Walmart is wrong on so many levels. Why do Americans continue to shop at Walmart? My family stopped going there a few years ago.

as I listen to the debate about the disclosure of two government programs designed to track suspected phone and e-mail contacts of terrorists, I do wonder if some of those who unequivocally defend this disclosure are behaving as if 9/11 never happened — that the only thing we have to fear is government intrusion in our lives, not the intrusion of those who gather in secret cells in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot how to topple our tallest buildings or bring down U.S. airliners with bombs planted inside underwear, tennis shoes or computer printers

Wow, there is a lot of fear in Friedman’s fantasy world…

I’m worried about what happens when activists, dissenters, and protesters are labeled “terrorists” and reduced to silence after the “two government programs designed to track suspected phone and e-mail contacts of terrorists” are turned against Americans who used to have a rights.

No, it’s news when a Republican does something that harms the weak or poor, too. The difference is that Democrats claim the moral high ground on defending the weak and poor when running for office.

Clearly, kabuki theatre and the supermajority shuffle sometimes just isn’t enough to make sure that the shittiest outcome prevails. Sometimes, a Senate Democrat has to step up do the assholish thing. Carl Levin, you’re a true American hero piece of shit.

NSA call database:

The United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) maintains a database containing hundreds of billions of records of telephone calls made by U.S. citizens from the four largest telephone carriers in the United States: AT&T, SBC, BellSouth (all three now called AT&T), and Verizon.

The existence of this database and the NSA program that compiled it was unknown to the general public until USA Today broke the story on May 10, 2006.[1] It is estimated that the database contains over 1.9 trillion call-detail records. According to Bloomberg News, the effort began approximately seven months before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Then we’ve been living in a totalitarian state for over a dozen years and have known about it for more than half of that time.

I thought the public was already aware of much of these surveillance activities. Why is it suddenly such a revelation?

This is particularly disconcerting given the fact that Marcus Bachmann’s clinic has received significant funding from the State of Minnesota and the federal government.

Too bad for Marcus that Michelle’s constituents have finally had enough of her, as I’m sure that his connection to a member of Congress had something to do with the funding.

On the other hand, it’s good news for his victims patients.

I haven’t seen the film. My comment was based entirely on the NPR interview last week in which the director characterized Manning in a number of ways, including the characterization of him as an emotionally troubled young man who was called on repeatedly for particular jobs and given access to high-level secrets because his skills were in high demand. In the NPR interview, the director was saying A) that Manning should not have had the access because he was too unstable to keep the evidence he had access to confidential.

I may have conflated his reference to Manning as “effeminate” with the rest of this less-than-flattering characterization.

Sorry.

I have no idea if the film depicts Manning differently than the way this director presented him in the interview.

NPR also had a quite good piece today on the film; I thought it was well-done.

I’m sorry, but I do not agree. This guy characterized Manning as a guy who was repeatedly given a lot of access to secrets because of his intelligence and skills despite his being “effeminate” and having emotional problems stemming from his youth. Before making this characterization of Manning, this guy described in a matter-of-fact way some of the material – which included evidence of our government stupidly and horribly killing children and bystanders – that Manning supposedly leaked, but concluded that Manning was – what? – too “effeminate” and emotionally imbalanced to have understood the need for our government to keep these actions secret.

The guy sounded reasonable in tone, but was saying some very assholish things, imo.

Another interesting review:

Is “Star Trek Into Darkness” a Drone Allegory?

Meanwhile, let’s cut more food stamps and Medicare.

Yes, let’s.

/s

Mostly insignificant conservative political groups were targeted, while a group like Crossroads GPS wielding hundreds of millions of dollars to impact political elections got its 501(c)(4) nonprofit status.

This whole thing looks like manufactured nonsense designed to make politically insignificant actors feel persecuted.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Holds Hearing on US Drone Policies

There’s a Congressional Progressive Caucus?

I remember enough about her to know that I don’t care about her gibberish or anything else about her.

Next.

Today’s conservative voters don’t care if the hack they are voting for dumped their wives, paid for sex, or tried to push their mistresses into getting abortions.

Do you have a list of Blue Dogs who deserve to face primary challengers?

Last night shows that partisan labels trump almost everything in Congressional elections.

And it shows that in America today there is a large percentage of Americans who are far too easily manipulated into voting based on nothing more than emotional attachment to the ‘conservative’ brand.

UN investigator suggests it was Syria’s rebels who used chemical weapons