The sheer breathless speed in which Washington is rushing toward a total government takeover of everyone’s life is quite frankly making J. Edgar Hoover’s paranoia and Lyndon Johnson’s delight in it all look completely lame. This piece is written by Bruce Henderson, who writes for And Still I Persist and is a former Marine who focuses custom data mining and visualization technologies on the economy and other disasters.

By Bruce Henderson
newledger.com
August 31, 2009

Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat senator from West Virginia, worries about the day a “Digital Pearl Harbor” happens. In response to what he sees as an inevitable attack on our communications infrastructure, he and his staff have been laboring to create law that will enhance our cyber security, under the name of S773 (Senate bill 773). The Obama administration apparently fears the “digital Pearl Harbor” and their ability to respond–and if the Rockefeller bill is any indication, they think that pulling the plug and a federal certification program will do just the trick. This shows a basic lack of understanding of what the internet is, how it works, and what it represents to present day America.

In an August 28th article on CNET (on the internet, mind you), Declan McCullagh analyzes the second version of this bill. The original introduced in April was so bad that it was quickly deemed legislative garbage and sent back for complete re-work. This revised version was meant to address the concerns of lawmakers, trade groups and citizens by narrowing its focus and refining its goals. Instead it has unleashed a flood of criticism (mostly on the internet, mind you) on how this would give the government a “kill switch” for the internet whenever they deem there to be a national crisis or emergency.

As has been demonstrated during times of national and regional crisis — whether we’re talking about September 11th, Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wild fires or the health care proposals, the internet is an important means of communication and self-organization among the population to respond to any crisis or any debate. Any move to limit this is a perceived as a direct threat to the constitutional rights of assembly and speech upon which the government cannot infringe.

S773 makes no attempt to outline and describe what form of emergency would trigger the use of these broad new powers to limit communication, nor any means by which it could be reviewed by anyone outside the executive branch. The bill also proscribes that the executive branch will perform periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government.

Translation: the US government bureaucracy will be spending your tax dollars to figure out private networks, find choke points and places where they can control the flow of communication. Furthermore, companies (such as your ISP) are going to be required, by law, to supply the federal bureaucrats with whatever network, account, usage and history information they deem appropriate. All in the name of cyber safety, you see.

If that were not enough of an outrage, the bill also establishes federal indoctrination and certification for cyber security professionals. It would require companies that the executive branch deemed “critical” to adopt restrictions on who it could hire to work with network security to a limited pool of those who had undergone government training and certification. You might assume from this that the private sector was completely lacking in any certification or training in cyber security. In fact there is a robust and growing business (aka a “free market”) for this type of training that the government would now control and regulate.

The body of this bill continues to reflect a basic lack of understanding of the technology behind the internet. It is not just a series of “tubes” that are connected end to end. There is no good place for the government or any other body to put a spigot that will allow them to “turn it off”. Many companies and organizations are connected through multiple network channels, using independent physical network paths and independent network service providers.

This precisely to avoid any problems with a single network cable to the outside, or a single provider’s network. The providers themselves, from your cable company to big players like Sprint or AT&T, interconnect to themselves and each other at hundreds or thousands of places. Above that they connect with networking companies outside of the US (and US jurisdiction). The protocols and software that run the internet are purpose-designed to route around slow or blocked spots, to keep the traffic flowing as much as possible even if segments degrade or fail.

While I am sure the people crafting this legislation will wonder why there is an uproar, one only has to pay attention to the reality of the day to understand; As printed newspapers and old guard media quickly fade away, it has been replaced by the raucous free scrum of ideas, discussion and content that is found on the internet. In one Pew research study they cite as many as 69% of Americans are now getting news from internet sites. While another study states that the internet has overtaken newspapers and is climbing fast to challenge television as the public’s source of news and information. As has been proven in times of crisis, the internet can react faster and in many cases better than traditional media outlets.

Because of this new and growing reliance on the internet as a wide, free, virtual “press”, any government control, intrusion or regulation runs afoul of American’s most basic sense of rights. By its very nature, the internet is not easily controlled by any government — it is the ultimate embodiment of free speech and free press. While it did not exist in 1776, I am sure the founders would have loved it.

