It doesn't matter...

If you can stand it, check out this masterpiece of The Hammer doing dance steps in Dancing With The Stars circa 2009, something to behold considering just how powerful and corrupt  Tom DeLay truly was in his heyday as GOP House Majority Leader from 2003 - 2005 but he's not alone, not by a long shot as seen in a polemic by Frank Rich titled The Stench on the Potomac. 

This crowd is as intractable as it is incorrigible. There are no term limits, because Washington amnesia perennially wipes the slate clean. No one seems to remember anymore the furor kicked off by a 1998 Post "Style"-section piece in which Beltway grandees like David Broder and Cokie Roberts vented to Sally Quinn about how the impeached president had trashed their pristine city. "Regardless of whether his fortunes improve," Quinn concluded, "Bill Clinton has essentially lost the Washington Establishment for good." Well, that was then, and this is now. As This Town makes clear, these days Clinton alumni are the Washington Establishment, whether in the Obama administration or on K Street, and they can hardly wait for the greater dividends that will accrue should the former First Couple be restored to the White House in 2016. If that happens, Leibovich will not have to write a sequel, because it is already writing itself.

Read it and weep  because in the end, it doesn't matter... , ever.

On Reaching 1100

1100, to yours truly, is a large number, particularly when it comes to articles written for BRT. It astounds me to no end that this blog contains this much material, hopefully most of which is relevant and has value. One can only hope.

The 1000th article, titled 1000 & Counting,  was reached on Jan 10, 2013 with emphasis given to quality of thought and the importance of Homer, the blind poet who started it all for aspiring writers willing to expose their thoughts to the public in a form able to be understood by anyone who had the skill set to do so. With this in mind, what has transpired in the 8 short months BRT went from article 1000 to post 1100?

• For starters, Orwell lives. Black white, double think and newspeak reign supreme in the land of the free as seen by the treatment of whistle blowers being equated to traitors, thanks to Obama and Holder, even though the definition of espionage cannot be applied to what Snowden, Ellsberg and Manning did in showing us how the government systematically lied to us in areas of policy that impacts us all. 
• Global Warming, a reality accepted by all, save for flat earthers,  grows ever more ominous as we continue to burn fossil fuels at ever increasing rates even though nations like Germany move ahead of us in terms of leveraging renewables to keep their nation running. 
• Financialization, or the art of printing and manipulating money to feed the stock market, has replaced innovation as the "new" way to achieve financial success, a process equivalent to the game of musical chairs, where money, back by nothing and created from nothing, moves about at ever increasing speeds to temporarily satisfy immediate needs with the vain hope the music never stops though it inevitably will due to the ever increaseing cost of energy, the engine that kept the party going until now.
• Surveillance 24/7, something techies like myself have suspected all along, has been verified to be real at levels approaching disbelief, something most disquieting as surveillance is the first step to the creation of a police state, a condition this country is rapidly moving toward as seen by the militarization of the police, the increased control of the press via government wiretaps, the unprecedented concentration of power by the banks and corporations over government and the unprecedented attacks on whistle blowers of all types. 
• States like PA are decreasing education budgets while building new prisons because prison building is a for profit system requiring ever larger prison populations in order for it to thrive, something that will definitely occur as the populace in question becomes less educated and must resort to crime in order to survive in a society increasingly driven by science and technology.
• Drug policy stupidity regarding the delayed legalization of pot continues on even though the so called drug war is our personal Vietnam and we've lost but the DEA and other law enforcement entities march on because that's where the money is and don't you forget it. On the local side, police want pot legalized in order to go after real criminals, not those charged with a victimless crime by getting toasted on a plant man has smoked for over 10,000 years.
• The art of stupidity and inefficiency of governance continues unabated with politicos spouting off policy initiatives that boggle the mind in terms of just how out of touch they and the powers at be are in terms of what is truly happening in America and to the world as a whole. The disparity of wealth is the greatest it's ever been and where the inequity stops, no one knows. Pensions are going the way of the dodo and banksters move ever closer to getting our social security as this is the only remnant of wealth America has left.
• Healthcare, don't even go there as the cost of getting anything of significance done, costs more in this county then in any other nation in the world. Obamacare is but a weak start to a system needing a reset and then some.
• Science & technology continue to advance in spite of attacks by religious fanatics of all stripes. Quantum computing, artificial photosynthesis and the ability to manipulate stem cells to create organs in the near future to save lives are examples of research that could transform society in ways unimagined just a few years ago.
• The demand for excellence is never stated in this country because learning something new is difficult, requiring sacrifice in order to become good. Intellectual prowess is also frowned upon because not everyone is smart, something not acceptable in this age of bloviators even though society itself needs people with brains to get the job done due to the inherent complexities of an environment dependent on science and tech in order to function.
• People are now demanding to know what foods are GMO and what are not because the environment and our health may depend on it. Needless to say, Monsanto and significant others are not happy about this. This also applies to water and the right to having unfettered access to it, something Nestle wants to, in effect, eliminate as it continues to buy up water rights in places all over the world in order to control access and generate enormous profits to the one essential element on which all life on this planet depends.
• Fracking and the XL pipeline are also being questioned. PA wants a moratorium on fracking to ascertain heath risks while opposition to Keystone is increasing at exponential rates given just how dirty and polluting the tar sands product truly is. 
• Loser pays, the cessation of gerrymandering, the right to referendum and enactment of Amendment 28 are not happening, initiatives that need to happen if we are to take back control of this country.
• People are beginning to wake up and demand change. The question to ask is, can we make it happen before it's too late. As per many posts in BRT, the clock is ticking and we are running out of time.

