Houston Mayor Annise Parker Makes Strong
Statement About The Right Of Working People To Engage In Civil Disobedience In The Fight For Fair Wages

post from Texas Liberal on 20 July 2012 11:50:04 PM. © Texas Liberal

Yesterday I wrote that on the blog that Houston Mayor Annise Parker’s police were reportedly ticketing people who were honking their horns in support of striking janitors. I also said that Mayor Parker was no place to be found in support of these janitors as they fight for a living wage. I’m glad to report that [...]

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rong-statement-about-the-right-of-working-people-to-engage-in-civil-disobedience-in-the-fight-for-fair-wages/

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Friday Stuff

post from The Liberal Doomsayer on 20 July 2012 11:38:00 PM. © The Liberal Doomsayer

My sympathies and condolences go out to the victims of the latest mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado (here). However, since the NRA owns just about every politician who could make a difference, don?t expect that a damn thing will change.
And going from the ridiculous to the even more ridiculous, I should note that it?s that time again?

#25, Kristi Noem
#26, Hal Rogers
#27, Lou Barletta (Two bonus selections: Boren and Ross)
#28, Paul Broun
#29, Mary Bono Mack
#30, David Dreier
#31, Marsha Blackburn (including backgrounder)

?and that takes us to #24, who would be Buck McKeon of California; as noted here, he?s the top Congressional recipient (well, in the House at least) of defense industry donations, and he also received VIP loans from Countrywide, as noted here (interesting - can't recall this generating a fraction of the umbrage that the same thing generated against Chris Dodd, by the way)?

?and once again, Sam Seder brings some perspective to this item?

?and I?ve been meaning to get to this all week ? Chris Hayes profiles the awful cut in food stamps passed by those ignoramuses in the House ?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

?and gives this item (h/t Atrios ? it?s ?duuh? cubed tonight, people), I guess I?d better put up this video in response (sorry, no video).

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Open thread for night owls: Scope of cellphone
surveillance still not known

post from Daily Kos on 20 July 2012 11:30:07 PM. © Daily Kos

Open Thread for Night Owls At The Nation, Nancy Goldstein writes, Congress Is Still in the Dark About the Extent of Electronic Snooping:

Here?s the only marginally good news about Congressman Edward Markey?s bombshell revelations last week about government prying into personal cellphone use: the American public and the US Congress now have our very first inkling of the scope of cellphone surveillance requests by law enforcement to telecommunication providers?1.3 million requests for personal data in 2011, according to the telecoms.
The truly bad news, however, is that Congress still has no idea of the scope of law enforcement surveillance. Congress is the body designated to provide oversight of the ways that government peers into our most private affairs. Yet the information that the proactive Markey was able to extract from the telecom providers represents just a fraction of the possible surveillance requests made by law enforcement, a blurry and partial accounting of a field that remains sprawling, unmapped and without rigorous oversight.
The problem begins at the level of Markey?s own worthy but limited investigation. In his capacity as co-chair of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, the Massachusetts Democrat queried nine mobile wireless carriers about their policies and practices for sharing their customers? mobile phone information with law enforcement agencies. Leaving aside the fact that T-Mobile, one of the largest telecom providers, refused to share its numbers with Markey, the deeper and more troubling problem is that the investigation did not take into account all the law enforcement agencies involved in the snooping business.
The reason: surveillance orders from the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency are sealed, meaning that telecom providers could only share information on requests from federal, state and local police?or, more specifically, the police, FBI, Secret Service, US marshals, postal inspectors and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is therefore literally impossible to say how many cellphone data requests would have been tallied if the investigation had included requests to telecom providers by the NSA, CIA and DIA.
No less disturbing, cellphone companies represent only a sliver of the vast landscape of agencies and entities that government routinely taps for personal information. Remember, our data are recorded and archived every time we swipe a card at a subway turnstile, hold up our E-Z Pass at a tollbooth, use our credit or debit cards, interact with any broadband provider, take out a library book, request a disc from Netflix or sign in to Foursquare. But no Congressional body has publicly queried the transportation authorities, the banks or the cable companies, and it was only this week that Senator Al Franken began questioning the FBI and Facebook about their use of facial recognition technologies.

Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010:

In a campaign cycle where the competition for the most palm-to-face stupid comment by a politician would be a helluva contest, it would seem we can finally declare an undisputed winner.
Observe former Congressman Tim Walberg. Walberg is in the midst of an expensive and competitive primary in Michigan's 7th district, as he tries to reclaim the seat he lost to Democrat Mark Schauer in 2008. [...]
Consider that in trying to endear himself to the teabagger crowd, Walberg made the following observation:
"With the 9/12 movement, the Tea Party, people are standing up really for the first time in history," Walberg declared.

