Category: Overton Window

It’s Big Brother Day

Just plain too damn spooky for all this to hit in the same day.  If you’re not weirded out… you should be

Let’s start with the CIA keeping track of EVERYTHING you do.

Discussing the goldmine of data that today’s technology has created, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Chief Technology Officer Ira “Gus” Hunt on Wednesday said the spy agency tries to “collect everything we can and hang onto it forever.”  …

“The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time,” Hunt said. “Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.”  …

Hunt said it is “really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information.” This, he explained, would allow the CIA to analyze digital breadcrumbs people don’t even realize they are leaving behind.

“You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times, because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off…You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should,” he added.

via TheBlaze.com.

For the record, this is totally illegal.  The CIA is not permitted to perform any investigations on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.  This is the Obama administration run amok.

What’s that?  You doubt me that’s it’s the Obama admin pushing this?

The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.  …

Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program

via NBCNews.com.

Ya, it’s the Obama admin.  And you will note that’s it’s DHS taking the lead here… Not the CIA.  Why?  Because DHS is allowed by spy on U.S. citizens (thank you Patriot Act.)

And while talking about DHS… keep in mind that they refuse to answer any questions about why they need 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition.

Speaking at CPAC with Infowars and We Are Change reporter, Luke Rudkowski, Congressman Timothy Huelscamp revealed this week that the Department of Homeland Security has refused to answer questions from “multiple” members of Congress regarding its recent purchase of huge amounts of weapons and ammunition.

“They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that,” Huelscamp said.

“I’ve got a list of various questions of agencies about multiple things. Far from being the most transparent administration in the world, they are the most closed and opaque,” the Congressman added.

“They refuse to let us know what is going on, so I don’t really have an answer for that. Multiple members of Congress are asking those questions,” he added.

via Infowars.

Worry not.  Your government is here to protect you.

But just in case you’re not caught in the government tracking of absolutely everything you do.  Worry not… the Gestapo is alive and well.  You should keep an eye on your neighbor and see what they’re up to.

Nearly a year before signing the nation’s most stringent gun control measure into law, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched a hotline that allows state residents to report illegal gun owners in exchange for a $500 reward.  …

New Yorkers can call the “Gun Tip Line” if they believe someone they know has an illegal gun. Hotline calls are answered by state police and tips are referred to local law enforcement, the station reported.“This initiative seeks to turn neighbor against neighbor and use their own tax dollars to pay for the $500 reward,” Republican Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin told the station.

via Fox News.

It really is 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World all rolled into one.

Sixty years of modern liberalism and brought us to this point.  People too dumb to know that they’re marching themselves into the arms of a dictator.

Keep watching Dancing with the Stars!!  Your government owns you.  You’re no longer free.  You’re nothing.  You’re like a damn battery in the Matrix.  Just putting out enough effort to keep the machine running so the government can pretend to protect you.

You should be ashamed of yourself.  God knows the minority of us are ashamed of you.  It’s time to wake up and redeem yourself.  Please.

A Few Thoughts On Gun Control « Eudaimonia

This will be detailed and thorough, and I apologize in advance for its length. I also need to clarify that I am not a statistician, lawyer, political analyst, or sociologist. I am merely curious, capable at finding information, and trained in scientific analysis. If there are errors in this, they are not intentional.

via A Few Thoughts On Gun Control « Eudaimonia.

Amazing amount of information here.

Everyone Wants a Drone – Zero Concern For Your Privacy

Are unmanned aircraft, known to have difficulty avoiding collisions, safe to use in America’s crowded airspace? And would their widespread use for surveillance result in unconstitutional invasions of privacy?

via SFGate.

Yes, and no seem like pretty straightforward answers to these questions.

But the elected idiots who man the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus have taken over $8 million in campaign contributions from drone developers.

So do you feel safe yet?

 

 

Florida’s Bigoted New Education (Union) Standards

Asian students should be the smartest, and teachers will expect the least from blacks.  That’s the case in Florida, at least, where the Board of Education has agreed to pass a revised plan that outlines new academic goals for students based on race.  …

Under the approved strategic revision, 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of whites, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of blacks will be expected to read at or above their applicable reading grade levels in future tests. For math scores, they expect 92 percent of Asians, 80 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of blacks to excel, suggesting that some races warrant a lower bar than others.

Patrick Franklin, president and CEO of the Urban League of Palm Beach County, opposes the revision, telling the Sun Sentinel, “All children should be held to high standards and for them to say that for African-Americans the goal is below other students is unacceptable.”

via RT.

What kind of nonsense is this?  Thank you Patrick Franklin for standing up and demanding equal educational expectations for African-American children.

Did Florida just accept the premise of The Bell Curve?  Is that where we are today?

