These are Miami’s so-called “fans” heading for the exits during a two-point game in the fourth quarter of a game the Heat went on to win in overtime.
chaptertwelve asked:
So. Given what we’ve learned in the past few days, and bearing in mind what we may learn in the days ahead, what do you imagine as our best and worst case scenarios in terms of a path forward? How do you see all of this playing out in the near and distant future?1. Best case scenario, public outcry grows, and politicians feel pressured to put protections into the law that require probable cause for individualized warrants, and prohibit the blanket kind of surveillance that’s been used by the administration. The FISA court is changed in some way that makes it an actual check on potential abuse. Perhaps the Supreme Court is permitted to review all FISA judgments in camera in some kind of audit for abuse.
2. Worst case scenario, most of the public never cares about the surveillance. Other stories push the issue from the news, and the government continues to amass large amounts of private information concerning all citizens. The FBI starts to access this information for non-terrorist cases. Other government agencies do the same. The IRS checks your online purchases. The EPA monitors purchases of materials that might pollute. Those who express controversial opinions or visit controversial websites are watched. Rogue government employees access private data for their own person gain—selling it to interested parties, blackmailing people engaged in extramarital affairs, stealing identities. You’ll come home from work to find that your home has been ransacked by a SWAT team pursuant to a warrant issued by a secret court for unspecified reasons.
I fear that that the most likely outcome is closer to 2 than 1. Consider how crazy the drug war has become—the massive amounts of money spent to fight it, the increasingly militarized local police forces that enforce prohibition, the asset forfeiture laws that take private property from innocent citizens without any due process, and the massive incarceration of millions of people for extraordinarily long periods of time. At the beginning of the drug war, you’d be laughed at for suggesting that this would happen. But it did, because people just didn’t care, and drugs were scary. Terrorism is scarier than drugs, so you can imagine how that’s going to play out.
(reposted for reblogging)
Emphasis added.
(P.S. Hey Tumblr, your mobile app is fucking terrible.)
I wouldn’t have bought one of these shirts anyway, but I respect this particular part of Cubby Tees’ statement in response to the outrage:
Anyone who believes that the shirt mocked those injured in the horrible events of Patriots’ Day regrettably missed our point and did not read/process our accompanying commentary; nowhere on the shirt’s face (or within its subtext or motivation) did we take aim at the victims or make light of the incident — nor would we ever. The design poked fun at the embarrassing self-congratulatory branding of the tragedy, and its inappropriate adoption by SOME BOSTON FANS AS A MINIMIZING SPORTS ANTHEM, not the sad reality of that day’s mayhem.
I’m as wary as anyone about using these tragedies, and throw wars into this mix, for the sake of visceral entertainment without commentary. I don’t need to hear the National Anthem at a sporting event. I don’t need to see a soldier used as a prop during the game to get the crowd going. If the Bruins ever used a “Boston Strong” montage to fire up the fans in the third period, well, yes, that’s a bit deplorable too.
So if that truly was the aim for this shirt’s existence, it at least inches closer to “understandable but undoubtedly still misguided.”
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But in a situation drenched in irony – railing against the “frat boy” chant that “Boston Strong” has become by producing a T-shirt that’ll be seen in every frat bar in Wrigleville, for one of a dozen examples – the idea that a “Chicago Stronger” T-shirt was pulled off the market because Boston fans’ protests were that strong … well, how ‘bout them apples?
Well, that’s one conclusion. You could also conclude that it kind of undercuts your claim about being “Strong” when you’re getting upset about a fucking T-shirt.
PNC Park, visitors broadcast booth
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Photo by lathandplaster
the designated hitter is evil and wrong.
Emphasis added because I could not agree more.
Tom Marr: Terry Elliot of Washington, D.C. wants to know why you don’t use Terry Crowley as a designated hitter all the time?
Earl Weaver: Well, Terry Crowley’s lucky he’s in fucking baseball for Christ sake. He was released by the Cincinnati Reds, he was released by the fucking god dammed Atlanta Braves. We saw that Terry Crowley could sit on his fucking ass for eight innings and enjoy watching the baseball game just like any other fan, and has the ability to get up there and break one open in the fucking ninth. So if this cocksucker would mind his own business and let me manage the fucking team we’d be a lot better off.
“Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families.
Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids.”
Every other sportswriter in America can give up now. Grantland’s Andrew Sharp has authored the perfect Tim Tebow column:
He came to Manhattan pregnant with hope, but destined for an abortion. Rex Ryan was never going to give him a real chance.
I write a lot of software and documentation for regulated industries. I know my shit. Let’s play weasel word bingo! My text in bold! Stuff of interest in italics!
We want to set the record straight about stories that Yahoo! has joined a program called PRISM through which we purportedly volunteer information about our users to the U.S. government and give federal agencies access to our user databases. These claims are false.
