Huxley

“I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”

–Aldous Huxley

Political Agnostic

One who is a registered voterand politically informed, but is basically indifferent and non-committal toward the popular political parties (Democrat orRepublican in the US). Probably believes that the political parties are so ideologically similar and so mired in their ownbureaucracy that they have outlived their usefulness. Voting straight-ticket out of allegiance to a political party would be considered heresy.

A toxic president

by MICHAEL GOODWIN 

Chalk it up to karma, fate or bad luck. Whatever you call it, the Ebola scare is proof that Bad Things Happen to Bad Presidents.

The morphing of what is a single case into near panic is, according to medical experts, unwarranted. They point out that, so far, one person from Liberia died in a Texas hospital and two nurses who treated him got sick. Period, end of panic.

In rational and medical terms, they may be right. But their calculations omit another factor. It’s the X factor.

In this case, X stands for trust.

President Obama has spent six years squandering it, and the administration’s confusion, contradictions and mistakes on Ebola fit the pattern. This is how he rolls.

Don’t worry, there’s no chance of an outbreak, they said. Then it was, Oops, we must rethink all procedures for handling cases. Then there was no worry about a “wide” outbreak, yet quarantines for lots of people.

The irrational fear of an alien pathogen is fueled by rational suspicion of an incompetent and dishonest government. How did the so-called experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention give Nurse No. 2 permission to travel by air, even though she had a mild fever?

That’s a great question — if only the CDC would answer it. “I have not seen the transcript of the conversation,” was Director Thomas Frieden’s lame answer.

Meanwhile, the most obvious move, a travel ban from affected countries, is rejected with unpersuasive claims about the need to get aid workers to Africa. It looks and smells like political correctness searching for logic.

There isn’t any logic, so bet your hazmat suit a ban will happen soon. It’ll be one way for the new Ebola czar to make a mark.

But it will take a miracle worker to restore Barack Obama’s credibility. While there are many things to say about his tenure, the one thing you cannot say is that the nation trusts him.

Poll after poll, on subject after subject, show a collapse. Consistently now, a majority of Americans say Obama is not trustworthy. Most think he’s a failure, many say he is incompetent and the vast bulk — 70 percent in some cases — says his key policies are wrong for America.

He is so unpopular that members of his own party don’t want to be seen with him, lest his failures spawn a political plague.

Against that backdrop, any emergency will cause the national yips. The rise of the Islamic State and its beheadings of two Americans did it, and now Ebola is doing it.

As “Ghostbusters” asked, who you gonna call? Certainly not this White House.

Credibility is like a reservoir or a bank account. You make deposits in good times so you can make withdrawals when you need them.

Obama never made the deposits. It’s been all downhill since Day One. He blames others for failures, and when cornered or ambitious, reaches for a lie. Routinely.

The claim that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” is a defining example, but hardly the only one. Don’t forget “shovel-ready jobs” to justify a trillion-dollar boondoggle. Or there’s “not a smidgen” of corruption at the IRS. And Benghazi was caused by an anti-Muslim video.

His lies are legion and now he’s like the boy who cried wolf. When he makes a national appeal on Ebola, the trust tank is empty.

If there’s one encouraging sign, it’s that Obama may sense he’s walking on thin ice. When Ebola started to dominate the news, he canceled two fund-raising trips.

Talk about miracles.

Hillary

Hillary: “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs."

What a f*king idiot.

Citizenfour

Peter Bradshaw

Thursday 16 October 2014 10.00 EDT

This documentary is about that very remarkable man, the former NSA intelligence analyst and whistleblowerEdward Snowden, shown here speaking out personally for the first time about all the staggering things governments are doing to our privacy.

Fundamentally, privacy is being abolished – not eroded, not diminished, not encroached upon, but abolished. And being constructed in its place is a colossal digital new Stasi, driven by a creepy intoxication with what is now technically possible, combined with politicians’ age-old infatuation with bullying, snooping and creating mountains of bureaucratic prestige for themselves at the expense of the snooped-upon taxpayer.

Yet in spite of the evidence put in the public domain about this – due to Snowden’s considerable courage – there has been a bafflingly tepid response from the libertarian right, who have let themselves be bamboozled by the “terrorism” argument. There’s also been a worrying placidity from some progressive opinion-formers who appear to assume that social media means we have surrendered our right to privacy. But we haven’t.

Now activists are warning of “linkability”. In US cities, subway commuters are being asked to put their transit pass accounts on their actual credit cards. One card fits all, and also gives officialdom access to a whole lot more of your information. British cities are being encouraged to do the same thing with “contactless” cards. 

