This 9 minute video blew my freaking mind.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Are we "secure in our persons,..., papers, and effects" when every single telephone communication or text or email you ever make goes into a government database ?

And "probable cause" must be "supported by Oath or affirmation AND" any search warrants issued must in particular describe specifically "the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Collecting data from the citizens under the belief that this keeps us safe from "terrorists" presumes that there is a way to mine the data that will always be independent of potential political partisan witch hunts that can be (and has been in the past) used to blacklist or blackmail individuals who are otherwise obeying the law. Authorities can use this information to have prior knowledge about various groups or networks of individuals who are law abiding citizens by simply analyzing who calls who and how often.

Which is really why this is happening. Tracking real criminals and real terrorists is more difficult, because real criminals and real terrorists have been communicating with satellite telephones and/or laptop computers for a decade.

Every single recent security breech event since the 1990's has been about incompetence ... and some would say willful ignorance. Is this the security state gone rogue?

It was just growing mysteriously in the backyard.

Today I was thinking about how whenever someone asks someone else a question, there was actually a first question in their mind that was thought first; and the second question is what gets verbalized. Sometimes these are the same two questions, sometimes they are different questions.

For instance, if someone asks you "Where did you get that jacket?" one day, the first question might be "That looks just like a jacket I used to own, I wonder were that person got his/her jacket?"

Or it could be, "I wonder if that is a leather jacket?"

Or it could be, "That guy looks cute, I wonder if he's interested in me?"

The first question is subconscious, instinctive to the person's unique thought process. Assuming that the two questions are the same is a bad idea, because it depends upon the situation, and the relationship of the two persons or people involved. People's curiosity about strangers are different, and people with strong relationships can tend to anticipate each others' thoughts.

The first question might be also something that can be inferred from the number of inferential questions that are asked in a succession of events. For instance, a woman or man might have "Can I trust you?" in the back of their head while they are on a date with a new someone in their life.

Anyway, that's what I was pondering this morning.

Would you believe Arsenic,Silicone breast implant filler, and rat hair, click the Source.

Stop watching TV an read People.

[SOURCE: Anna Brones | UK Guardian | 13 May 2013]

Farm laborers in Australia make much more than American ones. And yet they still have a functional agricultural sector. It turns out that allowing companies to import an unlimited number of foreign workers desperate to work at a wage of epsilon will create shitty working conditions and low wages!

Labor costs as a percentage of consumer cost of most fruits and veggies are pretty tiny. Even for fruits like raspberries, they're on the order of 15-20%, and for most crops they're much lower. You could double or triple labor prices and, even if all the costs are passed off to consumers and there are no productivity boosts, there still wouldn't be particularly large increases in produce prices.

From Paul Krugman

Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter hw badly it fails in practice. Elites, he argues, see economic distress as an opportunity to push through “reforms” — which basically means changes they want, which may or may not actually serve the interest of promoting economic growth — and oppose any policies that might mitigate crisis without the need for these changes:

Talking to a moron is like a circle trying to explain a radius to a square. What do you mean all points equidistant from the center? A square has no idea what that means.

From Atrios

Lots real scandals out there, just not ones our Villagers care much about. Wrongful foreclosures, massive long term unemployment, bankster fraud.

Edited talking points. That's the one that got them.

Also:

• Wisconsin Rethuglican governor Scott Walker has been a running soap opera of scandal for the last two years
• The Offshore bank account scandal !!!!!!! (See ... I told you they'd bury the real scandal with something else.)
• Various non-profit political groups that filter and funnel money into localities and states to circumvent the local laws against outside money
• The on-going revolving door between appointed staff and bureaucrats and legislators who serve the interests of the corporations that hire them for large salaries after their brief interim in government
• The ongoing illegality of Guantanamo and the current massive hunger strike where almost every single "prisoner" is having to be feed intravenously

Yep, plenty of scandals abound for the press to do its job and educate the people. But that's not the purpose of the "mainstream" press. The "mainstream" press creates the normative background that crowds out other facts and topics that occur within the reality of the now. This is how the public is "managed" and "massaged".

You want a scandal. How about when Team Bush fucked up the "war effort" so poorly that they forgot to organize the distribution of food and collection of the mail because they outsourced everything to private insider groups under the guiding philosophy that the "free market" would automatically supply the troops with their food and bring them their mail. American soldiers were having to get their food from Italian troops because the food their "free market" distribution system was getting them was often rancid and unedible. The privatized mail delivery system would drop the mail at a few central locations and expect troops to come get their own mail, sometimes a hundred miles away. And soldiers were complaining of the pilfering of the mails. The fly-by-night corporations set up by the "free market" entrepreneurial insiders were only out to make a quick buck. They were unwilling to invest in a business model that provided quality efficient services. It didn't happen. Once again privatized government failed.

But at least they proudly sang the God Bless America and put a metal flag pin on their lapel.

Now that story never became a scandal. I heard it on a radio show and have remembered it ever since. I think there was a small New York Times article, but that's it. Back when the story broke, it became quickly pushed aside by one of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's mysterious Terrorist Alerts about possible terrorist activity.

Just like they have pushed aside the Off-shore banking scandal with this nonsense scandal called Benghazi.

What happened in Benghazi was that a CIA operation got hit, and the state department and CIA were at odds about how to portray the event. The talking points of the event is what the scandal is now about.

Richard Nixon has been vindicated because big bad Team Obama used poor talking points. Gosh darn. If Team Obama would have just used better talking points, this would have ended ... right?