The Return of McCarthyism

Update, video taken down, no doubt from pressure from FOX "News", but you can still view the video here.

This video is for all the people I know who don't understand why I hate Glenn Beck. His shtick is old, and it embarrasses me that my fellow country men and women are falling for it all over again.

Neoconservative Propaganda Techiques Circa 2004

I know Obama has disappointed several people within the Democratic Party of late, but whenever I feel let down by my new President I just search the hard drive of my Mac and find any random clip featuring my old President.



I don't know who made this video, but it is an excellent example of how the Bush Administration, fellow Republicans, and even a Zell Miller (former Democrat), used 9-11, terrorism, and general fear-mongering during the 2004 Republican National Convention to scare their base and a sizable portion of the American public into re-electing George W. Bush. Note the repetition, as George W. Bush said during his famous failed attempt at privatizing social security via the stock market: "You Have To Keep Repeating Things To Catapult The Propaganda."

White House opposes court order in e-mail case

Reprinted from Google News:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is aggressively pushing back against a federal court order instructing the most important offices in the White House to preserve all of their e-mail.

In court papers late Friday, the administration argued that a federal court has no authority to impose such a requirement on the offices of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council.

The issue underscores the administration's narrow view of the court's authority in lawsuits over the White House's problem-plagued e-mail system.

The administration argued that none of the court's orders can apply to parts of the White House subject to the Presidential Records Act.

The issue arose Wednesday after U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the White House to issue a notice to all employees to surrender any e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005.

Justice Department lawyers argued that the order applied only to White House offices subject to the Federal Records Act, prompting a quick response from U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola, who is working with Kennedy on the case. Facciola said that all White House offices must be searched for e-mail.

Besides the offices of Bush, Cheney and the NSC, the Presidential Records Act applies to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Council of Economic Advisors.

The Federal Records Act applies to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

In the lawsuits over possibly missing e-mails that may number in the millions, two private groups are seeking to force the White House to engage in a recovery effort and to establish an electronic archive for e-mail.

The White House said this week that it had located 14 million e-mails thought to have been missing. But the White House has provided no details to support this assertion.

The two private groups suing the Executive Office of the President are the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Is anyone surprised?

The Spies that Love You

Wire Tapping as explained by Snuggly the Security Bear.

Black Ops Jungle: The Academy of Military-Industrial-Complex Studies

Excerpted from Mother Jones:

Dedicated to everything from architecture to sports medicine, "career academies" claim to offer high school kids focus, relevancy, and solid job prospects. Now add a new kind of program to the list: homeland security high. In late August, Maryland's Joppatowne High School became the first school in the country dedicated to churning out would-be Jack Bauers. The 75 students in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness magnet program will study cybersecurity and geospatial intelligence, respond to mock terror attacks, and receive limited security clearances at the nearby Army chemical warfare lab.

The new school is funded and guided by a slew of federal, state, and local agencies, not to mention several defense firms. Officials say it will teach kids to understand the "new reality," though they hasten to add that the school isn't focused just on terrorism. School administrators, channeling Cheneyesque secrecy, refused to be interviewed for this story. But it's no secret that the program is seen as a model for the rest of the country, with the Pentagon and other agencies watching closely. Continue article...

How many terrorist attacks have we had? How many people have died from said attacks? How many more people will die from car crashes? Welcome to our Brave New World.

Mildly Brilliant Update 08/12/07

Not much to say except for my utter disappointment of my sacless party's decision to capitulate once again to Heir Bush's will. I, of course, am referring to the passing of Bush's warrantless wiretapping bill AKA: The FISA Bill, which essentially makes the judicial oversite of the FISA court (already a rubber stamp anyhow which has turned down a whopping four requests for surviellance since its inception) optional or voluntary. Of course we all know how well sef-regulation has worked for past six and a half years...