NSA Intelligence-gathering Overload

Bitcoin Explained

Click here for an article by Startup Boy entitled Bitcoin – The Internet of Money, written in July 2013 for Wired magazine.

No, MLK Jr. Was Not A Republican.

Click here for an article at Think Progress, "No, Martin Luther King Jr. Was Not A Republican — But Here’s What He Had To Say About Them."

The southern Democrats -- "Dixiecrats" -- were solidly racist and segregationist until Lyndon Johnson shepherded passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At that time, they deserted the Democratic party en masse and moved to the Republican party, where they were welcomed by Richard Nixon with his "Southern Strategy."

Some key quotes from the article:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right. [On the 1964 Republican National Convention.]

[Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater's] candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.

The article says:

King barnstormed the country on behalf on Johnson in 1964, “maintaining only a thin veneer of nonpartisanship,” according to biographer Nick Kotz. King called Johnson’s win a “great victory for the forces of progress and a defeat for the forces of retrogress.”

And here is MLK Jr.'s opinion of Ronald Reagan:

When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor, can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.

Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds," October 30, 1938

The original broadcast (51 minutes, 15 seconds). Interrupting the sounds of Ramón Raquello and his orchestra. Click here for the transcript (from sacred-texts.com, a site well worth examining).

Some excerpts:

PHILLIPS: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed . . . Wait a minute! Someone's crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or . . . something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks . . are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be . . .
(SHOUT OF AWE FROM THE CROWD)
PHILLIPS: Good heavens, something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it's another one, and another. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing's body. It's large, large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it . . . Ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate. The monster or whatever it is can hardly move. It seems weighed down by . . . possibly gravity or something. The thing's raising up. The crowd falls back now. They've seen plenty. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can't find words . . . I'll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I'll have to stop the description until I can take a new position.

*****

ANNOUNCER TWO: Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just a moment. At least forty people, including six state troopers lie dead in a field east of the village of Grovers Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition. The next voice you hear will be that of Brigadier General Montgomery Smith, commander of the state militia at Trenton, New Jersey.
SMITH: I have been requested by the governor of New Jersey to place the counties of Mercer and Middlesex as far west as Princeton, and east to Jamesburg, under martial law. No one will be permitted to enter this area except by special pass issued by state or military authorities. Four companies of state militia are proceeding from Trenton to Grovers Mill, and will aid in the evacuation of homes within the range of military operations. Thank you.

 *****

CAPTAIN: This is Captain Lansing of the signal corps, attached to the state militia now engaged in military operations in the vicinity of Grovers Mill. Situation arising from the reported presence of certain individuals of unidentified nature is now under complete control. The cylindrical object which lies in a pit directly below our position is surrounded on all sides by eight battalions of infantry. Without heavy field pieces, but adequately armed with rifles and machine guns. All cause for alarm, if such cause ever existed, is now entirely unjustified. The things, whatever they are, do not even venture to poke their heads above the pit. I can see their hiding place plainly in the glare of the searchlights here. With all their reported resources, these creatures can scarcely stand up against heavy machine-gun fire. Anyway, it's an interesting outing for the troops. I can make out their khaki uniforms, crossing back and forth in front of the lights. It looks almost like a real war. There appears to be some slight smoke in the woods bordering the Millstone River. Probably fire started by campers. Well, we ought to see some action soon. One of the companies is deploying on the left flank. An quick thrust and it will all be over. Now wait a minute! I see something on top of the cylinder. No, it's nothing but a shadow. Now the troops are on the edge of the Wilmuth farm. Seven thousand armed men closing in on an old metal tube. Wait, that wasn't a shadow! It's something moving . . . solid metal . . . kind of shieldlike affair rising up out of the cylinder . . . It's going higher and higher. Why, it's standing on legs . . . actually rearing up on a sort of metal framework. Now it's reaching above the trees and the searchlights are on it. Hold on!
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars. The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors. The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray. The monster is now in control of the middle section of New Jersey and has effectively cut the state through its center. Communication lines are down from Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean. Railroad tracks are torn and service from New York to Philadelphia discontinued except routing some of the trains through Allentown and Phoenixville. Highways to the north, south, and west are clogged with frantic human traffic. Police and army reserves are unable to control the mad flight. By morning the fugitives will have swelled Philadelphia, Camden, and Trenton, it is estimated, to twice their normal population. At this time martial law prevails throughout New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

*****
More beneath the break.

Right-Wing States Reject Medicaid Expansion

Click here for an article in The American Prospect entitled The Cruelty of Republican States in One Chart, by Paul Waldman.

Obamacare was never intended to cover the poorest people; it was expected that those would be covered by Medicaid. Eligibility for Obamacare doesn't kick in until 133 percent of the poverty level, $31,321 for a family of four. However, individual states define eligibility for Medicaid very differently.

