Posts from — August 2013

I checked the calendar to be sure, but we are one day shy of 9 months since we last elected the President. That means that there are 3 years and 3 months to go before we do it again. Given the reality that the attention span of the American public is on a par with a kitten in a knitting circle, I was more than slightly taken aback by what the Republican National Committee Chairman, Reince Priebus, did today.

It would seem that CNN is making a movie, and NBC is making a documentary about Hillary Clinton. This hasn’t been a secret as these things take time. Both were somewhat stunned to be informed that if they continued with these projects, the RNC would boycott the networks. The media companies were given 9 days to respond.

This certainly indicates where the RNC comes down on censorship issues. Neither network can cancel these projects without taking a loss which is not something that corporations generally do.

My advice is to continue the projects and honor the RNC boycott by not asking any Republicans to violate it by appearing on any of their shows. Hosts can explain at the beginning of every show how much they wanted a Republican point of view, but the RNC won’t permit it. Republican candidates can be represented by an empty chair at any debates.

If you are an American worker, you no longer get vacations, but your Congresscritters get to put behind their grueling three-day workweeks and dabble in other things. The best part is – if their choices involve foreign travel, the taxpayers will pick up the tab.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham have decided to do just that by going to Egypt. The ‘Boris and Natasha’ of Republicans Senators felt that they would explain to the Egyptians how to solve their problems. Of course this might simply be a sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure covering the nursing home years.

Meanwhile, the Likud’s man in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has decided to annoy Russia:

(CBS News) Not only should President Obama cancel a bilateral summit with “schoolyard bully” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday on “Face the Nation,” but considering the country granted asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, U.S. allies should try to move next month’s G-20 gathering from St. Petersburg.

That may be what Bibi Netanyahu wants, Chuck, but after the embarrassment caused by going along with the US and violating the diplomatic immunity of the President of Bolivia, I don’t think ‘US allies’ are going to associate themselves in an effort to annoy the guy who supplies most of the natural gas that will heat European homes this winter.

The US is the one who has been doing all of the bullying, and we are paying the price in international relations.

These are the logos of the anglophone group that were closely aligned with NSA. The relationship was close enough that if any of them was doing something, the smart-money bet was that they all had been, were, or would be doing it.

Government Communications Headquarters, UK (Queens); Communications Security Establishment, Canada (Leafs); Defence Signals Directorate, Australia (‘Roos); Government Communications Security Bureau, New Zealand (Kiwis); and the National Security Agency, US (Yanks) did a lot of good work during the Cold War.

The close cooperation is the result of a 1948 UKUSA agreement and embodied the DSD slogan “Reveal their secrets … Protect our own”. That’s what we used to do.

The Global War On Terror™ changed things to the point that I’m not clear as to who the Gang considers “Them”, but it seems like it is everyone not in the executive branch of their governments.

An aside: I know it really doesn’t signify anything, but it is interesting that the center of focus for the ‘all-seeing eye’ on the top of the pyramid in the Information Awareness Office logo just down the page is not the Middle East or Southwest Asia, but North America. It’s not like it’s a Freudian slip or anything … right? [I know I saw that colander around here somewhere…]

Position: 31.7N 77.6W [ 4PM CDT 2100 UTC].
Movement: Northeast [045°] near 16 mph [26 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [ 50 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1013 mb.

Currently about 150 miles [ 255 km] East-Southeast of Charleston, South Carolina.

Dorian has regenerated, but it is likely to be a short term situation as the wind shear is building again.

Dorian has transitioned to a post-tropical storm, and the NHC has again stopped issuing advisories … unless it goes tropical again.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

In the beginning there was Total Information Awareness (TIA), another bad idea from the mind that gave us Iran-Contra, John Poindexter. Having avoided prison by confessing all of his crimes before Congress under a grant of immunity, he was just one of many Reagan retreads who were hired by the Shrubbery for position in excess of their abilities.

Congress was so impressed by what John had created, that they specifically defunded the entire concept in 2003. Silly people that they are, Congress thought that they had killed it.

Almost immediately after the program was defunded, a new program appeared: Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA), that was totally new and different, and had nothing to do with Total Information Awareness … 😈

TIA begat Mainway, Nucleon, Marina, Prism, and a British cousin, Tempora. After Obamacare is implemented they will have access to the electronic medical records that are required, but this isn’t Total Information Awareness because that program was killed by Congress in 2003 … honest.

The latest revelation is about the Xkeystore software, which shows how easy it is for anyone with access to the system to look at all of your information, despite all of the claims about oversight.

Lambert has a link to a CNN video of Piers Morgan, Glenn Greenwald, James Risen, and Jeffrey Toobin discussing Xkeystore that is worth watching.

Without Edward Snowden none of this would have come to light. This is being used to track the Occupy movement and environmental activists, not terrorists. This latest travel warning and terror alert will probably turn out to be nothing more than a distraction.

Digby caught a ‘live one’ from the BBC about British politics:

The Conservative Party has hired Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina for its general election campaign team, BBC Newsnight has learned.

It must be nice for Mr Messine to be able to stop pretending he is a Democrat or progressive and work with people who aren’t hiding their political views.

Froggie Sejant

Burrrrrrrp!

[Editor: Froggie pauses to digest dinner.]

Friday Ark

Yves Smith thinks that Obama is starting to lose it over Snowden, and, alas, I cannot disagree with her reasoning.

If you looked in a dictionary for “macho” you would see a picture of Vladimir Putin. He is constantly running around with his shirt off to kill or destroy something accompanied by the “FSB Lumberjack Chorus” and a film production company. The closest we come to this show is Sarah Palin. Zero has been trying to push him into doing something which is triggering testosterone poisoning all around. Evo Morales was on his way home from a meeting in Russia when the US messed with his flight clearance, and Putin would have taken that personally.

Russia doesn’t really need the US and relations were already going downhill before Snowden because of Central Asia, Iran, and Syria. Trying to push Russia into doing anything was really stupid.

I assume that Snowden will be using his new freedom of movement to visit embassies and get his asylum applications squared away. If he gets travel documents, he can leave Russia, but it probably will not be via Moscow.

The US says that the Obama-Putin summit is still on, but I think they might want to check with Vladimir, because he may decide not to talk to Zero.