Korean-ing Off The Rails, Part 3

North Korea is still putting out quite a stink over South Korea's increase in military drills and live fire exercises.

North Korea said South Korea is raising tension on the Korean Peninsula to an “uncontrollable extreme phase” by holding military exercises with the U.S. and planning a live-firing drill today by navy ships.

The South Korean government “is so hell-bent on the moves to escalate the confrontation and start a war that it is recklessly behaving bereft of reason,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency said in a commentary yesterday. North Korea is “now maintaining a maximum self-possession and self- control,” it said.

Today’s drills will include live firing from ships into seas near Daecheong Island, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week. North Korea said the exercise will result in shells landing in its territorial waters.

I'm not sure what the Korean equivalent of kabuki is, but I have a feeling we're seeing it here and with all the bells and whistles. It's only a matter of time before something particularly provocative is going to happen unless cooler heads prevail, and frankly cooler heads are nowhere to be found on the Korean Peninsula.

Robert Ludlum's The Assange Supremacy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is warning that if anything happens to him or his site that he has the insurance of a "poison pill" of potentially devastating secrets waiting to be released.

Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets.

The military papers on Guantanamo Bay, yet to be published, have been supplied by Bradley Manning, Assange’s primary source until his arrest in May. Other documents that Assange is confirmed to possess include an aerial video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians, BP files and Bank of America documents.

One of the key files available for download — named insurance.aes256 — appears to be encrypted with a 256-digit key. Experts said last week it was virtually unbreakable.

You had to have figured that Assange had something like this, a mutually assured destruction type backup plan, in case his site was obliterated. Putting out an example file and daring the NSA to break it is a damn good way to assure the US and other governments that he has the goods as well, and that calling his bluff would be a bad idea if he's actually holding the cards. Should the NSA be able to break the file's encryption, they only learn how serious Assange is on his threats.

Even better, you have to assume now that people will be ready to believe whatever this insurance file contains, even if it's fantastic or not. Assange has the credibility right now based on the massively disproportionate reaction by world governments to his cable leaks. If Assange tomorrow completely fabricated files tomorrow purporting contact with aliens from another solar system, he'd have more credibility than world governments right now, and all sides know it. Even if the NSA is unable to break encryption on the file, they have to take that into account.

That's why the lunatic idea of openly calling for Assange's assassination plays right into his hands and ironically makes his position stronger. The calls for such action are by no means new but are increasingly getting louder...and more self-defeating by the day.

It's a hell of a dangerous game he's playing, but so far Julian Assange is playing it well.

The Zealot References Are Valid

I talked earlier this week about Republican religious zealots who have no tolerance for anyone who isn't Christian enough or who isn't conservative enough in their Christianity for them. Anyone else found wanting is at best a second-class citizen and at worst open persecuted by these maniacs. Yesterday's story about the problems some of these nut jobs have with the Speaker of the Texas House being Jewish is just the beginning.

This week's story about taxpayer money being used for a Creationist Noah's Ark theme park here in Northern Kentucky was bad enough an example of this hypocrisy, but I had missed the connection with that and the whole fundamentalist outrage over wanting the entire Smithsonian museum funding revoked over an exhibit that dared to acknowledge that LGBT Americans exist.

Luckily, Stephen Prothero at CNN's Belief Blog notes the dangers of trying to legislate a national religion.

I write not to raise First Amendment questions about elected officials transforming themselves into self-appointed curators, but to ask whether these officials are really concerned (as they claim) about the use of taxpayer funds to weigh on matters of the spirit.

In a press release yesterday, Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky announced that his state had entered into a deal with the folks behind the Creation Museum to break ground for Ark Encounter, a $150 million theme park complete with “a full-scale model of Noah’s Ark.”

Rather than speaking of his state's support of this group’s creationist agenda, Gov. Beshear spoke of employing 900 workers and drawing 1.6 million visitors a year. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, however, the tax breaks offered by the state to Ark Encounter, as the theme park is being called, “could surpass $37 million.”

The entire exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery (of which the brief clip by the late artist David Wojnarowicz was a small part), cost, by contrast, $750,000, and all of that from private donations.

So my question to Representatives Boehner and Cantor, and to Glenn Beck and others who are working themselves up into a lather over this supposed attack on Christianity, is this: Are you equally outraged over millions in tax breaks to a group promoting fundamentalism? 