Maybe we all need to think again. Citizenfour is a gripping record of how our rulers are addicted to gaining more and more power and control over us – if we let them.

Law enforcement running scared over encryption

It's good news to see both Apple and Google highlight plans to encryptcertain phone information by default on new versions of their mobile operating systems, making that information no longer obtainable by those companies and, by extension, governments and law enforcement showing up with warrants and court orders. Having giant tech companies competing on how well they protect your privacy? That's new... and awesome. Except, of course, if you're law enforcement. In those cases, these announcementsare apparently cause for a general freakoutabout how we're all going to die. From the Wall Street Journal:

One Justice Department official said that if the new systems work as advertised, they will make it harder, if not impossible, to solve some cases. Another said the companies have promised customers "the equivalent of a house that can't be searched, or a car trunk that could never be opened.'' 

Andrew Weissmann, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation general counsel, called Apple's announcement outrageous, because even a judge's decision that there is probable cause to suspect a crime has been committed won't get Apple to help retrieve potential evidence. Apple is "announcing to criminals, 'use this,' " he said. "You could have people who are defrauded, threatened, or even at the extreme, terrorists using it.'' 

The level of privacy described by Apple and Google is "wonderful until it's your kid who is kidnapped and being abused, and because of the technology, we can't get to them,'' said Ronald Hosko, who left the FBI earlier this year as the head of its criminal-investigations division. "Who's going to get lost because of this, and we're not going to crack the case?"

That Hosko guy apparently gets around. Here he isfreaking out in the Washington Post as well:

Ronald T. Hosko, the former head of the FBI’s criminal investigative division, called the move by Apple “problematic,” saying it will contribute to the steady decrease of law enforcement’s ability to collect key evidence — to solve crimes and prevent them. The agency long has publicly worried about the “going dark” problem, in which the rising use of encryption across a range of services has undermined government’s ability to conduct surveillance, even when it is legally authorized. 

“Our ability to act on data that does exist . . . is critical to our success,” Hosko said. He suggested that it would take a major event, such as a terrorist attack, to cause the pendulum to swing back toward giving authorities access to a broad range of digital information.

Think of the children! And the children killed by terrorists! And just be afraid! Of course, this is the usual refrain any time there's more privacy added to products, or when laws are changed to better protect privacy. And it's almost always bogus. I'm reminded of all the fretting and worries by law enforcement types about how "free WiFi" and Tor would mean that criminals could get away with all sorts of stuff. Except, as we've seen, good old fashioned police/detective work can still let them track down criminals. The information on the phone is not the only evidence, and criminals almost always leave other trails of information. 

No one has any proactive obligation to make life easier for law enforcement. 

Orin Kerr, who regularly writes on privacy, technology and "cybercrime" issues, announced that he was troubled by this move, though he later downgraded his concerns to "more information needed." His initial argument was that since the only thing these moves appeared to do was keep out law enforcement, he couldn't see how it was helpful:

If I understand how it works, the only time the new design matters is when the government has a search warrant, signed by a judge, based on a finding of probable cause. Under the old operating system, Apple could execute a lawful warrant and give law enforcement the data on the phone. Under the new operating system, that warrant is a nullity. It’s just a nice piece of paper with a judge’s signature. Because Apple demands a warrant to decrypt a phone when it is capable of doing so, the only time Apple’s inability to do that makes a difference is when the government has a valid warrant. The policy switch doesn’t stop hackers, trespassers, or rogue agents. It only stops lawful investigations with lawful warrants. 

Apple’s design change one it is legally authorized to make, to be clear. Apple can’t intentionally obstruct justice in a specific case, but it is generally up to Apple to design its operating system as it pleases. So it’s lawful on Apple’s part. But here’s the question to consider: How is the public interest served by a policy that only thwarts lawful search warrants?

His "downgraded" concern comes after many people pointed out that by leaving backdoors in its technology, Apple (and others) are also leaving open security vulnerabilities for others to exploit. He says he was under the impression that the backdoors required physical access to the phones in question, but if there were remote capabilities, perhaps Apple's move is more reasonable. 

