Obama Continues Bush-Era Extremism on Liberties, Secrecy

Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.

The Obama administration has undone a few of the Bush administration’s worst policies, true. Yet when it comes to Obama’s increasingly clear disdain for some core civil liberties and his administration’s penchant for secrecy despite cheerful rhetoric to the contrary, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald arrives at a dismal — but sadly, logical — conclusion:   

After many years of anger and complaint and outrage directed at the Bush administration for its civil liberties assaults and executive power abuses, the last thing most people want to do is conclude that the Obama administration is continuing the core of that extremism. That was why the flurry of executive orders in the first week produced such praise: those who are devoted to civil liberties were, from the start, eager to believe that things would be different, and most want to do everything but conclude that the only improvements that will be made by Obama will be cosmetic ones.

But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for honest commentators to do anything else but conclude that. After all, these are the exact policies which, when embraced by Bush, produced such intense protest over the last eight years.  Nobody is complaining because the Obama administration is acting too slowly in renouncing these policies. The opposite is true:   they are rushing to actively embrace them.  And while there are still opportunities to meaningfully depart from the extremism of the last eight years, the evidence appears more and more compelling that, at least in these areas, there is little or no real intent on the part of the Obama administration to do so.

Democrats in Congress and much of the political left have been silent or nearly so despite the evidence. You expect cowardice from Congress, which spent the Bush presidency in a perpetual bent-over posture. The Netroots folks who did so much to elect Obama should be screaming bloody murder by now. Too few are even slightly audible. A shame.

Maybe the Republicans will re-discover civil liberties at some point. Nah.

(photo via Flickr by 

Source: Boing Boing

 

CIA Busted by Google Earth

Google Earth reveals secret history of US base in Pakistan: When the CIA gets busted by Google Earth, you know it’s a whole, new world.

The US was secretly flying unmanned drones from the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan as early as 2006, according to an image of the base from Google Earth.

[…] the Pakistani Government said in 2006 that the Americans had left and both sides have since denied repeatedly that Washington was using Pakistani bases. Pakistan has also demanded that the US cease drone attacks on its tribal area, which have increased over the last year, allegedly killing several “high-value” targets as well as many civilians.

Source: Gadgetopia

 

370H-SSV-0773H

Osama Bin Laden decided to send George Bush a letter in his
own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game. Bush opened the
letter and it contained a single line of coded message:

370H-SSV-0773H

Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condoleezza Rice. Condi and her aides
hadn’t a clue either, so they sent it to the FBI.

No one could solve it at the FBI so it went to the CIA, then to MI6 and Mossad.

Eventually they asked Australian Intelligence (ASIO) for help. Within a
minute, ASIO emailed the White House with this reply:

‘Tell the President he’s holding the message upside down.’

 

What if Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine and Jimmy Carter had a child?

What if Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine and Jimmy Carter had a child?

 

Sony’s Profits Down 95%

Sony just reported that through the fourth quarter of 2008, their profits plummeted a staggering 95%, losing $1.67 billion. The reported down profits were taken from last year’s Christmas season, usually the time of the year that all companies including Sony sell the most products. This is the first loss that Sony has reported since 1995 when they produced several box-office flops. In lieu of the situation, Sony is reportedly cutting 8,000 jobs and going to shut down five or six of the 57 worldwide factories. Will the headless chicken that is the economy ever recover?

Source: OSNews

 

Dems start ad campaign

The ads will be sent widely to the press later this morning by the coalition funding them, which includes Americans United for Change, MoveOn.org Political Action, AFSCME and SEIU. 

The spot shows some arresting images of the recession — chained up factories, empty warehouses — and features Obama talking about our dire economic times and his economic package, an effort to harness Obama’s popularity to push the plan at a time when Republicans are training their fire on House Dems, rather than the White House.

Along with the ads, Democrats will run campaigns in their districts an official tells Politico. The White House plans to release state-by-state job figures so we can put a number on what folks voted for an against, an administration aide added. It’s clear the Republicans who voted against the stimulus represent constituents who will be stunned to learn their member of Congress voted against [saving or] creating 4 million jobs.

 

Study Finds High-Fructose Corn Syrup Contains Mercury

MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) — Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.

HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.

“Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply,” the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.
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Source: Washington Post

 

‘Like Going From an Xbox to an Atari’

Obama administration officials meet the existing White House tech infrastructure:

The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found
computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft
software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the
West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on
online videos.

Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit
mobility — partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to
ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential
Records Act.

Source: Daring Fireball

 

‘A Return to These Truths’

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

– President Barack Obama

Source: Yahoo

 

Harper’s Index - The Bush years in numbers

Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount: $15,400

Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists: 98

Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser: 1

Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources: 6

Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden: 20

Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069

And this list goes on…

Source: Harper’s

 

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) on Vimeo

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my voice recorder and asked her to start from the top.