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Moore and Kennedy:

And now, here is the “feminist” perspective …

By Maureen Callahan
New York Post
August 30, 2009

In all the obits published and specials aired this week, Chappaquiddick gets a few paragraphs, a few minutes, a tidy recapping of the events of July 19, 1969: The married Ted Kennedy, driving late at night with young campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne, pitches off a bridge and into the water below. He escapes; she drowns. He does not report the accident for 10 hours. He pleads guilty and gets a suspended sentence, two months in jail.

In most of these narratives, Chappaquiddick is told as Ted’s tragedy, the thing that kept him from ever becoming president. And in these narratives, he is chastened, goes on to make amends through a life of public service, advocating for the disadvantaged and the downtrodden — and, especially, women. No one’s perfect, right?

But how is it that so many women unabashedly revere Kennedy today? The particulars of Chappaquiddick are especially gory; his behavior after the accident approaches the amoral. Once he broke free and swam to the surface, Kennedy said that he dove back down seven or eight times to rescue Kopechne. Failing, he swam back to shore and checked back into his hotel, and a short time later lodged a noise complaint with the desk clerk. The people in the room next to his were partying and it was interfering with his sleep. Then he asked the desk clerk for the time.

According to the Aug. 4, 1969 edition of Newsweek, that clerk, Russell E. Peachey, told Kennedy it was 2:25 a.m., then asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you,” Kennedy replied.*

In 1990, GQ magazine ran a devastating profile of Kennedy. Two 16-year-old girls near the Capitol startled by a limo rolling up, the door opening, Ted sitting in the back with a bottle of wine, asking one, then the other, to join. A former aide who acted as Ted’s “pimp.” His penchant for dating women so young that one did not know he was the subject of many books. Kennedy, at a swank DC restaurant with his drinking buddy Chris Dodd, throwing a petite waitress on his dinner table with such force that glass and flatware shatters and goes flying. Then Ted throws her on to Dodd’s lap and grinds against her. He is interrupted by other waitstaff. He is later caught in the same restaurant, in a semi-private area, having sex on the floor with a lobbyist.

In 1991, Kennedy’s nephew William Kennedy Smith is charged with rape. Kennedy Smith had been out drinking with Ted and Ted’s son Patrick at Au Bar in Palm Beach. Kennedy Smith is eventually acquitted, and it’s never proved that Ted had any knowledge of what happened on the Kennedy grounds that night. He remarried, in 1992, and very publicly domesticated himself.

But the tawdriness — the ostensible elder statesmen getting s – - t-faced and picking up women with his son and his nephew; the acquittal won, in part, by shredding the accuser on the stand and in the press; privilege winning out, always — is in such stark contrast to Kennedy’s politics that you have to wonder: Is this really what Kennedy thought of women?*

Most feminists don’t think Ted Kennedy was a misogynist. Upon news of his death, NOW, Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood all released emotional, laudatory statements. It’s true that Kennedy’s legislative record deserves such a response. And he was quiet enough in the last 15 years of his life that it’s not hard to minimize his past behavior if you want to.

Or if you’re unaware — Google reported that “Chappaquiddick” and “Mary Jo Kopechne” were the top searches Wednesday and Thursday.

“I didn’t know about Chappaquiddick and the rape case until yesterday,” says Miriam Perez, a 25-year-old editor at Feministing.com. She admires Kennedy’s accomplishments, but is perplexed. “Like every person, he’s human and there are lots of flaws involved,” she says. “But a big feminist tenet is: The personal is political. So I don’t feel it’s fair to fully ignore it in this case.”

Perhaps, along with the hagiographic Kennedy myth, we can bury this outdated tradition of excusing the reprehensible treatment of women by the same male legislators who otherwise advocate for our rights politically. It’s degrading. It’s like making excuses for the husband who beats you up but pays the bills on time. It may be 2009, but the bulk of the talking heads who covered this funeral were older white males, and among the few women — eminent historian Doris Kearns Goodwin among them — it’s still shocking to hear them, nearly to a one, reduce Kennedy’s bad behavior to rakish abandon or poor judgement. Why shouldn’t we hold our elected male officials — especially those who so assiduously court the female vote — to a standard of personal decency in their treatment of women? Why do we still assume that this is an either/or proposition?

