Posts from — January 2014

This is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns in Ayr, Scotland. The Burns Night celebrations conducted by Scots all over the world with haggis, whisky¹, and poetry.

Wikipedia has a description of the standard celebration, but easy on the malt or you may end up with a William McGonagall morning.

In honor of the occasion a bit of Robby Burns for the Democratic “leadership”:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!

To a Mouse

1. This is the correct spelling when referring to Scotland’s “water of life”.

Welcome to Brrr

Fairbanks sounds nice.

[Editor: The snow and freezing rain didn’t get this far East, but the latest bout of cold did. I would be happier if I joined that pile.]

Friday Ark

The BBC says that US privacy watchdog advises NSA spying is illegal:

The bulk collection of phone call data by US intelligence agencies is illegal and has had only “minimal” benefits in preventing terrorism, an independent US privacy watchdog has ruled.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board advised by a 3-2 majority that the programme should end.

The two dissenting voices are from Republicans who were Justice Department attorneys during the Hedgemony, and think at an advisory panel made up of lawyers, including a retired Appeals Court judge, shouldn’t be making determinations about the legality of the program. Excuse me, but as the panel’s experience and expertise is the law, not intelligence, why would anyone expect them not to deal with the legal issues?

Marcy Wheeler, Lambert, and Charlie Pierce all join me and dozens of others in noting that we have been saying this for years.

… Sucks … again.

I’m waiting for the THIRD cold front in TWO days to pass through. Not as bad as the Arcticalypse locally, but Houston, Texas and Fairbanks, Alaska are due to have pretty much the same forecast today – temperatures in the thirties and freezing rain. The Weather Underground notes that Alaska Bucks Freezing Temperature Trend, Is Warmer Than Lower 48.

The same Pacific high pressure ridge that is preventing the West Coast from getting any rain is pushing warmer ocean air into Alaska. Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the US just saw its first sunrise in two months, but will be warmer than St Louis, Missouri in a few days.

The Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race starts on February 1^st and both the start an finish locations [Fairbanks and Whitehorse, this year] are at or above freezing tonight. It wasn’t that long ago that they moved the start date to the first Saturday in February to give people more time between the Quest and the Iditarod, but now it looks like they will need to advance the date again to get weather cold enough for the dogs to run.

Sled dogs have heat related problems when they work at temperatures above 20°F. The ice on the rivers and streams won’t be strong enough for the weight of the sleds. This is global climate change in action, when it rains in Fairbanks in January.

Charlie Pierce has taken to collecting incidents of death and destruction caused by a lack of regulations, and compares the reaction to these incidents to the reaction of the few, scattered ‘terrorist’ attacks.

Unregulated industries are killing people, and there is no accountability. Texas hasn’t changed anything to prevent another fertilizer plant from blowing up and wiping out another town, like West, Texas. The company behind the chemical spill in West Virginia has declared bankruptcy to avoid any responsibility. Neither had liability insurance, in the current governmental climate they don’t need it.

We don’t have the people necessary to conduct inspections and enforce what few regulations there are in place, so people can just accept that some of them are going to be killed by corporations, and no one will do anything about it.

I wondered why Snowden wasn’t charged under the laws that I was constantly being reminded of when I was at NSA, then someone explained it all.

Snowden didn’t work for the government, and those laws apply to people who work for the government. Snowden worked for Booz-Allen and his actions would have been a civil matter of the non-disclosure clause in his employment contract. The government had to go to the Espionage Act to find something to charge him with that was criminal in nature.

Another thing that happens because Snowden didn’t work for the government, is that the complaints process wasn’t available to him. He wasn’t part of the system and had no chain of command to act on his complaints. No one in the government was required to listen to anything he had to say, much less generate any paperwork.

It has been suggested that he could have sent his concerns to Congress. Yeah, right. Senators Wyden and Udall couldn’t get Congress to do anything, but some unknown Booz-Allen employee was going to be taken seriously.

This would be the same Congress that is now suggesting that he was in league with Russia. There were a 1000 people at NSA who were system administrators and every one of them should have been able to do what Snowden did, if they were qualified for their jobs.

Look, the real Paul Revere failed to complete his mission, but Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was stirring up patriotic fervor at the beginning of the Civil War and created a new ‘version’ of what happened. Historical inaccuracies aside, what does observing the moments of uniformed troops have to do with the National Security Agency? The roots of NSA begin in the 1930s with new technology and techniques, so World War II is as far back as any analogy can go and be reasonable.

