March 31st, 2008
As if I didn’t have sufficient cause to worry about all the private info I’ve willingly handed over to Google (oh, how I love Gmail and Google calendar and Google Docs and Google Apps and Google sitemaps and Google Analytics and… and …), I now have to wonder about this match that’s straight out of 1984:
Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.
Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.
Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
All right, let’s set my paranoia aside, and admit that organizing and building a wiki-style tool for the intelligence community is pretty cool and, too, one of those, “Shit, why weren’t they doing that already?” kind of moments.
And now, back to dealing with my paranoia, Shit, just what else will Google, NSA, CIA and the Telecomms collaborate on next, and just how badly will we get screwed?
March 23rd, 2008
Well, it’s clear that the finger prints of republican operatives can be found in Eliot Spitzer’s fall, just like it’s clear that the now former governor of New York was just plain stupid for leaving himself so exposed:
Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ”used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida.
[...]
Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton’s presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.
Allegations of republican involvement in Eliot Spitzer’s fall surfaced earlier, as discussed here.
March 22nd, 2008
Paul Krugman reminds us of the lessons we’ve forgotten since 1929 — the time of the “Great Depression”:
The financial crisis currently under way is basically an updated version of the wave of bank runs that swept the nation three generations ago. People aren’t pulling cash out of banks to put it in their mattresses — but they’re doing the modern equivalent, pulling their money out of the shadow banking system and putting it into Treasury bills. And the result, now as then, is a vicious circle of financial contraction.
Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues at the Fed are doing all they can to end that vicious circle. We can only hope that they succeed. Otherwise, the next few years will be very unpleasant — not another Great Depression, hopefully, but surely the worst slump we’ve seen in decades.
March 18th, 2008
I was an Edwards supporter, but voted for Sen. Obama after my candidate of choice dropped out of the primary. However, even after voting for Sen. Obama, I remain lukewarm towards him. Because, frankly, I’ve found him to moderate his positions too much, while seeming to back away from muscular progressive positions — admittedly, this critique is primarily style over substance. Additionally, I’m not naive enough to believe that one man alone will be able to bring about a so-called “post-partisan” epoch to our nation’s capital; since, at the end of the day, politics is about power, and there’s no way in hell that any politician — much less partisan republicans — will willingly give up hard fought for power. That said, today’s speech by Sen. Obama on Race in America, or The Speech, as some have called it, has raised my enthusiasm for the junior Senator from Illinois.
If you haven’t seen Sen. Obama’s speech, I encourage you to listen to it — there’s a lot here to be hopeful for and enthusiastic about:
March 17th, 2008
It doesn’t take a political genius to realize that there’s more to the Eliot Spitzer story than what has been reported.
Soon after the news broke, I commented to friends how there’s another story to be told; a story that includes Wall Street interests, a crusading progressive politician with his eye on the White House, a politized Department of Justice, and, of course, we cannot forget that the Bush Administration still controls the reins of the Executive branch (i.e., they still control the investigative muscle to go after the opposition).
Because of this, I wasn’t too surprised to read this on Harper’s No Comment:
Just after the scandal broke, a number of New York pols told me they were convinced that the Albany Republican establishment knew “all about” Spitzer’s problems well in advance of the press reports. I couldn’t find anything that substantiated this suspicion, but Newsday’s Ellis Henican now presents the first evidence. He interviews Roger Stone, a man known as the ultimate dirty-trickster of New York politics.
But before I could even make my way to the Capitol to gather up a new pile of reaction statements, my cell phone was ringing from a place even nicer than this. The call-back number said 202, for Washington. But the sunny voice on the other end could only be in Miami.
Yes, it was Roger Stone. And the exuberance in his voice made high-fiving Albanians sound almost morose. “I didn’t make him go to a prostitution ring,” said the most famous and ruthless Republican dirty trickster who still walks the earth. “He did that all on his own.”
Stone said that even before I asked if his hand was somehow in Spitzer’s latest trouble. I figured, somehow or another, it had to be. “No comment on that,” Stone said. “I will say I knew it was coming. That’s why I wasn’t too upset about the results of the special election,” where a Democrat grabbed a supposedly safe Republican State Senate seat, leaving Democrats just one vote shy of control.
Maybe this is pure braggadocio. But if Roger Stone did know that all of this was going down then the state’s Republican leadership most likely did too. That would be more powerful evidence of a politically corrupted investigation and prosecution.
This, it goes with out saying, in no way excuses Eliot Spitzer’s blame and total lack of sense, and responsibility. However, it would not come as a great surprise if we later learn that Bush’s Department of Justice launched a fishing expedition with the sole intent to catching a once promising Democratic prize. Yes, the now former governor of New York should’ve known better.
And now to wait for the enterprising journalist that will dig beneath surface, and look pass the sex scandal, and easy story of prostitutes and powerful men.
