Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

A spaceship sent from Earth to explore the planet Mercury has discovered a giant spider living there. The creature is 40 kilometers wide.

Scientists writing for the magazine New Scientist (what happened to the old scientist, I’d like to know) admit that they categorize the meeting of the spaceship and the spider was a “close encounter”. Yet, trying to be coy, so as not to provoke panic among Earthlings, the scientists merely called the spider a “strange spider-shaped feature”.

Well, let’s think now. What is most shaped like a spider? Answer: A spider! Clearly, the most obvious explanation for this “spider-shaped feature” is that it’s a spider.

Besides, the name of the Earth spaceship that was sent to Mercury was Messenger. Any fool can understand that one does not send a messenger to a place where it is believed that there is no one to hear a message. Scientists, it seems, have known about the giant spider living on Mercury for some time, and they have reason to believe that the Mercury spider is intelligent enough to understand out language.

What else can this giant spider do? Travel through outer space, perhaps?

The bad news: There is not believed to be very much for spiders to eat on the planet Mercury. That goes double for a giant spider.

Earth, on the other hand, is filled with food – enough to feed even a giant 40-kilometer spider for years.

We can expect that giant spider from Mercury to visit the Earth soon, and we should expect it to be very hungry.

Prepare your underground shelter now.

I saw this calendar in the shopping mall today, and it pretty much says everything that needs to be said about the presidential campaign of Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani was engaged in a giant sadistic bet. He was betting that Americans would still be so terrified of the weak terrorist threat that they would clamor to him, begging to be rescued. Save us, Rudy! Save us, Sir Rudolph! So, Giuliani sat, counting down the days, waiting for the terrorist attack that he was sure would come, to propel him to victory. Alas for Giuliani’s plans, but nicely for the rest of us, no terrorists have had the werewithal to attack. The spectre of a looming attack has proven to be just a spectre.

So it is that Giuliani’s new year has been stuck in the past, right next to Father Knows Best calendars, as at the shopping mall. Giuliani’s time is long over.

Bye bye, Rudolph.

We’ve been writing about the Protect America Act here at Irregular Times now for about six months, so our regular readers know the danger of the law, which allows functionally unrestricted electronic spying against American citizens by the U.S. government. The FISA Amendments Act, which would renew the Protect America Act, and make its spy powers permanent, is now being debated in the Senate, but an equivalent law, only lacking telecommunications corporate immunity, has already been passed.

Though that House vote is done with, there still is something that can be done about it. Punish the Democrats who betrayed the American people by voting in favor of government spying against us.

In Georgia, one of the congressional Democrats who has been targeted by outraged Democratic voters is Representative Jim Marshall. Jim Marshall has a long record of collaboration with the Bush Republicans. He voted for Patriot Act, and the Military Commissions Act, and for starting the Iraq War too. Whenever a vital vote comes up in Congress, Jim Marshall falls in with the failed ideology of George W. Bush.

Democrat Robert Nowak has stood up to challenge Jim Marshall in this year’s congressional primary. But, is Nowak a better Democrat than Jim Marshall? Oh, you bet he is.

Here’s what Robert Nowak has to say about Jim Marshall’s support for the Protect America Act, and its programs of government spying against law-abiding American citizens:

“The latest demand from President Bush, that the US Congress shield telecommunication providers from liability for breaking federal law, is a real step backwards in the important mission of authorizing an effective intelligence surveillance program. Congress should not give blanket immunity for any unlawful acts, and it should renew its call for increased oversight of the telecom providers that may have broken federal surveillance laws.

Further, the US Congress must not budge in insisting that any surveillance program with the capability of eavesdropping on US citizens be subject to court oversight.

Congress should insist on codifying in the statute a court order requirement for any surveillance done on American citizens.

This last August, Representative Marshall voted for a temporary bill that allowed for expanded wiretapping and surveillance on Americans without a court order. Allowing that regime to continue is unacceptable.”

Many in the corporate world are having a knee jerk reaction to support the Republican proposal to, through the extension of the Protect America Act in the FISA Amendments Act, give telecommunications companies legal immunity from the assistance they have given to the government in conducting massive electronic spying operations against American citizens while those operations were against the law. Their automatic impulse is to support the Republican Party. In this case, however, to do so is directly in contradiction to their economic interests.

Corporations do have a responsibility to the government – to follow the law. Corporations also have responsibilities to their customers, to honor their privacy agreements. If corporations show that their legal agreements with customers no longer have any weight, what basis is there for trust in the marketplace any longer?