Perhaps the best response (which covers everything I was going to say before I spotted this) comes from Mark Draughn, who details "the dangerous thinking" by those like Kerr who are concerned about this. He covers the issue above about how any vulnerability left by Apple or Google is a vulnerability open to being exploited, but then makes a further (and more important) point: this isn't about them, it's about us and protecting ourprivacy:

You know what? I don’t give a damn what Apple thinks. Or their general counsel. The data stored on my phone isn’t encrypted because Apple wants it encrypted. It’s encrypted because I want it encrypted. I chose this phone, and I chose to use an operating system that encrypts my data. The reason Apple can’t decrypt my data is because I installed an operating system that doesn’t allow them to. 

I’m writing this post on a couple of my computers that run versions of Microsoft Windows. Unsurprisingly, Apple can’t decrypt the data on these computers either. That this operating system software is from Microsoft rather than Apple is beside the point. The fact is that Apple can’t decrypt the data on these computers is because I’ve chosen to use software that doesn’t allow them to. The same would be true if I was posting from my iPhone. That Apple wrote the software doesn’t change my decision to encrypt.

Furthermore, he notes that nothing Apple and Google are doing now on phones is any different than tons of software for desktop/laptop computers:

I’ve been using the encryption features in Microsoft Windows for years, and Microsoft makes it very clear that if I lose the pass code for my data, not even Microsoft can recover it. I created the encryption key, which is only stored on my computer, and I created the password that protects the key, which is only stored in my brain. Anyone that needs data on my computer has to go through me. (Actually, the practical implementation of this system has a few cracks, so it’s not quite that secure, but I don’t think that affects my argument. Neither does the possibility that the NSA has secretly compromised the algorithm.)

Microsoft is not the only player in Windows encryption. Symantec offers various encryption products, and there are off-brand tools like DiskCryptor andTrueCrypt (if it ever really comes back to life). You could also switch to Linux, which has several distributions that include whole-disk encryption. You can also find software to encrypt individual documents and databases.

In short, he points out, the choice of encrypting our data is ours to make. Apple or Google offering us yet another set of tools to do that sort of encryption is them offering a service that many users value. And shouldn't that be the primary reason why they're doing stuff, rather than benefiting the desires of FUD-spewing law enforcement folks?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140923/07120428605/law-enforcement-freaks-out-over-apple-googles-decision-to-encrypt-phone-info-default.shtml

US Slips to 12th in Economic Freedom

A new report of "economic freedom" around the world finds the US ranked 12th among 152 countries, tied with the United Kingdom, and lower than neighbor Canada or Australia. The index, published by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute, has been published since 1996. As recently as 2000, the US ranked 2nd in the world, in terms of boasting a free economy. The US's declining ranking will lower future economic growth. 

The index, built on decades of research by Nobel laureates and dozens of leading scholars, measures 5 broad factors that impact the economy: 1. Size of government; 2. Legal structure and security of property rights; 3. Access to sound money; 4. Freedom to trade internationally and; 5. Regulation of Credit, Labor and Business. Countries where citizens are freer to engage in business and trade and property and legal rights are protected by the rule of law will score higher on the index. According to economic research, though, these countries will also do better economically and create and generate more wealth. 

The 10 freest economies in the world are: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mauritius, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Jordan, and Chile and Finland tied for 10th. 

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notesthat, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States." 

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

The report estimates the cost of the decline of economic freedom in the US. On current trends, future economic growth will be half the historic average of a 3% yearly gain. The past few years have schooled us on the impact low growth has on the labor market and economic outlook. 

This latest report is a sobering look at the scale of challenges facing the US. Curtailing government's leviathan isn't simply solving a math problem, i.e. getting revenue and spending figures for government to balance. A far larger threat is the accumulation of thousands of rules and regulations that not only stifle innovation but also undermine our personal and property rights. 

A balanced federal budget is insignificant and meaningless if the rule of law has been subverted. No single election or administration can repair that damage. That is a task that must be tackled by a generation.

11 US Presidents Who Smoked Marijuana

While we’re really sure about the last three presidents’ history of pot smoking, the historical record is unclear about some of the rest. Here’s a Presidents Day look at the tokers and anti-tokers in the White House.

YES #44 - Barack Obama: The current president wrote about his cocaine and marijuana use as a youth in Hawaii and famously said, “When I was a kid, I inhaled, frequently. That was the point,” when running for president in 2008.

YES #43 - George W. Bush: Dubya was known as a cocaine user in his younger days, but he would never respond to questions about his marijuana use. Later, he told his biographer, Douglas Wead (yes, pronounced like “weed”), “I wouldn’t answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

YES #42 - Bill Clinton: Slick Willie famously said, “When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale and never tried it again,” when asked about his marijuana use. In true Clintonian fashion, he may have been telling the truth. The late Christopher Hitchens, who attended Oxford with Clinton, said Bill had an affinity for pot brownies, so he may not have ever tried “it” (inhaling) ever again.

