Well, I will not deny it: This is outrageous. I know, I know — no one is looking at your stuff, nor mine, but this is outrageous.
However, at the moment I’m just going to let shit slide. I’m now on vacation, and I’m in shit-sliding mode. You discuss. I’m still in absorption mode on this one.
What I can’t let slide is this column by Virginia Postrel, on the possible liquidation of Detroit’s art museum. Every idiot libertarian I’ve ever known has had a big googly-eyed crush on her, but this hits a little close to home:
Parochial interests aside, however, great artworks shouldn’t be held hostage by a relatively unpopular museum in a declining region. The cause of art would be better served if they were sold to institutions in growing cities where museum attendance is more substantial and the visual arts are more appreciated than they’ve ever been in Detroit. Art lovers should stop equating the public good with the status quo.
The cause of art. Hmm, what do you suppose that is? Postrel thinks our collection would be better off in those two artistic oases — Los Angeles and, get this, Dallas. God, what an odious twit.
I really need to go on vacation. So I think I will.
To repeat: Next week, five from the ancient archives. They suck, but they will suck free of charge, as always. I’ll be back, live and in the flesh, June 17.
Sherri said on June 7, 2013 at 2:59 am
It is outrageous, and not to defend it, it’s what happens when the War on Drugs meets the War on Terror and suddenly we’re all exposed to the tactics formerly only used on those people. James Fallows has been running a series of stories of what “stop and frisk” looks like when it’s applied to the private aviation world, where affluent, white, often conservative private plane owners are being detained and searched for no obvious reason.
Democrats, Republicans, neither are going to willingly give back that kind of power. Time to up my contribution to the ACLU.
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David C. said on June 7, 2013 at 6:26 am
Virginia Postrel is getting smacked around pretty good in the comments. I was a little reluctant to even look at them seeing as it appeared in Bloomberg, but good on them. She doesn’t seem to understand sold to the highest bidder either. If they were sold they would more likely go to oligarchs, never to be seen again by the public.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2013 at 7:04 am
Putin’s next wife will get to see them, for instance.
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coozledad said on June 7, 2013 at 7:22 am
The Koch brothers and their ilk would snap a bunch of that art up and shove it away in one of their idiotic treasure tunnels, just to tell their small circle of friends “That thang mine”. Every one of that fucked up family was frozen before the onset of maturity. They’re sort of like the Tudors minus brains or guts.
Sherri: I saw a libertarian* commenter say that “Obama took the Bush wiretap program and made it bigger”. Of course his real complaint was “black man got my phone number”. The New York Times has come out swinging, too, because they’re pissed off at the very thing they refused to say jack shit about just a few years ago. That is one courageous fucking editorial board. You could parachute those bastards into Syria and they’d have the mess cleaned up in no time. Hell, they did Iraq by remote, didn’t they?
What?
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coozledad said on June 7, 2013 at 7:23 am
*To paraphrase Edroso’s definition: a niche brand of the usual Republican swill
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2013 at 7:29 am
Actually, I suspect that in the end, we’ll learn that the reason for the rolling 3 month renewals is that Verizon et alia were simply deleting these files, and told the gummint “If you want ’em, you gotta store ’em; back up the digital truck and we’ll give ’em to you.”
And knowing they had to have a legal basis for taking custody of same, while not wanting to lose the possibility of reaching back into these records beyond three months, the AGs office came up with this FISA maneuver.
Betcha a nickel.
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coozledad said on June 7, 2013 at 7:42 am
Ahem. There seems to have been this “Total Information Awareness” thing the Republicans shoved up our ass. Now they want to claim they didn’t do the shoving?
In addition to the program itself, the involvement of Poindexter as director of the IAO also raised concerns among some, since he had been earlier convicted of lying to Congress and altering and destroying documents pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair, although those convictions were later overturned on the grounds that the testimony used against him was protected.
On January 16, 2003, Senator Russ Feingold introduced legislation to suspend the activity of the IAO and the Total Information Awareness program pending a Congressional review of privacy issues involved.[6] A similar measure introduced by Senator Ron Wyden would have prohibited the IAO from operating within the United States unless specifically authorized to do so by Congress, and would have shut the IAO down entirely 60 days after passage unless either the Pentagon prepared a report to Congress assessing the impact of IAO activities on individual privacy and civil liberties or the President certified the program’s research as vital to national security interests. In February 2003, Congress passed legislation suspending activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office’s activities (Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003, No.108–7, Division M, §111(b) [signed Feb. 20, 2003]).
