Why do you think damn near every finance and sales person was chained to their desk until late on Monday evening? Because *every* business works that way.

And here I was under the impression that the military wasn't a business. But I guess suiting up for the next avoidable war has higher margins than providing basic sustenance to women and children.

Way to go, guys. You're really doing a heckuva job.

It's definitely slower and I regret upgrading.

There's not enough white space to provide any visual separation on a device so small when there is not even an attempt at drawing lines or separating elements. Almost everything is smaller and harder to read, and it's not obvious what is a "button" and what is just text in a corner somewhere. In fact, many of the improvements are simple knock offs of Android has had for a while. The world will soon be divided into Upswipers and Downswipers.

I was thinking about updating my 4S, but while 7 was a step forward for some usability cases, I'm not sure I want to stick around for whatever is next. I am tired of not having full access to the hardware, and when I heard Ives was going to cut out cruft, I didn't imagine he was going to replace the whole system with the Office 2012 theme. Unfortunately for us, they're both based upon the premise that everyone wants to live in pure white Helvetica purgatory, and I don't think most of us do.

It's probably a consequence of his background in hardware. When you cut elements out of real materials down to their simplest possible form, there is still depth and innate information because it is a physical object. When you remove all delineation and depth from two dimensional representations, new users cannot even guess at your purpose when it looks like a blank sheet of paper with text and small iconography scattered around randomly on top of it. While the elements look much better on larger screens (as found in this informal poll), things like the slot-machine style picker are not very obvious when you're scrolling around. I don't think they did much real world testing with new users on actual devices.

tl:dr; If you're a first year art student, you will absolutely love iOS 7. If you prefer to have some visual cues on what is content and what is part of the interface, you may want to hold off until Apple allows graphic designers capable of using more than one color back on the team.

Let's try another thought experiment:

Which nations on earth operate a stateless prison camp where due process and the Geneva Conventions don't apply?

Which nations on earth have military commanders that regularly order the assassination of individuals who receive no due process before their death?

Which nation has the highest number of prisoners, both in raw numbers and per capita?

In each of those answers, for the first time in her history, you'd have to say the answers include America.

These crimes are regularly committed by other nations, and they are rightfully called violations of human rights by US Citizens and the government. But when the United States engages in aggressive warfare, a suspension of basic human rights, and a campaign of persecution against individuals, including journalists, who dare to talk about these items, somehow the conversation turns to talking about another nation instead of our own.

Putin may be a despot, but he is, by all accounts, a superior despot to Stalin. Does that excuse his behavior? Should we wait until he's got a few hundred thousand dead under his belt before we start including him in criticism?

The abject hypocrisy, ignorance, and hollow patriotism that plagues what's left of American culture is nauseating. Not only is our citizenry unable to have an intelligent conversation about world affairs, but they can't be led by facts or argument to any truth that conflicts with their jingoist worldview.

But America, especially in this case, has no place for pride. We treat our dissidents as poorly as our culture will allow -- the same as every other nation on earth. It wasn't too long ago that we were putting dissidents to death, or simply murdering unionists in the street back in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ahh, but who wants to talk about actual history when we can discuss the faults of others? The true mark of any great nation is not how it actually behaves, but only the stories that placate the masses with our nobility and purpose. Our treatment of the powerless, the dissidents, and our enemies can always be justified, as long as we tell ourselves that responsibility and accountability can be abdicated by pointing our finger at a few dead despots.

Is that the extent of your patriotism? Excusing the nonsensical corporal punishment of a dissident to protect the broken, corrupted, and unjust institutions that run our country by stooping so low as to say it's justified since we kill and torture fewer people?

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."
--Twain

What did we win? 4 trillion dollars of debt? The ire of the rest of the civilized world? Be specific.

The following is a transcript from the NSC commission in 2004:

TIMOTHY ROEMER, Commission Member: OK. With my 15 minutes, let's move into the Bush administration.

On January 25th, we've seen a memo that you've written to Dr. Rice urgently asking for a principals' review of Al Qaida. You include helping the Northern Alliance, covert aid, significant new '02 budget authority to help fight Al Qaida and a response to the USS Cole. You attach to this document both the Delenda Plan of 1998 and a strategy paper from December 2000.

Do you get a response to this urgent request for a principals meeting on these? And how does this affect your time frame for dealing with these important issues?

CLARKE: I did get a response, and the response was that in the Bush administration I should, and my committee, counterterrorism security group, should report to the deputies committee, which is a sub-Cabinet level committee, and not to the principals and that, therefore, it was inappropriate for me to be asking for a principals' meeting. Instead, there would be a deputies meeting.

ROEMER: So does this slow the process down to go to the deputies rather than to the principals or a small group as you had previously done?