The image above is the Earth, Moon and Sun as seen from Cassini as I feel it's important to get a true sense of perspective as to where we really stand in this part of a vast, unknowable reality in which we inhabit, something we really need to think about if we want to succeed as a viable species on a tiny speck of real estate that, as Carl Sagan once said, "we call Home".

Factoids

Salon's take on the foibles of the US titled 8 appalling ways America leads the world is, without doubt, a must read. 

People uninterested in change and progress tend to cling to the jingoistic fantasy that America is an exceptional country. Often this implies that the U.S. is somehow superior to other nations. Some, like the neocons, have taken the idea of exceptionalism to mean that America should be above the law and that other countries should be remade in our image. Others, like conservative evangelicals, believe that America’s supposed exceptionalism is God’s will.

In recent decades, America has indeed pulled ahead of the global pack in a number of areas. But they aren’t necessarily things to go waving the flag over or thanking Jehovah.

As a side note, yours truly recently visited friends in Quebec. Needless to say, diet, life style and the lack of fat people walking around town, is simply astounding, something America needs to fix, along with the other 7 factoids as seen in this truly informative article.

To Drill Down...

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

To drill down means to move from summary information to detailed data by focusing in on something. In a GUI-environment, "drilling-down" may involve clicking on some representation in order to reveal more detail.[1]

To drill down through a series of folders, for example, on a desktop means to move through the hierarchy of folders (from the top downwards) to find a specific file or to click through drop-down menus in a GUI. Clicking on an item moves you to a level of greater detail. When an online user accesses more and more pages of the website, he or she may delve deeper into the content of the site. 

Any questions?

Addendum: The NY Times just posted a piece describing the extent of the NSA's push to eavesdrop the world. Needless to say, quite ambitious and eminently doable give just how powerful and persuasive systems and the net have become in the 21st century.

The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as a newly leaked N.S.A. document surfaced showing how the agency spies on Web browsing and other Internet activity abroad.

Together, the new round of disclosures shed even more light on the scope of the United States government’s secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and debate by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.

Seems the eminent Mr. Snowden has been right all along regarding the emergent surveillance state, courtesy the NSA. As a bonus, click here to download the complete XKS manual. Who knows, we, the great unwashed, could use something as user friendly and as powerful as this to sift through the never ending cascade of emails that inundate us 24/7. :)

The Thought Police, Virginia Style

1954 anyone?

Pass the Salt, Please

Surveillance 24/7-  Phase II, is set to go live if the article titled  Feds Tell Web Firms To Turn Over User Account Passwords, courtesy Information Clearing House, is correct.