“Volunteer” is a weasel word. It’s narrowly defined as to mean “freely offer.” If there were any pressure of any kind of the government, Yahoo could deny they “volunteered” anything.
“Give federal agencies access” is also cavalierly broad as to suggest weaseling. If access is demanded, it can be construed as being “taken” rather than “given.” There are many kinds of access (discretionary, privileged, anonymous, read-only, write-only, etc.) so that term isn’t useful either.
Yahoo! has not joined any program in which we volunteer to share user data with the U.S. government. We do not voluntarily disclose user information. The only disclosures that occur are in response to specific demands. And, when the government does request user data from Yahoo!, we protect our users. We demand that such requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. We fight any requests that we deem unclear, improper, overbroad, or unlawful. We carefully scrutinize each request, respond only when required to do so, and provide the least amount of data possible consistent with the law.
Two more “volunteers” for you in the first sentence. The second sentence is stiltedly passive voice and vague (how do you define a “specific demand?”).
Then, they say they protect their users, implying a standard of privacy/security that exceeds the law, and then they say explicitly that they’re simply compliant with the law. That’s weaseling— exemplary compliance (the kind you’d tout with “we protect our users”) exceeds the minimum standards of regulation. Since the law in question is so murky it is fucking opaque, I find this to be an utterly meaningless statement and an example of Yahoo cowering behind the government’s pant leg.
The notion that Yahoo! gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users’ records is categorically false. Of the hundreds of millions of users we serve, an infinitesimal percentage will ever be the subject of a government data collection directive. Where a request for data is received, we require the government to identify in each instance specific users and a specific lawful purpose for which their information is requested. Then, and only then, do our employees evaluate the request and legal requirements in order to respond—or deny—the request.
Again: “give” is exclusive of “surrender.” An affirmative phrasing (“Yahoo restricts any government body from viewing user records”) would be meaningful; this is not.
Further, the PRISM system as defined in the leaked slides is not a “government data collection directive.” It is a government data access system. PRISM does not collect data or make ad hoc requests, it uses live and direct connections to user records for querying. Essentially, there is no difference between a Yahoo! user record system and PRISM, as Yahoo! (and all the other companies involved) are essentially candidates filed into a stack to be queried as needed. According to those slides and the articles about them, there is no mechanism for authorization, scrutiny, or rebuttal— there is just access.
This item does nothing to refute that.
We deeply value our users and their trust, and we work hard everyday to earn that trust and, more importantly, to preserve it.
Bullshit.
“Civil liberties are not something you get to ‘trade,’ not least because they don’t all belong to you. They belong to me, too, and to the woman at the next table here at the Commonwealth Avenue Starbucks — Oh, c’mon, you knew where I was anyway, NSA guys. — and to the four people who just walked down the street past the big plate-glass window. You give yours away, you’re giving mine away, too, whether I want you to do so or not. Therefore, we all surrender those civil liberties. We do not trade them because we don’t get anything back. And it’s not like we can cut another deal later to get them back.”
“There was a period after the Vietnam war, partly due to the Pentagon Papers, and largely due to Watergate, that made people much less tolerant of being lied to, much more aware of how often they were lied to and how the system operated to make that lying possible without accountability. We got the Freedom of Information Act. The FISA court was set up. The FBI was reined in a great deal. The NSA was forbidden to do overhearing of American citizens without a court warrant. That lasted for some years. But 40 years have passed, and after 9/11 in particular, all of those lessons have been lost. There’s been very great tolerance that if the magic words “national security,” or the new words “homeland security” are invoked, Congress has given the president virtually a free hand in deciding what information they will know as well as the public. I wouldn’t count on the current court with its current makeup making the same ruling with the Pentagon Papers as they did 40 years ago. I’m sure that President Obama would have sought a life sentence in my case.”
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, “Redskin” is labeled “usually offensive.” Other words to which M-W appends that description are “kike,” “dago,” and “darky.” Let’s all imagine, for the sake of argument, that the journeyman coach Marshall wished to “honor” had had a mother of possible Jewish, Italian, or African descent. How long do you suppose the name Washington Kikes, Washington Dagoes, or Washington Darkies would have lasted?
Not long. But “Redskins” lasts only because white people don’t know it’s offensive and don’t particularly care to stop and think about how and why it might be. They don’t know that it refers to the scalps (and skulls and corpses) of Native Americans, butchered by bounty hunters and delivered by the wagon-full to collect their payments from local authorities who’d authorized the kills. This recent poll that 79 percent of Americans aren’t bothered by the team’s name doesn’t impress me. All it means is that 79 percent of Americans need a history lesson.
So, too, does a certain NFL owner. Dan Snyder is Jewish, by the way; if he can’t see the similarity between “Redskin” and “kike” or “Hebe,” then he’s got a dark spot on his soul that I sure can’t help cleanse.
As WRC-TV news anchor Jim Vance—an employee at the Washington NBC affiliate since 1969—put it, “… the name sucks. We need to get rid of it.”:
