Yeah, not me either, but it appears that Rick Perry is about to make it available for public review:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) recently broke bread with The New York Times Magazine’s Mark Liebovitch at a Jewish deli in Beverly Hills.
“I’m more Jewish than you think I am,” he told Leibovitch over a corned-beef Reuben. “I read the part of the Bible that said the Jews are God’s chosen people.”
You’re more Jewish than we think you are?
A am NOT willing to check out this claim.
It now appears that one impetus for the US state security apparatus to spy on all of us was to cover its own ass:
You may have heard about the government’s spying on the Associated Press. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington’s Blog that the government also spied on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, and chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen.
But Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake tells Washington’s Blog that the spying on reporters started 12 years ago – in 2002 – and has been fairly systematic.
By way of background, Drake had championed the “ThinThread” program, which automatically encrypted Americans’ data (data could only be decrypted after a court found there was probable cause that the American was a bad guy).
But after 9/11, NSA instead adopted the competing “Stellar Wind” system, which didn’t protect Americans’ privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.
………
There was a program called “First Fruits”. They’ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]And that First Fruits program was a cutout which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. “Let’s just pipe off from all” that is involving designated [reporters] … or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists.
So you’re targeting actual newspapers. You’re targeting media outlets.
And you’re monitoring – on a persistent basis – their communications.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: How early did that start?
THOMAS DRAKE: The preliminary version of that – as far as an active program – was in 2002.
(emphasis original)
When secrecy is used as a weapon to cover up ones own misdeeds, not only does it breed more secrecy, it breeds more misdeeds.
Our secret security state is not protecting us. It is petri dish for incompetence.
Did Mark Halperin just call Paul Bremeran incompetent loser?
I think that Halperin, perhaps the poster child for the toxic consensus inside Washington D.C, did:
“It seems what you’re proposing is to double down on the policies that the Bush administration and you thought would lead to, not just a democratic and independent Iraq, but a force for good in the region,” Halperin said. “Why should we even consider going back to the same set of ideas to try to prop up a government with U.S. intervention, which seems to have failed and left us in this position?”
“I’m not proposing to prop up any government,” Bremer said, arguing that Maliki had dissolved many of the post-surge gains in Iraq. “In fact, I explicitly said we need a new government…I explicitly called for him to resign as Defense Minister and Minister of the Interior.”
“But what business is it of the United States at this point who is in the government of people of Iraq?” Halperin asked. “Why isn’t that up to the people of Iraq, civil society and leaders there, to figure it out and not the United States?”
“Because there is no one there who can do it and no other country who can do it,” Bremer said. “The experience of all of us involved in this for the last decade is that only the Americans can help the Iraqis broker across these sectarian and ethnic lines. There is nobody else who can do it, including the Iraqis.”
“What’s our record on that –” Halperin tried to ask, but Bremer cut him off.
“We may regret that, but it’s a fact, and facts have a nasty way of coming back and basically determining your options,” Bremer said.
This was on Morning Joe, and though the aforementioned Joe (Scarborough) seemed to like the idea of re-invading Iraq, but everyone else, the very heart and soul of the Beltway consensus are actually unwilling to swallow the bullsh%$ that Bremer was attempting to sell.
I think that the evil spawn of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Senator from Boeing, Richard Pearle, Elliot Abrams, Doug “The f%$#ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth” Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. may have finally run out their string.
I certainly hope so, but I am an inveterate optimist on such matters.
In looking at insights in the clusterf%$3 that is Iraq, Politico seeks advice from Douglas Feith.
Feith? Seriously, Douglas Feith?
The man who made the rest of the Bush administration look intelligent, competent, and observant.
Is there anything that a conservative can do disqualify them from being viewed as a font of wisdom?
Former Virginia Attorney General has been hired as president of the Senate Conservatives Fund.
That whole “Adults in the Republican Party” thing?
Not happening.
Over at Emptywheel, Jim White shows us a bit of cognitive dissonance that will make your head spin on the “World” section of the New York Times:
Seriously, first, we, (and the House of Saud) arm rebels in Syria, then they move into, and take over ¼ of Iraq, and take more of our weapons, and the very serious people think that we need to send them more weapons.
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
(On Edit)
And Obama is looking at air strikes to support the government. Obama has gone the full Nixon/Vietnamization route.
