StupidiNews!

• China has launched three astronauts into orbit, docking with its Tiangong-1 space lab high above the Earth.
• The world's oldest living man, Jiroeman Kimura, has passed at the age of 116.
• The Obama administration has moved to protect chimpanzees, with the US Fish and Wildlife service classifying both wild and captive chimps as endangered.
• More information is coming to light about manipulation of currency rates allowing banks and electronic traders to make instant profit off of customers.
• Nintendo's Wii U may have beaten PS4 and XBox One to market, but games for the console are still scarce, and the bigger franchises won't show up until 2014.

Last Call For James Clapper's Job

Slate's Fred Kaplan won't be the last person calling for President Obama to can Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  For once, Kaplan is correct.

If President Obama really does welcome a debate about the scope of the U.S. surveillance program, a good first step would be to fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Back at an open congressional hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.” As we all now know, he was lying.

We also now know that Clapper knew he was lying. In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired this past Sunday, Clapper was asked why he answered Wyden the way he did. He replied:

“I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked [a] ‘when are you going to … stop beating your wife’ kind of question, which is … not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘No.’ ”

Not good enough, not even friggin' close.  I can understand the debate over whether Clapper lied, but not when Clapper himself admitted lying to Congress and admitted it on national TV.  That's suicidally stupid in a intelligence officer, much less DNI.

Nor was this a spontaneous lie or a lie he regretted making. Wyden revealed in a statement today that he’d given Clapper advance notice that he would ask the question and that, after the hearing, he offered Clapper a chance to revise his answer. Clapper didn’t take the offer.

Nope.  Lying to Congress openly is bad enough.  Lying to Congress openly and not being smart enough to recognize it when you're in charge of the nation's entire intelligence gathering apparatus?  Obama should clean out Clapper's desk himself and hand him the box and a pre-paid cell phone so Clapper can call someone and get a friggin clue.

Sorry James, you gotta go.

Ohio Doesn't Want Obamacare Exchanges To Work

Otherwise, as Luke Brockmeier and the Plunderbund crew point out, they would have gone California's route.

Ohio is establishing a “clearinghouse exchange”, wherein any plan that meets the Obamacare standards will be offered. Since 214 plans were submitted for review, there will be 214 plans on the exchange. This is intended to drive down costs the way that Travelocity does: people will pick the less expensive plans on the list.

There’s not much evidence that this will do anything; after all, similar websites already exist.

California, on the other hand, has an “active purchaser exchange”. In an active purchaser exchange, it’s actually the exchange that’s insuring you, and they bid out administration of your insurance. This drives down costs a few ways.

And because of true competitive bidding, negotiated lower payments through the power of the exchange's mass, and long-term cost reduction through preventative care, Californians will see Obamacare work.

Ohioans, not so much.

In Ohio’s exchange, 17 separate collective bargaining units won’t be able to bargain the way that California’s active purchaser will. California’s payments will probably be in the neighborhood of Medicaid and Medicare rates, which are around 60% of private payments.

Since health insurance is just an aggregate of all health expenditures, a 40% reduction in payments means a 40% reduction in premiums. In fact, a really canny exchange will combine the Medicaid and exchange risk pools and bargaining powers.

But of course, since Ohio is run by Republicans, they can simply make the plan not work and blame Obama.  Much more on Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who is in charge of the exchanges in Ohio, on Plunderbund.

Bobo's Game Of Moans

Bobo has decided in today's column that the only thing he can't stand more than the suspect, anti-colonialist, not-like-us President and his government is the notion that a Millennial Paulbot can cause so much damage to Bobo's status quo.

It’s logical, given this background and mind-set, that Snowden would sacrifice his career to expose data mining procedures of the National Security Agency. Even if he has not been able to point to any specific abuses, he was bound to be horrified by the confidentiality endemic to military and intelligence activities. And, of course, he’s right that the procedures he’s unveiled could lend themselves to abuse in the future. 

But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good. 

This is not a danger Snowden is addressing. In fact, he is making everything worse. 

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things. 

David Brooks complaining about the rise of distrust in government is a bit like Tywin Lannister moaning about the rise of the price of bread in King's Landing with all this war going on.  Bobo's argument would be measured and even on-point if it wasn't for the quibbling little fact that Brooks has spent much of the last four years telling us that we can never completely trust Obama or his government because he's different from us, not like us, etc. etc. blah blah blah.

So now we see Brooks actually can make a salient point when it's convenient to him, that yes, Snowden arrogantly took it upon himself as arbiter of the entire national security apparatus and that he directly betrayed the government he took an oath to serve, circumventing the Constitution's checks and balances.

That of course makes all his other vile drivel all the more hacktastic.

StupidiNews!

