Bumper stickers of the week:
We moved a few books around. Travel is now in the Fantasy Section. Sci-Fi is in Current Events. Epidemiology is in Self-Help.
There are few things more challenging in this life than encouraging another person to think independently.
MLK Day
. . .
K “’Don’t Be Evil’. An age of overwhelming edgy sarcastic anxiety and detached cynical irony really is not a healthy and productive age.”
J “Our society has not aged well. Bad wine. White wine that has gone sour and not red wine that improved with age. And Google and Facebook and Amazon provide the most perverse ironies of our age.”
. . .
[See “The Big Tech Extortion Racket” in “Harpers” dated September 2020 by Barry C. Lynn.
“In 2018, an Irish technologist named Dylan Curran downloaded the information Google had collected about him. All in all, Curran found, the corporation had gathered 5.5 GB of data on his life, or the equivalent of more than three million Word documents.
In an article for article for “The Guardian”, Curran wrote that within this trove he found
“every Google Ad I’ve ever viewed or clicked on, every app I’ve ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I’ve ever visited and what time I did it. They also have every image I’ve ever searched for and saved, every location I’ve ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I’ve ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I’ve made since 2009. And . . . every YouTube video I’ve ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.”
In addition, Curran discovered that Google keeps a detailed record of what events he attends and when he arrives, what photos he takes and when he takes them, what exercises he does and when he does them. And it has kept every email he has ever sent or received, including those he has deleted.”]
[See the e-commentary at “Goggle” and “Facebook” and “Amazon” and other topics such as “Privacy” and related issues.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Bye Don 2020 (also sported on lawn signs)
Re-Elect The Mother Fracker (also sported on ball caps and t-shirts)
. . .
K “About the run on toilet paper . . . .”
. . .
K “It is slithering closer. The very close friend who lost a very close friend will soon be the very close friend who is lost.”
J “Them or her or him or you or me. Now or by NOVember.”
. . .
J “Contract tracing is a diametric departure from and express rejection of the privacy concerns expressed in HIPAA and other legislation. Now when someone tests positive, all the world is notified.”
K “The government can justify just about anything domestically in the name of public health and safety. And the government can justify just about anything internationally in the name of national defense and security. I concede that I do not have a fundamental quarrel with announcing to the world that someone tests positive.”
. . .
J “Now that the horses are out of the barn, the government is hiring bureaucrats to determine the names and addresses of the escaped equines.”
K “The ad for contact tracers says the government is seeking ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ to interview the team of horses who have fled the barn.”
. . .
J “And contact tracing has just about exceeded its usefulness when just about everyone you come into contact with has contracted it. The response has always been two weeks behind. The strategy should be to get two weeks ahead. Contact tracing is now two months behind . . . and moot.”
K “Contact tracing is now the cover to monitor the activities of every citizen. Now that the Virus has nestled in every corner of the country, contact tracing needs to be curtailed.”
. . .
K “The current bailout includes provisions exempting all the legislation and payments from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). We as a society made so much progress and now are on the retrograde.”
J “Our personal privacy rights are compromised by all the governments admittedly for reasons that are not implausible in this situation. The public’s right to know is totally undermined in one stroke by Congress. There is something retrogressive about all those decisions.”
. . .
K “The Big X, the Tenth Amendment, is resurgent along with the Virus. States are now almost co-equal players with the federal government in the political debate over the response to the Virus.”
J “International agencies and the federal government have failed. Some state governments have stepped in commendably. Some state governments have failed. Some city governments have stepped in commendably. Some city governments have failed. The checkerboard response is surreal and unreal.”
J “Medicine is politics. What happens when a red state governor does not adopt a mandatory masks policy and a blue city mayor adopts a mandatory masks policy?”
K “In the city, the citizens wear a mask; in the rest of the state, they wear what they think is appropriate consistent with the ignorant directives of the governor. But I can assure you that logic will not prevail particularly when you are dealing with American–trained judges.”
. . .
K “And you know my firm conviction that there are many members of the medical establishment and in government committing crimes against humanity.”
