January 28, 2014

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlord...

https://twitter.com/TheObamaDiary/statuses/427978750123200512

January 28, 2014

Jon Stewart to Sean Hannity: ‘It’s not East Germany, you can get out’ of NY ‘any time’

“Sounds like he’s got a case of Selective Undergarment Bunching, or S.U.B.,” Stewart reasoned.

Of course, Stewart said, Hannity wasn’t as trapped as he made himself out to be.

“He’s gotta know, it’s not East Germany,” Stewart pointed out. “You can really get out any time.”


Video & more:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/28/jon-stewart-to-sean-hannity-its-not-east-germany-you-can-get-out-of-ny-any-time/
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/daily-show-takes-whack-hannity-whine-about

January 28, 2014

NSA Agent’s Identity Exposed in Poorly-Redacted Snowden Document

NSA Agent’s Identity Exposed in Poorly-Redacted Snowden Document

It’s finally happened. The name of an NSA agent has been accidentally leaked to the public via an NSA document stolen by Edward Snowden.

On Monday, we covered one way in which the Snowden leaks have touched off observably negative international consequences. Specifically, we discussed how an article in The Guardian detailing how Australia spied on the president of Indonesia has exacerbated tensions between the two nations, potentially touching off a military conflict at sea. Hours later, another example of apparent irresponsible journalism came to light.

A pair of new Snowden revelations were published on Monday. First, an article was published by NBC News in association with Glenn Greenwald about an NSA operation codenamed “Squeaky Dolphin.” A second revelation was posted by The Guardian in partnership with The New York Times and ProPublica, which covered an NSA document that revealed how the NSA and the British GCHQ are able to collect information on various targets via “leaky” smartphone apps like Angry Birds.

As soon as the article was posted, someone from or associated with a popular cryptography website claims to have downloaded a pdf of the Snowden document from The New York Times and discovered that three of the redactions that were intended to obscure sensitive national security information were easily accessible by highlighting, copying and pasting the text. The poorly-redacted file was subsequently posted to the cryptography website, then promoted via Twitter. (We’re not going to post the name of the website that posted the file to protect the information contained within.)


more:
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/01/the-name-of-an-nsa-agent-exposed-in-poorly-redacted-snowden-document/

January 27, 2014

More on the Davos Pity Party

They're having a good old fashioned pity party over there in Davos:

“Life is hard enough,” according to Swiss banking executive Sergio Ermotti, “without people “constantly bashing banks.” The UBS chief executive made those remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I think this constant lecturing on ethics and integrity by many stakeholders is probably the most frustrating part of the equation,” he said, “because I don’t think there are many people who are perfect.”

Yeah, "life is hard" for the "imperfect" super wealthy.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/27/3207221/ubs-stop-bashing-banks-davos/
via:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/plutocrat-whine-o-day.html

January 27, 2014

Koch Bros. are engineering a “merger & acquisition” of the Republican party

The Kochs engineer a merger and acquisition of the conservative movement

by digby

72 billion can pay for a whole lot of wingnut welfare:

The billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are convening some of the country’s richest Republican donors on Sunday at a resort near Palm Springs, Calif., to raise millions of dollars for efforts to shape the political landscape for years to come.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

.................. This year, the Kochs’ close allies are rolling out a new, more integrated approach to politics. That includes wading into Republican primaries for the first time to ensure their ideal candidates end up on the ticket, and also centralizing control of their network to limit headache-inducing freelancing by affiliated operatives.

The shift is best illustrated in the expansion of three pieces of the Koch political network expected to be showcased or represented at the three-day meeting in Palm Springs, whose evolving roles were described to POLITICO by several sources.



.....................

The meeting tomorrow is to persuade other moneybags greedheads to kick in a few bucks and the report says they are eager to sign on. But the Kochs don't really need them. They could double their investment from 2012 and not even notice the difference.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-kochs-engineer-merger-and.html

January 27, 2014

The jet set crowd in Davos is feeling very sorry for itself that no one seems to like them.

The jet set crowd in Davos is feeling very sorry for itself that no one seems to like them. Other billionaires are worried that Nazi storm troopers are coming for the rich any day now.

It seems almost superfluous to point out the obvious, but there are some very good reasons that animosity toward the top tenth of one percent of incomes is so high. They're simple enough that they can easily be expressed without comment in chart form:



or this one:


or this:


or this:



If the Davos crowd wants to keep the current order that has made them so wealthy, they need to work on making it fairer for everyone. That means not just making it easier for a few lucky poor people to become rich, but also vastly improving the lives of all those in the poor and middle class who don't hit the lucky jackpot. Otherwise, sooner or later the current order will be replaced--peacefully or otherwise--with something better that actually provides results.


http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/i8GWMePeQTbO1wndh6RJ2w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTY3OA--/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/en_us/Finance/FIN_US_AHTTP_THEATLANTIC/The_World%27s_85_Richest_People-d5592235cc533bcadad95cf828e0ca26
http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-cluephone-for-davos-by-davidoatkins.html

January 27, 2014

State of the Union (preview toon by Mike Luckovich)

January 27, 2014

"I'm a Republican and I'm angry."