It is absolutely to claim that America can only be secure from terrorism when the government is allowed to conduct massive electronic spying operations against American citizens AND businesses without any judicial review or congressional oversight. In fact, America cannot be secure from terrorism when power over communications is so centralized that free and open communication within and between corporations and citizens is limited by self-censorship. A nation of citizens afraid to talk to each other openly is a nation where no one, including the government can know what is going on.

The FISA Amendments Act legislation goes far beyond reasonable reform. It is a threat to the independence of business from government and to the liberty of the individual citizen.

No one can conduct business when they aren’t assured of private communications. If people in business believe that government spies may be eavesdropping upon any of their electronic conversations, innovation, cooperation and sales will grind down until they are excruciatingly slow. Without the ability to secure proprietary information, all the competitive advantages built up over the last 15 years through the development of electronic communication would come to naught.

The FISA Amendments Act would indeed give legal immunity to corporations like AT&T, Google and Yahoo, for cooperating with the federal government in spying against Americans’ private communications. However, that legal immunity is no protection. In fact, such immunity would strip corporations of any legal justification for refusing to cooperate with government electronic spying programs.

If the FISA Amendments Act, no company could guarantee its customers privacy. That would have a chilling effect on all business, not just individual communication.

The American economy cannot function without freedom of speech, the right to free assembly, and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure. That’s why American business ought to come together with civil libertarians and demand that the FISA Amendments Act be voted down by the United States Senate.

In dissecting what went wrong for Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, some attention needs to be given to the issue of time. Exit polls show that Clinton’s greatest segment of support came from people who had made up their minds over one month ago.

That means that it’s likely that something happened in the last month that made undecided voters choose to not vote for Clinton. What was it that happened? It’s hard to say for sure. It might have been Barack Obama’s come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses.

On the other hand, it might have been the attacks that went back and forth between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over the last couple of weeks. The same exit polls show that while 70 percent of voting South Carolina Democrats thought that Clinton’s attacks against Obama were unfair, only 57 percent of voting South Carolina Democrats thought that Obama’s attacks against Clinton were unfair.

Whatever the reality of which attacks were accurate and fair, it seems that Clinton came out of the squabbles looking the worse.

This far out blast from the past come from the Democratic Caucus:

How much did a gallon of gasoline cost when George W. Bush took office (and I put the emphasis on took)?

$1.39

Can you imagine how much your monthly budget would change if the price of gasoline were back down to that level?

It can be done – if America invests heavily in solar, wind, and geothermal power. When I say “America invests”, I mean the American government.

Let’s end the economy-destroying military occupation of Iraq, and redirect that budget to implementing green power, back here in the USA where the investment will be returned to the government in the form of taxes resulting from a stronger, more efficient economy. Those bullets in Iraq don’t bring anyone any economic benefit. Windmills keep on giving, long after their initial deployment.

Drop energy prices, not bombs.

Robocalls are tacky even when they carry the best of messages. I hate it when I get a telephone call in the middle of dinner, and it’s just some machine playing a pre-recorded message to me from some politician who wants my vote. The message doesn’t let me talk back and give my opinion. It just gives me that robotic message and then hangs up.

How rude.

This politician thinks that I’m going to vote for someone who doesn’t even have the decency to have a human being talk to me? No. Politicians who use robocalls are indicating the disrespect they have for voters, and suggest that if they’re elected, they won’t listen.

Robocalls get even worse, though, when they’re used by a politician to attack another candidate. That’s what Hillary Clinton has been doing in South Carolina, and she’s been doing it to attack John Edwards. John Edwards, for goodness sakes!

Maybe this is why Hillary Clinton had such a miserable showing in South Carolina.

Interrupt voters’ private time to have a robot spew a negative message at them over the telephone? Only the Clintons could be so arrogant as to think that would help their campaign.

Whatever little tender moment Hillary Clinton was able to create in New Hampshire has been destroyed with tactics like this. Why can’t she learn to stay positive?

In his latest eruption of idiocy, Bill Clinton says of his wife Hillary, “She and John McCain are very close. They always laugh that if they wind up being the nominees of their parties, it would be the most civilized election in American history and probably put the voters to sleep.”

Ha. Ha. Ha… What?!?

Since when would it be a good thing to put the voters to sleep?

This statement by Bill Clinton is doing Hillary Clinton no favors. It exhibits everything that’s wrong with the Hillary Clinton campaign. As a senator, Hillary Clinton has made cozy allegiances with Republicans, and voted along with them to advance their agenda.

