1/ The President gave a press conference that I listened to on the radio last week, and according to this article he lied through his teeth about how the NSA data is being used.
The story says there is a supersecret division of the DEA that is using the data to make major drug busts in the "war on drugs", and the DEA is telling the police to lie about where they got their information. This is ominous and as is typical of these secret programs a classic example of "mission creep".
Nor is this story in the mainstream media, apart from a small piece in the Washington Post......."they" have shut this down.....can't have "folks" think the gumment is lying.....
The NSA-DEA police state tango
This week's DEA bombshell shows us how the drug war and the terror war have poisoned our justice system
BY ANDREW O'HEHIR
TOPICS: DEA, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION, NSA, SURVEILLA
(Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)
So the paranoid hippie pot dealer you knew in college was right all along: The feds really were after him. In the latest post-Snowden bombshell about the extent and consequences of government spying, we learned from Reuters reporters this week that a secret branch of the DEA called the Special Operations Division – so secret that nearly everything about it is classified, including the size of its budget and the location of its office — has been using the immense pools of data collected by the NSA, CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to go after American citizens for ordinary drug crimes. Law enforcement agencies, meanwhile, have been coached to conceal the existence of the program and the source of the information by creating what’s called a “parallel construction,” a fake or misleading trail of evidence. So no one in the court system – not the defendant or the defense attorney, not even the prosecutor or the judge – can ever trace the case back to its true origins.
On one hand, we all knew more revelations were coming, and the idea that the government would go after drug suspects with the same dubious extrajudicial methods used to pursue terrorism suspects is a classic and not terribly surprising example of mission creep. Both groups have been held up as bogeymen for years, in order to scare the public into accepting ever nastier and more repressive laws. This gives government officials another chance to talk to us in their stern grown-up voices about how this isn’t civics class, and sometimes they have to bend the rules to catch Really Bad People.
On the other hand, this is a genuinely sinister turn of events with a whiff of science-fiction nightmare, one that has sounded loud alarm bells for many people in the mainstream legal world. Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law professor who spent 18 years as a federal judge and cannot be accused of being a radical, told Reuters she finds the DEA story more troubling than anything in Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. It’s the first clear evidence that the “special rules” and disregard for constitutional law that have characterized the hunt for so-called terrorists have crept into the domestic criminal justice system on a significant scale. “It sounds like they are phonying up investigations,” she said. Maybe this is how a police state comes to America: Not with a bang, but with a parallel construction.
2/ Why are we, as a nation, so angry?
Robert Reich discusses the polarisation of our nation into red and blue states and the widening gap between conservative whites and everyone else.
Frankly the righties and old whites are justified in their anger - the problem is they are angry at the wrong people - Obama, immigrants, gays, the poor and blacks. They should be angry at the oligarchs and the how their anger is twisted and manipulated away from the wealthy and corporations......
Why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it’s been in eighty years? Why is there more anger, vituperation, and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war, or the Watergate scandal?
If anything, you’d think this would be an era of relative calm. The Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is over. The Civil Rights struggle continues, but at least we now have a black middle class and even a black President. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been controversial, the all-volunteer army means young Americans aren’t being dragged off to war against their will. And although politicians continue to generate scandals, the transgressions don’t threaten the integrity of our government as did Watergate.
And yet, by almost every measure, Americans are angrier today. They’re more contemptuous of almost every major institution — government, business, the media. They’re more convinced the nation is on the wrong track. And they are far more polarized.
Political scientists say the gap between the median Republican voter and the median Democrat is wider today on a whole host of issues than it’s been since the 1920s.
Undoubtedly, social media play a part — allowing people to pop off without bearing much responsibility for what they say. And most of us can cocoon within virtual or real communities whose members confirm all our biases and assumptions.
3/ An interesting web series is "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee", which features Jerry Seinfeld picking up his fellow comedians in fancy cars and going for coffee.....followed of course by a camera crew etc.
The premise is, I guess, two funny rich guys having a chat........in this episode Seinfeld picks up Chris Rock in a Lamborgini Miura......
Mildly amusing.....great car......about 15 minutes.....
4/ Stephen Colbert is brilliant - watch this hilarious interview with a candidate for New Jersey's Senate seat, Rush Holt. You have to admit Holt kind of held his own, but it's funny and occasionally painful to watch......
Note - he lost to Cory Booker.....
If members of Congress need further reason to avoid going on "The Colbert Report," look no further than Senate hopeful Rush Holt's interview with Colbert for his "Better Know a District" segment, in which Princeton, New Jersey is profiled.