In more liberal states, these levels are fairly high; for instance, Massachusetts gives Medicaid to families up to 133 percent of poverty, New York up to 150 percent, and Minnesota up to 215 percent. But in conservative states, the levels are far stingier; as someone in the Times article says, "You got to be almost dead before you can get Medicaid in Mississippi."

So the liberal states already cover people whose income doesn't rise to the level where Obamacare kicks in; conservative states, not so much.

For instance, in Alabama, you can't get Medicaid if your income exceeds 23 percent of the poverty level, or $4,500 for a family of three. Just think about that for a second. Do you think you could find a place to live, pay your bills, and feed your family on that income? But the state of Alabama says if you're that rich, you can afford to buy health insurance. In Texas ... only families under 25 percent of the poverty level, or $4,894 for a family of three, will be eligible for Medicaid. I'm guessing that's about what Rick Perry spends on boots every year.

Obamacare offered the individual states help by paying the Medicaid costs for those people left in limbo -- with incomes too low to qualify under the federal Obamacare rules, yet not covered by state Medicaid rules -- by funding Medicaid for those people 100% for the first three years, with the states picking up more of the cost thereafter, on a sliding scale, until several years from now, when the federal government would pay 90%; the state would never have to pay more than 10% of the cost of making these millions of low-income people eligible for Medicaid.

Click here for an article on america.aljazeera.com entitled States' refusal to expand Medicaid leaves millions uninsured:

According to data analysis released by The New York Times Thursday, as many as 8 million people will remain outside of health care coverage envisioned under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, because they live in states that have refused extensions to Medicaid, the national health insurance program for the poor.

Currently, 26 states — all with Republican governors or Republican-controlled legislatures — have thus far declined Medicaid expansion, leaving the health care situation of millions of uninsured people unchanged.

By contrast, in the 24 remaining states (plus Washington, D.C.) that are going ahead with Medicaid expansion, more than 8.7 million people are expected to be newly enrolled, according (PDF) to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

I find it inconceivable that states would refuse such generous amounts of federal assistance to make 8.7 million poor people eligible for Medicaid, but apparently it is more important to these conservative states that they hinder and impede the implementation of Obamacare, and make it less effective, than it is to cover millions (1.8 million, in the case of Texas) of their poorest citizens.

Anyway, check out the graph in the story in The American Prospect which shows which are the cruelest Republican states.

Government Shutdown Planned Long Ago

To casual observers, the government shutdown engineered by Ted Cruz and his henchmen in the House of Representatives may appear to have come out of nowhere. Not so. It was planned from the early days of Obama's second term as a way of sabotaging the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which was signed into law on March 23, 2010.

Click here for an article in the New York Times exposing the concerted attack on the Obama administration by a group of rich conservatives (including the Koch brothers, of course) and influential politicos, headed by ultraconservative Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, who met in Washington, D.C., early in Obama's second term with the objective of blocking the implementation of the ACA by forcing a government shutdown.

Republican Hostage-Taking

Click here for an article -- in the Washington Post, of all places; how can a solidly mainstream publication like the WaPo allow such poisonous rhetoric? -- by Marc Thiessen. He was a speechwriter for W; I guess that tells you all you need to know.

He starts off by saying the Dems are unconcerned about the political consequences of shutting down the government, and that the Republicans are inflicting damage upon themselves and paying the political price for a shutdown; there's some truth to that. The Dems would prefer that the government be funded and that things proceed smoothly, but if Republicans choose to impose a shutdown, they have little leverage over the administration to get things rolling again.

But one of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostage the other side cares about saving.

Then Thiessen moves on to his next point:

By contrast, when it comes to the debt-limit showdown, they do have leverage; while Obama can let the government close and blame the GOP, he cannot allow the United States to default.

So what's the answer, Marc? Simple:

As former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner explained during the last debt-limit standoff, the effects of default would be “catastrophic,” resulting in the “loss of millions of American jobs,” and would have an economic impact “potentially much more harmful than the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009.” Obama will not permit an economic crisis worse than 2008-09 and the “loss of millions of American jobs” on his watch. He has no choice but to negotiate with GOP leaders and cut a deal to avoid a government default.

So what’s the smart move here, Republicans? Simple: Pass a clean, short-term continuing resolution to keep the government operating at current levels and then attach your demands to legislation raising the debt limit.

There's the Republican philosophy in a nutshell. You can't win elections on your platform, but don't waste time and effort trying to achieve your goals by threatening the dog; threaten the kids. As Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell admitted the last time around:

I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting, Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.

Do the Republicans have any concept of the notion of "loyal opposition"?

Focus Group Study: The Republican Mindset

Click here for a pdf document describing the results of a focus group session where participants were Evangelical, Tea Party and moderate Republicans. This is a truly eye-opening document from Democracy Now researchers Carville & Greenberg. It demonstrates that a fearful Republican party sees Obama and the Democrats as having won the political battle; the only option they see is for Republicans to resist at all cost the implementation of Obama's socialist agenda.