No Republican will vote to lift a finger against this. Betcha.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2013 at 7:56 am
Right, but the story Nancy linked says “Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection.” I don’t want to be cavalier about this, but data storage is a huge issue for these companies, and I still suspect their role was to say “If you want this stuff to be available for more than three to six months back, you need to pay for the storage yourselves, we’re not going to put up that kind of outlay just in case you decide you want to see a data set from 2010.”
If there’s nothing in those two acts that remediates the resolutions you quote, Cooze, I’m sure there will be a Congressional hearing on that, and rightly so.
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alex said on June 7, 2013 at 8:02 am
I think Jeff may very well be right about this. We subpoena cellular phone records all the time for the purpose of determining whether the personal injury plaintiffs suing our clients were texting or were otherwise distracted at the moment they incurred their boo-boos. That’s one way to establish contributory negligence. Quite often by the time these folks have filed suit, however—typically at the eleventh hour of their two-year statute of limitations—the phone records have already gone pfffft. So maybe we should stop sending subpoenas to Verizon and direct them instead to the NSR.
I’m not one who’s given to paranoia about Big Brother watching me; in fact, I think you face a much greater likelihood of being caught on video in a moment of ignominy by some a-hole who’ll put it on YouTube and ruin your good name.
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alex said on June 7, 2013 at 8:11 am
Predictably, the local angle where a bunch of rubes generalize it to themselves. Yeah, like the feds really give a shit about Hoosier half-wits passing around crude Obama jokes on their cell phones.
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beb said on June 7, 2013 at 8:25 am
Storage of telephone call metadata is not as much of an issue as Jeff implies because when the police requests phone data in a criminal investigation the data can go back several years. The limitation of NSA searches to three month spans, I’m sure, has more to do with the need for court approval for these searches. And while the FISA courts have been pretty much a rubber stamp for wholesale invasions of privacy, they still need to show that they do set limits on the government, hence warrants that last for a limited length of time.
Last week the Supreme Court ruled on the matter of the police collecting DNA samples from anyone arrested, whether or not they have been convicted of a crime or how serious the charged are against the prisoner. Ruling 5-4 the court said this was OK as long as the charges were for “serious” crimes. Without enumerating what are serious crimes we’ll soon learn that jaywalking is a serious crime.
But – and this is what it gets interesting – Justice Scalia joined the minority! He argued that the fourth amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searces and seizures blocked what amounted to the wholesale collection of DNA from people not accused of any specific crime. My head kind of exploded when I realized that I actually agreed with Tony S. about something. The argument applies here as well. What the NSA is doing is a vast fishing expedition looking for crime. And it’s all being done is secret. This isn’t the American way.
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Scout said on June 7, 2013 at 9:11 am
The privacy ship has sailed. Most of the very same people who are bitching now never batted an eye when the so-called Patriot Act was rammed down our throats. The Rude Pundit weighs in: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2013/06/nsa-phone-record-collecting-and.html?m=1
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2013 at 9:42 am
Beb, I agree that three month reapplications are probably at the request of the FISA court, if only so they don’t look like they’re just rolling over for a belly scratch to anything the government asks — and to both you and Cooze, I entirely agree this should be handled differently, I’m just trying to think out loud how that would work. I’m not seeing imperial overreach as the intention, Bush or Obama, but there’s a willful disregard on the part of those asking as to how this can be misused, just as in some of the leaks from within the IRS of info from the 501(c)4 applications.
But as with Alex, I’ve been surprised often when the court requests cell/text data in a case under circumstances anyone would agree is proper (domestic violence cases and looking to show when incidents first occurred, etc.), and we’re told “Nope, that was deleted from our servers to make room for new traffic.” You can say it would be no big deal for them to arrange storage, but they want neither the cost – minimal or not – nor the liability. But I can see where they’d be delighted to shift that burden off onto the feds.
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alex said on June 7, 2013 at 9:51 am
It’s the securing of metadata, not wiretapping. It’s reauthorized every few months by the FISA court thanks to Obama, who wanted the program to have some oversight; the activity had been undertaken unilaterally by Bush. Chill, fer Chrissake.