Hillary Clinton has become “very close” with John McCain, and will be civilized if she runs against him for President, but she treats Barack Obama like a dog, with robocalls that slur “Barack Hussein Obama”.

Why the hell would Democrats want a presidential nominee who treats Republicans with kid gloves, but attacks fellow Democrats with savagery?

Bill Clinton’s comment is also a not very subtle warning to the activist progressive Democratic grassroots: The Clintons will run a “civilized” campaign, which means that the backbone gets thrown out the window. Uppity grassroots Democrats who demand strong action against the Republicans will not be tolerated. Progressives will be shut out of the process. This confirms my suspicion that Bill Clinton is determined to keep new Democratic voters out of power.

Hey, if you want a Democratic presidential nominee who will go soft on the Republican agenda, and follow the Joseph Lieberman path of giving a big hug John McCain and his plans for an American presence in Iraq of 50 years, then Hillary Clinton is a good pick for you.

If you want a Democratic presidential nominee who will actually represent Democrats, then you’ll need to vote for someone else.

As for myself, let me make this clear, Bill Clinton: This Democrat will not go to sleep.

In the summer of the North, Greenland lost record amounts of ice last year, and the Arctic Ocean’s summer ice cap was reduced to a small size never seen before. Now it’s the summer of the South, and the same activity is being seen in Antarctica, which is losing its ice at a rate almost as fast as Greenland. The rate of ice loss, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has increased by 75 percent over the last ten years because glaciers are speeding up in their flow to the Antarctic seas. That happens when water from the melting ice lubricates the bottom of the glacier, easing its flow over the ground beneath.

The team’s results do not include data from 2007, the second-warmest year on record. Eric Rignot, who led the study, comments, “Ice sheets are responding faster to climate warming than anticipated.”

En lieu of the recent posts on the main blog about the FISA ordeal, I thought I should share this little story I came across when I logged on to Yahoor today.

(Link)

Senate delays eavesdropping vote
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 39 minutes ago

The Senate on Thursday signaled support for granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government conduct warrantless eavesdropping, a sign that the contentious provision may be headed for approval next week.

On a strong 60-36 vote, senators rejected an amendment that would have killed the immunity provision and strengthened the powers of a secret court to oversee the surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States.

Further action on the legislation was delayed until Monday, pushing Congress closer to a Feb. 1 deadline for enacting a new law. If a new law is not signed by the president by then, some eavesdropping practices that are now legal would be prohibited.

The Bush administration is insisting that any new law also protect from potentially crippling civil lawsuits those telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, R-Nev., blamed Republicans for the delay, saying they were trying to block a series of amendments majority Democrats sought to offer.

“It appears the president and Republicans want failure. They don’t want a bill,” Reid said.

The draft bill, written by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law, first enacted in 1978, dictates when federal agents must obtain court permission before tapping phone and computer lines inside the United States to gather intelligence on foreign threats. Agents may tap lines outside the country without court oversight.

It was the second time in six weeks the Senate had taken up the FISA modernization bill, only to see action stymied. Reid abruptly closed down debate in December when it became clear the Senate couldn’t finish work before the holiday break.

Most vexing to the intelligence agencies, without an extension of the law the government would return to needing individual court orders to listen in on any communication that passes through U.S. telecommunications switches and computer servers — even those that are between people who are outside the country. This is not required by FISA, according to legal experts, but became the practice over time to provide firms with legal protections.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., on Thursday proposed extending the existing law for 30 days to buy the Senate additional time to produce a bill. The House completed its version of the bill last fall.

In a move to resolve the immunity issue, the key impasse on the legislation, the White House ended months of resistance Thursday and agreed to give House members access to secret documents about its warrantless wiretapping program.

The Bush administration is trying to persuade the House to agree to retroactively shield from liability those companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans without the approval of the FISA court. About 40 such civil lawsuits are pending against telecommunications firms, and the administration says if the cases go forward they could reveal information that would compromise national security. It also contends that the companies could be bankrupted if the lawsuits are successful.

The companies were helping the administration carry out the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, a still-classified effort that intercepted communications on U.S. soil without oversight from the FISA court from Sept. 11, 2001, to Jan. 17, 2007.

Reyes and Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence panel, requested access to the White House documents in May. House Democrats say they will not support telecom immunity without seeing them first. Some senators were given access to the documents last fall.

The documents include the president’s authorization of warrantless wiretapping, Justice Department legal opinions going back to 2001, and the requests sent to the telecommunications companies asking for their assistance.

I’m trying really hard to be surprised these days…really hard…