Here Is A Story That Underscores a Certain Problem in the Obama Administration

Trey Smith

More than two years after sensitive information about the Osama bin Laden raid was disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers, Pentagon and CIA investigations haven’t publicly held anyone accountable despite internal findings that the leakers were former CIA Director Leon Panetta and the Defense Department’s top intelligence official.

Instead, the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office is working to root out who might have disclosed the findings on Panetta and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers to a nonprofit watchdog group and to McClatchy.

While the information wasn’t classified, the inspector general’s office has pursued the new inquiry aggressively, grilling its own investigators, as well as the former director of its whistle-blowing unit, according to several people, including a congressional aide.
~ from ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Leak Investigators Now Target of Leak Probe by Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay ~

See the problem, here? Members of Team Obama can leak like crazy -- including classified information -- and EVEN when they are identified, they have nothing to worry about. Not only are they NOT prosecuted, it would appear they aren't investigated, reprimanded or merely chastised.

Oh, but if you expose the culprits or any degree of wrongdoing, that's when the boot of government comes down and it tends to come down very hard. You almost can guarantee that you will be investigated and, in most cases, prosecuted or punished in some other way. It is a proverbial case of shooting the messenger, not the party who actually is culpable.

Yes, indeed. The Obama presidency is the most transparent in US history...NOT! He makes one almost long for the days of Dubya!!

Frozen Out

Trey Smith

Joe White was this close to making it.

A 50-year-old California man described by relatives as a “loving father and a doting grandfather,” White had been living on the streets of Hayward for years. He wanted to work and was able to find odd jobs here and there, but it was never much or consistent enough to afford a place to live. Hayward has no emergency shelter with beds for single men, so White slept outside.

But things were looking up. Last Saturday, White was second on a long list to get permanent supportive housing in Hayward. He had been waiting in line for months and it seemed as though he might finally catch a break.

White died on Sunday.

Temperatures in the Bay Area plummeted to near-freezing on December 10, an uncommon occurrence in a region generally known for its lack of inclement weather. White’s body was found in the old Hayward City Hall courtyard. He’d been beaten up and robbed by multiple men, who took the new winter coat White’s sister had given him on Friday. He was wearing just a hoodie and shorts. His cause of death is still being determined, but police speculated that his death was weather-related.

White is now the seventh homeless person in the Bay Area to die in the cold since November 28. The others were Daniel Brillhart, 52; Enrique Rubio, 56; Andrew Greenleaf, 48; Daniel Moore, 53; and two men in the East Bay and Peninsula whose names have not been released.
~ from 7 Homeless People Freeze to Death in Wealthiest Area of the Country by Scott Keyes ~

Seven doesn't sound like that large of a number. For those who live in colder climes, the figure probably is much higher. But that's not the point.

We live in a nation in which corporate profits are soaring to record heights and those who are reaping these rewards concurrently are pushing to lower their responsibility to the community -- via taxes -- by even more than they already are. The deaths of these 7 individuals represent blood on the hands of the elite, but they don't give a damn.

Their sole focus is on the welfare of themselves and their kind. They don't care about the rest of us. Any way one looks at it, that is sad. Tragically sad.

One Federal Jurist Finally Gets It

Trey Smith

A federal judge on Monday concluded that a National Security Agency program that collects massive amounts of telephone data “likely” violates the Constitution, propelling a high-stakes fight right toward the Supreme Court.

In an extraordinary 68-page decision, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington ordered the NSA to stop snooping on two specific individuals who had challenged the so-called “bulk telephony metadata” collection program. While Leon then put a stay on his own order, pending a government appeal, his skepticism about the program’s constitutional validity came through loud and clear.

“I believe that bulk telephony metadata collection almost certainly does violate a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Leon wrote, taking note of the “almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States.”

Appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2002, Leon further cautioned that the 21st century surveillance technologies may have outstripped the decades-old legal precedents being used to justify them. The only way to resolve the dilemma spelled out in Leon’s decision is for the Supreme Court to revisit the issues once the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit takes a crack at it.
~ from NSA Telephone Spying "Likely" Illegal, Judge Says by Michael Doyle and Ali Watkins ~

In this day and age, it almost is surprising to see that a federal judge finally gets it. This bulk collection of almost ALL phone data on the potentially guilty and innocent alike is obviously far over the legal line. It treats those suspected of no wrongdoing like criminals which is something the founding fathers sought to thwart. I mean, why enumerate specific rights of citizens that government is supposed to not breach?

It's even more amazing that the judge who finally got it was appointed by a Republican President, not a Democratic one. If a conservative jurist is alarmed, this only shows that this program has crossed far, far over the line...or maybe Judge Leon is just some crackpot. Maybe the rest of our vaunted judicial system will give the Obama administration what they want: the ability to abrogate the US Constitution whenever they feel like it!

Wouldn't that be a glorious day!

The Science of Unreality

Trey Smith

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.

In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Maldacena's idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein's theory of gravity. It provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a 'duality', that allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But although the validity of Maldacena's ideas has pretty much been taken for granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.

In two papers posted on the arXiv repository, Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his colleagues now provide, if not an actual proof, at least compelling evidence that Maldacena’s conjecture is true.
~ from Is the Universe a Hologram? Physicists Say It's Possible by Ron Cowen ~

I find this "discovery" to be quite intriguing, but, in terms of my singular existence, I'm not sure that it really matters. Ta-Wan (the more science-minded of the three of us writers) may think differently.

But what if this theory turns out to be true? Does it mean we are mere reflections of a different reality? What do you think?

Lurking Everywhere

Trey Smith

Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.

The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a "target-rich communications network" where intelligence targets could "hide in plain sight".

Games, the analyst wrote, "are an opportunity!". According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a "deconfliction" group was required to ensure they weren't spying on, or interfering with, each other. (emphasis mine)
~ from Xbox Live Among Game Services Targeted by US and UK Spy Agencies by James Ball ~

Why stop with gamers? Chances are there are "terrorists" lurking at the Chamber of Commerce, local PTA or Friends of the Library!

You see, this is what happens when people or agencies become supremely paranoid. You see enemies at every turn. No activity is innocent anymore. You figure that almost anybody is "up to something."

Might there be a bona fide terrorist who is an online gamer? Certainly...but you shouldn't violate the rights of scores of innocent folks just to catch maybe one or two bad apples. There are far more efficient methods for this kind of stuff. As has been pointed out by many, too much data is as dangerous as too little. How can the NSA find specific terrorists within all this data? It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack 12 miles high!

The Bottom Line Stands Up and Roars

Trey Smith

The world's leading technology companies have united to demand sweeping changes to US surveillance laws, urging an international ban on bulk collection of data to help preserve the public's “trust in the internet”.

In their most concerted response yet to disclosures by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and AOL will publish an open letter to Barack Obama and Congress on Monday, throwing their weight behind radical reforms already proposed by Washington politicians.

“The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favour of the state and away from the rights of the individual rights that are enshrined in our constitution,” urges the letter signed by the eight US-based internet giants. “This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for change.”

Several of the companies claim the revelations have shaken public faith in the internet and blamed spy agencies for the resulting threat to their business interests. “People won’t use technology they don’t trust,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel. “Governments have put this trust at risk, and governments need to help restore it.”
~ from NSA Surveillance: Tech Companies Demand Sweeping Changes to US Laws by Dan Roberts and Jemima Kiss ~

It seems rather ironic that corporations who regularly spy and collect hordes of data from their often unsuspecting users are demanding that the federal government not spy and collect hordes of data so much from the unsuspecting masses. There is an obvious reason why these tech giants have committed to this drastic action: money. If people don't trust the internet, they might not rely on it so much and this development could put a serious dent in the bottom line of these companies.