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Mark P said on June 7, 2013 at 9:57 am
I have mixed feelings about the whole spying on Americans thing. First, of course, it’s plainly wrong. It’s like giving the police the authority to search everyone’s home for stolen property. It would certainly solve a lot of crimes and return a lot of people’s stolen stuff, but it’s not constitutional. On the other hand, based on my experience with government’s capabilities, I would be surprised if the government can actually make much use of this outside some very limited circumstances. For one thing, it’s a very large amount of data, and dealing with large data sets requires a sophisticated computer program. That means you set certain limited parameters and let the program run, and then you see the results. Unless you’re specifically searching for whoever is looking at porn, you won’t get that. Hopefully, you only get whoever is looking at online instructions for how to make a bomb. The porn search, of course, would overwhelm all existing data storage devices in short order. In the second place, the government has demonstrated that it does not usually have enough competent people to do that kind of job without very focused activity. Finding bin Laden is one thing. Randomly finding me looking at online coochie is another.
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alex said on June 7, 2013 at 10:02 am
Of course, I can see some value in all of this hysteria if it makes right-wing paranoiacs fearful of black helicopters showing up and hauling them off to Guantanamo for possession of pickaninny caricatures of the president.
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Mark P said on June 7, 2013 at 10:06 am
This is totally off topic, but do you remember the post and comments about dinner and supper? Take a look at question No. 96 (found via languagelog):
http://spark-1590165977.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/
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Danny said on June 7, 2013 at 11:20 am
Putin’s next wife will get to see them, for instance.
That was a coffee spitting comment. Thanks, Jeff. I haven’t smiled in a few days.
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Danny said on June 7, 2013 at 11:30 am
I reckon that if the NSA looked at my collective data they’d say: “Okay, what do we know about the phone calls.. what are all of these late night and early morning conferences with folks in multiple foreign countries. Very suspicious, no? What about his emails. Dang, same thing. What is he up to? And even most weekends…. oh wait… it’s all work related. But look at his IRS returns!?!? Damn, this dude needs a raise!”
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LAMary said on June 7, 2013 at 11:46 am
If they looked at my phone calls they would fall asleep from boredom.
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coozledad said on June 7, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Alex: I think what may worry the teabaggers more is their cache of “Horny Asian Nuns Pissing Contest” and “Jesus is My Safe Word” sites. Even though the latter is a 501(c)3.
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Judybusy said on June 7, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Mark P, that was a fun site to poke around in!
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Bitter Scribe said on June 7, 2013 at 12:15 pm
I’m not sure how I feel about this phone-data stuff. Is data collection on the macro level, without any actual monitoring, really such an odious invasion of privacy? Especially if, as seems to be the case, it’s an effective anti-terrorism tool?
I know we’re all sick of right-wingers using “terrorism” as an excuse for this and that, but let’s not forget that it is an actual threat. Anyone who thinks this monitoring stuff is so horrible that we must eschew it on the grounds of privacy, the Constitution, whatever, needs to make a more convincing case than any I’ve seen so far.
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beb said on June 7, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Michigan is not without its millions and billionaires and some of them and enough public-minded that if the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection is thrown on the block, they will be the first ones to form a coalition to buy it up. Southeast Michigan is like one of those germ cultures where the germs are virulent they’ve killed themselves in the center but form a growing ring around it. The City of Detroit it the dead center but the suburbs and far suburbs are both wealthy and pretty rich.
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 1:51 pm
As a proud possessor of a Cointelpro file on myself from back in my Yuppie 1960s, I find all the crying and gnashing of teeth over Patriot Act intrusions somewhat boring. And laying it at the door of Obama and the Democrats is insufferably self-serving revisionist bullshit. This is happening all over the webs–Congressional Dems engineered the Patriot Act against Shrubco’s objections–WTF? The creation of Department of Homeland Security was an outright and obvious attack on federal employee and thousands of union jobs were wiped out. My FBI file is disappointingly thin, but it does contain a suggestion that I might have taken part in an attempt to burn a ROTC building at Holy Cross, to which I say some of my best friends were in that ROTC unit. The suspicion was based solely on the knowledge I had participated in organizing anti-war demonstrations. We always figure anybody that proposed such a hare-brained scheme was law enforcement. It took me 25 years to get my hands on that file. It used to be classified. Lord knows why?
