ones where participants have experienced related pain and suffering personally.

I am not speaking of any topic in particular here if you were reading in guns, or gender, or race, or whatever. The thing I'm trying to get at, and probably won't do justice to, is once I've been burned by a thing it's really hard not react in an emotional state when someone brings up the damned thing. Makes it hard to hear what they mean at times. Even more so when it relates to something that is nuanced and painted with a broad brush.

So maybe, just maybe we can be a little less on edge? Maybe we can trim our broad brushes down to maybe a sash brush? When you paint with the broad brush it can be painful to those with prior pain related to the subject. Once that pain surfaces, it's difficult not to respond in kind.

If we could carry that into the new year, then I'm sure GD would suck a little less.

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
- Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

To all you people who said I was crazy that the NSA could have a back door into encryption, my inference back in July is now confirmed.

My mistake back then was I thought Cisco was compromised and it now turns out that RSA itself is compromised. How was it compromised? A subtle flaw in the random number generation that I suspect allows the private key to be deduced from the public key.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sickening.

So to all who said I was nuts, who hassled me for attending the anti-NSA rally, it's your turn to be mocked. Unless you want to stand up and say Sorry, Hoot I guess you did know a little about this tech stuff.

A condition symbiotic with affluenza causing actions that are not in a person's self interest, thus keeping them poor.

Symptoms:

Thinking that higher taxes on the affluenzant will hurt the Gulliblemic.

Confusing the debt ceiling with a limit on how much the government can spend.

Thinking Medicare and Social Security are not government programs or are causing the deficit.

Thinking that shutting the Federal Government is a good thing.

Watching Fox News other than for comedic effect.


Oddly, it seem the spelling and grammar centers of the brain are also affected.


Attending rallies with 1 port-a-john for every other protestor.

Confusion between religious law and Federal Law.

An extreme case:



There are probably many more I have missed.