Tweety pissed at Bibi

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX6TMENCvKk

And at Boehner, too:

“I’ll get to the heart of this speech now,” Matthews told MSNBC’s Thomas Robertson. “This man from a foreign government walked into the United States legislative chamber and tried to take over U.S. foreign policy. He said, ‘You should trust me, not your president on this. I am the man you should trust, I am your true leader on this question of U.S. geopolitics. To protect yourself, you must listen to me and not this president.’”

“It was a startling situation,” he continued. “To allow someone to come in — knowing that was going to be their message — to the U.S. Congress. This was a decision made by Boehner and certainly complied with by Netanyahu and his ambassador [Ron Dermer]. They went into the U.S. Congress to take over U.S. foreign policy from the president.”

“Think it through, what country in the world would let a foreign leader come in and attempt to wrest from the president control of the U.S. foreign policy?” Matthews asked.

“This was a takeover attempt by Netanyahu with this complying America partners to take American foreign policy out of the hands of the president.”

Having seen the things he’s seen in the past seven years, why is he so surprised? Republicans are profoundly unAmerican.

Hillary Clinton’s email

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

■■■■Hillary Clinton Is Criticized for Private Emails in State Dept. Review http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/state-department-hillary-clinton-emails.html?smid=fb-share&referer=http://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F20

This was written by Clay Johnson, a former director at the Sunlight Foundation. He says pretty much what I thought. Federal IT systems are antiquated and insecure:

I love this story from the New York Times about Hillary Clinton using her personal email account for official Secretary of State business because it points to a serious fracture in transparency’s goals, it’s implementations and IT policy in Government. Take choice quote:

“Personal emails are not secure,” he said. “Senior officials should not be using them.”

Are you serious? Let’s be clear, that personal email was probably far more secure than her state.gov email account. The State Department’s email system has been compromised for months. It’s highly likely that it’s been compromised since forever: remember, during her tenure, Wikileaks released the State Department’s classified communications.

A better question is: why would she use the State Department’s email system to conduct official business? It’s probably the case that if Hillary Clinton was focusing solely on security, using her personal email with 2 Factor Authentication was probably way *more* secure than using the honeypot mess of IT that is the State Department’s email servers.

But more importantly, let’s talk about records. As the former director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation, it’s a cause I care about. That’s the important bit. I don’t believe Hillary Clinton was actively working to hide her communication from the public. I think she was looking for the easiest way to do her job. The one thing you have to understand about people in public service is people down to the lowest levels of public service understand open records laws, and they all know one thing: if you don’t want something on the record, don’t use email. Pick up the phone. Hillary Clinton knows that, too.

Continue reading “Hillary Clinton’s email” →

The absurdity that is our time

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This story is still crazy:

The Maryland parents investigated for letting their young children walk home by themselves from a park were found responsible for “unsubstantiated” child neglect in a decision that has not fully resolved their clash with authorities over questions of parenting and children’s safety.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv hoped the nationally debated case — which has lit up social media and brought a dozen television film crews to their Silver Spring home — would be dismissed after a two-month investigation by Montgomery County Child Protective Services.

But the finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision.

The parents say they will continue to allow their son, Rafi, 10, and daughter Dvora, 6, to play or walk together, and won’t be swayed by the CPS finding.
Continue reading “The absurdity that is our time” →

If you live in PA, call your state reps

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Mike Stack sworn in as Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor

As you can see with this vote, elections do have consequences! Let’s not let them turn Pennsylvania into Wisconsin, no matter how many Koch-loving hacks we have in the state house:

An attempt to pass a controversial amendment to a bill that would restrict union dues collection from state and school employees’ paychecks narrowly failed in the state Senate on Monday.

But most likely, we haven’t seen the last of this amendment to this so-called paycheck protection bill.

Immediately after Lt. Gov. Mike Stack cast his first tie-breaking vote to defeat the amendment 25-24, the Senate voted 29-19 to reconsider it at a later time to keep it alive.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair County, would have made it illegal for government to deduct union dues from state and school employees’ paychecks. The amendment offered on Monday narrowed that restriction to only ban governments from deducting money for unions that is used for political purposes while still allowing dues collection to support for general union operations.