short and sweet
May 22, 2006 @ 10:21
Kate got married on Saturday on a flower farm. Shortest (and therefore best) service ever. The food rocked, too. Congrats Kate.
And on Sunday a crack head was buying a 10 lb bag of sugar at Hark's, and nothing else. As I was walking out, two cops were walking in. I think the crackhead probably had a very bad day.
beerlarious
May 18, 2006 @ 12:01
don't mug yourself
zero in a fitty-five
May 15, 2006 @ 22:38
I should have my blogging license revoked, but then, Bush should have his Presidenting license revoked.
Anyway, thank god Jesse is here to pick up the slack and deliver the funny regarding the events of last Friday.
Just a preview: plastic parachute soliders.
a little nietzsche for you
May 13, 2006 @ 12:56
"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."
A few facts that might otherwise slip through the cracks. Well, probably not this first one:
1. Every NSA, CIA, DoJ, and White House official we've got has stood in front of Congress and the American people and flat out lied about what the NSA is up to.
2. The NSA isn't chartered to arrest Americans for your everyday criminal acts, but the problem is that these databases are being sold off to the FBI and the DEA, who are.
3. For this phone record database scandal... our data was SOLD by the phone companies. The NSA spent our tax dollars buying Americans' phone records.
If you're FOR this NSA program, you should be enraged that your tax dollars were spent buying these phone records. Congress could have passed a law requiring the phone companies to hand the records over for free.
If you're AGAINST this NSA program, you should be enraged that your tax dollars were spent buying these phone records, for obvious reasons.
Have you called your phone company and asked them if they sold your records yet?
sure bush, i believe you
May 11, 2006 @ 11:33
USA Today: NSA building massive database of phone records
Why should anyone believe a single word this man says?
I distinctly remember two times he stood in front of the American people and explicitly stated that when we were spying on terrorists we were doing it with warrants, even while he knew we were not.
I distinctly remember him saying there were WMD's in Iraq. Guess what, there weren't.
I distinctly remember him saying nobody could have anticipated that the levees would break in New Orleans. Hell even heck-of-a-job Brownie anticipated that, not to mention EVERYBODY ELSE.
I distinctly remember him saying "Mission Accomplished."
Do I need to continue?
If he was CEO of a corporation he'd be asked to resign. He has no credibility. He is a failure. His incompetence puts us all in danger. Let me give you an example:
He ignored intelligence showing that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and instead of being honest with the American people he chose to lie. Now Americans have doubt about our intelligence agencies. Now when the CIA says that Iran has a nuke, we will doubt them, even if this time it is true.
That puts us in danger, and it is his fault.
pissed off, worn out
May 11, 2006 @ 11:21
Well, it looks like the government's üat;ber creepy computer data mining program Total Information Awareness is on the front page, this time perhaps revealing it's ugly scope.
That's right, the government is building a database of every domestic call ever made.
Before I get into why this is a bad thing, in case you are one of the 31% of Americans still drinking the Kool-Aid, let me just remind you that even our less-belovéd-than-the-president Congress thought that Total Information Awareness was a violation of our privacy. Congress cut its funding, and yet it was just sweeped into a classified budget rather than being shut down. I've blogged about this before.
So, why is it a bad thing? Well, you compliment this with domestic surveillance (you don't still believe that NSA spy program is just international and just involving terrorists do you?), rendition flights, and torture... and you've got yourself a less than pretty picture.
Look, what do you think they are going to do with a big database of every phone call ever made? They're going to mine it for data. They're going to let some software dig through this data to try to find connections between good people and bad people. They're going to look for patterns. They're going to look for people who the computer thinks they should watch, and they are going to watch them.
Let's not forget that people write this software. The kind of people who write the software you curse at when it crashes at work. The kind of people who write the software that suggests products to you that you have no interest in buying. Imperfect people can only make imperfect software.
But the spooks will trust it. They'll mine it, and somebody who is just a tax paying everyday American is going to get on a government watch list because he made the wrong combination of phone calls. And who knows what happens after that.
It isn't just your phone calls. I'd like to point that out. Internet traffic is being routed through NSA computers. AT&T got sued about that, and the government shut the lawsuit down.
There's no oversight. Every attempt to investigate has been stonewalled.
If they don't have anything to hide then why are they so worried about investigations?
You don't have to take my word on all of this. You could read any one of these media reports. You could listen to investigative reporting that was on NPR.
Even a former director of the NSA thinks what's going on is wrong. Here's some of what Admiral Bobby Ray Inman had to say:
"This activity is not authorized," Inman said.
The Bush administration "need(s) to get away from the idea that they can continue doing it."
Education yourself. This is the makings of a police state. Despite what you were taught in civics class. Despite everything you've ever believed about the 4th Amendment of the Constitution... these people don't read it as requiring warrants for searches. They think that any "reasonable" search is Constitutional, and they'll define "reasonable" any way that fits them. Why does the 4th mention warrants at all then?
Why did our Founding Fathers give us a 4th Amendment if not to protect us from this?