July 26, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "CNet" -  The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused...

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

It gets better.

Some details remain unclear, including when the requests began and whether the government demands are always targeted at individuals or seek entire password database dumps. The Patriot Act has been used to demand entire database dumps of phone call logs, and critics have suggested its use is broader. "The authority of the government is essentially limitless" under that law, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence committee, said at a Washington event this week.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” 
― George Orwell, 1984

R.I.P.

It's a sad day. The Oil Drum is going away, a site yours truly admired and used as a valuable resource when talking about peak oil and the consequences of what happens when demand for fossil fuel energy outstrips supply. What made the drum different was the way it presented complex data in ways that could be understood by rubes like me.

The world currently produces around 91 million barrels a day (mb/d) of ‘oil’ in the International Energy Agency’s definition, which is for all liquids. For the past two years, actual crude oil production (which includes lease condensate in the EIA’s definition) has been hovering around 75 mb/d on an annual basis, just slightly over the 74 mb/d plateau established in 2005.

The moment of truth for peak oil will be when the decline of mature fields finally overwhelms new production additions, and global supply begins to turn south. (A vogue alternative is that we’ll reach “peak demand” first, where oil is replaced by other fuels and demand falls due to greater efficiency, but as yet I find the proof that this has happened, or will happen, unconvincing.)

That moment of truth isn’t quite here yet. Fracking, along with all the other methods the world is employing to squeeze a bit more oil out of the earth, has barely budged global oil production. Here is the chart:

As per the wont of BRT, Peak Fish, the supplier of the graphic above, is a new resource BRT will use as Peak Fish "takes hard to locate, difficult to understand public data and displays it in a way that's readable and visually appealing."

Works for me. 

I'm Dreaming of a ... :)

As Why Evolution is True would say...

I am the Walrus, napping on a Russian submarine LOL :)

A Simple Matter of Perspective

When looking at this glorious image, courtesy of NASA's Cassini Mission to Saturn, the tiny pale dot seen in the picture is earth or, as Carl Sagan said so eloquently in Pale Blue Dot,

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Make you think doesn't it?

The Folly of Going Private

When taxpayers lose control of public services, in this case, the fubar known as Chicago's Parking Situation, something done without the knowledge of said tax payers, bad things happen, and then some. 

Mr. Rowey holds up the example of Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters that were sold in a 75-year lease to an investor group backed by Morgan Stanley as a success. In fact, Chicago taxpayers, investors and mayors across the country will tell you that not only was it an unmitigated disaster, it is also Exhibit A in the folly of blindly giving up taxpayer control of services.

An after-the-fact investigation by the city’s inspector general concluded that the decision to enter the lease contract lacked “meaningful public review” and neglected the city’s long-term interests to solve a short-term budget crisis. Specifically, it found that “the city was paid, conservatively, $974 million less for this 75-year lease than the city would have received from 75 years of parking-meter revenue.” That’s nearly $1 billion that could have been used for better police and fire protection, longer library hours and many other services that would benefit the public good rather than private profits. By Dec. 31, 2009, Chicago had only $180 million left from the $1.15 billion parking meter deal, forcing the city to consider alternative sources of revenue rather than relying on long-term reserve funds generated by the parking meter lease.

Matt Taibbi, in his incendiary book, 'Griftopia': Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, expands upon this dubious practice of privatizing public services with details on the various Wall Street deals that bankrupted America, in collusion with government, in ways that boggle the mind.

“Our leaders know we’re turning into a giant ghetto and they are taking every last hubcap they can get their hands on before the rest of us wake up and realize what’s happened.” 

and

“This story is the ultimate example of American’s biggest political problem. We no longer have the attention span to deal with any twenty-first century crisis. We live in an economy that is immensely complex and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand it – who incidentally often happen to be the same people who built these wildly complex economic systems. We have to trust these people to do the right thing, but we can’t, because, well, they’re scum. Which is kind of a big problem, when you think about it.” 

Get the book, you'll learn a lot. I did and I have.