Or is the latest Cadillac Escalade ad, the one that uses David Bowie’s song Fame, the stupidest ad of the year so far?
It is sure to be appealed, but a judge in LA has just ruled that California’s teacher tenure laws are unconstitutional:
Teachers union officials denounced a ruling Tuesday by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge deeming job protections for teachers in California as unconstitutional as a misguided attack on teachers and students.
The ruling represents a major loss for the unions and a groundbreaking win by attorneys who argued that state laws governing teacher layoffs, tenure and dismissals harm students by making them more likely to suffer from grossly ineffective instruction.
If the preliminary ruling becomes final and is upheld, the effect will be sweeping across California and possibly the nation.
Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled, in effect, that it was too easy for teachers to gain strong job protections and too difficult to dismiss those who performed poorly in the classroom. If the ruling stands, California will have to craft new rules for hiring and firing teachers.
Rather unsurprisingly, privatizer in chief, Arne Duncan, loves this, because for Wall Street to make money off of our children, they first have to make sure that they have a cowed and cheap work force.
Interestingly enough I had occasion to look up the record of Geoffrey Canada, the hero of the anti-teacher agitprop Waiting for Superman, the former CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone charter schools in response to a sickeningly hagiographic article about him.
What did I discover?
I have no doubt that there are good charter schools out there, but I’ve let to see one on the national stage.
You have looting behind a not-for-profit corporate façade (Rocketship), widespread forgery and fraud in testing (Michelle Rhee), sexual and financial irregularities (Kevin Johnson, Michelle Rhee’s husband), insane levels of teacher turnover (all of them), and aggressive policies to foist low performing students back on the public school district. (again, pretty much all of them)
Seriously, whenever you take a cursory look at the charter school movement, and the educational-industrial complex that supports them, there are layers of corruption and opacity that are at the core of their business models.
At the core of the issues with our educational system are societal problems of grinding poverty, a porous social safety net, and law enforcement that frequently acts more like an occupying force than peace officers in poor neighborhoods.
Until these are resolved, we will have problems educating poor children, no matter how well our schools are run.
But the current focus on fill in the box testing and privatizing education serves only to make money off the backs of our children’s future.
No link, because I do not want to give him page views, but George Will, the man who coached Ronald Reagan in his debates with Jimmy Carter, using Jimmy Carter’s own briefing books, which had been stolen, while commenting on Reagan’s debate performance on Nightline, has returned to classic form, arguing that women want to make rape allegations, because it is a “coveted status that confers privileges.”
No I won’t link to George Will, but I will link to The Onion article, “College Rape Victim Pretty Thrilled She Gets To Recount Assault To Faculty Committee:
Visibly excited for the thrilling hour ahead, college sophomore Megan Anderson enthusiastically made her way to a meeting with members of her university’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution to offer a detailed account of her recent sexual assault, the eager undergraduate told reporters Tuesday. “I get to go into a room filled with a committee of middle-aged men whose primary concern is upholding the college’s reputation and recount in explicit detail the circumstances of my rape at the hands of another student—I can’t wait,” said the pleased 19-year-old, who noted that she’s particularly looking forward to describing her choice of clothing the night of the assault, explaining the nature of her relationship with her rapist, and entertaining a variety of questions aimed at determining whether she herself invited the attack with her words and actions, all while offering a step-by-step account of the most horrific night of her life. “Don’t get me wrong, it was great being interrogated by the local and campus police, but this way I get to tell university officials who have a vested interest in minimizing campus rape statistics and ensuring the steady inflow of alumni donations what exactly I was drinking and why I could have misremembered events. And to think, once I finally give my entire story, I then get the pleasure of listening as they try to push the whole incident under the rug. Lucky me!”
Seriously, if I had a time machine, I’d go back in time to 1940, and give his mom a shot of Depo-Provera.
What a pathetic sorry excuse for a human being.
The Cornish pastys did not cook properly last night.
They just were not getting done.
This morning, it hit me: the recipe called for them to be cooked at 210° (165° with a convection oven).
Only the recipe is METRIC, not English, so 210°/165° C is 410°/330° F.
So I will be taking my not particularly cooked pastys from the fridge and putting it in the oven at the appropriate temperature.
Posted via mobile.