J “You may be right. I am still researching. But no one in power in America will ever be convicted of a crime.”
. . .
Bumper stickers of the week:
Make masks great again
Great Meteor 2020 Just End It Already
. . .
K “Taking stock of the stock market is the stock in trade of the Federal Reserve. The only certainty throughout this Plague is the Federal Reserve doing everything possible to protect and serve Wall Street.”
J “Those on every street in and out of uniform who are obliged to protect and serve have protected and served the interests of Wall Street not Main Street.”
. . .
K “It has been a tough few weeks to be a statue.”
J “Some had to be moved. But in their uncontrolled and unfocused rage, they may topple a statue of Lincoln without knowing who he was or what he did, albeit with alloyed motives.”
. . .
K “This is also a tough time to be a state in the Union. The federal government can print money at will in unlimited amounts forever until the rest of the world unseats the United States as the purveyor of the world’s reserve currency. The towns, cities, counties, boroughs, water authorities and other political subdivisions can always file bankruptcy. But the states are stuck because they cannot print money and cannot deficit spend and cannot file bankruptcy.”
J “And cannot pay their bills. The federal government has an out, the other governments have an out and the state governments are left out. It will soon manifest and not be pretty.”
. . .
J “My initial fear was that it appeared to be some variety of the Hantavirus which is far more virulent and infectious than Covid-19.”
K “My continuing fear is that it is becoming more virulent and infectious.”
. . .
K “I do not know what to make of “Event 201” in October 2019 with the powerful players playing war games and discussing the outbreak of a Coronavirus at the very same time that the Coronavirus was breaking out.”
J “The exercise let everyone know that they had more than a clue that the Plague was coming, but they were absolutely clueless about what to do about it as it came.”
. . .
K “The proper use of masks was obvious. I joined the cover up immediately and was the first Occidental in my Costco to wear a mask way back in early February.”
J “Make masks great again. We have always known that fact despite what those in power said and misled. However, based on recent findings, the concern with spreading by contact with paper, door handles and the like is still a concern but a less urgent one.”
. . .
J “Faux libertarians say their right to swing their fists only ends an inch from my nose. However, their swing is still a battery against me and my nose. And their refusal to wear a mask and cover their nose and mouth hits me right in my nose and mouth.”
K “They say it is the hit to the kisser that can be the kiss of death.”
. . .
K “We are in the halcyon days of the Plague. When do we enter the next stage?”
J “That is what I fear. That is what I don’t know. I’ll simply go on record as prognosticating ‘Winter’ at this time.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at “On Freedom and Liberty (May 24, 2010)” and “Who Is Your Big Bad Bogeyman? (March 26, 2007)”.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Make masks great again
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” George Orwell, 1984 Orwell’s “Party” = War and Wall Street Party?
. . .
X “We are doing it to ourselves. The ‘Chip’ is not even implanted; the ‘Card’ is never discarded. The ‘Chip’ and the ‘Card’ are consolidated into the ‘Fondle Slab’ we call our Cell Phone, our electronic love machine.”
Y “The Cell Phone is a hard ‘Card’ embedded with the ‘Chip’ and cherished and adored as the most important possession and appendage of each and every subject.”
X “The ‘Fondle Slab’ is the first thing we scramble for in the morning, the constant companion we clutch and caress throughout the day, and the last thing we embrace at night.”
Y “They can access and assess the pictures we take and see who and what we saw and what we did and where we were when we took the pictures. Who, what, when, where . . . and surely why. And without asking us or paying us.”
X “We pass on buying infant formula to pay for the Slab.”
Y “The enemy has been met.”
. . .
[See the article “Holding U.S. Treasurys? Beware: Uncle Sam Can’t Account For $21 Trillion” in “Forbes” magazine by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff dated January 9, 2019 and an acknowledgement of his and Professor Mark Skidmore’s pioneering work looking behind the curtain at dodgy government accounting at “Third Annual Noble Prize In Eco-nomics (October 8, 2018)”.]
