Prairie Weather

One wild and crazy guy

You have to worry when you read this.  I don't know who John Hinderaker is, but I do know something about him:  He lives in northern  Idaho in a barely insulated cabin with trophy guns on the walls and he writes angry diatribes about communists in our midst?  Did I get that right? 

Today this note was slipped outside the door of his little house.

Why do Republicans never seem to come out ahead politically when they go toe-to-toe with the Democrats? Part of the reason, at least, is that the press, to a greater extent than at any time in our history, is monolithically Democrat. ...Powerline

If we're going to do something about this, we need to help -- financially and with our moral support --that wonderful, if little known, unwatched and uninfluential news service: Fox News.

"United States House of Representatives 113th Congress, 1st Session · The House is not in session"

It's Monday. 

We're already at work, most of us. Got a serious 48 hours ahead of us, not just at work but across the country.  The irresponsible, badly-managed House of Representatives has acted to shut down the government as of midnight tonight, the issue being a law that has already been passed, approved by the Supreme Court, and due to go into effect tomorrow.  The dominant party in the lower house -- the Republican party -- thinks it's better to shut the entire government down  if they're not allowed to, effectively, nullify that law -- particularly as they don't have the necessary support to change or chuck the law. 

So fuck you America.

"Fuck you America" doesn't actually appear at the august website of the United States House of Representatives.  Instead, its equivalent -- in small print and more practical and polite -- is that the "113th Congress, 1st Session · The House is not in session."  It goes on to note briefly that there will be two hearings, one on site and the other in Atlantic City.

Atlantic City? Have fun.

___

Ezra Klein sees a very interesting outcome for all this wrangling:  the Republicans take a punishment they don't appear to have anticipated.

... The federal government will probably shut down tonight. And, at about the same moment, Obamacare will go live, as the shutdown does little to impede the law.

There's a silver lining in this for Obamacare, as well as a real danger. ...Klein,WaPo

If nothing much were going on -- in other words, if the threat of the shutdown and then the shutdown itself weren't gobbling up the media's attention -- all eyes would be on the inevitably bumpy start of the application of  the new law tomorrow.  The danger?  That Obamacare may lose some signups tomorrow because all the attention is on Washington -- on a messy Congress and more economic uncertainty.

But in the end...

... All of this speaks to why the Republican Party is so frightened. Until now, Obamacare has been an abstraction. You can repeal an abstraction. Tomorrow, it becomes a reality. And reality is a lot harder to repeal. ...Klein,WaPo

Government announcement has done more damage than Edward Snowden's leaks

From NBC News, August 1, 2013:

The United States on Friday issued a worldwide travel alert to all Americans through Aug. 31 due to an unspecified al-Qaeda threat that led to embassy closures.

“The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the continued potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula,” it said.

“Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August.  This Travel Alert expires on August 31, 2013.” ...NBC

This didn't, of course, come from Edward Snowden.  It came from NSA/CIA and it has done, according to reports this morning, considerably more damage to our counterterrorism  efforts than any data leaked by Edward Snowden.   The news of the diplomatic shutdown and the reason for it was, of course, reported by major press the world around.  It was, in fact, a seemingly perfectly normal thing to do.  Trouble is, it caused terrorists to pinpoint the leak in their communications and seal that leak up.

The New York Times reports this morning:

As the nation’s spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

Since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack, analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists’ use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring. Since August, senior American officials have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaeda’s leaders and operatives.

“The switches weren’t turned off, but there has been a real decrease in quality” of communications, said one United States official, who like others quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence programs. ...NYT

The Snowden problem for the government is a repeat of a long list of Whistleblowers who reveal the messy workings of our government. That's not a hanging offense, it's an embarrassment for members of Congress who, over the years, have allowed the increasing duplication, inefficiency, and over-spending because it increases their power and their campaign funding. And it angers government's top administrators as much (or more?) than a dangerous leak. They inherited the problem, thanks to Congress, and are allowed little latitude to reorganize their  departments.

Our leviathan government employs people doing the same jobs in different agencies in more agencies than we can name as well as a long habit of revealing that the right hand hasn't a clue what the left hand is doing. Whether it's  the enormous and costly nonsense of setting up the Department of Homeland Security or the NSA's employees breaching your privacy or top lawyers at Justice creating law for the  benefit of a warrior president, it happens all day every day in every part of government -- probably including your city council or county commission. You can use that knowledge in an attempt to destroy a series of presidents but only if you'll also face the reality that most presidents are as unlikely to know what's happening in myriad agencies as you are and you're shooting at the wrong target.

So we scream, "Hang Snowden!"  All that does is show how much we don't know don't want to know.

And for breakfast, marmelade on your toes

This completely mystifying quarter-spoonful of Constitutional black tea first came to my attention in a  comment section of the National Review.  It is also a subject of contemplation at a no less worthy source, HuffPo. 

