The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Monday
Jun102013
The Commentariat -- June 11, 2013
My postings will be light & sporadic for a time & I'll do most of them in the wee hours. I doubt I will be doing any news ledes. Please stick with me. I'll be back. -- Constant Weader
** Okay, I'll Freak Out Over This. Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "Global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use rose 1.4 percent to 31.6 gigatons in 2012, setting a record and putting the planet on course for temperature increases well above international climate goals, the International Energy Agency said in a report scheduled to be issued Monday. The agency said continuing that pace could mean a temperature increase over pre-industrial times of as much as 5.3 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit), which IEA chief economist Fatih Birol warned 'would be a disaster for all countries.'" ...
... When is an an unelected dictator of a repressive Communist regime more responsible and progressive than Congressional Republicans? Steve Benen has one answer.
Michael Shear & Pam Belluck of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has decided to stop trying to block over-the-counter availability of the best-known morning-after contraceptive pill for all women and girls, a move fraught with political repercussions for President Obama. The government's decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription." CW: Thank you, Judge Edward Korman. (Korman is a 70-year-old Reagan appointee who "angrily accused the administration of blocking the drug because of politics, not science, and ordered [HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius to reverse her decision.")
Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "As Justice Department officials began the process Monday to charge Edward J. Snowden, a 29-year-old former C.I.A. computer technician, with disclosing classified information, he checked out of a hotel in Hong Kong where he had been holed up for several weeks, according to two American officials. It was not clear where he went." ...
... How'd He Do That? Peter Finn, et al., of the Washington Post: "Counterintelligence investigators are scrutinizing how a 29-year-old contractor who said he leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents was able to gain access to what should be highly compartmentalized information.... Among the questions is how a contract employee at a distant NSA satellite office [in Hawaii] was able to obtain a copy of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a highly classified document that would presumably be sealed from most employees and of little use to someone in his position." ...
... Cloak & Rubik's Cube. Charlie Savage & Mark Mazzetti on the course of conversations among Snowden, Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, Barton Gellman of the Washington Post & documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. ...
... Irin Carmon of Salon interviews Poitras. ...
... Oh, and here's a surprise: Glenn Greenwald is pissed off at Barton Gellman. Everybody pisses off Greenwald -- and he's quick to say so. ...
... Eli Lake of the Daily Beast: "Even before last week's revelations by The Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting call records from telecommunications companies and had the ability to mine user data from major U.S. Internet companies, the NSA was already on the trail of the leaker, according to two former U.S. intelligence officers with close ties to the agency.... The people who began chasing Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, according to former U.S. intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. The directorate, sometimes known as 'the Q Group,' is continuing to track Snowden.... Snowden's disappearance in May was immediately noticed by the directorate, and when The Guardian published the first court order and then documents associated with a program called PRISM, Snowden immediately became the leading suspect in the leak...."
... Spies R Us. Robert O'Harrow, et al., of the Washington Post: "The unprecedented leak of top-secret documents by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden raises far-reaching questions about the government's rush to outsource intelligence work to contractors since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.... In the rush to fill jobs, the government has relied on faulty procedures to vet intelligence workers, documents and interviews show. At the same time, intelligence agencies have not hired enough in-house government workers to manage and oversee the contractors, contracting specialists said. On Monday, lawmakers said they will examine Snowden's hiring and the growing use of private companies for intelligence work." ...
... Alan Travis of the Guardian: "Leading Europeans, from Angela Merkel down to information chiefs across the continent, are lining up to grill American counterparts on the Prism surveillance programmes, amid mounting fury that the private information of EU nationals will have been caught up in the data dragnet. With Merkel set to bring up the issue with Barack Obama next week, and the European commission vice-president, Viviane Reding, eager to grill US officials at a meeting in Dublin on Friday, the issue looks set to dominate a week of summitry. Reding, who is responsible for data protection in Europe, is to seek clarification on whether the access to personal data in the Prism programme is limited to individual cases, is based on concrete suspicion or if wider sets of data are being accessed." ...
... ** Dana Milbank: "As the administration and some in Congress vent their anger about leaks to The Post and to Britain's Guardian newspaper, officials have only themselves to blame. It is precisely their effort to hide such a vast and consequential program from the American public that caused this pressure valve to burst. Instead of allowing a democratic debate about the programs in broad terms that would not have compromised national security, their attempts to keep the public in the dark have created a backlash in which the risks to national security can't be controlled." Read the whole column. ...
... Scott Shane & Jonathan Weisman & of the New York Times on why we're not going to be having that "healthy debate" about secret data collection. ...
... Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker: Edward Snowden is "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.... What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications.... The Post decided to publish only four of the forty-one slides that Snowden provided. Its exercise of judgment suggests the absence of Snowden'." ...