There is no way to gauge how serious these outfits are. Only a very naive person would not understand that, at the very least, this could be nothing more than a savvy pr move. Were it not for Edward Snowden, most of the revelations related to this open letter would have remained hidden from public view. The abuses would have been the same, but it's hard to imagine ANY of these corporations going to bat for the rights of citizens out of the apparent blue. My guess is that, as long as the bottom line was not impacted, these giants wouldn't give a wit about possible governmental abuses of power.

That said, beggars can't be choosers. If this open letter helps to create the political will to put some serious constraints on the NSA, then I welcome it. Just don't expect me to sing praises for the altruistic actions of Microsoft or Google.

This Really Isn't "News"

Trey Smith

Conservative groups across the US are planning a coordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as "free-market think tanks", includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. The proposals were coordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.

The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014.
~ from State Conservative Groups Plan US-Wide Assault on Education, Health and Tax by Ed Pilkington and Suzanne Goldenberg ~

A lot of liberal and alternative media pundits are acting like this leaked information is big, B-I-G news, but is it really? Which of these policy initiatives is new? Which one hasn't been part of the conservative agenda in year's past?

Let's get real here, folks. This agenda doesn't look much different from the one pursued 10 or 20 years ago. Yes, some of the specific targets (issues) change with the generations, but the overall aim is the same. The elite want to eliminate the social safety net as much as possible and shift public monies into their own pockets. They also want tight controls placed on the unwashed masses, while, at the same time, they want to be freed from almost any degree of constraint.

I suppose the difference between now and twenty years ago is that this agenda is out in the open for all to see. In the olden days, the elite pursued such policy initiatives behind the scenes and the general public was none the wiser. These days, however, it's getting harder to keep one's activities under the radar...even for the elite. Someone always is ready to spill the beans.

Unfortunately, just because we know the parameters of their current blueprint, this doesn't mean we have much chance of stopping them. They hold most of the cards and they know it. In some ways, they probably don't care that we know what they are up to because we pose so little of a threat.

Turn It Around

Trey Smith

French MPs have voted to impose punitive fines on prostitutes' customers as part of a controversial new law going through parliament aimed at helping sex workers throw off the shackles of pimps and organised criminal gangs.

The measure, part of an anti-sex-trade bill, was approved by a show of hands in the Assemblée Nationale in the early hours of Saturday.

If the rest of the law is approved, customers of prostitutes will face a fine of €1,500 for a first "contravention", rising to €3,750 for subsequent offences, which will be considered crimes.

The proposals, introduced under a private members' bill, shift the criminal responsibility away from the estimated 40,000 prostitutes in France and on to their clients. Prostitution is legal in France, but soliciting, pimping and selling underage sex are not.

France's Socialist government introduced the legislation after examining a similar law in Sweden passed in 1999, which supporters claim has reduced the level of prostitution in the country by half.
~ from French MPs Vote to Impose Fines on Prostitutes' Customers by Kim Willsher ~

Personally, I think the act of prostitution should be legal between consenting adults, so I don't favor laws that seek to target prostitutes OR their clients. But this post isn't about prostitution anyway; it's about illegal immigration.

In the US, we don't go after the clientele of "illegal" aliens -- the corporations who enrich themselves on the backs of the immigrants. If we were serious about ending the flow of illegal immigration -- I submit that our political leaders aren't all that serious -- this is the tack to be taken. If we hammered those who hire illegal immigrants -- massive fines and/or jail time -- the market for those kinds of workers would dry up rather quickly.

But illegal immigration is vital to our national economy. Get rid of all the migrant workers and you can flush any economic prosperity goodbye. This is why we punish the "prostitute" and not the "john". It makes it appear as if something is being done about the "problem" when, in fact, almost nothing is being done.

Virtual Target Practice

Trey Smith

In a recently released report about the Sandy Hook school shooting of last December, one of the revelations is that the shooter (Adam Lanza) possessed a video game called School Shooting. As reported by the Guardian, the game features "a character controlled by the player who enters a school and shoots students."

