We think people sexualize guns because people sexualize guns.

Crap like this is why we think gun people have a weird sexual thing about guns.

The never-ending deadly clown tragedy.

First Note:This post started with a much lighter tone when the situation had not yet turned as tragic as it has become.

Second Note: Been with the wife and my new child these last few weeks. Proud father of a wonderful baby boy! Blogging has been light, focus has been elsewhere, SO MUCH STUFF has came and went since then. The security vulnerabilities in IE, The recently released hacker "Weev" trying to make a hacker-sploit Startup or Hedge Fund (or this might be a BEAUTIFUL example of trolling, we will see). Huge decisions by the Supreme Court have come down regarding race, admissions, campaign finance, and searching your cell phone. The FCC may have just ended Net Neutrality as we have known it. And so much more.

This man is the gift that keeps on giving
But I am not saying anything on any of that right now. I am mesmerized by the gift that keeps on giving that is the Bundy Ranch standoff. This started as Cliven Bundy's long term status of not paying his bills or respecting the law regarding his cattle using land that is not his own without any kind of payment received for twenty years and continuing to have them trespass on Federal land on a daily basis. That is a VERY clear moral no-no. The agents informed Cliven Bundy that the next time his cattle trespassed they would be seized. Cliven responded with threats of lethal force and as such tactical units were dispatched.

The combination of guns, cowboy hats, and faux patriotism proved intoxicating to the least admirable members of America and his home became a camp for armed Anti-American drifters. After the BLM thoughtfully backed off, the inevitable happened.

#1) Two state chapters of Americans for Prosperity (the Koch Brother's political group that orchestrated "Tea Party" events which advocates for right wing cultural issues and the Koch's corporate agenda) decided to promote this cause as "Lone armed white person against the big government blah blah blah jack booted thugs etc...". Remember, there was NO merit to his case at any time in the last 20 years.

#2) Every right-wing grifter and his brother gets of the Cliven Bundy bandwagon. Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, those and many more jump in with support...

Truly a hero of our times, taking cover while civilians without flak jackets just stand around next to him and film.
#3) This situation escalates. More armed-and-weird people show up from across the nation to point their rifles at law enforcement agents and use their women as human shields. Supporters get down right Messianic about Cliven. The BLM decides to avoid slaughtering any American to seize Bundy's trespassing cattle. Bundy likely feels invincible. Rumors (with literally nothing behind them) state that Bundy not paying his bills for 20 years isn't the real issue it's a conspiracy involving Senator Reid, Solar Power, Chinese Communism, and the United Nations. (Illuminati and Reptilians to follow)

#3)The "Pro-States Rights, Anti-Obama, Conspiracy Theorist, Pro-Gun, and so on" guy was given too much time to ponder things on the microphone and said things that are pretty much unforgivably racist in any context:

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”


#4) The great back-away began. Politicians who supported him claimed to never do so, supporters began to split hairs about supporting his noble cause of trespassing against his personal racism. Cliven himself does the standard "I blame the Media for twisting my words" and then posts a photo of him with a black person. Americans for Prosperity scrubs the posts that promoted his cause. The bigger, more corporate supporters back away and Cliven is left with only his menagerie of armed paranoid malcontents. Cliven's supporters eventually do what the most ignorant of racists would do in this situation, prove that he cannot possibly be racist because he has been photographed by a genuine black person (he didn't burst into flames or anything)

Clearly a racist can't possibly pose with a person of a different race!

#5) Oh, the gift keeps on giving! While the savvy grifters move on to their next cause (Sarah Palin had an NRA convention to speak at), the less savvy continue to defend the indefensible. The contortions they have to twist into to make the guy that said "they put their young men in jail because they never learned to pick cotton" into a non-racist are AMAZING. 2nd and 3rd tier paid mouthpieces (like Dana Loesch, but some rather prominent names stick with him for a few more days.

