Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Faux News

They're not even pretending anymore.

 

Seven Words? Try Hundreds!

Seems like George Carlin was a piker compared to the Department of Homeland Security.  Via gyma over at A Spork In The Drawer, we learn that DHS has a list of naughty words like "cloud," "incident," "pork," "smart," "gang," "pirates," "sleet," and "worm" that can flag your blog or other electronic communications for some tender loving government scrutiny.

The problem with lists like these is that they tend to create a lot of background "noise" that intelligence agencies must sift through in order to glean actual, actionable evidence, never mind the creepiness factor of the gubmit monitoring the web.  Perfectly innocent postings along the lines of "My toddler got a hold of the talcum and the next thing we knew, there was white powder all over the living room" can raise a flag due to the mention of "white powder."  Or, say one of your Facebook friends wants to know what the cause of WWI was, and you answer "The assassination of Franz Ferdinand lead to the outbreak of war in Europe."  Both "assassination" and "outbreak" are on the list. 

I am in no way, shape or form plugged into the intelligence community, but from what I've been able to read over the years, I'm pretty confident that the agencies tasked with monitoring the bad guys have a pretty solid idea of who the bad guys are.  Trolling the web for random words and phrases that might, might indicate something (but far more likely is just an innocent posting, such as "The plumber fixed the gas leak") seems to be a colossal waste of time and manpower.

As for me, perhaps I'll try and work a few of the naughty words into each and every post from now on. 

 

In Order To Form A More Undemocratic Union

Florida continues is purge of those pesky, dusky voters who might cast a ballot for the Kenyan Usurper.

UPDATE:  A ray of sunshine in the Sunshine State:  Florida's onerous voter registration laws are ruled unconstitutional. 

Unfreakishly busy with work. Had to bring some home tonight to work on, posting may be light this week.

And don't forget to read this.

It was nice to sit at the ballpark this afternoon and see some actual offense from the Buccos! Bonus: I ran into an old coworker buddy who is spending his golden years as an usher at the ballpark.

The Shivs Come Out In Three...Two....One....

Another conservative strays off the reservation.

The right didn’t create this reservoir of fear, anger and hate. But it has both tapped into it and roiled it. Indeed, the right-wing mass hysteria is what sociologists call a “moral panic.” It occurs when a society is undergoing a wrenching transformation. Somebody then comes along and creates a “folk devil” both to provide an explanation for bad conditions, real or imagined, and a target. Kill the devil; eliminate the bad conditions. But the right has no serious incentive to help solve or ameliorate these problems. Indeed, as with the reelection of Obama, it will benefit from their continuation or worsening.

Chipping Away At The Constitution

The Supreme Court, along the usual pro-state/anti-citizen 6-3 split, erodes the double jeopardy provision. 

The 6-3 decision holds that a jury's unanimous but tentative vote to acquit a defendant on some charges does not count as a verdict.

It came in the case of an Arkansas man who in 2009 was tried for murder and manslaughter in the death of his girlfriend's 1-year-old baby. The jury voted unanimously against the murder charge, but the foreman said they were "hopelessly deadlocked" on whether he was guilty of manslaughter. The judge declared a mistrial.

Note that the defense was not arguing that the defendant could not be retried on the charges the jury failed to agree on, but the radical Roberts court declared he can be retried on all charges, even the one the jury aquitted him of!  Outrageous!

The conservative majority of this court are not sober jurists.  They are radical fanatics, determined to do whatever they can to limit the protections offered by the Constitution to those who lack power or access to those who weild it. 

Your Backdoor Man

Daryl Metcalfe, The Shame of Butler County, tries the old end around on abortion funding.

Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, said in a Wednesday news conference introducing the measure that it would end the "flow of taxpayer money to support abortionists."

The bill, similar to legislation attempted in a half-dozen states and supported by several Republican legislators and anti-abortion groups, prioritizes funding for hospitals, rural health care clinics and other providers, but prohibits Department of Health funds from going to any of those organizations that provide abortions.

As the article points out, the laws on the books already prohibit taxpayer dollars from going towards abortions, so the real effect this law would have should it pass is cut off money for other health services that have nothing to do with abortion.  That loss of service will likely impact poorer residents who lack insurance or who live in rural areas.

The law could have an unintended consequence as well.  By eliminating state funding to those health care facilities that perform abortions, it very well likely make those hospitals and clinics facilities provide abortions only, as the funding for that proceedure isn't supplied by tax dollars. 

Just as an aside, I get the distinct impression that every far right bill that comes up in Harrisburg is associated with Daryl Metcalfe, The Shame of Butler County.  Those bills are usually ones that have been introduced in other states first, or authored by ALEC, which leads me to suspect that Metcalfe is probably too stupid to actually write any orginal legislation on his own.

 

Gamblers Lose While Gambling, Look For Someone To Blame

I'm somewhat amused by the entire Facebook bruhaha.

With $2.5 billion in value evaporated less than one week after one of the most touted stock sales in Wall Street history, Facebook's botched public offering is rattling investor confidence that's been shaken ever since the failure of large financial institutions four years ago.

What I find amusing is that investors who lost money are looking for someone to blame.  What do they expect from a deregulated market and toothless watchdogs?  "The Market" is nothing more than a big ol' casino these days, and sometimes, when you pull the lever, it comes up lemons. 

Enhanced regulation, however, is a political nonstarter, but without common-sense regulation and agencies with the tools to make it work, you can complain until you're blue in the face about the money you lost, and blue in the face is all you're going to get. 

I dabble in stocks, and one of the first things I learned when researching stocks is "do not bet money that you cannot afford to lose."  Secondly, I do not buy stocks that don't pay a dividend.  If later on, that stock stops paying a dividend, I dump it, and look for another one that does pay.  By following those two broad rules, I've done pretty well.