Holt, who's going head-to-head with Newark's Mayor Cory Booker in the state's Democratic primary Tuesday, doesn't appear to be quite prepared for Colbert's curveballs. Perhaps most notable was his response to Colbert's question about why he thought it was important to defeat the man who would be New Jersey's first black senator.
5/ Our justice system is designed to screw the poor, illustrated in this column from the excellent Nicolas Kristof......
How these prosecutors, supposedly the "good guys", sleep at night is beyond me.......
IF you want to understand all that is wrong with America’s criminal justice system, take a look at the nightmare experienced by Edward Young.
Young, now 43, was convicted of several burglaries as a young man but then resolved that he would turn his life around. Released from prison in 1996, he married, worked six days a week, and raised four children in Hixson, Tenn.
Then a neighbor died, and his widow, Neva Mumpower, asked Young to help sell her husband’s belongings. He later found, mixed in among them, seven shotgun shells, and he put them aside so that his children wouldn’t find them.
“He was trying to help me out,” Mumpower told me. “My husband was a pack rat, and I was trying to clear things out.”
Then Young became a suspect in burglaries at storage facilities and vehicles in the area, and the police searched his home and found the forgotten shotgun shells as well as some stolen goods. The United States attorney in Chattanooga prosecuted Young under a federal law that bars ex-felons from possessing guns or ammunition. In this case, under the Armed Career Criminal Act, that meant a 15-year minimum sentence.
The United States attorney, William Killian, went after Young — even though none of Young’s past crimes involved a gun, even though Young had no shotgun or other weapon to go with the seven shells, and even though, by all accounts, he had no idea that he was violating the law when he helped Mrs. Mumpower sell her husband’s belongings.
In May, a federal judge, acknowledging that the case was Dickensian but saying that he had no leeway under the law, sentenced Young to serve a minimum of 15 years in federal prison. It didn’t matter that the local authorities eventually dismissed the burglary charges.
So the federal government, at a time when it is cutting education spending, is preparing to spend $415,000 over the next 15 years to imprison a man for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells while trying to help a widow in the neighborhood. And, under the law, there is no early release: Young will spend the full 15 years in prison.
6/ Daft Punk are a legend in the music industry......rarely make personal appearances on TV but give wonderfully elaborate live shows. They have a collection out this year and are making a surprise appearance at the MTV Music Awards......
Here is a great video "Lose Yourself to Dance", a repetitive but incredibly hypnotic song set to dance videos from old movies and TV......after listening to it twice I can't get it out of my head, so be warned.......
7/ And on a related subject Daft Punk were due to appear on Stephen Colbert's show, but didn't turn up. So Stephen said "I'm going to play their song anyway", and he dances all the way through it with celebrities and even the Rockettes.....most amusing, and even though it's a TV insider joke it's still very good.....six minutes......
Stephen Colbert was in for a surprise at his Tuesday night showing of "The Colbert Report." The Comedy Central host had booked reclusive band Daft Punk to perform the duo's hit single "Get Lucky" during the show, hyping the performance as part of his StePhest Colbchella 2013.
One day before the show was set to tape, however, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk reportedly canceled their appearance. Colbert introduced the show, one that was "featuring the artist formally booked as Daft Punk."
"Now, they're not here tonight and I have accepted a lot of money from our Colbchella sponsor, Hyundai," Colbert explained. "So, not delivering the song of the summer is a real kick in my balls, brought to you by Hyundai. Now folks, this could not be a bigger disaster, I gotta say, if someone had planned it."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
8/ O lordy - think the extreme weather is bad now? Wait till the arctic ice melts completely in the summer, which could be a soon as 2015....two years from now.
The whole of the Northern hemisphere will be affected because the lack of ice affects the jetstream, which controls our weather...........
"Arctic is Caught in Rapid Melt Death Spiral"
Last week’s State of the Climate report confirmed it: Ice is melting in the Arctic at one of the fastest rates in human history. Researchers and climate scientists monitoring ice melt in the Arctic have started using the ominous term “death spiral” to describe what’s happening at the top of the world. But what does it mean? And is it as scary as it sounds?
http://www.realfarmacy.com/10-
First Things First: What is a Death Spiral?
In aviation, a death spiral or graveyard spiral happens when an inexperienced pilot is unable to use properly spatially orient their plane in flight and falls into a spiral dive. The plane will rapidly lose altitude, falling to the ground in tighter and tighter circles. Once in a spiral or spin, it can be very difficult for a pilot to regain control of the plane—hence the term, death spiral.