#6) The armed paranoid folks with nowhere particular to be? They're still hanging around. They make the community exactly as comfortable as you would think. Reports of them acting as de-facto law enforcement, setting up checkpoints, intimidating residents and visitors, carrying weapons of war all over the place and such happens. Without a BLM presence to point weapons at, Oath Keepers and Militia Members and such begin to "diversify" their efforts. The gunned up folks keep talking up conspiracies about the constitution being suspended and an imminent drone strike.

#7) The Armed Factions split. The "Oath Keepers" promote a rumor from their "inside source" that Eric Holder (The Attorney General) had authorized a Military Drone Strike against the Bundy compound, which, aside from the fact that isn't how the chain-of-command works... is somehow believed by the Oath Keepers. The other Militias working at the compound reject the crazy bullshit (which is claimed to come from someone inside the DoD - which I guess answers to the Attorney General in his world) as crazy bullshit. The Oath Keepers are kicked off of the compound, too crazy and paranoid for a convention of armed paranoid people. A guy going by "Booda Bear" who is the "Head of Security" for the ranch releases a statement kicking out the Oath Keepers and manages to work in "I swear by the white skin..." which can never not sound creepy no matter what is before or after:

"... now we all have that thought of the fight of freedom and fighting against tyranny and this government that's trying to repress us but ta pull out of town and to go to hotels and say you did it for security -- that's coward, that's coward. My guys sleep in the dirt out here, we're on shifts for 14hours a day and trying to make sure that this family [welfare-king Bundy] stays safe and secure ... and just so everybody knows, as Booda, head of security for the Bundy Family I can swear on the white skin that covers my ass there will not be an Oath Keeper -- there WILL NOT BE AN OATH KEEPER allowed to set foot on the internal ranch property."

He also was rather sane in his evaluation that if a drone strike was being prepared against someone like the Bundy menagerie of armed idiots, only about five people on the planet would be aware of this in advance, and NONE of them would anonymously call up an OathKeeper hotline (it exists!) to give them details. Rather logical thought from a guy camping in the desert to promote Bundy's right to trespass.

There is a vote taken an unanimously the Oath Keepers are kicked out. Like any good meeting of guys pretending to be soldiers pretending to fight a war.. they have to threaten murder: "...you’re lucky that you’re not getting shot in the back. Because that’s what happens to deserters on the battlefield.".

Good stuff.

This is taken from a video where you get to find out that local Republican organizers cancelled meetings to come out in support of Bundy... because OF COURSE.

#8) All their failures are blamed on the government. The Oath Keepers release a statement blaming their promotion of a drone strike as government "Psy-Ops" as opposed "We listened to some GIJOE-wannabe who just makes shit up" for believing the crazy bit about the drone strike. They blame "plants" in the militia movement for them getting voted out after their crazy bullshit. They put out a press release that reads like a journey through the mind of the modern paranoid.

"The info we received stated that Eric Holder of the Department of Justice had okayed a drone strike on the Bundy ranch near Bunkerville, Nevada, within a 48 hour period over the weekend of April 26/27, 2014....That, fortunately, turned out to be “dis-info” – a false rumor...Oath Keepers is tremendously happy that nothing happened and that this was a bad tip, a piece of “dis-info”, a “psy-op”."

E. Stewart Rhodes (The Head of the Oath Keepers who made the above statement and formed Ron Paul staffer for what that is worth) goes on to attack the Militia folks in the harshest terms possible for Militia type people:

"...steroidal psycho-pathic dreamwish of little boys playing “Army” in the fields near the house forty and fifty years ago, who somehow retained that aloofness and swapped it for a job with a badge or uniform and a gun and a retirement plan that could be counted on, or worse, in some cases, self-proclaimed “officers” who never bothered to go into the military when they grew old enough to enlist, or never made the police force.".

He calls out Militia types for what they are, which means a phony soldier called out other phony soldiers for being phony. This is like a hipster calling another hipster a hipster... this is a pretty grievous attack in the pretend-army community. You can read more about the leader of the Oath Keepers here, and HEY they accept BitCoin for donations so you know they are a (self-link) collection of brilliant intellectuals. Some of the guys are straight up begging for cash.