Oliver “Arms for Hostages” North is criticizing the Obama administration for paying a ransom:
As the right’s outrage over Bowe Bergdahl’s release grew, Chris Hayes joked, “We should definitely get Oliver North to weigh on this one, for maximum absurdity.”
Chris, of course, was kidding. But we were reminded a day later that in this farcical political environment, it’s awfully difficult to joke about things that are likely to be real.Newsmax host and former Republican congressman J.D. Hayworth added his voice today to the growing right-wing outrage over the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, and what better person to discuss the situation with than Oliver North!
North demanded that the media ask the Obama administration if there was “a ransom, a fiscal, financial, money transaction,” with the Taliban as part of the deal. “Was there a ransom paid? Did the government of the United States, either directly or indirectly, finance a terrorist organization?”Oliver North, helping push the political world closer to “maximum absurdity,” also took his concerns to Fox News’ Sean Hannity last night.
………
But even putting that aside, in what universe does Oliver North enter this debate with a straight face?
I realize that it’s become impolite in some circles to point out scandals that rocked Ronaldus Magnus’ White House, but the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iranians in order to secure the release of American prisoners, then used the money to illegally finance a war in Central America. Reagan himself assured the American public that the allegations weren’t true, and those assurances turned out to be the opposite of the truth.
Un dirty-word believable.
The Onion has become completely redundant.
Following the National Rifle Association’s declaring the Texas open carry maniacs weird, said maniacs organized a mass destruction of their NRA cards, and the NRA responded by folding like a bunch of overcooked cauliflower:
The National Rifle Association is walking back its statement criticizing gun activists who carry loaded assault weapons in public as a form of protest, with the NRA’s top lobbyist apologizing and calling the statement “a mistake.”
In recent months Open Carry Texas and several other gun activist groups have made headlines for openly carrying loaded assault weapons in public and into restaurants in the Dallas area. This tactic of attempting to “normalize” open carry of rifles has spectacularly backfired, as gun violence group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America has persuaded several restaurant chains where open carry rallies were staged to ask customers not to bring firearms into their businesses.
On June 2, Mother Jones reported on a statement on the NRA’s website that criticized the open carry protests as “downright weird” and suggested that the practice was “downright scary” to onlookers and “counterproductive for the gun owning community.” The Mother Jones report was widely circulated in media as it was an aberration from the NRA’s typical absolutist position on firearm issues. Open Carry Texas called the NRA’s statement “disgusting and disrespectful” and some gun activists cut up their NRA membership cards.
The NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, appeared on the NRA’s radio show Cam & Company on June 3 to repudiate the NRA’s article criticizing the open carry movement. Cox said that the statement was “a mistake” and that “it shouldn’t have happened,” adding “our job is not to criticize the lawful behavior of fellow gun owners.” Cox also blamed the statement on a “staffer” who Cox said “expressed his personal opinion.” Referencing media interest in the statement, Cox termed it a “distraction.”
I’m beginning to think that we should start having people of color showing up at NRA meetings and maybe NRA headquarters, doing open carry.
See what that does to the state of their underwear.
Well, now we know:
The nation’s staunchest defender of the Second Amendment has told gun activists in Texas who insist on carrying assault-style rifles in public places to knock it off.
In a statement issued late last week, the National Rifle Association (NRA) called out so-called “open carry” groups in Texas that have been frightening restaurant customers and motorists by approaching them while carrying AK-47s and AR-15s.
The NRA applauded Texas for a “robust gun culture,” but noted that a number of activists had “crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”
“Now we love AR-15s and AKs as much as anybody, and we know that these sorts of semiautomatic carbines are among the most popular, fastest selling firearms in America today,” the statement said. “Texas, independent-minded and liberty-loving place that it is, doesn’t ban the carrying of loaded long guns in public, nor does it require a permit for this activity. Yet some so-called firearm advocates seem determined to change this.”
“[I]t is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms,” the NRA continued. “Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary.”
(emphasis original)
Seriously, this like that classic moment in Iron Man 3, when one of the henchmen says, “”Honesty, I hate working here they are so weird!” and runs away.
He wrote a post complaining about business as usual at the Democratic Party titled, “Democrats: You suck.