On Friday, the National Review reported that a group of conservative House Republicans, unsure of how to respond to Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) proposal for dealing with the debt limit, decided to consult Cruz, who isn't even in their chamber. Cruz "strongly advised them to oppose it," which they did.

Cruz could possibly do more than simply advise House Republicans; he could lead them.

While every speaker of the House has been a member of that chamber, the U.S. Constitution is actually not explicit that it has to be that way: "The House of Representatives shall chuse [sic] their Speaker and other Officers." ...HuffPo

Love them internets!  They leave us all with so much to think about!

Are the "sane, old Republicans" actually saner than their completely nuts tea party colleagues?

That's what we like to think.  Paul Krugman did too.  Until recently.

Amid this drama, however, it’s worth remembering that even the sane ones are pretty much off the deep end, all too willing to buy into crazy conspiracy theories. Remember how Jack Welch accused Obama of cooking the jobs numbers?

And now, in a story I missed, Ari Fleischer briefly declared that Twitter must have special rules allowing Obama to use more than 140 characters. In fact, it turns out that Fleischer doesn’t know how to count — but think of the mindset that would even make him think of such a thing. ...Krugman,blog

One savvy commenter writes: "Of course he doesn't know how to count. No one in the Bush Administration did."

Kevin Drum says the problem is something other than insanity and bad math.  It's about clinging to a fantasy of social superiority.

The Republican Party is bending its entire will, staking its very soul, fighting to its last breath, in service of a crusade to.... Make sure that the working poor don't have access to affordable health care. I just thought I'd mention that in plain language, since it seems to get lost in the fog fairly often. ...Drum,MoJo

Or maybe it's just childishness, embarrassing childishness.

...The point of this is....what? Nobody knows. It's just an action of pure spite, a howl of frustration from children who have been denied ice cream for lunch and are looking for some way to lash out. So now they're thinking that maybe a bit of self-mutilation is in order. Maybe that will make everyone pay attention to them.

Or something. I don't know what to think anymore. I don't know if this behavior is sociopathic, or just sad, or merely embarrassing, or what. I just don't know. ...Drum,MoJo

My own view that it's about education in the widest sense of the term -- that there are people who haven't learned and who damn-it-all don't want to know takes me back to a troll at Krugman's blog and the response to him:

Troll:  Real world experience shows liberals are never going to stop on their own. They are always going to demand more. More of other people's money. More control over other people's lives. More government. More debt. In European countries where tax rates are well over 50%, the governments still run unsustable deficits. What more proof do you need to accept that liberalism belongs on the trash heap of history?

Response:   You do realize of course that more Europeans live better and materially more secure lives now than at any other point in their history because of the rise of the welfare state? That's the 'real world experience' that all advanced industrial democracies have had since the end of WWII.

By the way the last two Presidents to have budget surpluses were both left center Democrats. And the deficient has gone from $1.4 trillion in Bush's last fiscal year budget to about $744 billion for the next fiscal year's budget. There's more 'real world experience' for you ...

Now go out and play in the yard. And make sure your tin foil hat is on tight. Wouldn't want those liberal government spies getting hold of any of your secret thoughts. ...Krugman, blogcomments

Troll doesn't know, doesn't want to know.  Response is packed with facts.

The NSA's vigilance over our social lives should not go by unnoticed

It really is appalling.  The NSA's greed for personal information takes on the form of an addiction.  "...If one tastes good, two will taste even better ... and a whole box-full doesn't seem unreasonable..."

The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners. ...NYT

When the government does this, it changes citizens into specimens.  Citizens who aren't treated like citizens can hardly be blamed if they decide not to behave like responsible citizens.  We aren't just changing the rules.  We're opting out of democracy, a system that depends on responsible, independent, and private citizens.

This change began -- and this may tell you how responsible you are -- in 1979.  Weren't paying attention?

The legal underpinning of the policy change, she said, was a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called. Based on that ruling, the Justice Department and the Pentagon decided that it was permissible to create contact chains using Americans’ “metadata,” which includes the timing, location and other details of calls and e-mails, but not their content. The agency is not required to seek warrants for the analyses from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. ...NYT

This report in the Times is interesting enough in itself.  But added interest lies in the identify of the reporter.  James Risen is still being pursued  by the Justice Department for his investigative reporting during the Bush administration.  He was assisted in this latest report by the documentary filmmaker who  has focused on Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras.

Risen is the reporter who, on the eve of Bush's reelection, completed an investigative report into Bush's secret surveillance program.  Bush might well not have been reelected had that report been published in the Times before the election.  New York Times editor Bill Keller decided not to publish it before the election.

We need more people like Risen and Poitras if democracy is to survive.  Most of all, we need fewer specimens and more citizens. It's a vicious circle, well-documented by George Orwell and others...