How Do We Know That Arctic Ice is in a Death Spiral?
A certain amount of ice melt is expected during the summer season, which wouldn’t have been a problem a few decades ago. Winter storms and cold would replenish the ice lost over the summer, keeping the total amount of ice in the Arctic relatively stable.
Now, the total volume of ice in the Arctic shrinks all year long, with rapid melt periods during the summer. Every year the total volume of ice in the Arctic gets smaller and smaller—just like the tighter and tighter circles of a death spiral. The melt is happening so quickly, some researchers believe it’s possible we’ll see a summer with an ice-free Arctic as early as 2015.
“The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are altering the jet stream over North America, Europe and Russia. Scientists are now just beginning to understand how these profound shifts may be increasing the likelihood of more persistent and extreme weather.” – Jennifer Francis, Rutgers University climate scientist.
9/ A very good Daily Show with John Oliver on the "stop and frisk" rules that were changed by a federal judge last week......
One of his better ones.....seven minutes, and a clever two minute report from Jessica Williams below the clip....
Both John Oliver and Stephen Colbert addressed the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy on Tuesday, with Colbert sarcastically lamenting it being ruled unconstitutional.
Oliver, however, opted to try to put the whole thing into terms white people could understand. He then turned to correspondent Jessica Williams, who explained that it's not less stop-and-frisk we need, but more... and in the right high-crime areas, i.e. Wall Street.
Watch Oliver's segment above and Williams' report below.
10/ A story from the Times that argues that based on traditional voting trends and also voter suppression there won't be much change in Washington next year in the 2014 elections.....indeed, there may well be a Republican majority in the Senate.....
If you are at all interested in politics, read this......
More Opportunities for the More Unpopular Party
By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG VIEW
Published: August 11, 2013
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WASHINGTON — As hundreds of U.S. lawmakers fan out to their home districts this month, there is a genuine political conundrum.
Approval ratings for Congress are at an all-time low, rivaling those of junkyard dogs. Republicans are seen as the main villains; the party’s standing with the public keeps falling.
So what’s the outlook today for next year’s congressional elections? Republicans will hold the U.S. House of Representatives, conceivably even adding to their 233-200 majority. They seem certain to pick up U.S. Senate seats, with an outside chance to gain the half-dozen needed for control.
There are many explanations: the voter profile of the off-year electorate; the way House districts are drawn; the fact that most of the competitive 2014 Senate races do not favor Democrats; and deteriorating enthusiasm for President Barack Obama.
Events could change those prospects. Republicans may overplay their hand by shutting down the government in a budget dispute this autumn or by undermining the United States’ good faith and credit by refusing to raise thedebt ceiling. They overreached in 1998 with the planned impeachment of President Bill Clinton and ended up losing seats.
The Republican pollster David Winston foresees a good Republican year but warns it is far from assured: “There is an opportunity, not an outcome,” he says. “Voters aren’t looking for an opposition party; they are looking for an alternative.”
To date, on issues like Mr. Obama’s health care measure — which House Republicans have voted to repeal or defund 40 times — they are short on alternatives. Still, Mr. Winston and others agree with the assessment of David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for The Cook Political Report, that the Republicans have a “built-in midterm turnout advantage.”
Compare, as Mr. Wasserman does, the compositions of the electorate in 2010, a banner year for Republicans, and in 2012, when Mr. Obama and Democrats did well. Last year, almost one in five voters were under the age of 30; two years earlier, this age group made up 12 percent of the electorate. The reverse is true of those over 65: One in six presidential-year voters were senior citizens; in 2010, it was 21 percent.
That makes a huge difference because more than half of young voters vote Democratic these days, and, with a few exceptions, similar percentages of senior citizens prefer Republicans. Older voters, Mr. Wasserman notes, “are less transient, have grown deeper roots in their local communities and pay much more attention to nonpresidential years.”
11/ An amusing premise - a panhandler harangues a subway car with an unusual twist........quite a good 2 minutes......
12/ I hope after all my nagging readers of DDD are more careful about what you are eating.....but in case you are new to the topic, here are 10 foods you shouldn't be ingesting......in fact some of the additives and processes are so bad for you every other civilised country has banned them.....
We are all learning - I didn't know about half of these, but because we eat organic we aren't exposed to them......phew.....