Tweet of the Day:

RT @stevebruskCNN: Spokesman confirms to CNN that former President George W. Bush is declining an invitation to attend the GOP Convention.
? @SteveSebelius via TweetDeck

Tune in Monday to Friday from 9-11 AM ET for Daily Kos Radio, hosted by David Waldman a/k/a KagroX. You can listen here. It was a tough morning to go on with the show at Daily Kos Radio. We did turn our attention away from the tragedy in Colorado, with DemFromCT bringing us back to ground as usual. Romney's woes continued to dominate the non-breaking news headlines, and we revisited the great discussion with where4art from Wednesday's show, and expanded on it by looking at today's Boston Globe piece, and discussed some new angles on how private equity firms structure themselves such that Romney's story might make some sense after all. Look for more of that, and maybe a guest or two on the subject, next week.

Non-Flash

High Impact Posts. Top Comments.

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-owls-Scope-of-cellphone-surveillance-still-not-known

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Open Thread

post from Crooks and Liars on 20 July 2012 11:30:04 PM. © Crooks and Liars

enlarge

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http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal-aka-fran/open-thread-356

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Late Night: Exploiting a Window of Opportunity

post from Firedoglake on 20 July 2012 11:00:46 PM. © Firedoglake

It's on the verge of becoming old news in our endlessly revolving media cycle (not to mention in the wake of the latest gun tragedy in Colorado), but I wanted to belatedly take note of the surprising "Firms" TV ad that the Obama campaign began running[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/QMA8ltDoqsg/

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C&L's Late Nite Music Club with Mike Doughty

post from Crooks and Liars on 20 July 2012 11:00:23 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Genre: AlternativeTitle: Looking at the World from the Bottom of a WellArtist: Mike Doughty

What songs about hope and/or recovery inspire you? Music open thread....

The Question Jar Show

Price: $14.49 (As of 07/20/12 06:18 pm details)

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http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal-aka-fran/cls-late-nite-music-club-mike-dou

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Canadians now richer than Americans, more likely
to have a job

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 20 July 2012 11:00:18 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Via Slate:Economic times here in America are pretty tough, but things aren?t so shabby for our neighbors to the north.Over the past five years, the net worth of the average Canadian has crept up, overtaking the average American?s wealth for the first time. These days, Canadian households are about $40,000 richer than American ones.

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an-americans.html

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If it isn't one thing, it's another

Wedge issue politics on billboards along a U.S. highway in eastern New Mexico.

Because no republican plutocrat ever paid for an abortion.

Obviously part of the 27 percent.

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-isnt-one-thing-its-another

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Great Moments in Tucker Carlson

Also, when we come back ... some people were shot and died and we have also have video of Dancing With The Stars hostess Brooke Burke Charvet sporting a teeny bikini.[...]

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Malaysian-owned voting machine firm plans to grow
USA vote-counting

By Bev Harris - BlackBoxVoting.org

NEW CERTIFICATIONS, PLANNED EXPANSION:

Black Box Voting has been investigating and reporting on this disconcerting trend for nine years now. Everything we've been reporting has not only turned out to be true, but is increasing. A press release today about the planned expansion of Unisyn into more USA locations renews attention on foreign ownership of corporations selling voting systems into the United States.

Unisyn is owned by a Malaysian gambling outfit. Another major elections industry player, Canada's Dominion, purchased the massive Diebold Election Systems division (which it shares with ES&S); Dominion also owns Smartmatic, which handles electronic vote-counting in the Philippines and Belgium. Military voting is now handled in several states by Barcelona, Spain-owned Scytl. In January 2012, Scytl acquired the largest election results reporting firm, SOE Software.

Accenture, now based in Dublin Ireland (formerly headquartered in tax-haven Bermuda), claims copyright over the massive electronic voter registration/voter history databases used in several states, including Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin and Arkansas. Accenture purchased its voter registration unit from Election.com, a Saudi-owned company based in the Cayman Islands.

Because a computer will only do what it's programmers and administrators tell it to do, whoever issues the commands gains ultimate control over how it receives, counts, and reports votes, voter registrations, and voter histories.

UNISYN: According to Barry Herron (formerly of Diebold Election Systems), now Director of Sales for Unisyn, "Unisyn and our business partners are actively supporting installations in the States of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. We intend to expand into other states in late 2012 and early 2013."

Unisyn also recently made inroads into Puerto Rico. Another Unisyn election product called "Inkavote" is used in 4 million-voter Los Angeles County (Calif) and in Jackson County Missouri.

IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF USA ELECTION SOFTWARE?

Not if you don't mind some unknown guys working offshore controlling whatever they choose to in the software processing votes and voters.

For more on Malaysian, Chinese, Canadian, Spanish, Saudi, Cayman, Irish ownership of USA election software, see full Black Box Voting article with supporting documents and links:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/82176.html

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http://thepoliticsofjamiesanderson.blogspot.com/2012/07/malaysian-owned-voting-ma
chine-firm.html