CLARKE: It slowed it down enormously, by months. First of all, the deputies committee didn't meet urgently in January or February. Then when the deputies committee did meet, it took the issue of Al Qaida as part of a cluster of policy issues, including nuclear proliferation in South Asia, democratization in Pakistan, how to treat the various problems, including narcotics and other problems in Afghanistan, and launched on a series of deputies meetings extending over several months to address Al Qaida in the context of all of those inter-related issues. That process probably ended, I think in July of 2001. So we were ready for a principals meeting in July. But the principals calendar was full and then they went on vacation, many of them in August, so we couldn't meet in August, and therefore the principals met in September. ...

ROEMER: You then wrote a memo on September 4th to Dr. Rice expressing some of these frustrations several months later, if you say the time frame is May or June when you decided to resign. A memo comes out that we have seen on September the 4th. You are blunt in blasting DOD for not willingly using the force and the power. You blast the CIA for blocking Predator. You urge policy-makers to imagine a day after hundreds of Americans lay dead at home or abroad after a terrorist attack and ask themselves what else they could have done. You write this on September the 4th, seven days before September 11th.

CLARKE: That's right.

ROEMER: What else could have been done, Mr. Clarke?

CLARKE: Well, all of the things that we recommended in the plan or strategy -- there's a lot of debate about whether it's a plan or a strategy or a series of options -- but all of the things we recommended back in January were those things on the table in September. They were done. They were done after September 11th. They were all done. I didn't really understand why they couldn't have been done in February.

I know you've never read about the NSC meeting, so I have highlighted areas of interest. Instead of taking the policy recommendations in place at the urging of several members of the Clinton Administration in December 2000 and implementing them, even after the Cole bombing, the Bush Administration shelved the policy and then delayed it by going on vacation.

Unless you are, in fact, a typing ostrich, how would you clarify your position in the light of these facts, as stated under oath?

You have no idea who Hamas is, how they formed, what their purpose is, or how they are connected to Iraq.

al Qaeda spent less than five million in total for their act of terrorism.

In response, the US has spent two trillion dollars, shredded basic parts of the constitution, lost allies across the globe due to unilateral and illegal wars, sent one million US citizens through war (and will spend approximately three trillion more dollars on interest and veterans care), and what has the change been?

Al Qaeda now operates in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria (with help from US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Bahrain), and is poised to launch a full scale attack on Shia forces from Aleppo to Tehran -- again, with funding and support from US allies in Saudi Arabia.

None of the 9/11 terrorists or their funding came from Iraq. The major nations that have provided cover for al Qaeda -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Pakistan -- have not received punishment, and the Taliban is set to retake Afghanistan the moment US troops leave Kabul. In the wake of the collapse of Saddam's government, and the idiotic decision to disband the Iraqi Military, al Qaeda operatives have swarmed into Iraq and are now setting up training camps throughout the country, as well as receiving training from US allies in Syria. (You may remember a few weeks back they broke into Abu Ghraib and freed 500 of their most senior military members.)

So who won the war? I'm guessing it wasn't the guy whose Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld, famously claimed the Iraq War would cost "no more than 50 billion dollars." (Of course, he also hired a judge of Arabian Horses to run FEMA, so at least Rumsfeld had seen a tank before.) I don't think it was the guy who promised to find WMD, when all they found were the leftover WMDs that were a gift of the previous Bush Administration. Junior's group even failed at getting Iraq's Oil law overturned in 2007 when al-Maliki flat out told them it wasn't going to happen.

That's some stellar real-politik right there. So when a political leader fails to heed cryptic warnings like, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States," fails to confront terrorism while his administration claims the real threat is Saddam -- at least, until 9/11 -- lies about weapons of mass destruction, sends in a quarter of what Colin Powell demanded, fails to plain for a post-Saddam Iraq, allows al Qaeda leadership to continue operating in and outside of Afghanistan, fails to find (or even pursue) bin Laden, fails to improve the lives of the average Iraqi, creates a massive power vacuum and hands regional influence to the Iranians and the Syrians, spends two trillion dollars on a war, fails to raise taxes to pay for the war -- in fact, puts us another 2 trillion in the hole by keeping tax cuts during a supposed time of war -- and presides over the largest economic collapse in modern history while creating another weak state for terrorists to operate from and setting the state for an all-out sectarian war in a newly destabilized Middle East -- all while logging a record amount of vacation days -- what do you call that?

I'm listening.

Technically, he's an incomplete moron, because he doesn't understand that he is dumb. (Or perhaps it works the other way around?) Anyway, add to that your shared bigotry, and that equals at least two things you have in common.

Only a sociopath would want war across a region with a few hundred million human beings in residence for obnoxiously self-serving goals. Especially when that person manages to devalue the lives of innocent civilians by confusing their role with the actions of a small group of religious extremists.

Okay, let's make that three things you have in common.

I apologize for the lack of proofreading, but not the vitriol.

Only a sycophant can ask if a nation surrounded by US military bases is "destabilizing" to regional politics.

