Sister Sarah Is On the Grift Again

You know when Sarah Palin needs a new fur coat, designer handbag, or new tanning bed because she starts hinting at running for some office somewhere. A couple years ago Sister Sarah suggested she just might run for President, she raised almost $5 million for her SarahPAC and donated less than $300,000 to candidate campaigns, she spent nearly as much money just on travel expenses. 

This year is not an election year so donations from suckers marks loyal supporters are down substantially. Sister Sarah has to gin up the gifts she gets if she is to continue living the lifestyle to which she has become accustom. Hinting at running for office is a great scam. That doesn't mean Sarah won't actually run for Senate. While hinting is a great scam, holding a seat in the US Senate would be a goldmine for a thief as skilled as Sarah Palin. It's just that running for office might seem too much like work for Sister Sarah.

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FBI Nominee Pours on the Bullshit

James Comey, President Obama's choice to head the FBI, has several difficult problems facing him during his Senate confirmation hearing.

His paper trail showed him approving torture while working for the Bush Administration. Yet, times have changed and he has to sound at least tacitly disapproving of torturing prisoners. Comey settled on the odd philosophical construct that waterboarding was awful and illegal but still lawful and necessary. There is little that someone with so flexible a mind can't wrap his brain around.

Comey believes that force feeding prisoners holding hunger strikes to protest inhuman conditions is the humane thing to do. He believes that people would accept domestic spying and the secret FISA court if only people were familiar with it; that people opposing it are simply showing their ignorance; and, of course, people cannot be allowed to know about domestic spying and the secret FISA court because of national security. He wonders whatever happened to the concept of "ignorance is bliss."


Obama has supported Comey for a Supreme Court slot as well as the FBI post. This is a surprise given that Comey is a rightwing Republican who share nothing with either the President nor anyone else in the White House. Comey also has a very weak resume. This all begs the question, what kind of blackmail information is Comey using to pressure President Obama to appoint him to high office?

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American Police State: 3rd Amendment Division

One of the things that outraged our Founding Fathers was when the British used armed force to take over somebody's home and station their forces there. It was so egregious an act that when it came time to write a Constitution they included a clause, the Third Amendment, specifically outlawing such actions by the new United States.

Fast forward to 2013 and in these new United States the Third Amendment has taken its place along side the Fourth (unreasonable searches), Fifth (due process), Sixth (speedy trial, per-trial confinement often lasts years),  Eighth (cruel and unusual punishment), Fifteenth (voting rights), and Twenty-Fourth (requires payment of taxes or fees to vote) Amendments in the trash heap of history.

In Nevada, police wanted to quarter officers in the home of Anthony Mitchell to keep watch on his neighbor. Mitchell refused. Police forces then invaded Mitchell's home, attacked and arrested him, and took possession of his home for their own uses. And abuses as the police ate the Mitchell's food and left a mess behind when the concluded their occupation. The consensus opinion is the Nevada will claim that armed police forces do not qualify as "soldiers" and that in denying police demand to surrender their home to police was an act of obstruction justifying both the warrentless arrest and physical punishment.

What about the criminal the Nevada police wanted to keep an eye one? He wasn't a terrorist, murderer, or Mafia don, he was suspected (suspected only) of domestic abuse. Apparently, the only people arrested in this affair were the innocent homeowners. 

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Postal Spy Network

Let's make a couple of simple points first, the price of postage could be halved if the NSA didn't insist on logging all the data of every piece of mail sent. Postal delivery would be faster too.

This isn't the first time the US government has intruded on the privacy of the mail. During World War II, mail sent home by soldiers was opened and read by censors to insure no secret war plans were revealed. The big difference is it wasn't done in secret, everybody knew the government was censoring the mail. Every single piece of mail was clearly stamped to show a censor had handled it before it was delivered.

The current NSA postal spying is part of their effort to build comprehensive dossiers on every American in the event they might, one day for some reason, want to arrest someone.  And the NSA does this in secret because they last thing they want is for the American people to know how much of their lives are being recorded by the government with the intent of using it against them at some point.

Technology allows for so much more in depth spying on citizens. In the old days, for example, the East German Stasi had to keep millions of reel to reel audio tapes of every citizen's phone call that had to be listened to by secret police officers.  Today, the data can be kept digitally and monitored by complex algorithms looking for patterns. Computers can choose who to target for intimidation with minimal human involvement.

Its a brave, new world we live in and one that Erich Honecker could only dream of.

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The Snowden Terror

The Snowden Terror© keeps getting more and more bizarre.

Today the plane carrying the President of Bolivia was forced to land because of the rumor (false) that Edward Snowden was on the plane. Four European countries refused passage for the presidential plane, a violation of basic diplomacy. The Bolivian plane was apparently searched by Austrians, another egregious violation of diplomatic protocol. Imagine Russian authorities demanding the right to search Air Force One.

The implied, if not outright, threat was that military forces would shoot down the presidential plane. Perhaps not strangely, this is exactly what the CIA is alleged to have done in murdering the President of Ecuador a quarter century ago.

The Snowden Terror is revealing a shocking level of American thuggery. Whole nations are cowering in abject horror over what the Americans might do because of this single young man.

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What Does the NSA Have on Them?

From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion? ~ Thomas Paine

Witnessing Vladamir Putin folding like a cheap tent gives some hint at the kind of pressure the NSA-led US government is putting on anyone who might provide asylum to Edward Snowden.

I assume President Obama has not threatened nuclear war if Russia provides sanctuary to Snowden (I can't think of a lesser threat that would scare him). So that means the NSA must have some pretty powerful info stored in their databases to cower Putin so thoroughly.

In Ecuador it is commonly accepted as true that the US assassinated a beloved former President of their country thirty years ago. If that knowledge was insufficient to scare off current President Rafael Correa, then what threats did Vice-President Biden convey to President Correa that terrifies him so.

The Washington Post of Woodward and Bernstein Watergate fame, the same paper that, with the New York Times, published the Pentagon Papers, has betrayed their heritage by editorializing that government secrets are sacred and that leaks are horrible. The NSA must have some very juicy secrets about the Post publishers.

Diplomatic channels must sound a lot like a back alley in South Chicago during the 1920's. The threats, veiled and otherwise, a going hot and heavy. And make no mistake, the NSA is running this show, not President Obama. Obama is as much a victim here as everyone else.

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Austin and Egypt

Two very different societies, two very similar situations.

Texas rally against the Governor's anti-democracy actions.

In both, religious radicals have gained control of the government. In both the people are aggrieved by a government intent on imposing its own, particular brand of religious orthodoxy upon the people. Their governments, conversely, see the people as bothersome obstructions to enforcing religious order.

In Egypt, the government tried and failed to use police intimidation to quell the people. In Austin, Governor Perry is planning on using a massive display of armed police power to prevent the people from having access to the legislative gallery.

I have high hopes for the people of Egypt than the people of Austin.

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