I am sure that some people will point to this particular game as being a cause of the tragedy. Other people will broaden the scope to say that all violent video games are part of the problem and, consequently, should be banned. Still others will point out that millions of people play violent video games and yet they don't commit heinous acts, so the problem obviously isn't the games themselves.

Where do I stand on the issue? Sort of in the middle.

I do think violent video games are part of the problem, but that doesn't mean that I believe they should be singled out. Violence permeates our society. Our federal government has a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. This perspective has trickled down to local police forces. Even ordinary citizens -- like George Zimmerman -- wrap themselves in the shoot first mantra.

Most of the top box office draws in the film industry employ varying degrees of violence to sell tickets. The same is true for television programs. Heck, a good deal of the most popular music these days is filled with violent themes. When you add in the amount of violence showcased in a great deal of the "hallowed" religious tracts from the Abrahamic religions, the whole thing ends up tied neatly with a bow!

Yes, a video game entitled School Shooting is vulgar, but so too are the violent themes that seem to worm their way into every nook, cranny and crevice of our lives. Banning one tiny element won't make that much difference at all.

"An Alternative World"

Trey Smith

When I read a rundown of military assets being sent to rescue survivors and deliver supplies, I feel grateful for the logistics officers marshaling their expertise, but also struck by the fact that the tools we're using were designed to fight wars and are being temporarily repurposed. I wonder what a fleet as well-funded as the U.S. military's would look like if it were optimized for natural disaster response.

How many victims would have been reached already?

The stories about inaccessible areas of the Philippines, where authorities haven't yet seen the damage — let alone helped the survivors — makes me reflect on the global drone fleet, and imagine an alternative world where it was optimized and expanded to spot victims rather than insurgents, delivering drinking water rather than Hellfire missiles.

I don't mean to go all John Lennon on you. This isn't a naive call to eliminate the U.S. military and spend its entire budget augmenting the International Red Cross.

But given how predictable it is that there will be deadly storms, catastrophic earthquakes, and other natural disasters besides, you'd think we'd spend more on preemptive measures that would help lower the death toll and speed help to survivors. Alas, our psychology as individuals and nations is to dig into our pockets only after the fact, when the descriptions of mass graves and hunger reach us.

It is good to act then. It would be better to act sooner.
~ from Is This the Best Humanity Can Do for the Philippines? by Conor Friedersdorf ~

If asked to sum up in brief the primary reason I started this blog in January 2005, it would be because of my desire to imagine "an alternative world", one aptly expressed through the eyes of Laozi and Zhuangzi. As far back as when they (or others) wrote their famous tracts, humanity has wrestled with cultures fixated on satisfying the egoic desires of the elite. In "an alternative world", ALL of this planet's creatures and life forms would be valued and war would have no purpose.

A report is out that survivors in typhoon-ravaged central Philippines stormed a government owned rice warehouse because...they were starving. It is a sad commentary that there are people in this world who starve everyday despite the fact that enough food is produced to feed everyone. Though there is enough fresh water, there are folks who die of thirst. There are people who are born into grinding poverty and, when death comes (sooner than it should), have never had the opportunity to escape its grip.

I don't understand how ANYONE could be satisfied with the kind of world we have created. It is a world of a few mega winners and a wide swath of mega losers. To sit by silently is, to me, the greatest sin of all.

Sometimes You Can't Go Home Again

Trey Smith

When Mount St. Helens blew her top in 1980, the nearby landscape looked like it had been leveled by an atomic bomb. Some people thought that any form of life would not return before several generations had passed. And yet, within 5 years or so, life did return. It seems that nature has a way of repairing herself.

Climactic events can be fierce and lead to overwhelming destruction. Most communities that find themselves in the path of a major hurricane, tornado or flood take years to rebuild, but they DO rebuild. There is one event -- a human-caused one -- in which this is not always the case: a nuclear accident. When a nuclear plant melts down, it can render the surrounding area uninhabitable for, maybe, forever.