I then created some very basic animation in Final Cut to go along with her narration.

Source: Vimo

 

The bill for the Bush administration

President Bush inherited a peaceful, prosperous America. As he exits, Salon consults experts in seven fields to try to assess the devastation.

How much poorer are we going to get before we start getting richer again? Here are some (scary, morbid, gruesome) clues.

Expected shortfall of gross domestic product below normal growth path in 2009: $900 billion

Decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from its decade high to its value at the close of business, Jan. 7, 2009: 5,394.83, or 38.1 percent

Number of manufacturing jobs lost since 2000: 3.78 million

Increase in number of unemployed workers from 2001 to 2008: 4 million, a jump of 2.7 percent in the unemployment rate

Real median household income according to the 2000 census, adjusted for inflation: $51,804

Real median household income as of August 2007: $50,233

Of course, the government didn’t sit idly by while our financial future was disappearing down the drain. Instead, the feds have pumped in hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, hoping to juice lending and public spending.

Cost of finance industry bailout: $350 billion, with another $350 pending congressional approval

Cost of auto industry bailout: $17.4 billion, so far

And even though there’s widespread agreement among economists that the government needs to be spending a large sum of money on an economic stimulus package, it still won’t look pretty on the public balance sheet.

National debt: $10.6 trillion

Amount of that debt owned by China: At least $800 billion

Source: salon.com

 

I have confidence that Prop 8 will be repealed

I have confidence that, in no short order, Prop 8 will be repealed, and the gay marriage debate will look as absurd as the miscegenation debates of the 20th century do now. I have confidence this will happen not because it is merely right, or because the electorate will suddenly love gayness, but because opposition to gay marriage has no logical foundation in a civil society that is premised on equality.

John Hodgman

 

Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash

From at-Largely (Larisa Alexandrovna):

“Mike Connell set-up the alternate email and communications system for the White House. He was responsible for creating the system that hosted the infamous GWB43.com accounts that Karl Rove and others used. When asked by Congress to provide these emails, the White House said that they were destroyed. But in reality, what Connell is alleged to have done is move these files to other servers after having allegedly scrubbed the files from all “known” Karl Rove accounts.

In addition, I have reason to believe that the alternate accounts were used to communicate with US Attorneys involved in political prosecutions, like that of Don Siegelman. This is what I have been working on to prove for over a year. In fact, it was through following the Siegelman-Rove trail that I found evidence leading to Connell. That is how I became aware of him. Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened.”

Graham writes: “Unfortunately, he won’t get to talk. He died in a plane crash yesterday.”

UPDATE: A curious press release: “Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation” (Thanks, Adam!)

(Via Why, That’s Delightful)

Source: Boing Boing

 

Any questions?

 

Charles Platt on life in prison

Forced by the feds to spare a life, the Texas criminal justice system did the next-best thing: It sentenced Son to forty years before he can be eligible for parole. He now spends his days providing unpaid labor, sewing underwear for a garment manufacturer that has contracted with the prison system. Forget about third-world sweatshops; some of the most lucrative ones are staffed by felons here in America.

Source: Boing Boing

 

Send your old shoes to Dubya’s Liberry

Got an old pair of shoes lying around, waiting to be used in a ritual gesture of disrespect? Send ‘em to the GW Bush liberry so they can put them on the My Pet Goat shelf.

George W. Bush Presidential Library
c/o SMU
6425 Boaz Lane
Dallas TX 75205

Old Shoes

(via Making Light

Source: Boing Boing

 

Austin teacher threatens to sic cops on Linux group because “No software is free”

An teacher in Austin sent an angry, accusatory email to a local Linux collective (”HeliOS Project, which builds and provides Linux computers to disadvantaged or ‘exceptionally promising’ students”) accusing them of piracy for distributing the free operating system and excoriating them for encouraging her students to do the same. She threatened to have the group’s organizer investigated by the police, too.

…observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence [sic] with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization.

Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer, and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all.

The HeliOS organizer kind of goes off the rails in his response, implying that the teacher’s been brainwashed by her union to support Microsoft because they get donations from Microsoft. I think it’s more likely that she just doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about and has received umpty-million “piracy is terrorism” messages from the school board and the BSA.

AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student’s Linux CD

Source: Boing Boing

 

You wouldn’t buy our shitty cars…

Source: Here

 

The Worst Is Yet To Come: Anonymous Banker Weighs In On The Coming Credit Card Debacle - Executive Suite Blog - NYTimes.com

A few weeks ago, I published an e-mail message sent to me from an executive who works in the banking industry — and had become disgusted by what he sees all around him. This weekend, that same banker sent me another e-mail message, which he has also agree to let me publish. It’s another wake-up call. Too bad nobody is listening.

Source: New York Times