[See the article discussing excessive spending and trust betrayed by J. Mark Watters and Sarah Vega with the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) titled “A $450 dinner, $45 whisky: Political appointee, aide ring up the expenses” in “The Washington Post” by Robert O’Harrow, Jr. dated January 19, 2019.]
[See the e-commentary at “Monitoring The Masses: The Card And The Chip (January 12, 2015)” and “The Mandibles, FRNs, SDRs, IMF, G20, WTD! (September 5, 2016)”.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Big Brother in a little box
We have met . . .
. . .
K “The envelope please. . . . This year, the ‘Cameo In Courage’ Award is awarded to . . . Chelsea Elizabeth Manning and Julian Paul Assange. Courage is rare. It must be celebrated. It is one of the “rare-earths” within the human heart and is very rare on this Earth.”
. . .
And a tip of the hat to the great nation and good people of Ecuador that provide a home and a haven for Mr. Assange.
And a partial tip of the lid to former President O’Bama for commuting all but four months of Ms. Manning’s sentence. A presidential commutation reduces the sentence being served but does not change the fact of conviction. A presidential pardon would have forgiven the criminal offenses. But at core O’Bama lacked the fortitude and courage to pardon Ms. Manning and Mr. Snowden and Mr. Assange. He could have just done it.
[Please send nominations for the “Cameo In Courage” Award for 2019 and a supporting letter by January 25, 2019 to e-ssay@gci.net and send the entry fee to your favorite charity.]
[See the e-commentary at “Hero or Traitor? (June 10, 2013)”, “Second Annual ‘Cameo In Courage’ Award For 2017 (March 6, 2017)”, “First Annual ‘Cameo In Courage’ Award For 2016 (May 9, 2016)”, “Award Deadlines (Livelines?) (July 25, 2016)”, “Profile In Cowardice Award (May 12, 2014)”, “Profile In Courage Award, 2015 (May 11, 2015)”, “Chelsea And Ed: Time For “Con” “dign” Treatment (November 30, 2015)” and “On Courage and Truth (March 17, 2008)”.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
“In a dozen plus years and without a debate or a vote, technology has deprived us of privacy. With little debate and many hasty votes, Congress has deprived us of privacy at every opportunity. We as a society should create a rebuttable presumption in favor of privacy even if it appears to sacrifice security. Our personal insecurities are actually creating greater national insecurity.” See “Hero or Traitor? (June 10, 2013)”.
Boycott Facebook. See “Boycott Facebook (August 2, 2010)”. And Google. And Amazon.
Love is elusive and transitory; the Internet is forever.
The Internet never forgets.
What’s said on the Internet stays on the Internet.
. . .
K “It was placed third ahead of the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, the right to a trial by jury and the right not to be subject to cruel and unusual punishment, among others. Protecting against the threat was a greater concern and anxiety that these other concerns and anxieties.”
J “And yet one hundred out of ninety-nine Americans cannot identify it. Even at tony cocktail parties. It is the Privacy Provision.”
. . .
K “As I recall, it says: ‘No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law’ or something like that. Congress has not formally declared war for decades, yet the government is at war with most of the world all the time and will be at war with most of the world until the final collapse of the American Empire.”
J “The Constitutional benchmark in time of war allows for regulation ‘prescribed by law’ that provides an open-ended ability to oppress the people. The government can send in the police and contend that they are not even soldiers, even though the police are militarized and soldier-surrogates in the soft martial law that has been in place for the last dozen plus years.”
K “And the Republican federal judges suffering from ‘Republican Federal Judge Syndrome’ will allow the government to do anything it wants to and call if deference.”
. . .
K “Survey the literature. No one even questions that the government will confiscate gold and likely silver when the stuff begins to compete with the fraudulent fiat currency foisted on the public by the government.”
J “The government will not stop there. The Empire will confiscate all the elements – Au, Ag and Fe and Pb.”
K “The Second Amendment may provide some limited protection for guns and perhaps for ammo. The Third Amendment needs to be expanded to protect gold and silver from government confiscation.”