This is what the citizens of the towns surrounding Fukushima have just learned. Up until now, the government has issued assurances that people would be allowed to return home at some point. But in the last few days government officials have admitted the obvious: the communities near the Fukushima plant have been rendered uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Residents who had pinned their hopes on going home are now coming to the realization that "home" will have to be somewhere else!

You see, this is THE issue with nuclear energy. As long as things are humming along, nuclear energy seems like a good thing. But when a problem arises and things aren't humming along, it's not a good thing at all. This so-called wonderful energy source has the capacity to end human civilization all by itself. So, while many will argue that it has many upsides, this one downside cancels out all the supposed benefits.

It is bad enough that residents near Chernobyl or Fukushima have been permanently displaced, but what happens when a nuclear catastrophe renders the planet unlivable? If the entire population of earth is displaced, we have nowhere else to go!

Big Number Means Next Too Nothing

Trey Smith

The US government has urged that Bank of America Corp pay $863.6m in damages after a federal jury found it liable for fraud over defective mortgages sold by its Countrywide unit.

In a filing late Friday in the US district court in Manhattan, the government also asked for penalties against Rebecca Mairone, a former mid-level executive at the bank's Countrywide unit who the jury also found liable, "commensurate with her ability to pay".

The government said the penalties were necessary to punish the bank and Mairone "and to send a clear and unambiguous message that mortgage fraud for profit will not be tolerated".

Bank of America and Mairone were each found liable for defrauding government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the sale of shoddy loans purchased from Countrywide in 2007 and 2008. The case centered on a mortgage lending process at Countrywide, which Bank of America bought in July 2008, known as the "High Speed Swim Lane," or alternatively "HSSL" or "Hustle". (my emphasis)
~ from US Seeks $864 Million From Bank of America After Mortgage Fraud Verdict via Reuters ~

Here we have yet another example of a big number that isn't nearly as big as it seems. According to Wikipedia, around the time that this fraud was committed, Bank of America (BoFA) controlled "20–25% of the home loan market." That is a staggering percentage and it means they were pulling in a staggering amount of money. We're not talking about millions of dollars either. Try over $100 billion per year.

Let's take a look at the proposed fine from another angle. In 2012 alone, BoFA had $83.33 billion in revenue. They held $236.95 billion in equity and had total assets of $2.209 trillion. As a percentage of these vast assets, $863.6 million represents 0.000425628. That's not even one-tenth of one percent!

As I have done before, let's bring down these high brow numbers to something most of us can get a handle on. If you or I was fined $1,000 for some offense and we only had to pay at the rate of 0.000425628, the actual fine would be...drum roll please...43 cents. Not even one measly dollar! Do you think this would dissuade you from committing a similar offense again?

The point here is that the real message the government is sending is the OPPOSITE of what they say. A fine of such a miniscule amount sends a clear and unambiguous message that mortgage fraud for profit WILL BE tolerated, if not encouraged. It is saying, as Cenk Uygur likes to say, "Have at it, Hoss!"

If Only Man-Made Climate Change Was Real

Trey Smith

When typhoon Haiyan - known in the Philippines as Yolanda - pounded into the islands of Samar and Leyte at 4.40am after picking up speed on a 900-mile track across the Pacific, the US navy's warning center, JTWC, in Honolulu, calculated its winds to be gusting at up to 235mph (380kph).

This would make it the fourth most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded and possibly the strongest to have ever hit land. By comparison, St Jude, the storm that hit in southern England last month, had winds gusting to 99 mph.

As Filipino communities calculated the flood and wind damage done in the 25-mile-wide path of the storm, meteorologists questioned claims that Haiyan was the strongest ever to make landfall. "All we can say at this stage is maybe. The estimates of wind strength and central pressure are just that – estimates – albeit from well-attested satellite techniques developed over decades. Without ground observations right in the centre of the track we can never be totally sure," said Julian Heming, tropical prediction scientist at the Met Office.