• The Senate is expected to take up debate on immigration reform today, with the ultimate fate of the bill still very much unknown.
• The Obama administration will comply with a federal judge's order and make emergency contraception available over-the-counter without age restrictions.
• Pakistan's new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, has declared an end to secret approval of US drone strikes in the country.
• Turkish police have retaken Istanbul's Taksim Square with tear gas and water cannons in an effort to end two weeks of protests against PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
• Google may be forbidding official facial recognition apps for Glass, but unofficial ones are all but inevitable according to one developer.

Last Call For You Can Call Him Al

There's a reason as a former Minnesota resident and voter that I've backed Al Franken since the beginning of his Senate career, and I'm glad to see him not only freely admit that the briefings the intelligence community gave were valuable to the Senate, but that the American people should take reassurance that safeguards that were not there under Bush are there now.

Franken, chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, also said there are aspects of security programs that he should be aware of but the public should not.

"There are certain things that are appropriate for me to know that’s not appropriate for the bad guys to know," he said. "Anything that quote the American people know, the bad guys know so there's a line here, right? And there's a balance that has to be struck between the responsibility of the federal government to protect the American people and then people’s right to privacy. We have safeguards in place …The American people can’t know everything because everything they know then, the bad guys will know."

He said that the data the security agency has collected have kept Americans safe.

"I have a high level of confidence, that it is used…to protect us and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism," he said.

The senator, who is running for re-election, said, however, that he is not confident that the proper balance has been struck between privacy and safety concerns.

"We haven’t quite hit the exact balance we want to," he said. "I have been for more transparency and I actually co-sponsored legislation to require the FISA court to release their opinions on why they’ve decided the way they have."

I support that legislation, and I'm hoping that Senator Franken will be a key player in any effort to repeal the Patriot Act.  Yes, that's a massive long shot, but it's got to start somewhere.

We'll see.

Meanwhile Back In Reality

Where we're not buried in GOP-manufactured "scandals", that is, Sen. John Cornyn is quietly about to kill immigration reform, sparing both Marco Rubio and John Boenher from having to do anything other than blame Obama.  Ed Kilgore:

You’d have to say that Marco Rubio and Harry Reid don’t exactly see eye to eye on immigration legislation. Last week Rubio raised eyebrows by saying the Gang of Eight legislation with which he has been immensely identified didn’t have the 60 votes needed to survive a Senate filibuster. He counseled delay and modifications to bring more Republicans on board. Reid responded by scheduling floor action on the unmodified bill for this week. Then Rubio revealed he’d been working behind the scenes with Gang of Eight opponent John Cornyn to develop a “border enforcement” amendment that would not only boost the vote total for a Senate bill, but would open up House Republican hearts and minds to comprehensive reform.

Reid’s answer to that thinly veiled demand for a bill that would focus on Marco Rubio’s distinctive political needs came out bluntly yesterday, as Reid called Cornyn’s amendment a “poison pill” (on Univision, no less) echoing the private assessment of reform proponents. This declaration is likely to stiffen Democratic resistance to any significant preemptive surrender to Cornyn’s demands (as channeled by Rubio). And it will also make it much harder for Rubio for keep playing both sides agains the middle.

Once again, Cornyn's border enforcement amendment putting enforcement before immigration makes these enforcement conditions literally impossible to meet:

“We have a senator from Texas, Senator Cornyn who wants to change border security, a trigger, saying that it has to be a 100 percent border security, or [there will] be no bill. That’s a poison pill,” Reid said on Univision’s Al Punto.

Anything less than perfection on the border?  No path to citizenship, no green cards, no DREAM Act stuff, nothing.  Cornyn is trying to bury the legislation and he knows it.

Will anyone in the media fall for it?

En-Tire-Ly Ridiculous

What happens when you apply the rent-to-own ripoff model to auto parts?  Scuzzy "rent-a-tire" businesses that are crushing the poor with 300% markups and repo men from hell that will strip your tires in minutes.

When the tires on their Dodge Caravan had worn so thin that the steel belts were showing through, Don and Florence Cherry couldn't afford to buy a new set.

So they decided to rent instead.

The Rich Square, N.C., couple last September agreed to pay Rent-N-Roll $54.60 a month for 18 months in exchange for four basic Hankook tires. Over the life of the deal, that works out to $982, almost triple what the radials would have cost at Wal-Mart.

"I know you have to pay a lot more this way," said Florence Cherry, a 57-year-old nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn't using it to get to his job as a prison guard. "But we didn't really have a choice."

Socked by soaring tire prices and short on funds, growing numbers of Americans are renting the rubber to keep their cars rolling.

Rent-to-own tire shops are among the newest arrivals to a sprawling alternative financial sector focused on the nation's economic underclass. Like payday lenders, pawn shops and Buy Here Pay Here used-car lots, tire rental businesses provide ready credit to consumers who can't get a loan anywhere else. But that access doesn't come cheap.