His experience is that, following making a small donation to a Democratic candidate for office, he has been bludgeoned into something approaching PTSD from their repeated fund raising requests:
………
……… At least I think that’s what they’re doing; I now look at the incoming source, and if it’s the Democrats, I don’t bother to pick up. And here I am, entirely sympathetic to that party (if dissatisfied with their conservatism), and I have a conditioned aversion now.
I’ve had enough. I can learn. And the moral I have learned is to never donate to the Democratic party.
Who’s the idiot behind this campaign? Is it actually working for them?
Do Republicans do the same thing to their donors, or do they just scam them with things like gold coins and quack cures?
They just got a bill passed in Ohio ending their renewable power initiative:
As renewable energy production has surged in recent years, opponents of government policies that have helped spur its growth have pushed to roll back those incentives and mandates in state after state.
On Wednesday, they claimed their first victory, when Ohio lawmakers voted to freeze the phasing-in of power that utilities must buy from renewable energy sources.
The bill, which passed the Ohio House of Representatives, 54 to 38, was expected to be signed into law by Gov. John R. Kasich, who helped negotiate its final draft.
It stands in marked contrast to the broad consensus behind the original law in 2008, when it was approved with virtually no opposition, and comes after considerable disagreement among lawmakers, energy executives and public interest groups.
………
Eli Miller, Americans for Prosperity’s Ohio state director, backed by the billionaire industrialists David H. and Charles G. Koch, called the proposed law “a prudent step” to re-examine standards that could be a “potential impediment to job creation and job growth here in the Buckeye State.”
Seriously, the Kochs are a cancer on American society in general, and American politics in particular.
In rewriting an OP/Ed contributed by Ramesh Ponnuru, some as yet unamed editor has actually lowered the quality of the indicted right wing pundit’s writing.
Speaking to the universal desire of the right wing to excise the memory of Abraham Lincoln from our recent memory, he wrote in the Post that we should go back to calling it Washington’s Birthday. (I am old enough to remember when both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays were both holidays, and not spot welded together), and some nameless editor at the paper changed his words in a fairly significant way:
“Getting rid of President’s Day would not be difficult. All we would have to do is start calling the third Monday of February by its proper name under federal law: Washington’s Birthday. That’s the practice state governments and advertisers ought to follow.” The version the Post ended up running struck the third sentence and replaced the second with ”All we would have to do is designate the third Monday of February to mark George Washington’s Birthday.”
As an aside, I had a fair number of discussions about the writing business with science fiction author and editor Ben Bova, and noted that when he was editor-in-chief at Omni,* he had to fire a number of editors who refused to stop rewriting stuff. (He makes a distinction with minor copy edits, and the editor asking for changes from the authors)
Whoever made this change should be fired. Period. Full Stop.
*I am not sure if this was an issue during his stint at Analog Science Fiction, but I got the impression that it was less of an issue, probably because the editors were less likely to be frustrated writer English majors.
One of the joys of Neil deGrasse Tyson and his science show Cosmos, is the way that it makes the heads of the primordial wing of the Christian right explode.
Case in point, they have now come out opposing electromagnetism:
If there is one topic in each week’s Cosmos that sends the Christian fundamentalists into a frenzy, it is evolution.
You see, scientists understand that most sciences cannot be done correctly if you ignore the scientific fact of evolution. Yet, week in and week out, creationists critique the job Tyson and his team of writers are doing, calling them speculative and misleading.
Creationists would have you believe that Tyson and his crew are force-feeding viewers a story of evolution dreamed up in the minds of those who simply want to refute God and spread atheism.
Calling evolutionary biologists names such as “evolutionists”—a word not used outside of the creationists sphere—is an attempt to demean the science as nothing more than a religion; ironically, the very thing they are trying to sell you on.
This week’s episode, titled, “The Electric Boy” was about scientist Michael Faraday. Faraday’s study of electricity led to some of the biggest discoveries and inventions in the history of mankind, ranging from the electric motor to the discovery of electromagnetic waves that surround just about everything.
How on earth could creationists be upset with electricity? Well, Tyson had the audacity to mention that Faraday’s discoveries helped us explain how birds navigate the globe using the earth’s electromagnetic waves, and that their brains are evolutionarily wired for such a task.
Seriously. What is wrong with these people, and why do we allow them to breed?