Haiyan is the third Category 5 "super typhoon" to hit the Philippines since 2010.
~ from Typhoon Haiyan the Biggest Yet As World's Tropical Storms Gather Force by John Vidal ~

I've asked this before, but how many dots are needed before the vast majority feels confident enough to start connecting them?

Typhoon Haiyan, in and of itself, doesn't prove that man-made global warming is real -- I use the term "man-made" because males are primarily responsible -- but the number of records set for violent storms over the past decade or two should cause people to be concerned -- very concerned. We keep hearing and reading of record droughts, tornadoes, blizzards, floods and hurricanes. Why have many of these records been set in the past few years. There has to be SOME sort of explanation.

Scientists -- not pundits, politicos, religious nuts or the folks who benefit financially from denying climate change -- have zeroed in on the primary cause. That would be human society as it is operated in the industrialized world. They issue dire warnings after another and yet the issue somehow is still open to debate?

What will it take to put this picture into a clearer focus? Really! What will it take?

Still Ashamed

Scott Bradley

I wrote a post some time ago in which I said I was ashamed to be an American; I still am.

Yesterday (11/8) I heard (and thankfully did not see) a video (released by "Rolling Stone") on Democracy Now! in which a detainee in Afghanistan was being tortured while American soldiers — trainers — looked on. His cries were horrific. (I admit to having an incredible dread of torture.)

This was done in my name. This is now, even as I write, being done in my name. My country is an evil empire, and its citizens by virtue of their complacency are responsible. Got stuff? What else matters?

But this was an aberration we will be told, the work of a few bad apples. No it is not. This is America at work around the world — sending out its mercenaries to bring death and terror to keep the world safe for the multinational corporations and the ruling elite.

But why should I be ashamed? I denounce this evil; I write this post. Yet still I profit (at least for the moment) from this despicable system. And I know of no way to change it.

But mostly I am ashamed because I am not myself sufficiently transformed as to be able to transform others. My engagement would just be more of the same.

I once was a Christian, and as a Christian went to protest at a Christian sponsored "God Bless America" rally and held up a sign saying, "America's God is the Devil". I say it again now: America's God is the Devil.

Where are the prophets? Where are the religious, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, who stand up in sackcloth and ashes and scream the idolatry of nationalism, "exceptionalism", empire, and divine mandate? Let me, at least, say together with Rev. Wright, Obama's (our beloved Judas who sold us out for a few pieces of silver) abandoned preacher, "God damn America!"

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

Breaking Bad (For Jesus)

Trey Smith

In a move sure to please religious conservatives, President Obama's Justice Department filed a brief in the Supreme Court in favor of allowing overtly Christian prayers before city council meetings. It's an inexplicable move, and it's one more befitting a Republican administration than one headed by a Democrat and a constitutional scholar.

The case is Town of Greece v. Galloway, and it's set to be argued in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Greece is a suburb of Rochester, N.Y. Until 1999, its Town Board opened meetings with a moment of silence - a practice that excludes no one. But then Town Supervisor John Auberger initiated a policy change, and the town began inviting clergy to open meetings with a prayer.

These prayers were decidedly and explicitly Christian. From 1999 to 2007, the town invited exclusively Christian ministers, most of whom included explicitly Christian content. Some elaborated on Christian theology, including such discussions as "the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross" and "the plan of redemption that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ."

These prayers were delivered to an audience of local citizens, including children and adults, who attend meetings at the Town Board's invitation or direction. Children's athletic teams are invited to be publicly honored, police officers and their families attend to participate in oath-of-office ceremonies, people come to speak about local issues of great personal importance, and would-be business owners come to request zoning permits.

All of these people - Christians and non-Christians - are asked to stand and bow their heads for many of these prayers. But Muslims, Jews and nonbelievers cannot in good conscience participate in a prayer to Jesus Christ, and doing so shouldn't be the price of civic participation.
~ from Why Is the Obama Administration Bowing to Religion? by Erwin Chemerinsky ~

What will conservatives say now that the "Kenyan-born", "secret Muslim" and "ardent socialist" Obama is arguing THEIR side before the US Supreme Court?