Customers pay huge premiums for their tires, sometimes four times above retail. Those who miss payments may find their car on cinder blocks, stripped of their tires by dealers who aggressively repossess. Tire rental contracts are so ironclad that even a bankruptcy filing can't make them go away.

And since busted tires mean no car and an immediate lost job in today's at-will employment America, it's getting loan-sharked for $1200 for a $300 set of tires or lose your job, your home, your car, and having to face Republican laws that all but criminalize being unemployed.  These businesses are preying on the working poor, and the GOP is more than happy to take money from the "small business owners" who are providing jobs in the community.  You know, for tire repo guys.

Legalized loan sharking where the GOP gets a cut?  Working as intended.

StupidiNews!

• World civil rights icon Nelson Mandela remains in a Pretoria hospital in serious condition as the public is asked to consider that "it's time to let him go".
• Transcripts form IRS interviews by a House oversight committee finds a self-described "conservative Republican" admitting to conducting increased scrutiny of Tea Party groups.
• Taliban fighters are suspected behind an early-morning assault on a NATO air base in Kabul, Afghanistan, devolving into a gun battle that lasted several hours.
• Google is expected to announce plans to acquire mapmaker Waze Software in a $1.1billion deal in an effort to top Facebook's offer for the company.
• A big week for tech companies as both gaming's E3 and Apple's WWDC get underway today.

Last Call For Leakers

The video interview with Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker:



My carefully measured response:



Night, folks.

Winter Is Coming For Edward Snowden

The latest NSA leak from the Guardian is the identity of the person behind the leak themselves:  Edward Snowden, a 29-year old contractor who has come forth with some absolutely unbelievable claims.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.

And yet Snowden is apparently hiding out in Hong Kong, China and fully expects the CIA to bag him at any time.  The Guardian's Q and A with him is just something else.

Q: Why did you decide to become a whistleblower?

A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."

Q: But isn't there a need for surveillance to try to reduce the chances of terrorist attacks such as Boston?

A: "We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism. Boston was a criminal act. It was not about surveillance but good, old-fashioned police work. The police are very good at what they do."

Q: Do you see yourself as another Bradley Manning?

A: "Manning was a classic whistleblower. He was inspired by the public good."

No, Manning was a leaker.  That's why he's on trial right now.  And this is a guy with a political axe to grind who fled to CHINA.

Q: Do you think what you have done is a crime? 

A: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence."

He's fled to Hong Kong and he doesn't think he's committed any crimes because the Obama administration is criminal.  I'm not liable to take anything said by anyone who believes that seriously.

But here's the kicker:

Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?

A: "You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."

YOU ARE NOT SAFE.  FEAR FEAR FEAR, says the guy who is sick of the perpetual fear state.  This guy is Greenwald with a security clearance.

Q: When did you decide to leak the documents?

A: "You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process.

"A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor."

And there it is.  Obama is just like Bush, so he had to do it.  Good night, folks.

The Fifty Year Battle For Voting Rights

Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia has fought for the rights of voters for five decades.  Sometime in the next couple of weeks, the Supreme Court is expected to decide that his signature legislation, the Voting Rights Act, is no longer necessary because, ironically, the efforts to get black voters to the polls in 2012 was so amazingly successful.

The successful resistance to voter suppression may be the most important story of the 2012 election. Compared with 2008, 1.7 million more blacks, 1.4 million more Hispanics and 550,000 more Asians went to the polls, versus 2 million fewer whites. The turnout rate among black voters exceeded that of whites for the first time on record, according to the Census Bureau. While the turnout rate fell among nearly every demographic group, the largest increase came from blacks 65 and over. Those, like Lewis, who had lived through the days when merely trying to register could get you killed were the people most determined to defend their rights last year.

Yet Lewis viewed Obama’s re-election as only a temporary victory, given the challenge to Section 5 before the Supreme Court. The mood in Selma during this year’s anniversary of Bloody Sunday was more somber than celebratory. “Here we are, forty-eight years after all you did, and we’re still fighting?” Biden said in Selma. “In 2011, ‘12 and ‘13? We were able to beat back most of those attempts in the election of 2012, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.” After Holder cited the continued importance of Section 5 in combating discrimination, the crowd at the foot of the bridge chanted, in what had to be a first, “Section 5! Section 5!”

“When it comes to voting rights,” says Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, “you realize the past isn’t the past.”

And with Section 5 gone, southern states will be able to gerrymander black and Latino voters into a handful of districts and crush voting everywhere else.  The Voting Rights Act will effectively be gutted in a time when it's needed more than ever.