Would you be outraged at all if the clip in question concerned not an "antsy Christ" but an "antsy Buddha" or an "antsy Christopher Hitchens"? And how loud would the outrage be in Washington if Kentucky's governor was offering millions in tax incentives to a Hare Krishna theme park? Or a Disney Land of Atheism?

It's these same fundamentalist zealots that constantly accuse Obama of being a "secular fascist" and question his faith. It's the same zealots who declare that their religious beliefs are under attack by a country that wishes to persecute them, warning that everyone else is coming to destroy them in their own paranoid shrieking.

But it's these same zealots who use their secular political power to actively legislate against anyone who is not like them, based solely on their rabid beliefs that everyone must agree with their narrow definition of Christianity. We hear it all time: America is a Christian nation.

That's not true, of course. But this stale bigoted twisted version of Christianity that has no room for anyone else in America to exist gets special protected status when it comes to our government, and its adherents wish only to legislate those views upon all America because they believe it's the right thing to do.

This dangerous religious hypocrisy needs to be stopped.

Friends Indeed

Definitely glad to make a blogroll trade with Michael Stickings and the crew at The Reaction. More than a little honored, too. Go check them out.

A Texas-Sized Case Of Bad Religion

Via TPM it seems Texas Republicans have a bit of a problem with State House Speaker Joe Straus...a very ugly problem with the fact that Straus is Jewish. The Texas Observer's Abby Rapoport details the fight:

When emails first appeared calling for dumping current Speaker Joe Straus in favor of "Christian conservative" leadership, Straus' more visible opponents initially dismissed accusations of anti-Jewish/pro-Christian bias. "I've never heard any one talk about Mr. Straus' religion," said Michael Quinn Sullivan, the head of Empower Texans and a vocal leader of the anti-Straus crowd. "There is no place in the speakership race for discussions of people's religion or lack thereof." Shortly afterwards, Straus' opponents took a new approach, condemning the emails and distancing themselves from the statements. "There is absolutely no place for religious bigotry in the race for Texas Speaker, and I categorically condemn such action," said state Rep. Ken Paxton, who's challenging Straus for the position. 

It seemed like things had died down, until I obtained an email exchange Tuesday between two members of the State Republican Executive Committee—Rebecca Williamson and John Cook. After Williamson sent a fact sheet to SREC members defending Straus, Cook responded by dismissing her claims and saying that "We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it." (You can see both emails here.) Since the SREC governs state Republican Party affairs, this marked the first time an elected party leader had semi-openly called for a "Christian conservative" Speaker. 

There is no mistaking the message being sent here. If you're not a Christian conservative, there's no place for you in the Republican leadership. They want a Christian conservative leadership...and a country to match. Anyone who doesn't live up to that, well enjoy being a second-class citizen.

That's how they roll.

Some are more equal than others.

Busting The Filibuster

Dems will still have control of the Senate come January, and their first move in the 112th Congress may very well involve making Senators actually physically filibuster bills in person rather than just threaten.

This week on The Big Picture With Thom Hartmann, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) laid out a path to fundamentally change the way the filibuster works. Merkeley told Hartmann to “mark this date on your calendar: January 5th. That’s the date we’re going to come in for the next Congress, and it’s on that date that a group of us is trying to pass a motion for the Senate to adopt new rules.”

Merkley then went on to explain his proposal for the new filibuster rules. The senator explained that by assembling 51 votes at the start of the new Senate, he wants to change the chamber’s rules so that when a senator engages in a filibuster, they have to go to the floor of the Senate, “defend your position, hold the floor, and if you’re not there, the Senate goes forth and holds a majority vote.” In other words, Merkley is proposing that if senators want to filibuster bills, they actually have to show up and physically spend time on the floor of the Senate to stop bills from going forth. “Hopefully we can bring together that magic 51 to say let’s make it function, the Senate function, to be that deliberative body that it once was,” he concluded.

If the Republicans are going to block any any all Senate business, then make them be there to do it. It's a great plan, one that should have been implemented as soon as the 111th Congress started. Having said that with Republicans controlling the House, there's no reason to make this a priority either. Nothing will pass the House that isn't a 100% Republican plan anyway. It almost certainly will be a moot point.