This report has me so dumbfounded that I don't know what to say. 

Why even get involved in this hot-button political issue when you don't have to? What is he thinking?  Is he trying to manufacture a political firestorm in an attempt to move NSA and FBI misdeeds off the front page?

Oops! Did We Make a Boo Boo?

Trey Smith

The FBI monitored a prominent anti-war website for years, in part because agents mistakenly believed it had threatened to hack the bureau’s own site.

Internal documents show that the FBI’s monitoring of antiwar.com, a news and commentary website critical of US foreign policy, was sparked in significant measure by a judgment that it had threatened to “hack the FBI website” and involved a formal assessment of the “threat” the site posed to US national security.

But antiwar.com never threatened to hack the FBI website. Heavily redacted FBI documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the Guardian, show that Eric Garris, the site’s managing editor, passed along to the bureau a threat he received against his own website.

Months later, the bureau characterized antiwar.com as a potential perpetrator of a cyberattack against the bureau’s website – a rudimentary error that persisted for years in an FBI file on the website. The mistake appears to have been a pillar of the FBI’s reasoning for monitoring a site that is protected by the first amendment’s free-speech guarantees.
~ from FBI Monitored Anti-War Website in Error For Six Years, Documents Show by Spencer Ackerman ~

Look, we all make mistakes. Some are silly and inconsequential ones. Others are glaring and far-reaching. The surveillance of antiwar.com -- a site I visit frequently -- falls into the latter category. What's worse, due to all the secrecy surrounding the function of the NSA, CIA and FBI, it is next too impossible to complain about surveillance [by error] when you can't even be sure it is taking place!

We've seen this same kind of problem with some people placed on the No-Fly list. Over the last decade, I've read several accounts by rather innocuous individuals who have been barred from flying domestically or internationally because their name (or something close to it) showed up on the no-no list. When they try to find out WHY they are on the list, nobody can or will tell them. When they try to get their name removed from the list, they hit a brick wall. They are told that there is a good reason their name appears on the list, but "we can't tell you why that is!" If a person is not allowed to know why, it makes it damn hard to prove it is some kind of error.

In this case, however, the documents obtained by the Guardian clearly show a glaring error and it is one that NOBODY in the FBI caught for over 6 years! This kind of revelation does not instill the citizenry with much confidence in the FBI. How could that many trained professionals miss something so obvious for so long?

Of course, there IS another explanation. It wasn't an unknowing error. Maybe the FBI was looking for a justifiable reason to surveil a known anti-war website and, finding none, conjured up this "error" as their ticket in. Later, if the "error" saw the day of light, the FBI could merely say, "Oh, our bad.  Sorry."

The Writing on the Wall

Trey Smith

Amidst all the political races and ballot initiative votes yesterday, something very positive happened in the State of Illinois. The legislature passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. The governor has said he will sign it and, when he does, Illinois will become the 15th state to legalize it. That means that same-sex marriage will be legal in nearly one-third of all states.

Who would have imagined this only a generation or two ago? This development helps to explain why conservatives are running around the country as if their hair is on fire! They see the writing on the wall. At the rate we're going, same-sex marriage will be a non-issue in another generation or two. Soon, maybe we can start tackling REAL problems -- not made-up religious ones -- like global warming or ever-widening income disparity. Ya know, the kinds of problems that impact almost everyone...regardless of your nationality, skin color, gender or sexual orientation.

It's Not Truly a Cut, But...

Trey Smith

Emergency food providers in the US are preparing for an influx of struggling families across the country who have been warned their Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, will be cut on [Nov. 1]. Feeding America, the hunger relief charity, describes the scale of the cuts, $5bn a year, as representing about 2 billion meals a year and warns that the effect will be "close to catastrophic".