 

Indeed, despite powerful moments of reconciliation, the South is far from a post-racial utopia. Six of the nine states fully covered by Section 5, all in the South, passed new voting restrictions after the 2010 election. “Section 5,” write law professors Christopher Elmendorf and Douglas Spencer, “is remarkably well tailored to the geography of anti-black prejudice.” Of the ten states where anti-black stereotypes are most common, based on data from the National Annenberg Election Survey, six in the South are subject to Section 5. Racially polarized voting and “explicit anti-black attitudes,” according to an AP survey, have increased since 2008. Arkansas and Virginia have passed strict new voter-ID laws this year, while North Carolina is considering a slew of draconian restrictions.

“Places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, they forget recent history,” Lewis said. “We’re not talking about something that took place a hundred years ago, but a few short years ago. And some of it is still going on today. And if you get rid of Section 5 of the VRA, many of these places, whether it be state, county or town, will slip back into the habits of the past.” 

We'll find out in a few weeks.  We could find out as soon as Monday.  Without the VRA Section 5, these states will immediately move to disenfranchise millions of voters.

We voted in record number in 2012.  Now we have to be punished so that never happens again.

 

Who Watches The Guys Watching The Watchmen?

Smartypants has a hell of point here on Glenn Greenwald and the NSA leaks:  the person deciding whether or not there is any harm is declassifying these programs to the public is...Glenn Greenwald.

I appreciate very much that Glenn is owning responsibility. I think that is important. But once again, the question comes back to trust. What he's suggesting is that we should trust him to calibrate the potential for harm from this information being leaked. He evaluates that and then decides on the balance between public value and harm.

 

And no, Greenwald believes there's no harm in everything he's leaked so far.  Zero.  But he's made that decision himself.

 

I think that's why this story has grabbed me so strongly. The level of harm this particular leak might/might not have caused is not self-evident to me. But of all people on the planet I want to see making decisions about something like that, Glenn Greenwald is near the bottom of my list. I fear this is dangerous territory we've entered when ideologues like Greenwald and Rosen are the arbiters of our national security. 

 

So my question for Greenwald is this:  when is the government allowed to have secrets, and why are you the one making that judgment, rather than the President?

Leaking Like A Sieve

Steve M. is asking the right questions about the timing of this week's NSA "revelations".  Who benefits from this, and why now?  The benefit part is easy:  Republicans who are going after the President, not the policy they passed and renewed.

Result: Obama's approval ratings go down; Democrats (and only Democrats) are associated in the public mind with highly intrusive "big government"; Republicans make significant gains in the 2014 midterms; this scandal and others hurt the Democrats' 2016 presidential candidate the way Monicagate hurt Al Gore in 2000 ... and yet the surveillance state remains in place, and is possibly even expanded in secret by President Christie or Rubio or Jeb (all of whom would be likely to stock their administrations with veterans of the Bush White House).

The right is working hard to make us forget that these policies were the work of two presidents from two different parties, endorsed in a bipartisan way in Congresses that have had several shifts in party control, and mostly OK'd by the courts. For the right, the real and faux scandals of the past few months are table-setters for this week's revelations.

And that's really the crux of this.  This was a program that was in operation supposedly since 2007, created under Bush and Patriot Act.   But we're only finding out about this now, just after A) Republican sources lied about Benghazi emails to get that story back in the news, B) a Republican appointee planted a bombshell question about the IRS "targeting" the Tea Party in 2010 , and C) A FOX News contributor was being investigated by the DoJ for a leak in 2009.

Now we have D) where an ongoing and renewed six-year classified program is being leaked to Glenn Greenwald, a guy who virulently dislikes the President, the NSA, and the federal government.  Greenwald completely blew the story out of proportion and he's all but promising more soon. All of these leaks and scandals came down in the space of just five weeks. 

Has anyone bothered to ask why?

I'm thinking no.  You should be.  Republicans are trying to pretend they have nothing to do with any of these issues, and in the words of El Rushbo, America is under a "coup" by the illegitimate usurper President.  We're seeing an "atmosphere of endless scandal" being built right before our eyes and at every turn the President, not the policy, is under attack.  They are all policies the Republicans supported and used, but now it's all Obama's fault.

All this seems awfully convenient for the GOP, doesn't it?  There's a reason for that.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A gunman in Santa Monica, California was killed in a firefight with police after killing four and wounding five others.
• After allegedly framing her estranged husband, a Texas woman has been arrested in connection with sending threatening letters laced with ricin to the White House.
• Michigan Congressman John Dingell has become the longest-serving member of Congress, surpassing the late Sen. Robert Byrd's 57-year plus career length this week.
• The commanding general of US Army forces in Japan has been suspended after allegedly failing to investigate allegations of sexual assault.
• China has reclaimed the mantle of the most powerful supercomputer with the Tianhe-2, clocking in at a massive 30.65 quadrillion floating-point operations per second.