Thank You Google

Google just announced that as of today, Gmail is more secure than ever before. And the company isn't shying away from the fact that it's actively trying to stop the thwart the government from spying on your email activity. Google made HTTPS encryption the default for its users back in 2010 when sending from point of use devices to get into and out of the Google network, but in it's efforts to continually make improvements wherever possible to keep out prying eyes and as an additional barrier between you and the NSA, Google is making the additional change that every single email message Gmail users send or receive will now be encrypted as it moves internally between the company's data centers. That would seem to defeat a popular strategy of the NSA, which involves the agency intercepting email messages as they move between data centers and servers located within Google's massive network. Google says this change became "a top priority after last summer’s revelations" from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

It's not so hard to see why Google is taking this action. There is a fundamental concept that the NSA is completely disregarding, that when you send someone a message that it is intended for the person that the message is addressed to. We no longer live in the era of wax seals and blood bound couriers. Is it so unreasonable that we be able to send a message to someone without it being logged by our government that I did it without first having a responsible suspicion case brought before a judge in order to issue a warrant?

Read 1984, see how the main characters in that story have to take extraordinary measures to avoid what is considered suspicious activity out of the massive web of Big Brother's surveillance and then tell me with a straight face that we are not moving in that direction. People are not pissed off because they have something to hide, they are pissed off because they now re forced to accept living in the world where our own thoughts and communications are no longer our own. They are pissed that another entity outside of their control has deemed the masses undeserving of a simple degree of trust and privacy. And we are pissed that there is so little that we, as individuals, can do about it. 

Thankfully for us, Google does appear to be slightly pissed as well and is in a position to do something about it. They, along with several other large communication and social media groups have launched the website http://reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/ where they outline governing concepts and principles that should be followed by the NSA and other spying agencies should the surveillance activities be allowed to continue under the law of the land. Yes, the people are telling the government how they should be acting, and their voice is very reasonable. It appears, at least for now, that Google is focusing its efforts on protecting our right to privacy – Thank you Edward Snowden for all the leaks!

To The Victor

It appears that in the eleventh hour of the treasury department expending it's 'extraordinary measures' that the Senate Democratic and Republican leaders have reached a final agreement on a deal to reopen the government and extend its borrowing authority into February, with final passage looking increasingly possible by this evening.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced the completion of the agreement shortly after noon, and the Senate Republicans who had led the push to shut down the government unless President Obama’s health care law was gutted conceded defeat and promised not to delay a final vote.

The deal, with the government shutdown in its third week, appears to yield no concessions to the Republicans. The only item offered was some minor tightening of income verification for people obtaining subsidized insurance under the new health care law. Basically more red tape in a system that appears more like a mummy playing for a Cincinnati baseball team then a well constructed benefit to anyone.

It is important to once again review the principals behind the decision to allow a government shut down in the first place to better understand what this proposal means for the country. First off, this was a Republican endused shut down, trying to say the democrats caused this is like swinging your fists in the air in front of you while walking towards your younger sibling shouting "I'm swinging my arms around like this, and if you get hit, it's your own fault." It was a principled stand that I supported to try and shed some light on all the issues facing the country that where not only not getting fixed by any action in congress, but getting much much worse through the enacting of the American Care Act, aka Obamacare;

Full time workers Loosing hours and pay

An Economy that is growing at 2% annually

Chronic Unemployment and Underemployment

Deficits that only pale when compared to the other deficits from this Administration

These problems are not new, we've been experiencing them either since the recession of 2008 or since the healthcare law has been passed. These along with so many other issues (Benghazi, NSA wiretapping, Guantanamo Bay) appear to be valid topics for discussion, but never at a time when the other side of the negotiating table hold any cards for which to actually have any leverage.

Think about this pattern, the Snowden release of NSA programs is a prime example, the story breaks on on June 5th and the public is appalled, two days later, Obama addresses the issue and explains that this can be up for debate in do far as what trade offs for security and privacy are acceptable. This debate never happens! A stupidly acting police officer at Harvard can get a summit at the White House but this issue is only deserving of a press conference and then is effectively deemed closed by this administration with a subtle 'I Got This!'.

Fast forward to July 23rd, no national conversations have occurred over the NSA issue, it has faded from the media spotlight with no changes, no resolution, no nothing. In an effort to strengthen their hand, propose a halt to the funding of all NSA gathering of this metadata. A specif, targeted bill that would effect nothing other then this program that is supposed to be up for debate, the White House response? "This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process."

The Press Secretary is saying debate in Congress is not informed, open, or deliberative.

This approach is used over and over again. Call is punting, call is dodging, call is waiting for the next scandal to come along and distract us all from the current debacle we are in. We seem to be incapable of discussing jobs, the budget, the debt ceiling, anything!  And when the opposition party tries to press the issue, what are the terms that this President uses?