Can you imagine someone said, well it’s ok to pay black people less than white people or Asian people?  Or that black people only need to work 6 or 7 hours a day instead of 8?

We need to work on treating all peoples equally.  Isn’t the goal to try to ignore race — not call it out?  This goofiness is only going to set back race relations 20-30 years.

It’s such a stupid idea that one has to wonder why it was put forth and passed…

And while educators are hoping to have higher test scores coming in across the board, race and ethnicity play a deciding factor in what’s expected from Sunshine State students in the years to come.

“Educators” for those that don’t know means “Union Teachers.”  These are the people who are fighting to limit any performance based evaluations.

Florida’s Republican governor think this is a dumb idea:

Schools’ expectations should be color blind.  As a nation, we have rejected police use of racial profiling on the streets, by what rational do we now accept it from educators in the classroom.

Indeed Governor. Indeed.

The take-away here is that Democrat Teachers’ Unions are racist.

Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance

Pen register and trap and trace devices now generally refer to the surveillance of information about—rather than the contents of—communications. Pen registers capture outgoing data, while trap and trace devices capture incoming data. This still includes the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and the time, date, and length of those calls. But the government now also uses this authority to intercept the “to” and “from” addresses of email messages, records about instant message conversations, non-content data associated with social networking identities, and at least some information about the websites that you visit (it isn’t entirely clear where the government draws the line between the content of a communication and information about a communication when it comes to the addresses of websites).

via ACLU.

For the record, I agree with the ACLU exactly one time.  This is it.

Our government has taken to spying on its own citizens, that’s us, on an unprecedented level.  As more and more communications go electronic it’s easier and easier to intercept.  That it is done without a warrant is truly frightening.  If these communications are so important then the FBI should present evidence to a judge and get a warrant.

Mind you, this is the same FBI that cannot find hundreds of guns from Fast and Furious.  This is the same presidential administration that refuses to turn over records regarding those guns or the Fast and Furious catastrophe.  The same administration that promised to the “the most open and transparent in history” and has proven to be just as closed and private as Dick Cheney and the Bush years.

When it comes to spying on you but keeping gov. secrets Obama = Bush.

Embarassing Americans — And These People Vote

I received this via email this morning.  I thought it was timely because just yesterday Howard Stern played audio of his producers in Harlem interviewing Obama supporters.

There is something very very wrong with the educational system in this country whereas so many can be so ignorant of the most basic facts.  There is no way that these people can understand anything about finance, economics, job creation, tax theory, or any other subject that would make them an informed intelligent voter.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE?rel=0]

These people do not possess the requisite base of knowledge and analytical skills necessary to determine the implications of their vote.  They ought go into the voting booth and flip a coin.

This is the result of 60 years of modern liberalism governing our schools.  Modern liberalism has created legions of undereducated men and women who can barely take care of themselves.  We’ve told them that they’re “special” and deserving when they are not even average or in fact normal.  They’re unique only in their ability to articulate idiocy and not be even slightly embarrassed.

They are the poster children proving that ignorance is bliss.

This is what the modern unionized public school system has given us.

Ever Hear About the “Green” Old Lady?

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.

We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off

via a Facebook post.

Jobless Claims Jump

In a separate report, a sharp rise in gasoline costs drove up wholesale prices last month by the most in more than three years. But outside energy and food, price gains were mild.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000, the highest in two months, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week’s figure was revised up to show 2,000 more applications than previously reported.

via CNBC.

We all expect this right?

Is this the new normal?

Your Home’s Router is Spying on You

It must be spy on American’s week given posts on law enforcement asking for your cell data and how the NSA is going to expand its spying on Americans on a massive scale.  Now we have this:

Cisco Systems told users of its new high-end home routers — in a roundabout way — they couldn’t use their routers for porn or to send certain types of e-mail and a whole list of other things.  …

Last week, Cisco sent out an upgrade to the software that makes its routers work, called firmware. The upgrade affected two models, the EA4500 and the EA2700. Without asking, Cisco moved them to its “Cisco Connect Cloud” service.  …

[T]he Cisco Connect Cloud Terms of Service forbids a whole bunch of things including porn, sending advertising e-mails — it won’t even allow you to “encourage any conduct” that would violate the law.

Wait, there’s more. Cisco reportedly [also] deleted a portion of [its] privacy statement that said Cisco would keep track of Connect Cloud customers’ “network traffic” and “Internet history,” ExtremeTech reported.

via Business Insider.

Does anyone think any company could have gotten away with this in the 1960’s or 1970’s?  The outrage would have been tremendous.

We’re failing as a society to realize that it’s not polite to air our collective and individual dirty laundry.  And we should be especially wary of sharing our family business with corporations that usually have a cozy relationship with the government.

This is very very very bad.

In addition to establishing Internet Freedoms and Net Neutrality we need to start a national discussion on Internet Privacy.