If you want to make this about war, show people the declaration of war that passed both house of Congress. That’s how a war is defined in the United States. Show the people how this sucking up of all their personal communications has actually made them safer. This program has been going on for over a decade, as still hasn’t got a verified success. How long does it have to fail, how much money do we have to spend, before the government admits it doesn’t work?

Everyone in Federal service in the United States takes an oath to defend the Constitution – not the country, not the people, certainly not the flag, but the Constitution. The Constitution defines us and makes us the United States of America. The Constitution isn’t a convenience that can be ignored, it is the heart and soul of the country.

… So, move along citizens, just move along.

Zero gave a speech that was supposed to be about reforming the NSA’s habit of spying on everyone, what came out was a speech to calm the intelligence community while doing nothing about the flagrant abuses of the civil rights of US citizens.

Marcy Wheeler has an annotated version of the speech. Lambert as Corrente called it a nothingburger. Digby noted that it didn’t restore her confidence. Charlie Pierce panned it. McClatchy noted that the Europeans didn’t see anything in the way of meaningful reform.

Since the Snowden documents started appearing, people have been looking at the effectiveness of this program. The justification for riding rough-shod over everyone’s privacy was to stop terrorist attacks. So far not one of these studies can find any evidence of it working. In the meantime, several attacks, including the Boston bombing, that should have been caught, weren’t.

People need to remember that the intelligence community had the necessary information to stop the 9/11 attacks, but they lacked the resources to put it all together. We didn’t need more data, we needed more people looking at the data we were collecting under the programs in place before 9/11 and the Patriot Act.

What Is It?

[Editor: The body is approximately 1 inch long. I’ve never seen anything like it down here. It is a brighter red than the picture makes it seem.]

Update: Hipparchia has identified it as a Milkweed Assassin Bug [Zelus longipes]. It is not fully mature so the wings are just beginning to come out on its back between the middle and rear legs. It ‘assassinates’ all the right things [mosquitoes, flies, caterpillars] so it is a welcome addition.

Thar’ He Goes!

Bloody Ahab!

[Editor: My neighbor’s tom that I call Moby Dick. Despite not so subtle hints, he hasn’t been neutered and is really annoying.]

Friday Ark

Three of the dumbest people in LA County have been arrested for starting the Colby Wildfire in the Angeles National Forest that has destoyed 5 homes and damaged more than a dozen other structures. Despite being under Red Flag fire conditions because of high temperatures, low humidity, and high Santa Ana winds, these kindergarten rejects started a campfire and threw paper on it. The flaming paper was picked up by the wind and ignited multiple locations.

It is not as though people in Southern California don’t know about the hazard of wildfires, the ease with which they can start, and the speed at which they spread.

The fire is 30% contained.

In Melbourne they are playing tennis. They are playing tennis despite a temperature of 41°C on the court. That temperature is 105.8°F. At a heat index of 105°F the US military declares a ‘black flag’ condition, and all non-essential outdoor activity ceases. You head for air conditioning if it is available, or the shade, take salt tablets, and drink a lot of water. It is unhealthy. It can kill you.

At the Australian ‘Oven’ Tennis Tournament people are passing out, hallucinating, water bottles are melting, but play continues. This is insane, and it proves nothing about someone’s ability to play tennis, only their ability to tolerate heat.

The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the Benghazi attack and as Charlie Pierce notes they criticized almost everyone.

Almost, except they didn’t mention the role of Congress in cutting the funding for embassy security that severely restricted what the State Department could do. Nor did they pay much attention to the fact that the facility at Benghazi was a consulate that wasn’t really up and running. The ambassador just happened to have a meeting in Benghazi, or the facility would have probably been empty when it was burned.

With the restrictions on funding, it would have made no sense to spend a great deal of money to protect an empty facility. The permanent American staff in Benghazi were in the CIA Annex which is not part of the consulate. The funds for security in Libya were spent on the occupied embassy in Tripoli, as was logical.

If the US wants to have diplomatic facilities in dangerous places, Congress is going to have to fund their security. No money means no security.

Republicans in the Senate are blocking any movement on the extension of unemployment benefits, and want cuts in food stamps. The House won’t even take it up.

The Senate is trying to block negotiations with Iran with new rounds of sanctions, because they apparently think war is the only answer – even if they aren’t very clear what the question is.

Tennis players at the Australian Open are being subjected to conditions that the US military thinks is too extreme for basic training.

A retired cop guns down a man for texting during the previews in a movie theater.

There really does seems to be a lot of very negative vibes in the world at this moment and the campaign season hasn’t really gotten under way.

We really need to start adding Xanax instead of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol to the water supply to calm people down.