Guess what? In addition to advising the current government in Kiev, it appears that we have lent them mercenaries from the firm formerly known as Blackwater:
Soldiers from a private US security company with a record of alleged atrocities in Iraq are supporting Ukraine‘s security forces in the volatile east of the country, the German newspaper Bild reported Sunday.
The report, citing Germany‘s federal intelligence agency BND, said 400 of the heavily-armed men employed by the group formerly known as Blackwater were deployed in the vicinity of Lugansk where pro-Russian separatists are seeking self-rule.
The BND declined to comment on the report, while the security company – now known as Academi – dismissed similar reports in March.
Bild reported that according to a BND assessment, US intelligence services had knowledge of the covert involvement of the private soldiers in Ukraine. BND representatives relayed the information to Germany‘s federal chancellory on April 29, Bild said.
Academi was known as Blackwater during its time as key security services contractor to the US government in the war it led to oust Iraq‘s president Saddam Hussein in 2003.
It was later implicated in the killing of unarmed civilians and arms smuggling in Iraq.
This is nucking futs.
I can think of no more inflammatory news than having the most notorious mercenary organization in the real world providing “security consultants” for a government that is already being viewed with suspicion by much of the eastern half of the country.
I think that we have learned that the EU and US don’t care about the Ukraine as much as they want to just f%$# with Russia.
This is not going to end well.
H/t R1 at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
In Oracle vs. Google, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal, aka the “Patent Court”, has once again taken a delusionally extremist position on IP, and ruled that software APIs are subject to copyright. As Timothy B. Lee observes, “The court that created the patent troll mess is screwing up copyright too.”
A few years ago, the database company Oracle sued Google, arguing that Google’s Android operating system infringed the copyright of Oracle’s Java technology. On Friday, a federal appeals court sided with Oracle in the long-running dispute.
The decision seems to reflect a fundamental lack of understanding of how software works. And it could create serious headaches for companies that want to make their software compatible with that of competitors.Why did Oracle sue Google?
The lawsuit focuses on technical decisions Google made when it created the Android operating system.
Google wanted people who wrote programs in the popular programming language Java to be able to re-use their code in Android apps. To do that, Google had to ensure that Java code written for other purposes ran exactly the same on Android. But negotiations with the company behind Java, Sun Microsystems (which was later acquired by Oracle), broke down, so Google decided to create its own version of Java from scratch.
………
The trial court judge, William Alsup, sided with Google. Copyright only protects the creative aspects of a work, not its functional characteristics. Judge Alsup ruled that because the names of Java functions was essential to achieving interoperability, they were a functional characteristic rather than a creative aspect of Java, and using them wasn’t copyright infringement.
But on Friday, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The court was unimpressed with Google’s argument that function names were functional characteristics not protected by copyright. In the Federal Circuit’s view, the list of Java functions was just another kind of “code” that couldn’t be copied without its creator’s permission.
The court’s reasoning didn’t impress James Grimmelmann, a copyright scholar at the University of Maryland. “Not only do they not understand how computers work, they can’t even read,” he says.
………
The Federal Circuit is the court that hears appeals in all patent cases. Over the last three decades, it has shown a consistent bias in favor of patent holders, setting legal precedents that made the current patent troll problem possible.
Ordinarily, copyright cases in California would be heard by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But because Oracle’s fight with Google also includes some patent issues, the Federal Circuit gets jurisdiction.
And evidently, the Federal Circuit has a bias toward copyright holders to go with its pro-patent bias.
Needless to say, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is completely insane, and should be abolished, and the judges on that court should be told to take up knitting.
Sarah Palin just said that, “Waterboarding Is How We Baptize Terrorists.”
No, I am not paraphrasing, this was a direct quote:
With her legitimate political career all but unsalvageable, Sarah Palin has embraced her new role as a carnival barker. Speaking over the weekend at the National Rifle Association “Stand And Fight” rally at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Palin attempted an Ann Coulter routine meant to offend anyone not white and at least a little racist. “Not all intolerant, anti-freedom leftist liberals are hypocrites,” she offered before endorsing torture. “I’m kidding — yes, they are!” Zing — plus 1,000 patriot points.
And then her centerpiece joke, which really had very little to do with the gun nuts directly. “If I were in charge …” — wistful pause — “they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” The crowd erupted.
How I long for the day that she is relegated to the ash heap of history.
