kimmy

He certainly raises an excellent point. -k

I agree with AW in saying that presenting valid ID to vote is an entirely reasonable requirement. In this day and age there's no reason for any adult citizen not to have valid ID, not just for voting but for access to a wide range of services and activities that most of us take for granted. But I also agree with Argus in saying that the real purpose behind this agenda is obvious. The legislators who are pushing for voter ID laws claim they're fighting for the integrity of the democratic process, but their zeal for democracy apparently doesn't extend to fighting all the other shenanigans that have been done in the same states that are crying out for voter ID. Voter roll purges, inadequate polling facilities in areas with high concentrations of minority voters, gerrymandering, lawsuits to have polling stations removed from college campuses, phony voter registration clinics that resulted in boxes of registration applications being found in dumpsters, and on and on. You'd think that if Rick Scott and Rick Perry and their ilk were really so all-fired excited about the integrity of the democratic process, they'd be championing legislation to ban all of this kind of trickery as well. But they aren't. They just care about voter ID. Which says all you need to know about what's really on their mind. In the aftermath of the 2012 election, Republican analysts explained that their projections for a Romney victory were based on the assumption that more people would stay home. They lost because just as many young people and minorities voted in 2012 as in 2008, they concluded. Personally, I think that if your strategy for getting elected depends on having fewer people vote, it's probably a good indicator that your ideas are unpopular. But that's not how the leaders of Elephant Team see things. -k

Well, he probably has specifics about what information was being collected, how it was being analyzed, and so forth. But I agree with your point. They weren't giving Booz Hamilton contractors the launch codes, or operational information, or lists of undercover agents operating in other countries. These contractors have a clearance called "Top Secret, Compartmented", and their "compartment" was analyzing surveillance information. I doubt that the Russians or Chinese really need tips from Edward Snowden on how to run a wiretap. -k

It looks like the Bruins can be beaten if you can make them skate. -k

Update: Tesla will be able to sell directly to customers in North Carolina after all. http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/27/tesla-victory-north-carolina/ I am guessing the North Carolina Car Dealers Association couldn't put enough cash into enough politicians' re-election funds to make the legislation worthwhile. -k

Think strategically. The damage is already done, so there's nothing to be gained from killing him at this point. All they could get from killing him at this point would be extremely bad press. Snowden is too famous to kill now; if he turns up dead or vanishes, it would look suspicious. If they could have killed him before he got to China, sure, they might have. And I'm sure he'll get nabbed at some point and brought to the US for trial. -k

Every US supreme court decision is ideologically divided, due to the current composition of the US supreme court. -k

Did you even read your own link? As for the woman who voted 6 times, she's something of an internet celebrity, because she gets trotted out every time Republican boosters talk about voter ID. She's one of the very few cases they can use to demonstrate that it happens. -k

Well, that's the law in Missouri right now ( http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills121/sumpdf/HB2095I.pdf ) and it remains the law until it's struck down in ... well, probably the Supreme Court. It's taken straight from a boilerplate legislation that ALEC drew up and peddled to other Republican agricultural states as well. (why does ALEC care about protecting factory farms and feed lots from animal cruelty charges? because some ALEC sponsors have factory farms and feed lots, of course.) ALEC's lawyers are extremely confident that states have the authority to decide for themselves who qualifies as terrorists. Anyway, I've shown you a government arbitrarily deciding to declare critics of its private sector allies "terrorists". And I showed you TransCanada Pipeline educating state law enforcement agencies on they can to use anti-terrorism laws to deal with Keystone XL protestors. Giving governments carte blanche to do whatever they want in the name of fighting terrorists is a bad idea if they can decide that anybody they don't like is a terrorist. It's just begging to be abused. -k

People who are concerned about voting rights should forget about voter ID (which is a reasonable requirement, as far as I'm concerned) and focus on things like gerrymandering, voter registry purges, inadequate number of polling stations, early poll closures, and voter registration shenanigans. -k

