You have to laugh...

when you read about someone with no sense of irony.



From Huffington Post

A Republican Lobbyist Is Trying To Get Gay Football Players Banned From The NFL

Even Burkman concedes that conservatives like himself are supposed to
find it abhorrent when the government tells a private business how to
conduct its affairs.

"However," he added, "there are times when
that is trumped for reason of great urgency or necessity. And I think
this is it, because I see the society sliding in the wrong direction."

"I
felt that if the NFL doesn't have any morals, and people like
[Commissioner] Roger Goodell, who are just go-along-get-along guys, just
want to appease advertisers, appease corporate America and all that
stuff," he said, "I figured, well, it is time for conservatives in
Congress to step in and define morality for them."

I don't suppose looking at the health and safety of football players would constitute a moral issue.

But as RonCo would say, there's more:

He is also not necessarily the best person to wage a fight over decency and morality. A few years back, his name was reportedly found on the D.C. madam's list of clients of high-end prostitutes.

"The story simply was false," he said. "I'll say what I said on the air at the time. It is simply a false story. The numbers listed were never mine. It was planted by somebody in the liberal blog world."

"My life has been far from perfect. I am hardly any type of embodiment of moral perfection," he added. "But I have never let that stop me from doing what I think is right for the nation."

Good to know he will protect me.

Bias Bash: Why the media fixates on Hillary Clinton's past | Fox News Video

Bias Bash: Why the media fixates on Hillary Clinton's past | Fox News Video



This is a fascinating example of indirect attack.  The question asked is why the information was public. 

That's right, it is terribly suspicious that the information was public.  To follow this out, Fox will only trust Clinton if she keeps secret. And the media failed its job by not asking, why isn't this secret.

To be fair and balanced, this is a gem of its type.

Let's not miss the point: U.S. Spied on Negotiators At 2009 Climate Summit

 Here is a revelation: Snowden Docs: U.S. Spied on Negotiators At 2009 Climate Summit.



This means we spied on other countries delegates, outside of the United States, during an international conference to gain a negotiating advantage.



There is a real issue about NSA overreach in tracking American citizens in the United States.  It is a serious threat to our liberty, it violates the US constitution, and a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence.



Can we not be distracted by being informed that the United States is behaved like a sovereign nation towards other sovereign nations?

And I should care because ....?

The article What Jesus Says About Homosexuality? appeared a recently in the  Huffington Post, it makes a point that nowhere in the Christian Testament does Jesus mention the topic.

I have seen it referred to in several posts and Facebook pages, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.

• Speaking as one who has done some study on Christian theology and history:
  
  I find this argument problematic; if memory serves, there is little mention of  Halakhic law (though there is the interesting comment about fulfilling the law), much less its dispensing in the first four books of the Christian Testament, and it isn't until the expression of Pauline marketing -- written after the gospel accounts -- that Biblical laws are devalued in Christian thinking. 
  
  Given that, one would assume that as far as Jesus was concerned, in silence there is consent with regard to the law.
    
  Mind, this does raise the interesting question of what role the Bible's laws have to Christianity -- some are to be obeyed, others not.  For example, the observation of Shabbat is Biblically more important that sexual laws, but seems largely to be waived, as is the injunction against images.
  
  From an outsiders position, there is an ad hoc quality to this legal thinking.

And as amusing as thinking about this is to me, sort of a mental ping-pong practice, a position as an outsider is the main reason for me to raise the question of why.

• Speaking as a member of this republic:
  
  The specific teaching of the one of the gods of one particular religion should not be relevant to any debate.
  
  My position on the issue same sex marriage is founded on utility to the society,  people are jointly acquiring and transmitting properly and producing progeny, it is useful to have a common set of rules for governing that for all couples.
  
  Official impartiality about private sexual practices should stem from the fact is no reason to regulate the behavior.
  
  This republic was founded "like a bastard child, half compromised and half improvised" (from the play 1776), and not in allegiance to a given religion.

And finally

• Speaking as a Jew:
  
  Should I care about what arguments are made between the various parts of the Christian continuum? 
  
  If I deal with Christians, as above, as members of a shared republic, then a conversation is reasonable.  We can discuss the good of our shared enterprise.
  
  But is it not more likely that I will be insulted instead than be swayed by the arguments advanced by other peoples gods or prophets? 

"Unhappy is the land..

".. that needs a hero." Bertolt Brecht, Gallileo

In that light, an article that does not attempt to deny that Mandela was good and important man, but reminds us how good is really accomplished: The Mandela coverage and the banality of goodness

Anyone remember the Glomar Explorer

In the early 1970's' the CIA commissioned the construction of the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a deep sea drill ship platform, in an attempt to recover a sunken Soviet missile submarine.

The reasons for this (still undisclosed) were most likely to get cryptological documents and equipment and obtain an intact nuclear missile.

The project did not produce much (outside of a wonderful  McGuffin for the Charles Stross's novel, The Jennifer Morgue), but I remember that when it came to light in the mid 1970's. 

This was the time of the Church Committee, which was investigating CIA misdeeds, of which there were an elegant sufficiency. 

But what I remember to be most bizarre item about the whole story was the level of criticism the CIA received for this project -- not operational criticism (e.g. whether the project was well or badly undertaken) -- but criticizing the whole idea: Why should the CIA be trying to get information from a sunken Soviet sub.

What else is the CIA supposed to do, but try to get secrets from enemies?

This is all a preamble to my feelings about latest NSA disclosures -- that the United States was intercepting communications in France and browsing through the email of the Mexican president.

I may be simple here, but my response to the NSA spying on foreign governments (earlier it was Brazil) is "So?".  I suppose that should be "Nu?".

At least one of these countries has a history of tapping US phones, and in the 70's this was so well known that the CIA intentionally passed information on compromised lines to feed disinformation to the Soviets.  Which means there was more than snooping going on at that time.

The NSA's spying on United States citizens threatens liberty, and for that reason the secrecy of the program threatens the constitution.  But that is a constitutional matter, about how we try to govern the power of our state so it cannot become 'over mighty'.

We accord no such courtesy to other states -- and should not expect any in return.  I am morally certain that all these states maintain some intelligence presence in the US -- up to and including signals intelligence. If they do not, they are idiots. I would given better than even money that most of these states knew about it. The claim that this sort of spying is not what allies to each other runs into Palmerston's dictum.

It does point out why one should minimize the number and type of secrets one has.  Had the NSA gone through any public vetting of its programs, had there actually be some legislation, then I rather doubt Snowden et al would have bothered to leak this information. The fewer secrets one has, the better they can be kept.

Bravo For Life's Little Ironies*

You have to admire the blindness to irony in these statements.

Norquist: Cruz 'Pushed House Republicans Into Traffic And Wandered Away'

Maybe, Norquist thinks that Cruz should have had people sign a pledge?

*From an old Doonesbury cartoon.