Anyway, Nihil sub sole novum. This is a clear case of the current Administration continuing policies from the previous misAdministration. Of course that’s disappointing to me on some level, but I don’t see it as a threat to my civil liberties, and nobody is coming for my guns, because I don’t have any. What’s different for the GOPers and Libertarians? Presidential melanin:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
So Shrubco invented the FISA courts (much as they invented the military tribunal alternative Constitution system of justice)
Oh, and on that 501(c)3 business for the Teabangers, the 100 year old federal law that established that tax-free status doesn’t say anything about organizations “primarily” involved in social welfare activity, it says “exclusively”. Now there is some administrative guideline within IRS that uses the term “primarily” but that does not rewrite the actual law in the tax code. Since the Teabanger orgs don’t concern themselves with matters of social welfare in the slightest, applying the 501(c)3 status to them is erroneous. In the end, it’s obvious that what’s important to these people is anonymity of donors, not tax-exempt status. Now not long ago, Bushco went after the NAACP’s tax exempt status, and I don’t recall Congressional hearings nor scandal mongering in the liberal press.
I used to bring dates to the Detroit Institute of Arts sometimes. I absolutely loved that place.
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adrianne said on June 7, 2013 at 2:11 pm
As Pogo said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 2:23 pm
One very good reason why DIA is important and must be preserved despite what some dumbass philistine and pawdeen like Virginia Postrel says about it. The museums greatest work is actually a physical part of the museum. The story of Diego and Frida, and one of the greatest works ever conceived by humankind.
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Deborah said on June 7, 2013 at 2:32 pm
Bitter, I’m kinda with you on the data gathering. In this digital age privacy seems like a long lost issue. Corporations have been mining our data in other ways for awhile now. I suppose I could have a different opinion at some point, but right now I can’t get too steamed up about it.
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coozledad said on June 7, 2013 at 3:28 pm
Texas should be cordoned off, its leaders imprisoned, and its stupid, nasty people slowly sold off as chattel to Dubai:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/jilted-john-acquitted-texas-prostitute-death-article-1.1365975#ixzz2VYBinBWn
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Suzanne said on June 7, 2013 at 4:07 pm
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-actress-arrested-ricin-case-article-1.1366285
Yep. Cordon them off. Or give ’em back to Mexico.
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 4:12 pm
Happy Birthday Prince Rogers Nelson, purveyor of the greatest Super Bowl halftime show ever. Live version of Let’s go crazy, fully-clothed and sporting a natural. Great electric guitar playing with a Zep reference.
The information gathering programs have been reauthorized by Congress several times while Obama has been President. Since the GOPers control the House outright and the Senate 41-59, making this into a political issue is rankest hypocrisy. This entire discussion is taking place in a virtual information vaccuum anyway, unless you believe what President Obama says about it, or you are one of those tinfoil hat nutjobs that believe he’s the Kenyan socialist anti-Christ and everything he says is a lie:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-defends-sweeping-surveillance-efforts/2013/06/07/2002290a-cf88-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html?hpid=z1
And it’s pretty easy to see how leaking information about both Prism and the NSA program could damage anti-terrorist operations. Shrubco supporters were more than willing to surrender freedom for security, and have no business complaining when either is curtailed, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Grade A certified asshole Steve King and House GOPers say deport good citizen DREAMers, not criminals. Why? Because Obama, apparently. Kinda like the NRA insisting known terrorists still have 2nd Amendment rights to buy guns.
Tejas in a nutsoshell.
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Sherri said on June 7, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Will he manage to avoid plagiarism this time? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/after-his-fall-jonah-lehrer-shops-a-book-on-the-power-of-love.html?_r=0
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ROGirl said on June 7, 2013 at 6:32 pm
The Getty Museum is funded by the Getty Endowment and it has more money than any other museum/art institution in the world (over $5.5 billion a year). It could buy every piece of art for sale in the market today and still have enough left over to devour other museums whole, but it chooses to be a relatively positive presence in the art world (they do a lot of research, preservation and education). Anyway, Virginia Postrel’s article sounds like one of those pieces by Andy Borowitz in “The New Yorker,” except that they’re intentionally satirical.
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 7:12 pm
The Jonah Lehrer link says the book is about “the power of love”, so presumably he’s stealing from Huey Lewis this time instead of putting fabricated quotes into Bob Dylan’s mouth.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Why worry about the NSA when there’s . . . Domino’s?
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/04/dominos-pizza-is-testing-pizza-delivery-drones/
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Prospero said on June 7, 2013 at 11:51 pm
Fracking nitwit Senator Jeff Sessions says tithe magazines sold at PXs are the cause of military sexual assaults. As Bugs would say, “What a maroon. What an ignoranimus.”