The auto inspector was a willing participant in fraud even if the car doesn't get in a crash at all. The buyer of the car doesn't need to get crippled or killed for there to have been a crime committed. As for Moody's and S&P, they've already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on out-of-court settlements for fraud lawsuits, so it appears that their faith in their innocence isn't quite as unshakeable as your faith in their innocence. The DOJ has a fraud lawsuit lined up against S&P. With the quotes from the article Cybercoma provided, it looks like an open-shut case. And it's just hard for me to believe that these lawsuits are strong enough to convinced these firms to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on settlements, yet there apparently isn't enough evidence to lay criminal charges against anybody. Does that seem right? -k

Ok, so what about him? Whether the American public likes him or hates him, he's getting charged and going to jail, and the public's opinion of him isn't going to change any of that. Whether he was trying to be a hero, or whether he's just a douche, he's going away for a very long time once Uncle Sam gets ahold of him. I don't see much point getting emotionally invested in Edward Snowden. Maybe he really is a douche. String him up, whatever. I just hope that people remember the real story after this Where In The World Is Carmen Santiago? stuff is finished with. I was reading yesterday that 483,000 private contractors have access to the same information that Snowden did. (cite) That's a mind-blowing number. I would think that if the information Snowden has is as all-fired crucial to national security as his detractors say, it wouldn't be in the hands of half a million private contractors plus almost a million government employees as well. If 1.4 million people have access to information that could threaten your security, you're counting on way too many people to keep your secrets. -k

If an automobile inspector certified a car to be safe to drive and it was later discovered that the inspector hadn't inspected the car at all and had certified the car to be safe because the guy selling the car paid him to certify it safe, that inspector is going to be doing jail time. "Buyer beware, LOL!" isn't going to cut it. Buyer beware remains excellent advice, but it does not get that automobile inspector off the hook for being a willing participant in fraud. These bond rating agencies were also willing participants in fraud. No amount of trying to shift the blame elsewhere can change that. Normally I would think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Obama's spineless lackeys would do anything about it, but with all the PR trouble Obama has had of late, stringing up a few Wall Street fraudsters might be a way to get some good press for a change. -k

A point worth considering: -k

I think that there's a strong argument to be made that plowing through peoples' phone records is exactly the kind of unwarranted search they had in mind when they wrote the Fourth Amendment. But I'm certainly no legal scholar. There's people much more qualified people from all across the political spectrum who are making that assertion. That's why I want the pro-surveillance people to be forced to confront the issue instead of trying to make it about Edward Snowden. I thought that you and I had a lot in common in that we've both lost a lot of faith in the people who we trust with power. And I'm sure that you haven't fallen for this "if you aren't talking on the phone with terrorists, you have nothing to fear!" line that the President has been peddling. "If you don't have anything to hide, you've got nothing to be afraid of!" is a phrase that ought to strike terror into the heart of any citizen if it's being said to them by a police officer asking to come inside their home. One of the reasons that "if you aren't on the phone with terrorists you have nothing to fear!" isn't a very reassuring answer is that declaring people to be terrorists appears to be something of a trend in the US. Consider new laws being promoted by ALEC and considered in a number of US states that declare filming animal cruelty at factory farms to be an act of eco-terrorism and a matter of Homeland Security. On Friday there was a news item where the Deputy Director of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation informs a citizen that complaining about water quality could be an act of terrorism. TransCanada Pipeline is apparently collaborating with law enforcement authorities in several US states to look into ways of pursuing Keystone XL protestors as terrorists. If you give the authorities extraordinary powers in the name of "fighting terrorism", it doesn't take a wild imagination to anticipate people who are inconvenient to the state's biggest interests be labeled as terrorists. If states with powerful agriculture lobbies can decide that somebody who films a calf being skinned alive is an "eco terrorist", how long before somebody who blogs photos of open-top mining is deemed a terrorist in states where coal mining has a powerful lobby? The supporters of this program say that it's just monitoring people who make phone calls to foreign terrorists, but the rules also say that if the NSA turns up relevant domestic information, they forward it to the FBI. So if the program turns over information about domestic terrorism to domestic agencies, and states have arbitrary authority to decide who they consider a terrorist, the president's assurance that "you don't need to worry unless you're on the phone with terrorists" rings hollow. -k

Speaking of season 4, George RR Martin hinted at some exciting plot twists that are coming up next season! -k

