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May. 20th, 2008
"They hate our freedoms" George Bush 2004
May. 20th, 2008 08:31 pmA. The Real ID Implementation Review: Few benefits, GREAT costs
B. 17 states passed legislation against Real ID last year
C. Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
C1. Blogger Emptywheel from firedoglake provides analysis of the above article.
C2. Blogger Digby weighs in
D. China's all-seeing eye: With the help of American defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
D1. Blogger Tristero provides analysis
E. Total Information Awareness
F. Remember the Fusion Centers?
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
B. 17 states passed legislation against Real ID last year
C. Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
C1. Blogger Emptywheel from firedoglake provides analysis of the above article.
C2. Blogger Digby weighs in
D. China's all-seeing eye: With the help of American defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
D1. Blogger Tristero provides analysis
E. Total Information Awareness
F. Remember the Fusion Centers?
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
News Roundup
May. 20th, 2008 09:23 pmFederal Appeals court rules that US paper money discriminates against the blind
Pebble Mine: The biggest environmental threat in Alaska
Lets go shopping for National Security Clearances
Why Nations Fail to Act in the Face of Genocide
Whether it's Heather Mills or Kerry Katona, the celebrities that ordinary people vilify seem disproportionately to be female. Why?
Bullshit journalism Watch: Taking down the recent article that suggested that women don't go into the sciences because they don't like it
Girls’ Gains Have Not Cost Boys, Report Says
Pebble Mine: The biggest environmental threat in Alaska
Lets go shopping for National Security Clearances
Why Nations Fail to Act in the Face of Genocide
Whether it's Heather Mills or Kerry Katona, the celebrities that ordinary people vilify seem disproportionately to be female. Why?
Bullshit journalism Watch: Taking down the recent article that suggested that women don't go into the sciences because they don't like it
Girls’ Gains Have Not Cost Boys, Report Says
A former loan processor, the 67-year-old mother of three grown children said she never thought she'd spend her golden years sleeping in her car in a parking lot.
"This is my bed, my dogs," she said. "This is my life in this car right now."
Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.
"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them, is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."
Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament.
There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers.
The lots open at 7 p.m. and close at 7 a.m. and are run by New Beginnings Counseling Center, a homeless outreach organization.
It is illegal for people in California to sleep in their cars on streets. New Beginnings worked with the city to allow the parking lots as a safe place for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles without being harassed by people on the streets or ticketed by police.
Harvey stays at the city's only parking lot for women. "This is very safe, and that's why I feel very comfortable," she said.
Nancy Kapp, the New Beginnings parking lot coordinator, said the group began seeing a need for the lots in recent months as California's foreclosure crisis hit the city hard. She said a growing number of senior citizens, women and lower- and middle-class families live on the streets.
...
John Quigley, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the California housing crisis has left many middle-class families temporarily homeless or forced them to go to food banks to feed their families.
"Part of the reason why it's so painful in Santa Barbara is, there's so little in the way of alternative housing," Quigley said. "If there were alternative low and moderate housing and rental accommodations that were reasonably close by, you can imagine it wouldn't have this desperate look to it as people living in their cars."
I like the fact that we refuse to spend the taxes necessary to provide low income housing for people who get into trouble. I ESPECIALLY like the fact that we actually destroyed the low income and public housing that was available in New Orleans, and sold it to developers. Because only poor and lazy people need help, the rest of us need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Isn't the Republican , conservative mindset GREAT for America?
Via:Pam's House Blend
"This is my bed, my dogs," she said. "This is my life in this car right now."
Harvey was forced into homelessness this year after being laid off. She said that three-quarters of her income went to paying rent in Santa Barbara, where the median house in the scenic oceanfront city costs more than $1 million. She lost her condo two months ago and had little savings as backup.
"It went to hell in a handbasket," she said. "I didn't think this would happen to me. It's just something that I don't think that people think is going to happen to them, is what it amounts to. It happens very quickly, too."
Harvey now works part time for $8 an hour, and she draws Social Security to help make ends meet. But she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament.
There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers.
The lots open at 7 p.m. and close at 7 a.m. and are run by New Beginnings Counseling Center, a homeless outreach organization.
It is illegal for people in California to sleep in their cars on streets. New Beginnings worked with the city to allow the parking lots as a safe place for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles without being harassed by people on the streets or ticketed by police.
Harvey stays at the city's only parking lot for women. "This is very safe, and that's why I feel very comfortable," she said.
Nancy Kapp, the New Beginnings parking lot coordinator, said the group began seeing a need for the lots in recent months as California's foreclosure crisis hit the city hard. She said a growing number of senior citizens, women and lower- and middle-class families live on the streets.
...
John Quigley, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the California housing crisis has left many middle-class families temporarily homeless or forced them to go to food banks to feed their families.