A Bunch Of Block Heads, Part 2

As expected in Saturday's session, Senate Republicans have blocked the Bush tax cuts being extended for just the middle class and are now supremely confident they will get the Dems to cave on the matter completely.

A bill limiting the tax cuts to the first $250,000 of household income fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to limit debate, 53 to 36. A second measure raising the income threshold to $1 million also failed, 53 to 37.

The Saturday votes appeared to be part of the process towards reaching a deal. Democrats wanted to show where they stood – and only after they did that could they begin to accept the inevitable outcome, a temporary renewal of all the Bush tax cuts, rather than just those for the middle class.

“It became apparent the second time we met that actually there weren’t going to be any bipartisan negotiations to reach a decision until there had been a political catharsis on the Democratic side,” said Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who was tapped for the bipartisan working group. “We’ve been very congenial with each other, but it’s been very clear that we’re not going to be negotiating anything until all of this political process is over with.”

The votes were also aimed at registering Democratic concern about the direction of White House negotiations. Administration officials stepped up their advocacy late this week for some initiatives that Democrats view as crucial, including $150 billion worth of less-publicized tax cuts, hiring incentives and an extension of unemployment insurance. But unease remained about whether the White House was too willing to concede Republicans without getting enough in return.

So the question is what do the Dems do now? They need to follow this up with a tax cut bill of their own. They also need to go on the offensive and say "Look, the Republicans are holding 98% of America hostage to get tax cuts for the richest 2%." In other words, Dems have to be prepared to hurt Republican feelings here.

Put the Obama tax cut bill on the floor. Dare the Republicans to vote against it. Then hammer them. Use the bully pulpit, Mr. President.

[UPDATE] Looks like Obama is at least going to pick a fight.

A Couple Metric Craptons Of Spam

And it's Russian to boot.

Last month, Russia was the No. 1 source of spam in the world. It's probably because of Oleg Nikolaenko, a 23-year-old who was recently arrested for flooding the world with 10 billion spam emails a day.

Using a network of over 500,000 zombie computers known as the Mega-D botnet, Nikolaenko churned out 10 billion spam emails a day at the height of his operation. These advertised mostly counterfeit goods and herbal remedies--one Rolodex counterfeiter who was his client said he spent $2 million on spam advertising. But starting in 2007, the FBI began closing in on Nikolaenko. He was arrested on Nov. 4th, while in Las Vegas for a car show, and now faces a $250,000 fine and up to three years in prison.

Who knew spam was such a lucrative field, though? The case exposes a complex network of scam artists, money launderers and hackers whose only aim is to ply with grammatically atrocious pitches about sexual aids. Sounds sort of like blogging, only easier.

And this kid is just 23. He doesn't aim low, does he?

DREAM Sequence

Democrats in Congress are preparing to bring the DREAM Act up for votes next week.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Friday predicted a Senate vote on the DREAM Act will be held next week.

"Sen. Reid is going to call it," Durbin told The Hill shortly after the chamber adjourned at 3:30 p.m. Friday. Two procedural votes are scheduled for Saturday morning on competing plans to address the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

The legislation would provide legal residence to the children of immigrants who were brought into the country during their youth if they attend college or join the military. House leaders said this week they expect a vote in the lower chamber next week.

Republicans of course are going to do everything to kill this. We'll see.

StupidiNews,Weekend Edition!

A Chinese high speed train has set a record of just short of 300 MPH.
Federal law enforcement officials routinely track "persons of interest" by credit card, cell phone and customer loyalty cards without a warrant.
President Obama paid a surprise vist to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan yesterday.
The new free trade deal between the US and South Korea will begin with automobiles.
Scientists have determined that some bacteria can actually share electrons with each other when faced with limited food.

Last Call

The Catfood Commission may have not gotten 14 of 18 votes, but as I said yesterday, that was never the goal.. That 14 is not the group of 14 that matters.

Fourteen Democratic Senators have asked Harry Reid for action on reining in the budget deficit, on the same day that the Catfood Commission failed to reach the threshold to deliver an official report.

The number – 14 – is incredibly significant. Democrats will have 53 members next year. 13 of the 14 members who signed this letter will be back next year, and the letter didn’t include Dick Durbin or Kent Conrad, who voted for the Catfood Commission plan. That would mean that, if every Republican wanted a deficit reduction plan, there would be a filibuster-proof majority to do something. There may not be such a majority on the specifics, but in a general sense, there will be some kind of deficit reduction action next year.

