eVille Times

Mar 31, 2017

Today's Tweet

There's so much nepotism in the White House that Trump might resign to spend less time with his family.

#TrumpRussia @realDonaldTrump
— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) March 31, 2017

Mar 30, 2017

Today's Tweet

I have no idea if Trump campaign colluded w Russia. But if they didnt, what else could possibly be worth this amount of hamhanded deception?
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) March 30, 2017

It's possible Devin Nunes really thinks he's doing what we pay him to do - and it is possible he actually is doing what we pay him to do, even as he does it in a very unorthodox and troubling way.

It's also possible I can make the jack of spades jump out of a brand new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. (with apologies to Sky Masterson's dad for turning that one around)

NYT:

WASHINGTON — A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.

- and -

Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

Samantha Bee

Keith

GQ.com

It Gets Worse

The Daddy State approacheth.

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.”

--Mitch Ratcliffe

Quincy Larson at Free Code Camp:

Soon every mistake you’ve ever made online will not only be available to your internet service provider (ISP) — it will be available to any corporation or foreign government who wants to see those mistakes.

Thanks to last week’s US Senate decision (update March 28: and today’s House decision), ISPs can sell your entire web browsing history to literally anyone without your permission. The only rules that prevented this are all being repealed, and won’t be reinstated any time soon (it would take an act of congress).

ISPs can also sell any information they want from your online activity and mobile app usage — financial information, medical information, your children’s information, your social security number — even the contents of your emails.

They can even sell your geolocation information. That’s right, ISPs can take your exact physical location from minute to minute and sell it to a third party.

You might be wondering: who benefits from repealing these protections? Other than those four monopoly ISPs that control America’s “last mile” of internet cables and cell towers?

No one. No one else benefits in any way. Our privacy — and our nation’s security — have been diminished, just so a few mega-corporations can make a little extra cash.

I'll take exception to that last bit - about how nobody benefits in any way. My basic skepticism (ie: my cynical - tho' perfectly justifiable - paranoia) is waving flags like it's laundry day at Redneck Central Headquarters.

This looks a whole lot like standard Political Duplicity - privacy snoops disguised as profiteers to give the illusion of separation from Officialdom, so nobody in government is accountable to voters for the inevitable fuckery.

And the bonus is that the ISP cartel can peddle our information to Da Gubmint (aka: the Lunker Customer everybody's always gunnin' for, so you know it'll happen), which will confer upon us the supreme privilege of paying them to fuck us over - again.

Cronies get richer

Congress Critters get re-elected

We get fucked

'Twas ever thus with the Radical Right, and ever thus 'twill be.

Anyway, privacy is pretty much the whole banana in a free state, and there seems to an even fuckier fuckery afoot.

Roe v Wade is based on the concept of a Consitutional Right To Privacy. If this ISP thing stands up to challenge in the courts, kiss that one good-bye. And then it's really open season on everybody's rights across the board.

Now, I realize I'm pretty close to the Slippery Slope Fallacy, but these things happen step-by-step, so I'm just trying to follow it out to the logical extreme. And it's not like we haven't seen some of this shit already. The bullshit SCOTUS ruling on Voting Rights comes to mind.

So how's that Gorsuch appointment looking now?