I'm not aware of any claims that Snowden is actually sharing any information beyond what he already revealed to the public in The Guardian newspaper article. The charges of "aiding and abetting" America's enemies are founded on the claim that by revealing this program's existence, he has exposed their "security playbook" to the enemy (as one congressman put it.) I'm not aware of anyone claiming that he's going around shopping additional secrets that he didn't already reveal to the public; and the legal charges of "aiding and abetting" America's enemies are all founded on the initial newspaper report that you said you approved of. -k

Can you elaborate? The damage-control strategy in response to the surveillance revelations seems to be to attack Edward Snowden. It seems like people who are framing this discussion in terms of whether they "respect" Snowden or "have sympathy" for him or whether they think he is a "hypocrite" for seeking refuge in countries with crappy human rights records have fallen for that strategy, by letting the conversation be about Snowden instead of the program that he exposed. I think that the people responsible for this program ought to be forced to defend it on its merits and its legality, not on the basis of whether Edward Snowden is a douchebag. -k

Does it matter more than Edward Snowden's travel itinerary? -k

So what's the message here? We should forget about the Fourth Amendment because Edward Snowden is a douchebag? -k

Strong disagree on that one; I find it fascinating to look at old threads and revisit old opinions, especially my own. It's interesting to see what ways I've changed over the years and what ways I haven't. However, having the thread automatically locked after a period of extended inactivity might be plausible. But is it worthwhile? -k

"I was for it before I was against it." -Kerry. "I was against it before I was for it." -Obama. In 2008, one of Obama's campaign promises was to protect whistleblowers. And it turns out that he has actually cracked down harder on whistleblowers than any president before. I think the attacks on Snowden are beside the point. He fled to Hong Kong. He's off to Russia now. His girlfriend is a stripper. All of that may be true. So what? -k

It's big news, obviously, but there's not really a lot to discuss. There's a climate change angle, apparently. There's a land use and urban planning angle. There's a question of how much of a role the government has in aiding the people who have been affected. But for the flood itself, there's not really a lot to say except that I have best wishes for all the people affected. -k

He must give back to the community because it played a role in his success and makes his continued success possible. The bolded part is crap. Business people receive recognition aplenty. But it's a two-way street. The Heroic Job Creators side refuses to give recognition to the fact that they do business in an environment that makes a successful business possible, and is instead working furiously to undermine the foundations of that environment. Claiming he couldn't do it without the community is a plain fact. Sorry if that hurts the feelings of the Heroic Job Creator, but it's a fact. I keep asking you why Mogadishu isn't the business capital of the world, when it sounds like an idyllic haven for you John Galt types to function in. Low corporate taxes! No job-killing regulations to hold back business! Truly, the Somali entrepreneur has been unshackled in a way that his American counterpart can only dream of! It kind of makes you wonder why Willard hasn't packed up and headed there already, doesn't it? The community *is* making recompense, both by repairing the damage and caring for the injured. -k

Most bailouts have been financed by government debt. Most government debt exists in the form of government bonds and bills and securities that are held by private citizens and privately owned funds. Most bailouts have, therefore, been funded by borrowing from citizens. So the idea you're trying to sell just doesn't work. Bailouts aren't always unpopular, either. While people are certainly angry at the Wall Street bailouts, the same is not true in general. For example, you'll recall how damaging the "let Detroit go bankrupt" theme was to the Romney campaign. You make another faulty assumption: you assume that the expectation of a bailout was behind the recklessness in the first place. The problem with that is obvious: there was so much money to be made in the short term that the long term became irrelevant. The CEO who ran Lehman Brothers into the ground pocketed several hundred million dollars in performance bonuses in the years leading up to its collapse. Why would he even care if there was a bailout? If you could make $250 million in take-home pay from your company between 2001 and 2007, why would you worry if your company went out of business in 2008? The whole industry worked the same way. Brokers got paid on the sheer number of mortgages they could shovel out the door, not whether the mortgages were smart long-term investments. The agents at AIG who wrote all of those disastrous insurance policies on Wall Street MBS products got bonuses for the number of policies they wrote, not whether those policies were good long term risks. A reward system that prioritizes short term gain over long-term stability created the mess, not the expectation of a bailout when everything went south. The problem was not that people expected the government to save their companies when the collapse happened. The problem was that nobody had any incentive to even care whether a collapse would happen, because they were rewarded for the sheer volume of work they could do in the short term, not the long-term quality of their work. -k