10 American Foods that are Banned in Other Countries
Americans are slowly waking up to the sad fact that much of the food sold in the US is far inferior to the same foods sold in other nations. In fact, many of the foods you eat are BANNED in other countries.
Here, I’ll review 10 American foods that are banned elsewhere, which were featured in a recent MSN article.1
Seeing how the overall health of Americans is so much lower than other industrialized countries, you can’t help but wonder whether toxic foods such as these might play a role in our skyrocketing disease rates.
#1: Farm-Raised Salmon
If you want to maximize health benefits from fish, you want to steer clear of farmed fish, particularly farmed salmon fed dangerous chemicals. Wild salmon gets its bright pinkish-red color from natural carotenoids in their diet. Farmed salmon, on the other hand, are raised on a wholly unnatural diet of grains (including genetically engineered varieties), plus a concoction of antibiotics and other drugs and chemicals not shown to be safe for humans.
This diet leaves the fish with unappetizing grayish flesh so to compensate, they’re fed synthetic astaxanthin made from petrochemicals, which has not been approved for human consumption and has well known toxicities. According to the featured article, some studies suggest it can potentially damage your eyesight. More details are available in yesterday’s article.
Where it’s banned: Australia and New Zealand
How can you tell whether a salmon is wild or farm-raised? The flesh of wild sockeye salmon is bright red, courtesy of its natural astaxanthin content. It’s also very lean, so the fat marks, those white stripes you see in the meat, are very thin. If the fish is pale pink with wide fat marks, the salmon is farmed.
Avoid Atlantic salmon, as typically salmon labeled “Atlantic Salmon” currently comes from fish farms. The two designations you want to look for are: “Alaskan salmon,” and “sockeye salmon,” as Alaskan sockeye is not allowed to be farmed. Please realize that the vast majority of all salmon sold in restaurants is farm raised.
So canned salmon labeled “Alaskan Salmon” is a good bet, and if you find sockeye salmon, it’s bound to be wild. Again, you can tell sockeye salmon from other salmon by its color; its flesh is bright red opposed to pink, courtesy of its superior astaxanthin content. Sockeye salmon actually has one of the highest concentrations of astaxanthin of any food.
13/ Hard to describe this video, but it's set in Istanbul and it's a full orchestra with dancers, playing songs from the Big Band era......professionally done, and very good.....four minutes......
Nice music!!!
14/ End of life issues are very difficult, but why this case is being prosecuted? A heartbreaking story on many levels.....
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Fatal Mercies
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: August 10, 2013 244 Comments
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FEW of us get anything approaching the degree of control we’d like over our lives. Must we also be denied a reasonable measure over our deaths?
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
That’s all that Joseph Yourshaw, 93, seemingly wanted: to exit on his own terms, at home, without growing any weaker, without suffering any more. And that’s all that one of his daughters, Barbara Mancini, 57, was trying to help him do, according to the police report that set her criminal prosecution in motion.
She’s charged, under Pennsylvania law, with aiding a suicide, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Such a sentence would be ludicrous, but so, by all appearances, is the case against her: a waste of public resources, a needless infliction of pain on a family already grieving, and a senseless prioritization of a frequently ignored (and easily ignorable) law over logic, compassion, decency.
It would have been easy for prosecutors to walk away; that sort of thing happens all the time. That it didn’t happen here suggests how conflicted, inconsistent and bullheaded we Americans can be when it comes to the very private, very intimate business of dying.
These are the facts of the case, according to public records and news reports:
Yourshaw was receiving hospice care at his home in the small central Pennsylvania city of Pottsville. A decorated World War II veteran who had gone on to run his own contracting business, he was terminally ill, with severe diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease, among other ailments. He was frail and in pain, and had indicated a yearning for an end to it all.
On Feb. 7, he sought one, swallowing an unusually large measure of his morphine in the presence of Mancini, who did nothing about it. A hospice nurse who stopped by the house afterward found him unresponsive and later said that Mancini, herself a nurse, confessed to having provided him, at his request, a vial or bottle of his painkiller that contained a potentially lethal dose.
The hospice nurse called 911. The police and paramedics arrived. Although Mancini insisted that her father did not want to be revived, he was given medical attention and brought to a local hospital, where his condition stabilized. He nonetheless died there on Feb. 11. He did not get to spend his final days in his own home or his final hours in his own bed.