I'm a Republican and I'm angry. I almost never explain why I'm angry, but when I do, I blame it on somebody who had nothing to do with it. I almost never blame the people responsible for what's wrong with government, partly because I voted for them repeatedly, partly because I don't know any better. I never take responsibility for my actions. I don't understand how government works, but I get upset when the people I've elected, do exactly what it is they said they would do, because I never think about the consequences of what it is they say they want to do. I also like to get help, freebies, or discounts from government or business or anybody who is giving something, but tend to look down on others who do exactly what I do. This is also true in terms of getting divorced, having abortions, cheating on my spouse, abusing children, and being a pervert. It's mostly because I am selfish, unthoughtful, and anti-intellectual, with a slight overbite, and people who think and look differently than I do terrify me. I don't have the capacity to understand or think in nuance, so I tend to stereotype and make assumptions to make myself feel better. I don't understand the world around me or the changes that occur, and I lack intellectual curiosity, so I tend to say the same things regardless of new data, old data, logic, nor do I use factually accurate statements. And no, I'm not a racist, I just don't like it when black people talk about race or struggles with the police or the past. They were only slaves for 300 years here - they got a free ride to America, they should be as happy as I am. I mean, I'm not really happy. We live in the greatest country on Earth, but it's a tyranny, and Republicans in Congress are stopping this foreign Muslim Commie tyrant in the White House who for some reason hasn't been able to get everybody a job and prosperity yet. USA! USA!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/01/26/sunday-open-thread-61/?commentID=washingtonpost.com/ECHO/item/1390788039-939-429

January 27, 2014

The new face of food stamps: working-age, college-educated Americans

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a first, working-age people now make up the majority in U.S. households that rely on food stamps — a switch from a few years ago, when children and the elderly were the main recipients.

Some of the change is due to demographics, such as the trend toward having fewer children. But a slow economic recovery with high unemployment, stagnant wages and an increasing gulf between low-wage and high-skill jobs also plays a big role. It suggests that government spending on the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program — twice what it cost five years ago — may not subside significantly anytime soon.

Food stamp participation since 1980 has grown the fastest among workers with some college training, a sign that the safety net has stretched further to cover America's former middle class, according to an analysis of government data for The Associated Press by economists at the University of Kentucky. Formally called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, the program now covers 1 in 7 Americans.

The findings coincide with the latest economic data showing workers' wages and salaries growing at the lowest rate relative to corporate profits in U.S. history.

http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/The-new-face-of-food-stamps-working-age-Americans-5176482.php?cmpid=htx

January 27, 2014

Liberals, It's Time To Transition out of Our Fox "News" Fixation ---By Frank Rich

Stop Beating a Dead Fox
The conservative news channel’s only real power is in riling up liberals, who by this point should know better.

By Frank Rich Published Jan 26, 2014


................

The most interesting news about Fox News is that for some years now it has been damaging the right far more than the left. As a pair of political analysts wrote at Reuters last year, “When the mainstream media reigned supreme, between 1952 and 1988, Republicans won seven out of the ten presidential elections,” but since 1992, when “conservative media began to flourish” (first with Rush Limbaugh’s ascendancy, then with Fox), Democrats have won the popular vote five out of six times. You’d think they’d be well advised to leave Fox News to its own devices so that it can continue to shoot its own party in the foot.

...............

The notion that Fox News has been defeated would seem absurd if you judge solely by the numbers. The year just ended was the network’s twelfth in a row as the most-watched cable-news network. Its number of total viewers surpasses CNN and MSNBC combined. As the longtime Rupert Murdoch–Fox News watcher Michael Wolff wrote of the cumulative 2013 ratings, “Nobody has come close to competing” with Ailes. “He gets larger, everybody else gets lesser.” But as Wolff also observed, “The cable audience, for all the attention heaped on it for its theoretical political sway, is not that large.” To put it mildly. As the overwhelming leader in its field, Fox draws just over a million viewers in prime time—a ­pittance and a niche next to even the ever-declining network newscasts, of which the lowest rated (CBS Evening News) still can attract a nightly audience as large as 8 million

...........

More than in any political credo, Ailes believes most of all in the power of television, the medium he grew up in and mastered as a political tool well before many of his competitors. But as his viewers were gobsmacked by the reelection of Obama, so he has been blindsided by the fading of television as the dominant news medium. About new media Ailes knows very little and has never wanted to learn much. When MSNBC emerged in 1996, he mocked it not because of its political identity (it hadn’t chosen one yet) but because of its connection to Microsoft; he wisecracked that Fox News was not in business to “tell people to turn off their television set and go to their computer to get more information.” He failed to invest in new technology in the years that followed, and by his own account he doesn’t “do a lot of web at Fox News.” As the McCain and Romney campaigns were successively confounded by the Obama forces’ technological prowess, so Ailes has been repeatedly ambushed and frustrated by new media, from Gawker, which tortured him with gossipy revelations from a “Fox Mole,” to Google, which earned his ire by refusing to accede to his demand that it rejigger its search algorithms to smite an anti-Ailes blog. Even the success of a one-man website challenging the local newspaper Ailes owns near his home in Putnam County has taken him by surprise and brought him to apoplectic fury. He doesn’t have a clue that his great cable-news innovation at Fox, The Crawl, is aging as fast in the day of Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr as ticker tape did with the advent of computer terminals. He is so tech-phobic that when Glenn Beck left Fox to start his own empire online, he pronounced him “crazy” because “no one walks away from television.”

......

Without Ailes and his Fox News to kick around anymore, the left may feel a bit disoriented—much as the right most certainly will once its unifying bête noire (literal and figurative), Obama, is gone from the White House. But while the right remains obsessed with fighting its unending war against a nearly lame-duck president, it behooves liberals to move on and start transitioning out of their Fox fixation. Paradoxically enough, the most powerful right-wing movement in the country, the insurgency in the Republican grassroots, loathes the Boehner-Christie-Rove-centric Fox News nearly as much as the left does. The more liberals keep fighting the last war against the more and more irrelevant Ailes, the less prepared they’ll be for the political war to come.



THE REST:
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/fox-news-2014-2/index3.html