He calls them deadbeats. He calls them arsonists, he calls them hostage takers, he calls them terrorists.

Now he wins, now he gets a huge bump in the debt ceiling and he gets to reopen the 14% of government that was closed, he gets to keep his law and this government just the way it is. He offered nothing as a concession, nothing as a reform, nothing that even acknowledged that there is a problem in the first place. No spending cuts, no jobs programs, nothing to spark the economy on this premise that he will not negotiate until we reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. Sure, he says that once we allow him to spend a trillion dollars more then we take in that he is open for some debate. Debate what? He now has his healthcare reform, he has his de facto budget. We are going to be near tied for the largest revenue year in American history and we still can't get the deficit down to the levels from any year under the Bush Administration.

The decision to shut down the government was an attempt to get this administration to acknowledge that things are bad and only going to get worse with the healthcare overhaul. This attempt failed. We got caught up in WWII memorials and WIC checks. It becomes about the pain here and now rather then the pain of our economic condition that we appear to have grown a thick skin to. Pain that seemed to be intentionally made more poignant by extraordinary actions from this administration.

His objective wasn't to make people not like the shutdown, it was simply to distract us yet again, to not worry about the hurt from the poor economy, or the sticker shock felt from Obamacare, it was meant to make us believe the issue was the shutdown and nothing more. And it worked. Now we have no solutions and the republicans have no leverage.

I believe the old saying is, "the ball is in your court" Mr. President. Now, what is your plan?

Nobody Wants to Play With U.S.

Over the last week more documents and details have been fed to the populous from the Snowden collection of NSA secrets. The latest revelation is that the US of A has not only been spying on terrorist groups, China, and Russia, but also the leadership of the EU and other countries for the past 6 years.

This latest bit of embarrassing news has, understandably, outraged several ally nations which prompted a slew of questions and outright demands for explanations from around the EU directed at Washington.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have tried to play these new leaks down. Secretary Kerry stated, "Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that," But these dismissive remarks appear to have only provoked further anger among some European leaders, who seem genuinely shocked and aghast at the scope of the NSA’s blatent disregard for the 1961 Vienna accord. Elsewhere, government officials in Luxemburg, Austria, Turkey, and Japan have demanded answers from the Obama administration about the NSA’s spying efforts. And U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon raising serious questions about the faithfulness of the United States diplomatic core.

There are two possible lines of logic that I can follow that could lead the government to take these extreme measures. The first being that we are truly scared of countries like France, Germany, Japan, and the UK. We fear that they may be helping terrorists enter this country under the guise of a diplomatic convoy and using these connections to get so close to our upper echelons of government that these terrorists would complain about the President's bad breath before exploding their suicide vests. Leaving us with little recourse but to pull a Jack Bauer try and get a step ahead of these groups to protect ourselves.

The other scenario that I see is that the United State's negotiating position has gotten as weak as a starving mans farts over the years, and we are so incapable in regaining a more persuasive position when going into something as mundane as trade talks, that we feel obligated to obtain an upper hand through these amoral methods.

Seeing the almost daily revelations that this administration (with an acknowledgement that a lot of this began prior to Obama's election) of diplomatic failures, be it the Ecuador trade agreement, the North Korean saber rattling, Iran still thumbing their nose at us, or dozens of failures in the middle east, a different explanation seems somewhat more likely;

This administration sucks at negotiating...

Sucks the big one, sucks like a leech on a blood bag, like a plunger on my toilet after mexican night, like a movie starring Nicholas Cage, well you get the idea. Be it a sanction against a country doing something wrong or trying to enforce a treaty for extraditing. This administration appears to have such a poor track record of using it's leverage, winning friends in the diplomatic arena, and rallying countries to the American view to the point that it has cheat and lie it's way into getting an upper hand at the negotiating table. The truly sad part is that this method still appears to leave the U.S. wondering what just happened on many occasions.

This administration, especially, has built it's reputation on it's ability to talk. Though it looks like every time someone talks back, it suffers from a lack of ability to justify itself, and lacks any true conviction or guiding principals in it's navigation and foreign policy.

America is now standing on an island. We have disenfranchised our friends, and forsaken our own populace. Either that or the new practice of diplomats just mumbling their demands in their embassies late at night and waiting for the US to respond on a card that is delivered via a secret code embedded in the monthly unemployment numbers. Ironically all this takes place while also we discuss building up a massive wall on our borders, because not having any country willingly talk to us is not sufficient, we don't want to look at them or smell them either. A very rude gesture since we come visit almost every country in the world in the form of setting up military bases all over the globe. We can't return the favor of being a good host?