It never really mattered what the full commission thought or even did. Once Alan Simpson shot his wad and gave away the plan, this was inevitable.

The 14 signatories were: Mark Warner, Evan Bayh, Mark Begich, Michael Bennet, Tom Carper, Dianne Feinstein, Kay Hagan, Amy Klobuchar, Mary Landrieu, Joe Lieberman, Claire McCaskill, Jeanne Shaheen, Jon Tester and Mark Udall.

I think it’s clear that the Catfood Commission, while “failing” in the technical sense, did its job. It created a report that people can label “bipartisan” moving forward, and it put deficit reduction – when there are 15 million Americans out of work – at the top of the agenda.

And that's the rub. They have successfully framed the argument as "how much deficit reduction and how painful to make it" as the only discussion, not whether or not we should be cutting spending during a prolonged recession.

And now if all the Republicans join in on piling on the pain, there will be enough votes to send this to Obama's desk.

Given his record, what do you think the result of that would be?

Even More Food Stamps For Thought

Via Zero Hedge, the September SNAP numbers are out and quite depressing.



Some 42.9 million Americans are now on the program, up half a million from August and of course a new record. The montly cost (also a record) of $6.6 billion for the month.  A full 5% of the US population is now on SNAP compared to when the recession began in December 2007.

The misery continues.

Full PDF of the numbers here.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Count Out...Scott Brown?

Looks like Greg Sargent called Robert Gates's move this week as GOP Sen. Scott Brown is coming out for a DADT repeal.

A few quick points on this. First, it shows beyond doubt -- as I thought would happen -- that Robert Gates's handling of this whole affair was calibrated precisely to give GOP moderates the cover they needed to support repeal. Specifically, Gates' repeated assurances that he would have control over the pace of implementation shrewdly removed one of the last pretexts GOP moderates had to oppose lifting the policy.

Second, it shows that Gates has been actively working these moderates behind the scenes, offering them personal reassurances. This seems to reflect well on the White House's commitment to making repeal happen. Third, this could open the door for other GOP moderates to step forward and do the same.

One important question: How does this square with Mitch McConnell's letter vowing that the entire GOP caucus would stand in unison against DADT repeal and everything else Dems want until the standoff over the Bush tax cuts and funding the government are resolved? If Brown confirms he will vote for cloture on the Defense Authorization Bill containing DADT repeal, irrespective of whether a deal is reached on the tax cuts, it makes McConnell's threat look pretty empty.

Another important question is why John McCain continues to hold on to defeating this repeal legislation with an iron grip.  He's about to end up permanently on the wrong side of history here on a bipartisan effort to get rid of an overwhelmingly unpopular and morally wrong policy.  Younger, shrewder McCain would be in Scott Brown's shoes right now, at least being a useful political creature.  Now?  He's just a bitter, sad old man.

But the more important point is that DADT looks increasingly done for.

Gatekeeper, Meet The Keymaster

I talked about the FCC's pending net neutrality rules yesterday and noted how a prime example of a corporate conflict of interest created by these rules was Comcast charging internet backbone providers for streaming video through Netflix while Comcast is slated to complete its merger with NBC/Universal and gain its own streaming video service in Hulu.

Apparently the FCC more or less completely folding on net neutrality is not enough for the Washington Times, proclaiming in an unsigned editorial the end of the internet unless the FCC is completely removed from the oversight process.

It's not clear why the FCC thinks it needs to intervene in a situation with obvious market solutions. Companies that impose draconian tolls or block services will lose customers. Existing laws already offer a number of protections against anti-competitive behavior, but it's not clear under what law Mr. Genachowski thinks he can stick his nose into the businesses that comprise the Internet. The FCC regulates broadcast television and radio because the government granted each station exclusive access to a slice of the airwaves. Likewise when Ma Bell accepted a monopoly deal from Uncle Sam, it came with regulatory strings attached.

No such rationale applies online, especially because bipartisan majorities in Congress have insisted on maintaining a hands-off policy. A federal appeals court confirmed this in April by striking down the FCC's last attempt in this arena. "That was sort of like the quarterback being sacked for a 20-yard loss," FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell told The Washington Times. "And now the team is about to run the exact same play. ... In order for the FCC to do this, it needs for Congress to give it explicit statutory authority to do so."