... Robert Chesney & Benjamin Wittes in The New Republic: most of the revelations in the Post & Guardian stories were unsurprising -- they were what a person who read the law would suspect was going on. But what is surprising about the Snowden leaks is "that the government thinks it already has this authority under Section 215 ... to create giant datasets of telephony metadata that might later be queried..., and still more so that the FISA Court agrees and that members of Congress know this as well." ...
... Michael Kelley in Business Insider: "... the NSA is continuing to intercept and analyze an estimated 1.7 billion U.S. electronic communications each day." CW: this is not Kelley's point, but the volume of communications he cites should convince Americans that no NSA employee or contractor is sitting back in an NSA cubbyhole poring over their private correspondence. ...
... Steve Benen analyzes the public's views. CW: I would add that it may take a while for people to decide what to make of the disclosures. (It's taking me a while.) What the public thinks today could change in a month or two, as more (a) clarity & (b) demagoguery enter the mainstream consciousness.
Erika Eichelberger in Mother Jones: "Rejecting health care money for poor mentally ill people is an extremely costly way for states to stick it to the Obama administration." But 17 states are doing just that, even though many of them are already have the among the worst mental-healthcare systems in the country. ...
... BTW, I wonder if Elena Kagan & Steven Breyer are sleeping well, knowing that they helped enable 17 states to make poor people even more unequal than others. And, thanks, John Roberts (not to mention the other Fourth Dancing Tenthers), for the brilliant interpretation of the Constitution. Maybe you seven dwarfs should all go stand out in front of that monstrous Supreme Court building, look up at the entablature where inscribed in stone for some odd reason is the phrase "equal justice under law," scratch your chins, and ask yourselves just what the fuck that means.
The Grand Old White Party is still the GOWP. You knew that, of course, but Alex Roarty of the National Journal puts some detail to it: "... an early examination of the party's 2014 efforts shows that Republicans have yet to begin writing new pages for their old playbook. Efforts to expand the map by fielding candidates in diverse states have so far been stymied.... The GOP's midterm strategy will rely heavily on whites, especially those without a college education, and particularly in rural states where its presidential candidates win easily."
John Boehner, Immigration Reformer? ...
... Jonathan Chait says yes. ...
... Ed Kilgore is skeptical.
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: Hillary Clinton debuted on Twitter Monday. Almost 1,000 followers a minute signed up.
This is for contributor P. D. Pepe, the Persistent Poet:
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Reader Comments (14)
I've also waited to post on the issue of data mining all US citizens. It has been helpful to read other's comments because I have only emotions at this point.
When I was in my backpacking days a long time ago, somehow I decided to go through communist East Germany to visit with a friend in communist Poland to go skiing with him. I flirted with those cute guys in uniform, and had to be told not to because they were the secret police. My friend would occasionally point out the Stasi as we were followed around. I couldn't register this, coming from such an open society. On the way back, the Stasi robbed me of all my money. They knew exactly what I had.
After East Germany ceased to exist, people were able to see the extent of the knowledge the Stasi had and who the "helpers" of the Stasi were: the neighbors and friends of the people who were being snooped on. People were really shocked and disappointed by what had happened to people when they were coerced by the "State."
Now we discover that the "State"- our "State" - has the capacity to follow us around to an extent not imagined by the Stasi. This capacity will be used because it CAN be used. This is human nature.
I'm not surprised, I'm not angry, I'm not frightened.
I despair.
DIGGING FOR MOLES
Guy Burgess, a legendary red spy, sunbathed
on the shores of the Black Sea––––
There is a photo of him doing just that:
He’s stretched out on a wooden 10” plank,
A soft cushion with head- rest overlapping,
His right hand circles around his head
While his left holds a cigarette from which he is taking
a drag.
Naked, except for a black Speedo, his torso is slim,
Very long thin legs spread apart
inviting the sun ray’s penetration–––
And penetration of a different sort
Was with Harold Nicolson, among others
While he was toying with Brits and informing Soviets.
“I Spy” was played years ago by my children
delighting in their finds,
Burgess would have been bored
by such trivial pursuits.
His was the real game––the one with the risks and consequences.
Even after his fourth pink gin, he never revealed
the black heart hidden up his sleeve.
Isaiah Berlin claimed Burgess had no moral center.
Did he know all this that afternoon sunbathing
On the shores of the Black Sea?
12/09
I'm curious, Marie, how you go about writing this wonderful blog. How do you gather the information for each day's posts? Is it just you doing the gathering? How long does it take to prepare for the next day's posts? What is the relation of this blog to the NYTE? I'm asking because of your first paragraph today that your postings will be sporadic. I'm hoping you're taking some well-deserved time off!
