psybelle

I spent a chunk of today kind of laughing at myself for last night's bit of edginess. I'm fully aware that I'm "doing this to myself"...

But really. It doesn't take much doing....


The White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of John Brennan's swearing-in ceremony as Director of the CIA.

“There’s one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters gathered for their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

That is, he swore on a copy of the Constitution that did not contain the Bill of Rights: no First Amendment, no Fourth Amendment...

Now, that's symbolism.

This one's important - it's a review of sorts of the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign (and a small slice of history). What worked, some of how/why it worked, what the surprises were, what might be good ideas for next time. Because there will be a next time...

http://dashes.com/anil/2012/01/the-history-and-future-of-web-protest.html

GoDaddy changed its mind about supporting SOPA... Bad PR (or at least *more* of it) and the rush of folks ditching for companies opposed to the blacklist bill well in advance of the proposed 12/29 date to leave GoDaddy probably had a little bit to do with that.


There are still many companies that support the bill (Wednesday's list is here, hasn't been updated to reflect GoDaddy's shift), and some of them might be "too big to boycott" (as JP Barlow put it)... but none of them are too big to completely ignore public opinion.

Personally, I don't think Mastercard and Visa are too big to boycott, at least in part... I don't know about you all, but I own too much damn plastic and am in the process of slowly cutting back to one "emergency card" and maybe one "daily use" card (and, no, I don't use all the plastic I own - it's another reason I'm cutting back). I'll happily write a letter to both behemoths stating that I'm cutting back in part because of the irregularities in the banking industry over the last couple of years (several of my card-issuing banks have been implicated in unsavory dealings), but that their support of a bill that will actually make the internet less secure is hastening my process of weaning myself off the use of plastic entirely.

I may or may not send polite and slightly puzzled letters to the cosmetics companies on that list, asking why they're supporting bad internet legislation... But I'm not a heavy customer of any of them, don't feel that "threatening to leave forever" is particularly useful.

While we still don't know what sort of coordination there was between the various mayors on that infamous conference call (or what sort of support they had), there is now strong evidence for coordination between police chiefs and possible links to DHS.


Some good stuff on pepper spray and excessive force... Including kickbacks:

"If you see references to the FBI’s endorsement of pepper spray, look closely to see if the author also notes that FBI agent Thomas Ward, the person responsible for the research, 'pleaded guilty to accepting a $57,500 kickback from a pepper spray company.' That was 1996; he was sentenced to two months in prison and he was fired from the FBI."

And the Ninth Circuit Court's opinion on what constitutes excessive force:

"In Headwaters II ((August 26, 2011), the Ninth Circuit held that police officers employ excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment when they use pepper spray upon an individual who is engaged in the commission of a non-violent misdemeanor and who is disobeying a police officer’s order but otherwise poses no threat to the officer or others."

Looks like the lobbying firms are worried... The video clip is interesting, the memo is interesting. And, yes, this is one memo, from one firm, a year in advance of the elections. Expect lots of lies, lots of ugly; anybody want to start a betting pool as to when martial law is declared?

San Francisco still had paper ballots to mark in the last election...

But the article in Salon makes me think that absentee ballots might be the way to go, elsewhere...

I suspect that if I grew up in NYC with a name like "Tony Baloney", I might not have much of a sense of humor either... but I don't think I'd go so far as to mace nonviolent/penned female protesters. (The Atlantic has a really gruesome slow-motion annotated version of the video that I can't recommend simply because it's so so horrifying. The implications are ugly enough on their own.)

And it doesn't help that Southwest Airlines seems to think that same-sex affection is not ok (they get to police passengers' size/weight, wardrobe, and kissing partners? guess who I'm not flying!)...


I'm not sure what all else I'm pissed off about this evening... but this might well be enough. (to last me for the next two weeks.)

... and not in the funny way.

Nixon lives on: http://verdict.justia.com/2011/09/23/gaming-american-democracy

It's The Smartest Guys in the Room all over again, with oil rather than California's electricity: Rolling Stone has a short piece on oil speculation.


I am utterly disgusted.