“It’s a great question,” says Gloria Feldt, former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Feldt worked with Kennedy and is an admirer, still. “He worked with women’s groups in a very respectful way, in a way that few other senators do,” she says. “But I don’t know that you can reconcile it — when it’s in a group’s best interest that said person stays in that chair, how do you weigh that moral equation? I wish it were simpler than that.”

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Democrats such as Watson are nothing less than subversives who hate this country:

Now that massa Ted is dead, the plantation he and his brothers created is emptying itself out in plain public view. The truth is emerging as to exactly what the agenda of the Democratic Party is, which is instigating race-based antipathy in America so as to subvert the American system of government. Plain and simple. Michael Savage has done an outstanding job of bravely pointing out this indisputable truth.

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Harry Reid is losing in Nevada, and here is a primary example of why that is so. Reid’s remarks to Bob Brown, who is the director of advertising at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, display the complete and utter contempt that Democrats have for working people. And as has been exemplified many times before, the current Democratic Party are nothing more than subversives intent upon destroying American capitalism. Where is Nixon when we need him …

By Sherman Frederick
Las Vegas Review-Journal
August 30, 2009

This newspaper traces its roots to before Las Vegas was Las Vegas.

We’ve seen cattle ranches give way to railroads. We chronicled the construction of Hoover Dam. We reported on the first day of legalized gambling. The first hospital. The first school. The first church. We survived the mob, Howard Hughes, the Great Depression, several recessions, two world wars, dozens of news competitors and any number of two-bit politicians who couldn’t stand scrutiny, much less criticism.

We’re still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid.

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.

Such behavior cannot go unchallenged.

You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

If he thinks he can push the state’s largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye to eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don’t have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.

For the sake of all who live and work in Nevada, we can’t let this bully behavior pass without calling out Sen. Reid. If he’ll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet that he’s tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.

We won’t allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first.

That’s a promise, not a threat.

And it’s a promise to our readers, not to you, Sen. Reid.

Traitor, who spits on the graves of our service men and women:

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Get a load of these facial expressions at Teddy’s funeral. Then backdrop this against the outright thievery that is taking place in Washington, D.C. and then ask yourself if there is any wonder whether these crazy people are out of control. Basically, Obama to Washington politicians is a dream come true. They get to rip off the taxpayers even more than before because if anyone dares to bitch about it then they will have you labeled a “racist”.

Joe Kennedy:

John McCain:

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Rangel of course is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which by the way, writes the tax laws. The bottom line with these fucking assholes in the government is that they believe there is one set of laws for them and another set of laws for the rest of us.

By Charles Hurt
New York Post
August 28, 2009

Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.

The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.

This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.

In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.

But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.

The forms filed by House members provide for a range of value on such transactions, so the precise number isn’t publicly known.

Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.

Only in 2005 did Rangel reveal his total outside income.

Members of Congress are required to disclose all their assets and outside income in an effort to expose possible undue influences.

Rangel’s office insists the Harlem Democrat did not conceal any outside income from the IRS and is paid up on his taxes.

The Post revealed yesterday that Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes — for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.

Another area of wide discrepancy in his financial-disclosure forms is where he’s required to list financial transactions.

Every year between 2002 and 2007, Rangel failed to include all his deals for the year, according to records.

On his 2002 and 2003 financial-disclosure statements, Rangel did not include any transactions whatsoever, according to papers on file with the House clerk.

But the amended records filed this month show as much as $310,000 in business deals in 2002 and up to $80,000 in transactions in 2003.

In 2004, Rangel left off his disclosure form as much as $430,000 in stock transactions, amended records show. One of those deals he did include as a transaction on his original disclosure was the sale of the brownstone on West 132nd Street.

But in the same report, Rangel failed to include proceeds from that sale as outside income. That has been revised in the amended report.

Despite the reported sale, city records still show Rangel is the owner of that property.

His nephew, Ralph, who appears to live in the building, wouldn’t answer questions yesterday. Rangel’s office declined numerous requests yesterday for explanation.