Freedom and openness should continue to be the governing principles of the Internet. That's why Mr. Genachowski's proposal should be rejected and Congress should make it even more clear that the FCC should stop trying to expand its regulatory empire.

So Comcast will lose customers and they will go to another broadband provider if that happens, is the argument.  The problem with that is for millions of Americans there's no competition to go to, especially for businesses who are increasingly turning to telecommuting and teleconferencing to save money.

Small businesses want choice and competition in the broadband service market, according to a new government report, but unfortunately they aren’t getting either.


A report from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy also found that there are statistically significant differences between metro and rural areas in terms of broadband speed, availability and price.

About one-third of small businesses surveyed for the report indicated a need for broadband service requiring greater capacity networks than currently exist.

So the question then becomes "who pays for the needed infrastructure to increase availability, competition, and lower prices?"  Remember, the "free market solution" says that anyone who charges fees to cover the cost of infrastructure will lose customers.  Remember also that the government's not allowed to do it either because it's a "technological boondoggle for taxpayers" because after all government infrastructure is evil.

The result is exactly what we have now:  a system where nobody will pay for the infrastructure and as a result broadband remains unavailable to millions, and millions more are locked into a monopolistic situation where there is only one provider of broadband that serves the area.

Never mind that broadband providers already get subsidies from the government.  The solution really is obvious:  a system where the government provides the infrastructure and the broadband companies then maintain it and provide service at a fair price, the way water and power utilities work today.  It would create jobs for the construction of the network, and keep creating jobs as the barriers to providing broadband service and entering the market as a provider fell...creating competition, benefiting the end consumer with lower prices, not to mention the country would have broadband access.  Seems like a solid investment in our technology base to me.

But no, the only acceptable path is to rid ourselves of the FCC and hope the billion-dollar corporations "work something out" magically.  The rationale to protect the consumer?  Who cares about that in 2010?

Privacy, Who Needs Privacy?

In this article, a sociologist and professor of international relations at George Washington University points out that our privacy is at risk, and explains how companies actually take our information and matches it with other sites, in a horrible violation of privacy. Who are the people buying this information? According to the article, "the Department of Justice, and through it, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, IRS and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services."

We have to take a stand against this stupidity. What this means is through an anonymous interface, there exists the ability to harvest a person's life and all of their contacts, all correspondence and shopping habits. Google searches, Amazon book lists, message boards and instant messages, all with the ability to be trapped and kept forever. Obama has failed miserably in protecting our privacy, but let's not forget it was George "Warrants Are For Losers" Bush who started this in the first place. This has to stop, and now. How abusable is it that a message board post or email can be used as reasonable grounds for a warrant and even greater intrusion?

The ISPs of the country should have to protect their customers. Customers should be made aware of this, and should take responsibility for their burden of knowledge. The government can't be trusted to do the right thing here. Just because you don't have anything to hide doesn't mean that you should be profiled and your movements recorded. People who don't protect their privacy will become a liability to those who do. What will happen when there is no judge to oversee this practice, and no branch of government that doesn't directly benefit from this intrusion?

I write for several sources, as well as freelance (both fiction and non). This week, my most interesting Google searches were:

child abuse internet message boards (article on Internet predators)
ghost science measurements
meth laws missouri otc drugs used to make (in response to a local op/ed piece)
murder crime methods (always good to browse for crime story inspiration)
tracking family relatives (good Private Investigation story brewing)
hair extensions wigs (just curious, really)

Try reading that without the comments, and see how easily lack of context can make the most legal and legitimate actions appear suspicious. What if a woman wore a wig and robbed a store for over the counter medicines to make meth? That happens all the time in Missouri. Think about that the next time you go to a search engine. Don't look at it through the eyes of someone who wants to know who you are, but someone who wants to find a reason to dig for more dirt, or just needed a direction to dig in.

There are three reasons to lose a little sleep tonight. One, this is happening right now. Two, months of Internet traffic is being sifted and recorded for this use. Three, there is nobody who can make this stop, and even the professor who wrote the article points out that it is the very government who benefits from this behavior that has the best chance of protecting us.

All together now: "Yeah, right."