The cuts are the result of the expir[ation] of the fiscal stimulus legislation of 2009, which increased Snap benefits to provide a spur to the economy. The cuts will be unprecedented in depth and breadth, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a non-profit thinktank, and they will happen automatically, affecting every household in the US which qualifies for SNAP.
~ from US Emergency Food Providers Brace as $5bn Food Stamp Cuts Set In by Karen McVeigh ~

Americans -- not just the mainstream media -- treat every expiration as a "cut" or a "hike". It doesn't matter what the situation is. This situation with SNAP is just like the discussion around allowing the temporary Bush tax reduction to expire. In that case, it was said that, in allowing the expiration, Obama favored raising taxes on the well-to-do.

If we are at all honest, both declarations are disingenuous. In both cases, a temporary measure was adopted -- the key word here is temporary. By allowing the measure to expire, we return to the base. In other words, in terms of SNAP, there was a base formula utilized and the stimulus money simply increased benefit amounts for a fixed period of time due to the struggles within the US economy.

It would be like a golfer with a certain handicap. Because of recent knee surgery, this golfer's mates agreed to increase his handicap by several strokes while the golfer worked himself back into shape. Once his knee was healed and he regained his form, the extra handicap would be removed. Would he then complain that his mates were treating him unfairly?

My point is that this cut in SNAP really isn't a cut at all; it just brings us back to where we started before the temporary increase.

As a recipient of SNAP, you might then think that I have no issue with allowing the expiration of increased benefits to occur. 

Aah, but I do! 

My problem is that the President and Congress seem quite okay with allowing temporary measures that aid the poor to expire as scheduled, while continuing temporary measures that benefit the rich. The economy for the Wall Street has rebounded quite nicely since the economic downturn, but the economy of Main Street remains in the doldrums. So how is it that temporary measures that benefit the upper class become more or less permanent, while temporary measures that benefit the poor retain their temporary character?

Yes, All the Major Players Are Culpable

Trey Smith

A person would have to be naive to the max not to know their own government routinely spies. It doesn't matter if you live in a democracy or not; government by its very nature tends to be intrusive. So, the newest revelation in Spygate is the least shocking of all. It turns out that many of the European nations expressing dismay over the NSA's wide reach are, in fact, doing the same thing AND secretly cooperating with the US and UK while doing it.

In the latest story from the Guardian, it was revealed yesterday that "German, French, Spanish and Swedish intelligence services have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years in close partnership with Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency." This collegial cooperation goes a step further: All these agencies work together to help each other circumvent their own domestic laws on spying.

For example, if the laws of Nation A do not allow for a certain activity, their spy agency asks one of the others to collect the data and then share the results. In this way, their reps can go before legislators and say with a straight face, "No, we're not doing anything illegal. Our agency abides by the law."

For decades, many rabid conservatives have warned that the UN is trying to create a one world government. As it turns out, these "kooks" have been half right. There is a group that is trying to take control of the planet, but it's not the UN. No, it's the corporate elite. They are the ones who feel it necessary to keep tabs on the unwashed masses and it's not difficult to understand why. The elite represent a miniscule number of the world's population. If the rest of us got together, we could knock them off their perches lickety-split!

They Are Stealing Our M. O.!

Trey Smith

Google and Yahoo, two of the world's biggest tech companies, reacted angrily to a report on Wednesday that the National Security Agency has secretly intercepted the main communication links that carry their users' data around the world.

Citing documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the Washington Post claimed the agency could collect information "at will" from among hundreds of millions of user accounts.

The documents suggest that the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, is copying large amounts of data as it flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the worldwide data centers of the Silicon Valley giants. The intelligence activities of the NSA outside the US are subject to fewer legal constraints than its domestic actions.

The story is likely to put further strain on the already difficult relations between the tech firms and Washington. The internet giants are furious about the damage done to their reputation in the wake of Snowden's revelations.
~ from Google and Yahoo Furious Over Reports that NSA Secretly Intercepts Data Links by Dominic Rushe, Spencer Ackerman and James Ball ~

This is quite ironic, don't ya think? Here we have two corporations known for secretly gathering all sorts of data and information from their users and they're upset with the government for doing much the same!