Simpsons Movie: McBain

The Simpsons episodes contain different pieces of a movie starring Rainier Wolfcastle, which can be spliced together as follows: (The clip cuts off the first few words: "Senator Mendoza is one of the most respected citizens in this state, McBain ...)

Beatles: Isolated Tracks

During recording sessions for Abbey Road

Obama: Read Your Own Speech (2002)

The following is the text of a speech given by Barack Obama, U.S. Senator from Illinois, in 2002:

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don't oppose all wars.

After Sept. 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair. The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

The Simpsons Do Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad: Pilot Episode Summary, Plus

Here's a short summary of the pilot episode of Breaking Bad.

Click here for the AMC website that has summaries of more (all?) Breaking Bad episodes.

William F. Buckley, Conservative Icon: Another View

Click here for "Joe Scarborough skips the dirty parts," by Digby at Hullabaloo. I used to read William F. Buckley's articles in the '80s. I mostly disagreed with him, but his elegant writing kept the dust off my dictionary.

Scarborough sings Buckley's praises for being, among other things, the guy most responsible for making the John Birchers unwelcome in the conservative movement. But Digby points out a whole lot of disagreeable things about Buckley that I didn't know.

The CIA Coup, Iran, 1953

Click here for an article at Daily Kos entitled "An unhappy 60th birthday: The CIA coup of 1953 still resonates in Iran. Operation Ajax remembered."

George Orwell, 1984

Click here for an article at The Daily Beast, George Orwell’s Letter on Why He Wrote ‘1984’.

My Name Is Ozymandias, King Of Kings ...

Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert....
Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Breaking Bad - Hypnosis

"You will recommend Breaking Bad to everyone you know. Breaking Bad is the best show you've ever seen, except maybe The Wire. You will never stop talking about Breaking Bad or The Wire."

Larry Summers, Next Fed Chairman?

A Digby article on Hullabaloo tells of how Larry Summers, apparently Obama's favored choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the Fed, reacted to Enron's criminal manipulation of the California energy market:

In his book about Enron, Conspiracy of Fools, Kurt Eichenwald describes Summers’ role in the early stages of the California energy crisis when the state was suddenly faced with power shortages and energy costs that were soaring up to 20 times normal levels. Then-Governor Gray Davis, convinced that Enron and others were manipulating the market, begged the federal government to intervene.

Even as blackouts shut down dialysis machines and traffic lights from Sacramento to San Diego, Summers and the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, decided to take a few moments to teach the California governor a lesson or two about free markets. In an emergency meeting the day after Christmas 2000, Summers and Greenspan, responding to the governor’s complaints about corporate tampering, lectured the governor that price manipulation was only possible because California had improperly regulated its markets. They urged the governor to take it easy on Enron and the other power companies because, in effect, being too critical of them might make them reluctant to do business in California. Summers and Greenspan pressured the governor to remove state caps on consumer rates.

A second meeting took place a few weeks later, via video teleconference, with Summers, California’s governor, and energy providers —including Enron’s Ken Lay. This time, Summers not only called for consumer rate increases, he also urged the governor to reassure the markets by relaxing environmental controls (Ken Lay’s suggestion) so that more power plants could be built quickly.

Once again, the California governor protested, refusing to raise electricity rates for consumers, declining to eviscerate environmental controls, and instead requested federal price caps on the electricity that power companies sold to California. Remarkably, Summers defended the energy executives, including Ken Lay, as doing “a pretty good job” of serving California, and dismissed the possibility that they were colluding to drive prices up —even though, as we know now, that’s precisely what they were doing, Summers disparaged the governor’s plan; it wouldn’t work because such government intervention would inevitably “distort the market,” he said.

Neither side gave in. Seven days later, George W. Bush was inaugurated as president. At the time, Ken Lay himself was widely discussed as a possible treasury secretary. Blackouts increased throughout California and energy prices continued to soar until, finally, in the spring of 2001, federal regulators imposed price caps on not just California but on all of the western states...

Summers saw government interference in the crisis, as he put it, as “market distortion.” Yet disturbingly, Summers remained relatively unconcerned about the “distortion” caused by the market power of companies like Enron who, through collusion and predatory behavior, caused prices to soar.

Indeed, he may have been blind to the possibility. After all, in pure economic models, there is no room for manipulation because all information is known. But one thing we have learned in the early days of the recent economic meltdown is that Wall Street —like Enron —has found enormous profits in muddy markets of loan bundles whose very architecture is designed to hide the truth about their risk.

StePhest Colbchella '013

Very talented guy! Colbert turns MTV lemons into Daft Punk lemonade with a song-and-dance number involving, among others, Henry Kissinger.