@Nancy: good questions all. Unfortunately, I don't have time to answer them right now, but they deserve answers, & I'll write a post based on your questions when time does allow. Thanks for asking.
Marie
@ Victoria: If Snowden had operated under the Stasti, he'd be dead by now. This young man is called a hero by some and a turncoat by others and it will be interesting to see what ensues.
@Nancy: We old timers here on R.C. revere our founder, appreciate so very much what she doles out each and every day and your query into her works and days is welcome––some of us think she gets sprinkled with fairy dust at the crack of dawn.
P.S. and I still want to know what an "egg topper" is. Anyone?
@ PD: re the Egg topper. It is designed to remove the 'top' of the egg shell to enjoy spooning out the soft cooked egg inside. Tres elegant. Google 'Cook's Illustrated' to get URL for full details and a report of best type to purchase. The Swiss-made Rosle seems to be the winner.
It's a device for cutting off the top of an egg.
Check out this video on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/qcykZujvtRk
It shows one in action.
Well, thank you for the skinny on the egg topper and the nifty video that demonstrates its workability. I prefer my eggs sunny side up, but I wonder, if I did fancy a boiled one, if a good crack with a knife wouldn't do the trick although this gadget looks adorable and is something Carson the butler would certainly approve of.
Do people realize that every purchase you make online and every credit card purchase is subject to marketing analysis? Mine and I assume everyone else's, online mailbox / reg mailbox is full of ads targeting my specific consumer habits. This comes about from analysis of an individual's specific communications, not an identifying phone number that is used in meta analysis. I also assume that the NSA looks for certain words, names and phrases in e-mails that are related to potential threats as determined, again, from the meta level analysis using algorithms. So if personal data is collected as a free enterprise pursuit of commerce, its all good. If it is collected to reduce threats to the country, it is not. The horse left the barn long ago, but it seems like corporations get a pass and it becomes really scary if it is the government. The last election should give a clue about how dangerous corporations can be.
Lightening technological advances blinded us with the dazzle and lights. Like idiot children, we had no sense of proportion or balance or consequences. The current outrage, per usual, is an end in itself. I can't imagine there being any thoughtful discussions about the balance of privacy and security at this point. Its always easier to proceed thoughtfully than have to back the truck up over bodies afterwards.
Whether we like it or are ready for it, the cyber world is the tool of commerce, communication and probably, warfare. It is naive to assume that other nations (see China) will play nice. We don't know a lot about this Snowden guy. What we do know is he signed an oath not to divulge the stuff he divulged and he has some misguided romantic picture of free speech in Hong Kong. I'm afraid he has done far more damage than any positive that will come of his actions. But then 29 year olds aren't famous for maturity and thoughtfulness.
Just a random thought. We were wondering this morning (husband and me) how history will paint Obama. Aside from the "firstness", I suspect he has been subject to the most obstructionism by the opposition, faced with a bunch of tragedies ( both man made and natural disasters), and wars than any modern President. This seems to be an unusually volatile era on several fronts - guns, immigration, voter rights, women's rights, privacy rights, with an underlying watershed upheaval within the Republican Party as well as a serious cultural divide in the country. I continue to be in awe of his temperament and persistence. Personally, I would have been F-U all and the horses you rode in on long time ago. He has some extra gray hair - that's all?
Mention of the Stasi, the East German secret police, reminded me of the "The Lives of Others" a German film released in 2006, an excellent exploration of what happens in the kind of environment perpetuated and encouraged by police state surveillance in which uncovering the personal details and secrets of ordinary citizens and using them for personal, and occasionally state purposes, can twist the lives of both the watchers and the watched.
Highly recommended.
And while I'm at it, for an extra dose of paranoia, how 'bout a list of films whose plots hinge on surveillance?
As Addison DeWitt might suggest, "And why not?"
I always feel like somebody's watching me
Ak: I knew Brazil would be on the list, one of my favorite old movies, well, not that old at 28 years, but I can still watch it anytime.
And the egg topper, I think I remember my doctor using one of those
right after I was hatched. Ouch!
Re: films: "The Lives of Others" I've seen twice––an extraordinary film and let's not forget the mother of all creepy who's watching whom––"The Body Snatchers"––the original and the remake with Donald Sutherland. I first encountered it as a story in Colliers sometime in the Fifties while sitting in an old Chevrolet waiting for a boyfriend do his business at a bank. It's a vivid memory because the story was so compelling.
Thanks for the list AK. "Brazil", or maybe "The Conversation", is my ever most favorite movie, except... I just watched (for the umpteenth time) "The Plow that Broke the Plain." Ain't no other like it. Ever. And Vergil (queer) Thompson's score is heart-wrenching.