J “The right to keep and exchange precious metals shall not be abridged.”
. . .
J “The Founding Fathers did not have to contend with a fraudulent fiat currency.”
K “That is why I contend that the Third Amendment prohibition against quartering troops in one’s house should be expanded to include a prohibition against the government restricting the use of ‘Washington quarters’ of the citizen’s choosing in one’s house and in exchanges with other citizens so inclined.”
J “Quarters, dimes and dollars are under assault and attack by the government. They are the only means to maintain some privacy and freedom in exchanges.”
K “The Third Amendment may offer the most promise for providing some constitutional protection for privacy and freedom broadly defined.”
. . .
K “On the other head, the Third Amendment is undergirded by the fiction that the house is one’s castle and should not be invaded by the state. Vesting the Third Amendment with what we deeply believe is important may be an inappropriate bypass of direct Congressional action.”
J “Bypassing direct Congressional action does not seem inappropriate to me. Congress will pass the law to confiscate precious metals and not pass any law to protect private possession of property such as possession of precious metals.”
. . .
K “And talking about quarters, . . . that’s my two bits.”
J “And that is my dos centavos.”
. . .
[See the essay by Gordon S. Wood on “The Third Amendment” published by the National Constitution Center.]
[See the e-commentary at “Preserve Cash; Preserve (Some) Privacy (May 4, 2015)”, “The Paradox Of The Republican Federal Judge: Republican Federal Judge Syndrome (September 23, 2013)” and “Boycott Facebook? (August 2, 2010)” that suggests an extension of the Third Amendment to protect against invasions of privacy.]
Bumper sticker of the week:
“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
. . .
K “Someone who was one of the three or perhaps four heterosexual intellectuals in American to support gay marriage during the dark ages – in the early summer of 2011 – finds himself troubled by this new unbounded license to choose bathroom policy.”
J “That makes you all kinds of very bad things, you know. A reactionary, a red neck, a misanthrope, a misogynist, a mugwump and a sexist. For openers.”
. . .
K “Decades ago, I argued that notions of equal protection required more physical bathroom facilities for women than for men. That turned some folks apoplectic. Look at the lines outside the women’s bathrooms that form even today. The average time per visit for women is much longer than for men. I contended that the only way to achieve equality was and is to implement inequality. That did not sit well in some quarters.”
. . .
K “Clean available public bathrooms are key to public health. Think about it. When you turn on the television, they say that you invite into your living room deplorable characters that you would not allow to tread anywhere on your property. Public bathrooms are part of the social contract we make with fellow citizens allowing all of us to enter and share the most private chamber in one’s castle for a short and awkward period of time.”
J “When I stand next to an imperfect stranger at the wall urinal, I recognize that I am waiving my privacy in an uneasy truce with the other chaps for a minute or two.”
K “Exactly. We all agree to a ‘modus vivendi’ that entails a temporary suspension of our privacy.”
. . .
K “Thus, there must be an unequal number of stalls for women than men. And the stalls should be kept separate based on decisions made by Nature. In all other ways, treat everyone equally.”
. . .
J “The likely response and compromise will be more single ‘family’ bathroom units in the future.”
K “Building design will change. The total number of square feet per person dedicated to public restrooms will increase.”
. . .
K “I wonder if being way ahead of the curve in the past is likely to lead one to be way ahead of the curve in the future. Few see it.”
J “You are still a filthy troglodyte.”
K “I resemble that remark.”
. . .
[See the “e-commentary” at “Brown: 5 – Plessy: 4 (June 29, 2015)”, “The Tsunami Hits Shore (March 24, 2014)” and “The Sea Change Is Now A Tsunami (March 11, 2013)”.]
Bumper sticker of the week:
Public Bathrooms: “Separate and Unequal”
. . .
K “I am found on Google, therefore I am; I am not found on Google, therefore I am not.”
J “If you are not making money for Google, you are not found on Google; if you are not found on Google, you do not exist. You are not.”
. . .