Sayonara Penguins. Highest scoring team in NHL regular season, two goals in four losses to Boston. Sid Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, no points.
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Dexter said on June 8, 2013 at 1:03 am
I thought the Miami Heat was the only great professional sports team to lay down and quit for long periods of time…nope.
The Penguins losing like this, a total blow-away, is mind boggling. And Tomas Vokoun cannot cover the 4 hole when the puck is sailing right at him? And that was the only goal.
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Prospero said on June 8, 2013 at 2:42 pm
That goal was deflected twice on its way to Vokoun. That’s hockey. Penguins lost because the Bruins play better defense and kill penaltyies better than anybody else in the league. Penguins had the highest power play efficiency %age in the NHL regular season, and scored more points than anyone else in the league. vs. Boston, 0-13 PP and two goals in four games. Also, Boston clearly has the hot goaltender. Game 3, 2OT, Tuukka Rask stopped 53 of 54 shots. All that is a recipe for winning the Stanley Cup.
Anybody that read about Hiro Protagonist, pizza delivery guy in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash can relate to the Domino’s drone story. And it might get there fast, but it will still be Domino’s crappy pizza, and the proceeds will still be funding Tom Monaghan’s looney-toon Xtian town in FLA:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/02/27/domino-pizza-founder-to-build-catholic-town/
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Prospero said on June 8, 2013 at 5:53 pm
This is gonna cause some spontaneous cerebral hemhorrages. Now, you would think this would make sense to anti-abortion folks, but noooo. They will claim it encourages kids to have sex. That concept is beyond hilarious. I don’t remember needing any encouragement as a teenager.
The idiot sexist mayor of Osaka, Japan agrees with Sackless Chambliss about male troops and hormones.
I wish all of the people so upset about data mining by the government would consider the far more intrusive and massive data mining operations of private corporations in the interest of profits and targeted advertising. And the telecomm giants aren’t squeamish about that at all. Remember during the long Shrubco nightmare that they tried to get Congress to indemnify them against civil action for government data collection programs? They’d already been doing the same thing for cash for years for private sector merchandisers, except with far more individualized and specific information. How’d that sneak by all the hand-wringing civil libertarians?
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Sherri said on June 8, 2013 at 8:55 pm
I would guess that most of the people upset about data mining by the government are upset about data mining by private corporations. I know I am (there’s a reason I don’t have a Facebook account), and the ACLU and EFF are. You’re arguing a straw man, Pros.
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brian stouder said on June 8, 2013 at 9:10 pm
I agree with Sheri.
Emotionally, I love and admire president Obama. Objectively, the question must be asked: Is this “change”?
To be clear, I’ve no problem at all with the IRS scrutinizing folks who as for tax exemptions and anonymity as to where the cash comes from (what could possibly go wrong, eh?); and Benghazi has always been a total nothingburger.
But the Obama administration’s relentless continuance and expansion of some of the worst of President Bush’s assaults on the privacy rights of civilians, and of the national press (AP, etc) ain’t “change” – or if it is, it’s for the worse.
I’ll give President Obama credit for actively moving toward a formal END of this twilight war we’re involved in, as officially declared in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)….so there’s that.
But show me.
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brian stouder said on June 8, 2013 at 9:11 pm
Make that “Sherri”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 8, 2013 at 9:48 pm
Check out the final item in this memo — I find that note interesting, especially since we’re not hearing a word about it in any of all the public agitation around the subject, but it’s apparently one of the President’s main talking points to China’s big kahuna today . . . wheels within wheels?
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/prismfactsheet0608.pdf
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Dexter said on June 9, 2013 at 1:55 am
Here’s what we get when China steal USA technology. This is a Ford F150 Chinese clone. It even has a blue oval tag. They couldn’t have done this from photographs.
http://www.spendmatters.com/images/JAC-Ford-F-150-011.jpg
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David C. said on June 9, 2013 at 6:34 am
You would be surprised what can be reverse engineered from photographs. If you have good accurate photographs, a few key dimensions, and a good knowledge of descriptive geometry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_geometry it’s really not that hard. If the images are digitized and put into a good CAD system, say a pilfered copy of Catia, then it’s even easier.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9, 2013 at 7:29 am
David, are you saying they’re not even courteous enough to purchase a copy of Catia in order to render their stolen blueprints? 😀
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9, 2013 at 7:30 am
The blue lozenge is what cracks me up. Did they think: well, we’re not using that old-timey font that the “Ford” lettering is in, so they won’t notice this modernistic twist.