Many of these guys are STILL out there, and hopefully they'll go home to whatever they do at home before they up and shoot someone. We can only hope that after a few weeks of wearing fatigues and camping and pointing their rifle at people they got whatever it was out of their system and can go home and do something productive with their lives for a while.

Relaxing at home and Rand Paul rallies when not defending trespassers
This whole thing quickly seemed to confirm more than a handful of stereotypes about the Militia Movement/State's Rights/WAYYY into guns crowd.

Easy to manipulate by shady billionaire funded groups. Always at least adjacent to racists. Paranoid to a fault. Believe WAY too many things they hear from anonymous sources. Blame their own failures on the government.

The only way any of this makes sense to me is if a group of right-wing political activists wanted to test if they could summon an armed mob from all across the U.S. for a cause with literally no merit just based on hyperbole, lies, paranoia and the right wing media. It looks like they can. If the Koch Brothers are ever convicted of anything, expect this mob to believe whatever conspiracy is put out there and to come protect them.

Truly, defenders of the common man
It did not, of course, end there. Bullies - those who use force legitimized by only their own ego to make others give in to their demands - they tend to respond to any and all capitulation by engaging in more aggressive tactics. Sadly, this happened with two individuals who made their way to the Bundy compound:

They murdered two police offficers and another individual, adorning their victims with a Gadsen flag and announcing a revolution. Video came out showing their time at the ranch. Those who they rallied with have since then (of course) claimed minimal to no support of these people.

Nevada City and Georgia have since also had armed conflicts with "Sovereign Citizens" and Cliven Bundy fans that were horrible.

My final thought: When we legitimize and enable this horrible conspiratorial world view, we lay the foundations of the next crazy shooter. As paranoid delusion becomes more common as a belief system, expect to see more of this.

Post Note, researching this has given me many, many links to peek into the mind of paranoid people. There are MILLIONS of people who believe we are days away from FEMA Camps, Sharia Law, U.N. Occupation, Socialism, and that every crazy shooting tragedy is a "false flag" operation by the illumineworldorder. It's pretty terrible in there.

*This is flowing into my next post, why the gun culture is noise and what that means.

The rightful role of the loyal opposition...

It's a damned shame the right-wing keeps the noise/hate machine turned up to "11" all the time. Now that there is an actual scandal, the ones whose rightful place should be pointing out shortcomings of the current Administration, they cannot shine a light on where efforts to fix the problem need to go as they are used to keeping all the lights on all the time at their highest setting.

People who have spent the last five years jumping on bandwagons like "Birth Certificate! Grabbing our guns!! IRS!!! Ben Ghazi!!!!" have a routine about repeating or insinuating clearly false allegations in hopes of creating a general sense of villiany about their target... and they simply do NOT know what to do when actual wrongdoing has taken place. Already the elements of the noise machine (Fox, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Americans for Prosperity/Koch Bros), Crossroads GPS/Karl Rove) are already using the VA, and the current malfeasance some of the employees engaged in, as a general attack against everything from Obamacare, to the Obama Administration in general or simply the idea of Government providing functions to its citizens (and Veterans).

This isn't some fictional problem media folks invented that makes a handy attack on politicians one does not like. This is a systemic problem that eternal hearings and demands for resignations will not fix. This is an actual problem that needs a unified leadership and serious resources to overcome to fulfill the promise that our nation made to it's veterans.

The Right Wing noise machine is flawlessly engineered to generate noise. It seems to be wholly unsuited to carrying a signal. A damned shame, there are times when something like it is needed.

Vanished!

I haven't been posting these last few weeks. My son was recently born and, while I am the happiest man alive, time has been scarce. I should have something new up Monday.

Congratulations to those we've championed!

Congratulations Weev!
This has been a great week for those who believe in a more open world, freedom of speech (the kind that actually gets prosecuted) and our freedom to explore and learn about the tools we use.

A few days ago, Andrew "weev" Auernheimer, who I wrote about as an example of a hacker unjustly punished by a system he was an embarassment to, was released from Federal Prison after his conviction was overturned by the Third District Court of Appeals (on a technicality of jurisdiction, but whatever).