K “If Google does not deliver the site ‘above the fold,’ the site will ultimately fold. If Google consigns a site to the second page – the obituary page in digital media – the site is dead.”
. . .
K “You could play one of those Will Shortz puzzler games. ‘Drop the word “ogle” which means “to look at amorously, flirtatiously, or impertinently” and add a “d” and what do you get? . . . God.’”
J “Google is the gateway to reality and the wall to existence.”
. . .
K “Google has emerged as a natural monopoly in this the ‘Age of Monopoly.’ By definition, the free market cannot regulate a natural monopoly. A natural monopoly should be broken up or regulated.”
J “Google is our contemporary ‘Pa Bell’ much like ‘Ma Bell’ that dominated the telephone industry forty years ago. Google is a national public utility.”
K “And the United States Court of Appeals for The District of Columbia Circuit agrees.”
. . .
[See “United States Telecom Ass’n v. Federal Communications Comm., No. 15-1063 (June 14, 2016).” and “Court Backs Rules Treating Internet as Utility, Not Luxury” by Cecilia King, June 14, 2016.]
[See the e-commentary at “Less Government Regulation Series: Google (November 30, 2009).”]
Bumper sticker of the week:
Google is God; net neutrality is good.
. . .
K “Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of Edward Snowden’s receipt, along with several standing ovations in the Swedish parliament, of the Right Livelihood award for his revelations of the scale of government surveillance and monitoring. And a fortnight ago O’Bama announced the recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and forgot to mention Edward. And right after he released Edward Pollard, a spy who pedaled state secrets for money.”
J “He released the wrong Ed. He’s a busy guy.”
K “The absurdity and the insanity and the dishonesty and the hypocrisy continue in overdrive.”
. . .
K “For two individuals who did so much to protect our liberty and freedom, neither of them should lose a moment’s freedom or liberty. Require them each to do one thousand hours of community service. To send a message that actions have consequences.”
. . .
K “The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) is the unconstitutional law that allows the government to wiretap Americans who are communicating with people overseas. Under the FAA, the government can conduct this surveillance without naming individuals and without a traditional warrant based on a showing of probable cause.”
J “Despite the Fourth Amendment that requires a warrant.”
K “Yup. Despite the Fourth Amendment that requires a warrant. When the Supreme Court addressed whether the unconstitutional law is unconstitutional the Supreme Court did not address the constitutionality of the law itself and instead ruled that the plaintiffs could not prove the surveillance was ‘certainly impending’.”
J “We suffer because of the ignorance and intentional naiveté and dishonesty of the Supreme Court. Goes to show.”
K “They are only running show trials. The plaintiffs were held not to have the ‘standing’ necessary to sue. They were just a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights advocates who regularly communicate with likely ‘targets’ of FAA wiretapping.”
J “Seems like a ‘stand up’ group of individuals to me.”
K “Since the ‘stand up’ group of Americans did not have definitive proof that they were being surveilled under the FAA, they cannot challenge the constitutionality of the unconstitutional statute.”
J “And the government nearly always keeps its surveillance activities secret.”
K “But you always knew they were illegally surveilling.”
J “Sure.”
. . .
K “‘Condign punishment’ is the ideal punishment that balances the rights and responsibilities of the individual and the society. ‘Con’ means ‘with’ and ‘dign’ means ‘dignity’ so that condign means to provide ‘with dignity’.”
. . .
K “Both should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They have made great personal sacrifices for our freedom.”
. . .
[President O’Bama failed to name Edward Snowden as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Again. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/16/president-obama-names-recipients-presidential-medal-freedom. He cannot. Yet he could pardon Ed and Chelsea on the way out.]
[See the e-commentary at Hero or Traitor? (June 10, 2013), Profile In Cowardice Award (May 12, 2014) and Profile in Courage Award, 2015 (May 11, 2015).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
“For especially meritorious contribution to (1) the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” Presidential Medal of Freedom
And Edward Pollard, a spy who pedaled secrets for money, gets released.
e-commentary 