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David C. said on June 9, 2013 at 7:52 am
Jeff@47. I’ve heard rumors to that effect. No doubt propaganda started by a faithful running dog of the slave owning aristocracy.
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Danny said on June 9, 2013 at 10:38 am
What David speaks of:
http://www.gom.com/
Optical scanning systems like this are used commonly for reverse engineering. You pull the point clouds these sytems generate into a good CAD system and you are halfway there…. you have the basic dimensions, now you just need to establish the tolerances.
However, these tolerances are NOT trivial. This is what establishes critical fits between parts as they are subjected to operational loads, vibratory phenomena, cycles of thermal expansion, etc. In short, here this the trade off:
1. The reverse-engineered knock-off is usually a magnitude cheaper than the original.
2. But unless some real engineering and testing is put into the reverse-engineered product, it will likely fail sooner and maybe even catastrophically.
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Prospero said on June 9, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Sherri, I have no doubt that you are well-aware of private sector data mining and information sharing. You eschew facebook. Do you use Google? I also have no doubt that the vast majority of Americans go blithely through life unaware or willfully ignorant of it, except when they decide that targeted internet advertising is cool. I fail to see how my comment raised a straw man argument at all. Do I find it disappointing that President Obama has continued Shrubco policies on surveillance? Sure. Do I buy the President’s explanation about why he changed his mind? Yup.
Do I think it’s some massive encroachment on rights to privacy? Nope. Nobody is listening to your phone calls nor reading your email, unless you are in fairly constant contact with folks known to have evil intentions. The level of information gathered by government agencies is a pittance compared to what retailers share about all of us regularly. Are pols like Ron Wyden talking out of both sides of their faces on this? Absolutely. The surveillance state has been operating since 2002. Ron Wyden is a godfather of the data-mining programs, but now he’s making political hay disavowing them. Do I buy GOPers pushing this as another scandal? Right.
Why wouldn’t the Chinese truck makers just buy a couple of F-150s instead of reverse engineering from optical scans? Seems like a lot of wasted effort.
Why Steve Nash is undoubtedly the coolest guy in the NBA. Remember when he said Shock and Awe and the invasion of Iraq was stupid imperialist bullshit? David Robinson, the 7-ft. submariner from the Naval Academy said that if Nash didn’t love America he should leave. He’s Canadian, dumbass. And I guess he was right. 7-ft. guy in a sub. That’s funny.
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Prospero said on June 9, 2013 at 1:01 pm
Sherri, I have no doubt that you are well-aware of private sector data mining and information sharing. You eschew facebook. Do you use Google? I also have no doubt that the vast majority of Americans go blithely through life unaware or willfully ignorant of it, except when they decide that targeted internet advertising is cool. I fail to see how my comment raised a straw man argument at all. Do I find it disappointing that President Obama has continued Shrubco policies on surveillance? Sure. Do I buy the President’s explanation about why he changed his mind? Yup.
Do I think it’s some massive encroachment on rights to privacy? Nope. Nobody is listening to your phone calls nor reading your email, unless you are in fairly constant contact with folks known to have evil intentions. The level of information gathered by government agencies is a pittance compared to what retailers share about all of us regularly. Are pols like Ron Wyden talking out of both sides of their faces on this? Absolutely. The surveillance state has been operating since 2002. Ron Wyden is a godfather of the data-mining programs, but now he’s making political hay disavowing them. Do I buy GOPers pushing this as another scandal? Right.
Why wouldn’t the Chinese truck makers just buy a couple of F-150s instead of reverse engineering from optical scans? Seems like a lot of wasted effort.
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Prospero said on June 9, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Why Steve Nash is undoubtedly the coolest guy in the NBA. Remember when he said Shock and Awe and the invasion of Iraq was stupid imperialist bullshit? David Robinson, the 7-ft. submariner from the Naval Academy said that if Nash didn’t love America he should leave. He’s Canadian, dumbass. And I guess he was right. 7-ft. guy in a sub. That’s funny.
GOPer economic policy is a dead end in a bad part of Greektown, and it pains them that the American economy is coming back.
