With the "revelations" about the NSA's domestic spying program, helpfully provided by a private contractor because outsourcing rulez, I suppose most of us find ourselves on a particular fence. On the one hand duh, this is a confirmation more than anything else, certainly not informing any sentient being of something they didn't already know or at least presume.
And in a nation of chronic over-sharers, where the Fourth Amendment is just a hazy memory, is this really a massive transgression? Is this going to make Chat Rouletters self-conscious, worried that the gubmint might be looking on them rabidly masturbating with a stranger?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they can build all the zettabyte storage hives out in the Utah desert that they want, and it's still just a massive garage. There is simply too much data, too many emails, phone calls, what have you, to randomly sift through. It's all search algorithms and tracking (and retroactively tracking) known entities.
You want a career tip, kids? Come up with a slightly better automated regression analysis tool that can work through these ginormous data backloads, and sell massive contracts for the licensing to that software to Big Brutha. You're welcome.
On the other hand....well, where to start? Even his supporters no longer consider Obama any sort of transformative figure, merely a perfidious, mediocre bulwark against much more transgressive opponents. But elected -- even in a bullshit election -- representatives typically reflect their constituencies. So one might safely assume that a bored, intellectually lazy populace that mouths pieties about "privacy" and "rights", but really wants daddy to do "whatever it takes" and not tell them about it, will sooner or later park another venal Dick Cheney type at the levers of power and unaccountability.
All of the things "purist" liberals have castigated Obama over -- drones, IRS searches, now this -- have been underpinned by this very real concern, that a less reliable character gets in, with all these nifty superpowers at his disposal. Obama, as a con-law-prof, knows this better than anyone, that these powers he arrogates unto himself will at some point pass to a psycho or an idiot or an asshole, with no checks or balances to offset clear precedents.
This is part of the current design of the system, though, a center-right party either mewling ineffectively against their far-right opponents, or acting in cahoots with them, and getting away with it because their captive-market supporters are sufficiently cowed by the utter insanity of the far-righters. Yet they are operationally more alike than different; on issues that actually affect your life in a day-to-day respect, they are nearly identical, as a clear majority of 'murkins are never going to marry someone of the same gender or seek an abortion.
It is not a coincidence or a mistake that "both" parties share major donors, some of whom have a vested interest in seeing the impending health care "reform" changes get diluted even more, since having the foxes write henhouse legislation in the first place just wasn't quite enough. Once the talking heads are done huffing and puffing their manufactured outrage, get ready for a fall season of "scandal fatigue" stories, the better to soften up the constituencies for the rentier class to call in their chips on their congresscritters.
And in a nation of chronic over-sharers, where the Fourth Amendment is just a hazy memory, is this really a massive transgression? Is this going to make Chat Rouletters self-conscious, worried that the gubmint might be looking on them rabidly masturbating with a stranger?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but they can build all the zettabyte storage hives out in the Utah desert that they want, and it's still just a massive garage. There is simply too much data, too many emails, phone calls, what have you, to randomly sift through. It's all search algorithms and tracking (and retroactively tracking) known entities.
You want a career tip, kids? Come up with a slightly better automated regression analysis tool that can work through these ginormous data backloads, and sell massive contracts for the licensing to that software to Big Brutha. You're welcome.
On the other hand....well, where to start? Even his supporters no longer consider Obama any sort of transformative figure, merely a perfidious, mediocre bulwark against much more transgressive opponents. But elected -- even in a bullshit election -- representatives typically reflect their constituencies. So one might safely assume that a bored, intellectually lazy populace that mouths pieties about "privacy" and "rights", but really wants daddy to do "whatever it takes" and not tell them about it, will sooner or later park another venal Dick Cheney type at the levers of power and unaccountability.
All of the things "purist" liberals have castigated Obama over -- drones, IRS searches, now this -- have been underpinned by this very real concern, that a less reliable character gets in, with all these nifty superpowers at his disposal. Obama, as a con-law-prof, knows this better than anyone, that these powers he arrogates unto himself will at some point pass to a psycho or an idiot or an asshole, with no checks or balances to offset clear precedents.
This is part of the current design of the system, though, a center-right party either mewling ineffectively against their far-right opponents, or acting in cahoots with them, and getting away with it because their captive-market supporters are sufficiently cowed by the utter insanity of the far-righters. Yet they are operationally more alike than different; on issues that actually affect your life in a day-to-day respect, they are nearly identical, as a clear majority of 'murkins are never going to marry someone of the same gender or seek an abortion.
It is not a coincidence or a mistake that "both" parties share major donors, some of whom have a vested interest in seeing the impending health care "reform" changes get diluted even more, since having the foxes write henhouse legislation in the first place just wasn't quite enough. Once the talking heads are done huffing and puffing their manufactured outrage, get ready for a fall season of "scandal fatigue" stories, the better to soften up the constituencies for the rentier class to call in their chips on their congresscritters.
1 comment:
The Parties both major SUCK...
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