Grateful Dead

about Jedgar? Jedgar Hoover?

My error. Thank you for the correction Mary E. I was off on a gallop there...

I think you mean J. Edgar Hoover. Herbert, while president of the United States and much vilified in the Depression, was a pretty blameless soul, and not in power during J. Edgar's heyday.

Obama has appointed Senator Schumer (presumably in his capacity of being on the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Home Security) as point man against Ed Snowden. What a spectacle he was today as he stood up, a powerful United States Senator of 15 years, and bullied the small, insignificant country of Ecuador. He said that their package of economic aid was up for review this year and that the US would significantly make them hurt if they end up sheltering Snowden. This is unbelievable. The US taxpayer is going to underfund aid to 15 million people who have the cojones to stand up to the US? What a sick joke! Do you feel good Charles? Do you really think Ed Snowden is a traitor to his country for succumbing to his own conscious and saying "I can't do this anymore and furthermore people ought to be aware of what is actually going on." No, he is not a traitor. The latest news is that the NSA has been bugging the offices of our allies in Bonn and Brussells. It is now apparent that Snowden has a lot of information and that he is going to painfully leak it out till it is gone. He knows full well that he could be rendered to a third country like Poland and tortured. Actually, with intelligence agencies within the US at war with one another nobody is clear on anything. Who is Ed Snowden a pawn for? The CIA? Naval Intelligence? Is he really secreted in a flat down a quiet side-street near the Naval War College on Aquidneck Island, commuting to Raytheon, toiling away in nurdery paying his penance for the sins he has committed before God, flag and uh, whatever the third one is? C'mon President Obama. You said you'd been looking for an excuse to bring this up for a "conversation" with the American people. You can also now get that whopper off your chest about drones not plying the the friendly sky's of Hometown USA for the FBI. I suggest that now is a teachable moment for Schumer, Feinstein, Pelosi, Boehner, Cantor, Reid and McCarthy (whoops,I meant McCain) and the rest of the 535 Electoral College Members. A really good teachable moment, just like having a Sam Adams with that Cambridge cop!

Can we also address the fact that the media is clearly in cahoots with whatever is the gov't's public agenda? The day the Ed Snowden story broke, there seemed to be some hesitancy to immediately brand him a traitor, but now it seems like every news station from New York to south Texas all want his head on a pike. And there aren't too many people in America who realize that the "news" is more about shaping what They want you to think and less about keeping the people informed. I guess this is what happens when corporations are allowed to run a country....

Thought about the history of SF that led up to this weekend. It is quite the story of a group of people struggling to overcome bigotry and hatred to obtain their rights, a story that is not finished yet. SF always seems to outdo themselves on this weekend. Just so over-the-top!

Right out of the box, Snowden made a complete statement to the press about his intentions and motives. He just wants to expose the illegal spying on all US citizens so the public can decide what should be done, because after all, this is still a democracy. Snowden says he doesn’t want praise. He’s not a hero. He just wants transparency. And the NSA is breaking the law over and over. Snowden looks the part. Young, bright. A self-effacing yet steadfast nerd. Perfect. Nothing nasty about him. He doesn’t have that Julian Assange edge. He’s just a boy. Look at him. He obviously means well. Honorable hero? CIA operative? Either way, the US government is in a pickle. It’s not going to be a slam-dunk with this guy. In a related issue, it’s astonishing (to anyone who is awake) that the Congress hasn’t come down on NSA like a ton of bricks. We should be hearing a grilling like this, directed at NSA head, Keith Alexander: “Let me get this straight, General Alexander. Snowden captured and stole your most secret data. Anyone of his rank at NSA could have done the same, because you have no security protection against it. And now, with the most sophisticated spying system in the world, you can’t find Snowden. This makes the NSA the most bumbling stumbling trillion-dollar organization in the history of mankind. Can you give me a good reason why we shouldn’t move to de-fund NSA completely and start over from scratch? This is outrageous.” And that would just be the beginning of the assault. Yet, that’s not what we’re getting. Instead, so far, we’re hearing a few modest criticisms. Why? The most obvious answer is, Congress is afraid of the NSA. This bunch of legislators, these crooks and con men and perverts and felonious scum are scared that they’ve been under the NSA spying lens for a long time. And what could come crawling out of NSA files is terrifying to them. So they hold still. They take a deep breath. They pray for safety. They go on the attack against Snowden. They fall all over themselves calling Snowden a vile traitor who must be brought to justice. Which tells you something about who’s running things in Washington. It also tells you something about the level of resentment that’s built up over the years against the NSA. Not just in the Congress. In certain quarters of the CIA and the elite media, because NSA has been spying on reporters and editors and taking huge chunks of federal budget $$ away from the CIA. Lots of important people have been hoping for a way to take down NSA a peg or two. So this is the kind of Congressional-NSA conversation that’s going on right now, behind closed doors in Washington: “Here’s the thing, General Alexander. We spoken about this before. Your NSA has been invading our lives with your snooping for far too long. Now we have a trump card. Ed Snowden. We’re playing it. I’m not admitting he’s our creature, I’m just saying he’s doing the kind of work we ourselves should have done years ago. So we want some give and take here.” “What kind of give and take?” “Get off our backs. We’ll go easy on you. We won’t turn all our guns on you. We’ll call Snowden a traitor. We’ll focus all the public attention on him. But give us our privacy back. Now.” “Well, I suppose we might do that.” “But we have to know you’re setting us free to do whatever the hell we want to do, without fear of being seen doing it. We need guarantees.” “How might that work?” “We need people we appoint to have oversight on NSA. Real oversight.”

scoffing at that penny on the ground? If it's a 1943 copper wheat penny or a 1944 steel wheat penny, you would've just passed up $100,000! (courtesy of cointrackers.com)Adjusting for inflation, just "my two cents" in 1926 - the earliest noted US use of the phrase from the Olean Evening Times in an article from Allene Sumner titled "My two cents worth" - had the same buying power as $0.26 now. just my $0.26....currently, that kind of buying power gets you 1.2 cups of gasoline or 5 rolling papers.....your choice :))))

It was Pride weekend anyhow. And then the Supremes did their thing. parades! weddings! dancing in the streets! This in addition to everything else that's going on. Take transit while you can. BART's threatening to go on strike Monday.

Whatever, I don't tell people not to read other people's posts, however much they post.