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Dexter said on June 9, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Prospero, while I am a big fan of Jackie Earle Haley
http://cdn.unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/jackie-earle-haley.jpg
look-alike Nash, the coolest NBA dude has to be my main man Kevin Durant. “Go play, son, mama has things for daddy to do.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvypu0AHM8A
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Sherri said on June 9, 2013 at 2:55 pm
I use both Google and Bing, but I also use Ghostery when I use them, which blocks trackers (among other things.) I’m not going to go into everything I do to protect myself as much as I can, because it’s both extensive and not enough, but I do think about it a lot.
I’m not paranoid, I’m just offended by what companies want to take from me.
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Danny said on June 9, 2013 at 3:35 pm
Why wouldn’t the Chinese truck makers just buy a couple of F-150s instead of reverse engineering from optical scans? Seems like a lot of wasted effort.
That was the point. They buy them, take them apart and scan the parts.
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Danny said on June 9, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Rest in peace, Iain. You were special and will be missed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22835047
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Prospero said on June 9, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Why scan physical parts in your possession instead of measuring them? Saving a draftsman’s wages? It seems to me that any deviation from specified tolerances is going to be magnified by this roundabout method.
Great Sherri. My point was that Americans don’t generally take such precautions, yet a huge number of vendors and advertisers are aware of what brands they favor, what books, magazines and newspapers they read, and other personal information the government snooping programs never get near, quite by design, and nobody gets hyper about it. The major difference between deployment of these programs by Shrubco and by the current administration is the clear establishment of Congressional oversight, a considerable change for the better
Nash was also behind this initiative:
http://hoopspeak.com/2010/05/phoenix-suns-sort-of-making-a-stand-for-hispanic-fans/
when Goober-nor Brewski made it illegal to drive while brown. This is what Jackie Earle Hailey looks like these days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_q214wV_Cc
He looks more like John Hurt playing Alex Cutter than like Steve Nash.
I read The Wasp Factory a long time ago. From what I remember of it Danny, I’d recommend you read Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy. Opening line:
“When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent.”
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David C. said on June 9, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Draftsman’s wages in China are so low, it’s probably cheaper to put more on and do it manually than to pay for technology. The same reason there are very few, if any, assembly robots on the Foxconn assembly lines. It’s also for the domestic market only, so close enough is likely good enough.
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coozledad said on June 9, 2013 at 8:17 pm
Awww. A spy in the house of Booz (Allen). Funny the kind of crap Republicans think it’s worth blowing through wads of cash for. Atrios is right. It’s just more goddamned Amway.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/booz-allen-nsa-leaker-
committed-grave-violation-of
Screw DC::
Bush time was Hindu Kush time
The time for monitoring was ripe, and you felt so secure
Drumbeat,, increasing drumbeat
You loved the thunder of stampeding assholes, pleading for the tools of torture
This town just wasn’t built for all of us
And there’s some bastards ought to leave
Spying, domestic spying
And while the NSA is white, there’s no need for a fright
orange, terror code orange
You are no camo-trousered grenadier , it’s diarrhea that you’re wearing
This town just wasn’t built for the gutless
And there’s some shites we ought to heave
Daily, except for Sunday
You fantasize in the cafe about the Arabs you’d spray
bullets, you’d spray with bullets
but twenty projects have a hold of you, and those who type can be heroes too
This town is filling up with Cheeto dust
And it is clinging to your sleeves
Shower, another shower
You’ve got to wash your bloody hair and airbrush history
Fucked up, you really fucked up
There is no shampoo here that will remove it, face it, you’re no Cissy Spacek
This town has David Broder hairstylists
who ‘ll set you up with a new weave
Census, the latest census
Shows people running for the doors to get away from your act
flopsweat, increasing flopsweat
You know that:
This town wasn’t built for Cheney,
wasn’t built for Sensenbrenner
This town wasn’t built for John Yoo,
wasn’t built for Von Spakowsky
And They. Need. To Leave.
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Danny said on June 9, 2013 at 10:21 pm
A great game that is played at Derrick’s house…
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l231/gearsmith/Coozle-bingo_zpsb687c673.jpg
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Brandon said on June 10, 2013 at 12:42 am
@Coozledad, thank you for the video link. I’ve never heard of Sparks, but now I’ll check out some more of their music.
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Danny said on June 10, 2013 at 1:19 am
Translation: “Sucky, sucky, mon frere.”
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Brandon said on June 10, 2013 at 3:37 am
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/saving-detroit%E2%80%99s-art-treasures-%E2%80%93-while-rest-city-picked-clean
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Brandon said on June 10, 2013 at 3:51 pm
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