The problems with Rangel’s 2004 disclosure report were so glaring that apparently they caught someone’s attention, forcing Rangel to write a letter correcting his failure to fully disclose transactions that year.

“I listed only the real-estate transactions in which we were involved in calendar year 2004 on the transactions schedule because I was not aware of such details as the date and magnitude of the transactions involving our securities holding in the Merrill Lynch account,” he wrote in a May 2006 letter to House Clerk Karen Haas.

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To McNorman’s credit, presenting Officer Wesley Cheeks:

You didn’t think we were going to waste an opportunity like this on Ted Kennedy, did you? This guy wins the designation as this week’s Daily Nigger. Blinded by self-righteousness and angry at the world. Well gosh, that sounds exactly like the media doesn’t it? Well, imagine that. That’s where these messages are coming from!

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Nixon had Teddy tailed so that he could catch him doing what he did best, which is knocking off women and being a playboy, while simultaneously portraying himself as some kind of American hero of the political left. Listen to the tape of Nixon talking about Kennedy and his ‘jet set’ friends here.

I hate to break the news to everyone, but Teddy was nothing but a playboy, who masqueraded his lifestyle in politics. And in order to bolster his case, Teddy hung out with the far left in the entertainment world, which was back then the cornerstone of the leftist movement in America. You see, they had an agenda to sell to everyone of one world without borders and in which everyone is the same so that homogenized consumer goods could be sold to mass consumer markets.

Alas, in retrospect Ted Kennedy is the devil who encouraged everyone to sell their soul and bow to a political ideology, which was nothing more than a cover for the lives of elites in America. And believe it or not, Nixon was America’s guardian angel. That’s right. Right about now, Nixon should be hailed as a hero because he had the Democratic Party pegged from the get go. It was Nixon who fought back with his so-called ‘dirty tricks’ that earned him the moniker Tricky Dick. But the bottom line is that the truth about the Democratic Party is coming out now that Ted Kennedy is gone.

The big massa at that Massachusetts plantation is dead now, and Obama is NOT, I repeat, NOT the new Kennedy brother. Obama was chosen by Teddy to be his head nigga in charge to go out there and race hustle people some more in order to make himself look good. Now that Teddy’s dead, there isn’t any more of this chicanery and buffoonery that can be done without somebody getting wind of it. The Kennedy’s are all gone now, and the truth about their view of a race-obsessed America is literally killing us now.

But how soon people forget all of this, because those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And this right here should be enough for anyone to understand exactly what we are talking about. So, screw political correctness and the media, the truth is out about the Democrats and their friends in the far left media. They believe in an elite America, which means they are not on the side of ordinary people called VOTERS.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means. The rest is simply a matter of putting it all together and naming names. The Kennedy plantation is closed, ladies and gentlemen. The massa is dead. The media will keep on trying to do it on their own and prop up Teddy’s head nigga in charge, but with all that’s going on right now and all the anger across the country this is going to be very difficult to do.

All I can say is that Nixon deserves praise right about now. I know that is a controversial statement to make, but it is a fact that he knew what a danger the Kennedy’s posed to America. And Teddy just couldn’t be trusted to fade away and take the whole blighted mess with him. He got into politics in order to vindicate himself as being generous and caring, which in fact he was anything but that. It is hard to say this about a freshly dead person, because one would believe that they were judging someone before God and history had a chance to do so. But right about now, it is important to jump right in and tell the truth while it’s fresh on everyone’s mind and before the evil media plantation gets a hold of it and turns it into something that just plainly and clearly was not true.

Ted Kennedy was a media sell out. He was the kingpin of it. He was the great playboy politician, the landed gentry, the good old boy. He masqueraded all of this with faux concern based conveniently upon the media’s favorite subject, race. When asked why he was considering running for president, Teddy himself couldn’t say why. But the Massa’s chusetts seems to love their characters. Even though Barney Frank, John Kerry, and Teddy Kennedy are all cut from the same elitist cloth they didn’t have the ability to crown the next king of the media.

One problem with this scenario, the king has no clue. All hail Nixon!

-TDN

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Amazingly, the media celebrates the life of this race hustling, duplicitous bastard:

Ed Klein, former Newsweek editor, tells the Diane Rehm Show: “I dont know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?”

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