"Part of the reason why it's so painful in Santa Barbara is, there's so little in the way of alternative housing," Quigley said. "If there were alternative low and moderate housing and rental accommodations that were reasonably close by, you can imagine it wouldn't have this desperate look to it as people living in their cars."
I like the fact that we refuse to spend the taxes necessary to provide low income housing for people who get into trouble. I ESPECIALLY like the fact that we actually destroyed the low income and public housing that was available in New Orleans, and sold it to developers. Because only poor and lazy people need help, the rest of us need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Isn't the Republican , conservative mindset GREAT for America?
Via:Pam's House Blend
News and Views
May. 20th, 2008 10:26 pmIran vs the Soviet Union: Who was/is more of a threat to America?
Five Lobbyists have been dismissed from the McCain campaign, for, well, being lobbyists. Or, more accurately, being outed as lobbyists So much for Master Straight-Talk. The question, of course, is why exactly isn't this hitting the news media like a perfect storm and generating stories questions his ethics and commenting on how much in disarray his campaign is?
Then again:Obama would pursue vigorous antitrust policies and singled out Big Media as an industry that due to uncontrolled consolidation would bear particular scrutiny.
(As an aside:WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised more vigorous enforcement of antitrust law if elected, but antitrust experts said on Monday that the courts could trip him up.")
And, after all, Chris Matthews declared that the media was John McCain's base:
MATTHEWS: Every time I look at a poll -- and I expect McCain to win every one of these polls. The press loves McCain. We're his base, I think, sometimes...
In other news...
Democracy and the Web:New York Times editorial FINALLY hits on the issue of Net Neutrality (and see some of the legislation that has been introduced to safeguard this vital right)
and
Two new reports show today's young workers are being squeezed by high costs of living and low or stagnant wages and they want the government to do more to solve this nation's economic mess.
to say nothing of the fact that...
International envoys are meeting in Dublin for a 12-day conference to hammer out a deal that would ban the use of cluster bombs. Big producers like the US and Israel will not be attending, while the pressure is on the UK to push to water down the treaty to prevent it undermining the NATO alliance...
Almost 10 years after the Ottawa Treaty banned the use of landmines, more than 100 countries are gathering on Monday to attempt to ban cluster bombs as well. However, the United States and other big producers will not be attending. Washington is arguing that the proposed treaty threatens to undermine the very fabric of NATO...
The biggest producers of the cluster weapons, the United States, China, Israel and Russia, are not attending the 12-day conference and have been lobbying hard to have it watered down. Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations, told Reuters that Washington is opposed to any ban. "We do not believe they are indiscriminate weapons." ...
According to the United Nations Development Program, cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The munitions caused more civilian casualties in Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 than any other weapon system.
Five Lobbyists have been dismissed from the McCain campaign, for, well, being lobbyists. Or, more accurately, being outed as lobbyists So much for Master Straight-Talk. The question, of course, is why exactly isn't this hitting the news media like a perfect storm and generating stories questions his ethics and commenting on how much in disarray his campaign is?
Then again:Obama would pursue vigorous antitrust policies and singled out Big Media as an industry that due to uncontrolled consolidation would bear particular scrutiny.
(As an aside:WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised more vigorous enforcement of antitrust law if elected, but antitrust experts said on Monday that the courts could trip him up.")
And, after all, Chris Matthews declared that the media was John McCain's base:
MATTHEWS: Every time I look at a poll -- and I expect McCain to win every one of these polls. The press loves McCain. We're his base, I think, sometimes...
In other news...
Democracy and the Web:New York Times editorial FINALLY hits on the issue of Net Neutrality (and see some of the legislation that has been introduced to safeguard this vital right)
and
Two new reports show today's young workers are being squeezed by high costs of living and low or stagnant wages and they want the government to do more to solve this nation's economic mess.
to say nothing of the fact that...
International envoys are meeting in Dublin for a 12-day conference to hammer out a deal that would ban the use of cluster bombs. Big producers like the US and Israel will not be attending, while the pressure is on the UK to push to water down the treaty to prevent it undermining the NATO alliance...
Almost 10 years after the Ottawa Treaty banned the use of landmines, more than 100 countries are gathering on Monday to attempt to ban cluster bombs as well. However, the United States and other big producers will not be attending. Washington is arguing that the proposed treaty threatens to undermine the very fabric of NATO...
The biggest producers of the cluster weapons, the United States, China, Israel and Russia, are not attending the 12-day conference and have been lobbying hard to have it watered down. Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations, told Reuters that Washington is opposed to any ban. "We do not believe they are indiscriminate weapons." ...
According to the United Nations Development Program, cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. The munitions caused more civilian casualties in Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 than any other weapon system.