NO #41 - George H. W. Bush: It’s probably safe to say Poppy Bush never touched a reefer. He is the president who brought us the Drug Czar’s office and closed off the experimental federal medical marijuana program when AIDS victims started applying en masse. On the “scourge” of drugs, Bush specifically called for “intolerance” of drug users and prophetically announced that “Some think there won’t be room for them in jail. We’ll make room.”

NO #40 - Ronald Reagan: Given that he died from Alzheimer’s disease, it is a shamethe Gipper wasn’t able to embrace the cannabis medicine that could have protected his brain. Not that he would have used it, since Reagan told us, “I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.”

NO, BUT… #39 - Jimmy Carter: Jimmy Carter says he’s never smoked pot, but there’s no doubt his son Chip did on the roof of the White House with Willie Nelson. Still, Carter was the most progressive president on pot in the War on Drugs era, telling Congress, “I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.”

NO #37 - Richard Nixon: Tricky Dick is the one who brought us this War on Drugs in the first place. The Nixon Tapes are replete with Nixon’s mix of irrational hatred of marijuana and non-white races and ethnicities, with quotes like, “I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana, I mean one that just tears the ass out of them. You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.”

YES #35 - John F. Kennedy: JFK used marijuana to deal with severe back pain, according to a few written accounts, including “John F. Kennedy: A Biography”, which described this White House scene: “On the evening of July 16, 1962, according to [Washington Post executive] Jim Truitt, Kennedy and Mary Meyer smoked marijuana together. … The president smoked three of the six joints Mary brought to him. At first he felt no effects. Then he closed his eyes and refused a fourth joint. ‘Suppose the Russians did something now,’ he said.”

From President #17 Andrew Johnson to President #34 Dwight Eisenhower, we have almost nothing in the way of historical record of presidents smoking pot. Pre-Civil War America was a land of hemp farmers and slaves who could commonly roll up some hemp leaf as a smoke. Post-Civil War America heralded the development of pre-rolled tobacco cigarettes and prejudice against the Mexican immigrants who smoked “marihuana”.  Cannabis was becoming a patent medicine, so perhaps some presidents used it in that fashion.  But by the turn of the 20th century, the temperance movement was in full swing and states were beginning to prohibit cannabis. Pot smoking is not likely to be something the late 19th and early 20th century presidents wanted recorded for posterity, if they did it at all.

NO #16 - Abraham Lincoln:  The internet abounds with people claiming Honest Abe loved “a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.”  Hohner didn’t make harmonicas until two years after the alleged quote and didn’t export them to America from Germany until 1868, four years after Abe’s assassination.  Also, that oft-cited “Prohibition... goes beyond the bound of reason…” Lincoln quote?  It’s a fake, written by a former mayor of Atlanta in 1922 to court black voters to oppose alcohol prohibition.  That doesn’t necessarily mean Lincoln didn’t partake; we just have no proof that he did.

YES #14 - Franklin Pierce: One of three military men to become president who enjoyed smoking marijuana with the troops fighting the Mexican-American War.  In a letter to his family, Pierce wrote that marijuana smoking was “about the only good thing” about the war.

YES #12 - Zachary Taylor: Another of the three military men who smoked marijuana with the troops.

YES #7 - Andrew Jackson: Third of the three military men whose letters referred to smoking marijuana with the troops.

YES #5 - James Monroe:  Openly smoked hashish while he was Ambassador to France and continued smoking it until his death at age 73.

YES #4 - James Madison:  The “Father of the Constitution” claimed that hemp gave him the insight to create a new democratic nation.

YES #3 - Thomas Jefferson: In addition to farming hemp, Jefferson was Ambassador to France during the hashish era there.  At risk of imprisonment if caught, Jefferson smuggled hemp seeds from China known for their potency to America.  However, as far as our research takes us, he never said or wrote, “Some of my finest hours have been spent sitting on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see.”

YES #1 - George Washington: The father of our country kept meticulous diaries, wherein he noted “Sowed hemp at muddy hole by swamp” away from the hemp he grew for fiber. “Began to separate the male from female plants at do [sic --rather too late” and “Pulling up the (male) hemp. Was too late for the blossom hemp by three weeks or a month” indicates he was going for female plants with higher THC content. There is also indication he used hemp preparations to deal with his toothaches.

"Radical" Russ Belville is the host of "The Russ Belville Show."