Congratulations to weev, congratulations to his legal team, congratulations to the E.F.F. and everyone that donated to the legal fund. Congratulations even to GoatSec. This is a big deal, even on a technicality, and ESPECIALLY if new charges are not brought. Andrew is out and reportedly enjoying himself, attending a party in NYC with Glenn Greenwald and associated freedom advocates. The young man is fully nerded back up, on twitter and such.

This is truly a good thing as there is no reason that man should be in prison.

Speaking of Greenwald, he has such been awarded The Pulitzer Prize, shortly after being officially given his Polk Award for his reporting (which he stated should rightly belong to Edward Snowden, still in Russia). This means the Edward Snowden revelations and how they have been released to the public have won the most prestigious awards in journalism. Making this known to the public has been validated by press experts as a tremendous accomplishment and something to be celebrated (and not a crime). Mr. Greenwald felt free to come home to the United States after months of hesitation regarding just how "free" journalists are.

And based on statements our heads of National Security have publicly made, he was understandable in being hesitant to come home. It is likely a little harder to imprison a Pulitzer Prize winner than just another journalist.

This has been a very educating week for a bunch of folks about rights, privacy, deep state, and freedom to speak. The Heartbleed exploit was make public... AND the fact that the NSA kept this exploit secret for years so it could use it. Those actions made EVERYONE'S systems less secure just to enable ease of access. Honoring the work the Guardian did with Snowden, the release of weev, the publicity of the exploits in the code that can be used on any of us... these are all pushing things in the right direction.

I am going to embed Andrew's interview with RT. He is very much in the spotlight now and is using that to raise awareness of others targeted by a malicious culture of prosecuting hackers and an unjust law that allows it to happen. He mentions Schwarz and Keys and what they went though and how he isn't pleading or backing down (even though he still may be prosecuted).

Feel free to watch weev's interview, I am just very happy:

Snooping Diminishes Our Lives.

Not as funny as Chase and Aykroyd
One of the most annoying statements made defense of privacy is this:

"What do you have to worry about if you don't have anything to hide?"

And sometimes that shuts down the discussion. It shouldn't. I have come across many good rebuttals, such as "Okay, may I go through your wallet, bank statements, and cell phone right now?" and "Diaries have locks for a reason." and "I want my house key back." But those are not the complete answer.

The deeper, though not most snappy, answer is as such:

People always being watched live diminished lives.

USA Today reported on a Harris Poll recently done that stated 47% of Americans changed their online habits because of revelations regarding the NSA and online spying. Any time you take what a secret agency may or may not think of your actions into account before making a joke or commentary or even having contact with an individual... you are living a diminished life.

In my work overseas, something I have struggled with is trying to relate to the mind set of people who have lived their life in a totalitarian state. There are societies were it is assumed (and certainly legal) for the state to intercept any and all communications you may have. There are societies where a letter the the editor of the local paper or a campaign sign in your yard can land you in secret detention facility or cause you to be disappeared. This impacts people's minds and culture and gradually goes from being perceived as a crime against human rights as just a thing that happens. Of COURSE the agents of our sovereign leader disappeared Uncle Dave, did you see those letters he wrote about the leader? What did he expect?. People normalize this state of affairs and self-censorship becomes the norm.

Totalitarians NEED that self-censorship in order to maintain and grow their power. The police state cannot detain, execute, or even attend to everyone who has a disagreement with those in power. Most of the potential dissidents and activists out there have to be defeated before they ever put a pen to paper or clear their throat.

Our current leaders are by no means dictators.... The two hundred misleading, derogatory and semi-racists JPEGS in your Facebook feed attacking our president without reprisals are a pretty good sign of that. (In addition to an entire news network doing the same, with a thriving bumper sticker industry and the occasional billboard)

A real dictator would not allow this shit
But despite the relative freedom of our dumbest citizens to make fools of themselves, there IS a chilling of free speech that is even more necessary to our republic than racist JPEG files.