The statement of the police officer who interacted with Mancini on the day of the overdose says, “She told me that her father had asked her for all his morphine so he could commit suicide, and she provided it.” Mancini, through her lawyers, later denied that she was deliberately enabling him to end his life. Trying to reconcile these conflicting claims is, for now, impossible: a judge has issued a gag order for the main players in the case, which is headed to trial, barring a plea agreement or a prosecutorial change of heart.
15/ We are constantly being told the world is a dangerous place, but as Michael Cohen writes in the Guardian the biggest threat to the United States is the size of the financial drain on everything else.....
The biggest threat to America? The size of its own military budget
Don't be fooled by terror alerts and dire warnings: the world in general is a safer place than ever and the US in particular
- theguardian.com, Friday 9 August 2013 09.30 EDT
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US Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, in Islamabad. Photograph: Pid/ PID/Xinhua Press/Corbis
Dear America: I know you've got a lot on your mind these days. Work is a drag; the kids are still on summer vacation; the car is making an awful racket (it's probably the muffler); you've got to clean out the gutters; your anniversary is right around the corner and you can't think of a thing to buy; you really need to see the dentist. It's always something, right?
Well, here's one piece of good news: you're pretty safe.
Sure, Obama had to cancel that summit with Putin, and al-Qaida might be plotting to attack an overseas embassy, and there is that guy down the block who is just a little too into guns, and truth be told, you might want hit the gym a bit more often (just sayin') … but otherwise, you're pretty good.
Don't believe me? Check out what Michael Morell, the No2 man at theCIA, had to say about the threats facing America in this recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. If anyone knows about foreign threats, it's gotta be this guy, right? He's a big muckety-muck at the Central Intelligence Agency. He gets to see everything; even that stuff Snowden leaked.
What he's most worried about? Syria.
16/ And a Brian McFadden cartoon from the Times says it all about the threats.....
Todays video - dating from the male and female points of view......a little raunchy......
Todays golfer joke
Jim decided to tie the knot with his long time girlfriend.
One evening, after the honeymoon, he was cleaning his golf shoes.
His wife was standing there watching him, and
after a long period of silence she finally speaks.
"Honey, I've been thinking, now that we are married
I think it's time you quit golfing. Maybe you should sell your golf clubs."
after a long period of silence she finally speaks.
"Honey, I've been thinking, now that we are married
I think it's time you quit golfing. Maybe you should sell your golf clubs."
Jim gets this horrified look on his face.
She says, "Darling, what's wrong?"
”There for a minute you were sounding like my ex-wife.”
"Ex wife!" she screams, "I didn't know you were married before!"
”I wasn't!“, he said.
She says, "Darling, what's wrong?"
”There for a minute you were sounding like my ex-wife.”
"Ex wife!" she screams, "I didn't know you were married before!"
”I wasn't!“, he said.
Todays Irish joke
An Irishman was standing at a bar and a beautiful woman was beside him, so he leans over and says,
"You remind me of my little toe."She replies, "What? You mean I'm small and cute?"He says, "No. I'll probably bang you on the coffee table later when I'm drunk."
Today's Little Larry jokes
A new teacher was trying to make use of her psychology courses. She started her class by saying, 'Everyone who thinks they're stupid, stand up!'
After a few seconds, Little Larry stood up.
The teacher said, 'Do you think you're stupid, Larry?'
'No, ma'am, but I hate to see you standing there all by yourself!'
Larry watched, fascinated, as his mother smoothed cold cream on her face.
'Why do you do that, mommy?' he asked.
'To make myself beautiful,' said his mother, who then began removing the cream with a tissue. 'What's the matter, asked Larry 'Giving up?'
The math teacher saw that Larry wasn't paying attention in class.
She called on him and said, 'Larry! What are 2 and 4 and 28 and 44?'
Larry quickly replied, 'NBC, FOX, ESPN and the Cartoon Network!'
Larry's kindergarten class was on a field trip to their local police station where they saw pictures tacked to a bulletin board of the 10 most wanted criminals.
One of the youngsters pointed to a picture and asked if it really was the photo of a wanted person.
'Yes,' said the policeman. 'The detectives want very badly to capture him.'
Larry asked, "Why didn't you keep him when you took his picture ? "
Little Larry attended a horse auction with his father.
He watched as his father moved from horse to horse, running his hands up and down the horse's legs and rump, and chest.
After a few minutes, Larry asked, 'Dad, why are you doing that?'
His father replied, 'Because when I'm buying horses, I have to make sure that they are healthy and in good shape before I buy.
Larry, looking worried, said, 'Dad, I think the UPS guy wants to buy Mom ..... '
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