RANDOM #1 - CRUZ/CHRISTIANITY, SNOWDEN/OLIVER/WIKILEAKS/SONY & REAGAN/CLINTON/OBAMA

CRUZ/CHRISTIANITY

Ted Cruz is reported to have said that there is no longer room in the Democratic Party for Christians. If I were a practicing Christian, I would be pissed that the litmus test for being a Christian has become adherence to the laws of the Old Testament rather than an understanding of Christ's message of grace.

For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

SNOWDEN/OLIVER/WIKILEAKS/SONY
Folks like Jon Stewart and John Oliver appear to delight in insisting that they are not journalists, even as they do the very jobs that journalists ought to be doing but are not. For instance, it took Oliver just minutes to burst the bubble of righteousness Eric Snowden and his admirers have erected around his actions. Having admitted to Oliver that he hadn't read all of the documents that he leaked and that it is at least possible, perhaps likely, that bad things will happen to good people as a result, Snowden admitted to having to own causing collateral damage. One has to suppose that those canonizing Snowden would be among the first to condemn the military when a drone strike harms the innocent. What about Snowden, then?

Transparency can be a bitch when it applies to you, can't it?

And now we know that transparency applies to anyone and everyone. The personal information of thousands of Sony employees are publicly available - in a searchable database, no less - thanks to the determination by the folks at WikiLeaks that Sony, like the US government, qualifies as a suitable target for transparency. Who's next? Certainly not the folks at WikiLeaks. Why not? Good question. Maybe John Oliver will get to ask it one of these days.

REAGAN/CLINTON/OBAMA
On an internet discussion board recently, one writer gave Bill Clinton credit for presiding over the best American economy in a good long while. One naysayer insisted Clinton was not responsible. Rather, a Republican majority in Congress was responsible for the good times in the late 90s. One wonders if the same writer would be as quick to credit a Democratic Congress for Reagan's successes. Of course, just as Clinton's good times have grown better than they actually were when viewed through the lens of history, so have Reagan's good times...if indeed a judicious look at the Reagan years can be characterized as good times.

And what of Obama? By the numbers, Obama has presided over the best times of all. Which just goes to show, modern history is written by those with the most powerful microphones.

THE NSA, METADATA AND OVERSTOCK.COM

Quite a while ago, I bought a titanium ring from overstock.com. You can guess one of the unintended consequences. Everywhere I went on the interweb, ads from overstock.com popped up. I bought a ring once. I'll buy a ring again, won't I? Google will make it easy for me.

I don't live on the interweb but I shop and I communicate with friends there. I have, in other words, surrendered segments of my privacy for convenience sake. Harsh words but they are accurate. Google knows more about me than anyone except my wife and, to be honest, there are things that Google knows about me that my wife doesn't.

It won't be long before face recognition software will scan me when I enter a store. Coupons that are tailored to my shopping history will be sent to my phone. There will be no bothersome lines at cash registers. My phone will be the equivalent of an EZ Pass.  I'll just walk with my purchases past a certain line on the floor and my bank account will be debited on the spot.

The retailer will have me in his/her database. The wholesaler will. The manufacturer will. My bank will use my purchase for its own nefarious purposes. And so on...

I can avoid the interweb ads for titanium rings fairly easily. Ad blocking software has kept pace. But what do I do about the metadata? Go off the grid? That's much harder than it sounds. Cathey thought that she was a relative unknown until I searched her...on the interweb. To REALLY get off the grid you REALLY have to work hard. So what's the Risk/Benefit Analysis?

I've done no reporting. But when you think about it, what are the odds that I'm going to make just the right phone call or email to just the right address using just the right key words in just the right order to raise a flag? Pretty long odds, I would wager. One must take into account the odd security-cleared Peeping Tom who, in a moment of pure ennui, decides that my communications might make for an interesting diversion. But again, long odds.

Yes, I know. It's the principle of the thing. Slippery slope. Fascism.

Nah, I don't buy it. Our politicians are already bought and paid for. Being true fascists would be too much like work.