Edward Snowden has no plans to return to his home nation. Neither does Julian Assange. Chelsea Manning will be imprisoned for decades. Jeremy Hammond, who let us know what a bunch of crooked bunch of right-wing loons Statfor was (while still soaking up tax dollars) and how they were spying on private citizens at home and abroad... He has been sentenced to ten years in Federal Prison. Barret Brown, who wrote about and shared revelations that security and intelligence firm HB Gary was also generally incompetent in their field and full of paranoid delusions and willing to act outside of the law to target Americans, that poor soul sits in prison awaiting a sentence of up to 100 years in Federal Prison. Aaron Schwarz, who had created the RSS system that we all love, committed suicide at the young age of 26 after being persecuted by the Feds over sharing Academic Journals.. Heck, even little fish like Andrew "Weev" Aurenheimer is serving nearly four years in the Federal pen for finding a security vulnerability in AT&T services for the iPad and then, instead of using or selling this, sharing it openly so AT&T could fix it. He left us with this:

"[The Feds] worry a lot more about civil disobedience than my grandma getting robbed. They worry about the social integrity of their people staying in power...”
-Interview with Forbes

(Disclaimer, Weev is a friend-of-a-friend, so I might have a soft spot for his case)

How can you not love someone who has a profile pic from SNES Shadowrun?
Since their revelations, The President has addressed the NSA's over-reach, Stratfor is taken a little less seriously in some circles, HB Gary's CEO resigned after being exposed as petty and incompetent and some of HB Gary's partners in illegal activities have been exposed. Heck, AT&T even responded to Weev's warnings and fixed their security holes (and then pressed charges.)

The world we live in is a better place for what they have exposed.
That's true.

Others are afraid to contribute because of how these men have suffered.
That's true too.

I have written before that you can tell what information actually threatens an institution by what kind of response it brings. It should tell us something that you can rant all day about FEMA Camps and Gun Confiscation and the New World Order without any fear of reprisal... but if you show that those getting rich off of the Security State are useless, petty, incompetent and violating our constitutional and personal rights, if you demonstrate that the emperor has no clothes... you will end up in Jail.

Most of us will never be prosecuted like these gentlemen have. But 47% of us will change SOMETHING we are doing because of how we are being watched. People behave differently when they know they are being observed. This is not a new idea by any means, as Jeremy Bentham wrote in the 1700s as he conceived the Panopticon Prison:

"It is obvious that, in all these instances, the more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them, the more perfectly will the purpose X of the establishment have been attained. Ideal perfection, if that were the object, would require that each person should actually be in that predicament, during every instant of time. This being impossible, the next thing to be wished for is, that, at every instant, seeing reason to believe as much, and not being able to satisfy himself to the contrary, he should conceive himself to be so"

The purpose of the Panopticon wasn't to observe everyone in it all the time, but to lead people to change their behavior as if they were. Does this same ability to see into our online lives make us change our behavior? For about half of us the answer is yes, and that number is likely to increase as more revelations come to light.

We are in a once-in-a-generation discussion about how far secretive government agencies and their attached secret corporations should be peering broadly into our lives despite the fact that they cannot prove doing so has ever stopped a terrorist attack.. If we do not limit this beast, it will continue to change our culture and diminish the choices we feel free to make further.

Our culture should not be a prison

Everyone is a socialist come April 15th

When April 15th rolls around, everybody become a socialist.

From January to April of each year have been working as a tax preparer at a little kiosk in the Midwest. In that time I have done taxes for people doing rather well, people barely scraping by, hourly employees, landlords, small business owners, tipped employees, salaried employees and people in other situations it takes longer to explain.

One thing is true about every single client I prepared taxes for: Not ONE of them has turned down a tax deduction or tax credit they have qualified for. Every single person - when it comes time to pay taxes - has preferred I choose every legal option on their return to owe the minimum amount possible or to get back as large of a refund as possible. Not ONE person has said "Can I pay in an extra 100 or so to help lower the national debt?" or such, or refused to take an energy/home loan interest/student loan interest/higher education/child care tax credit based on some principle of "I don't believe the government should be paying for X."

The rest of the year we all might be fiscal libertarians or such, but come April 15th, everybody's a socialist.