The United States is propping up repressive theocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Yemen -- as well as funding, training, and providing intelligence for al Qaeda elements in Syria -- under the guise of an all out proxy war with Iran. Iran being the nation we took control over in 1953 with a coup d'etat and ruled through our puppet government, complete with torture squads and secret police trained by our boys in the CIA, until 1979. When that government was overthrown by the predictably radicalized Iranian populace, we started funding, training, and providing intelligence for Sadddam Hussein. We arranged loans worth about 50 billion in 1980s dollars worth of loans from Gulf States, and the ensuing Iran-Iraq War lasted for 8 years and killed at least one million people.

Then Saddam -- our boy, remember -- invaded Kuwait without permission, and the Kingdom of Saud invited us onto their land to push him back over the border. Since GW Bush had some statecraft experience, he knew better than to invade, and lifted the no-fly rules so Saddam could mow down dissidents we had helped stir up and at least regain control between the narrow tract of land we left him.

Fast forward to 2001, and Herbert's son, probably the dumbest leader in world history, invades Iraq, wrecks the country, creates an enormous power vacuum with one fourth of the troops his generals asked for, and now then Sunni terrorist elements moved in to begin their war against the newly freed Shia elements long repressed by Saddam. This situation has currently led to a nearly region-wide sectarian conflict stretching from Bahrain to Lebanon.

Now al Qaeda operated Sunni elements are poised to start a full-scale, no bullshit war in Iraq, funded by our Gulf allies -- where sodomites and witches are regularly beheaded; where women and non-Muslims can't even testify in court; where zero synagogues exist compared to a few hundred in Iran. And this is in Iraq, where zero al Qaeda affiliates operated before Junior's colossal fuckup.

The conflict pitted Sunni rebels against government forces and Alawites, backed by Iran, also patrons of Iraq's Shia leadership. Weapons flowed to the rebels from the Iraqi tribes -- sold for a comfortable profit -- while the Iraqi Shia prime minister toed the Iranian line and lent his support to the Syrian regime. With both sides using the same sectarian rhetoric, it was easy to join the dots between the two conflicts.

Abu Saleh found himself fighting his old war in a new field. He lent a hand to the novice Syrian rebels and joined the fight, commanding a unit of his own operating in the city of Aleppo and the countryside north of it.

"We taught them how to cook phosphate and make IEDs. Our struggle here is the same is in Syria. If Syria falls, we are liberated; if we are liberated, Syria will be liberated. We have the same battle with Iran -- by defeating them we break the Shia crescent of Iran, Syria and Lebanon."

Abu Saleh claims that once he and his men had been accepted back in Ramadi, they formed three battalions that had hit convoys carrying supplies to Syria as well as an Iraqi army helicopter.

In another echo of recent Arab uprisings, Abu Saleh says he and other Sunni leaders have now secured support from wealthy Gulf state figures who funded them during the early years of their insurgency against the Americans.

After the truce between Sunni groups, he says, a meeting was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, between a united front of Iraqi factions and representatives of "charities" from the Gulf.

The Iraqis asked for money and weapons; after a decade of war their arsenals were almost depleted. What didn't get destroyed by US or Iraqi forces was sold to the Syrians. They needed money to train and recruit new fighters but more importantly a religious sanction from the religious authorities for a new round of fighting.

The Gulf figures asked for more time and a second meeting was held in Amman, this time attended by a higher-ranking group of officials from the both sides. The answer was yes: the "charities" would offer support as long as the Iraqi Sunnis were united and used their weapons only after Iraqi government units used force against them. Another Sunni leader confirmed to the Guardian that the Amman meetings had taken place.

"There is a new plan, a grand plan not like the last time when we worked individually," another commander told me. "This time we are organised. We have co-ordinated with countries like Qatar and Saudi and Jordan. We are organising, training and equipping ourselves but we will start peacefully until the right moment arrives. We won't be making the same mistakes. Baghdad will be destroyed this time."

This is not to mention the fact that the United States has attempted regime change in Syria no less than three times, and as far as I know, is the only nation with at least a dozen invasions and coups in the area under it's belt from 1955 to the present.

The next time you want to say that a nation is destabilizing regional politics in the Middle East, and that country's name doesn't start with an "A" and in with you know what, just fucking do us a favor and don't bother.

Why are you shilling for Apple?

"Congressional investigators found that some of Apple's subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless -- exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world."

The U.S., they explain, determines the residency of companies based on their incorporation location, but Ireland uses their actual base of operations. So for tax purposes, for example, Apple's Apple Operations International -- officially located in Ireland -- exists nowhere. AOI accounts for about 30 percent of the company's total net profits worldwide from 2009-2011, according to USA Today.

Yeah, no dodge there. They just have a non-existent office that also -- just by sheer accident of good ethical business practices -- makes 30% of all of their worldwide profit. Apple uses a different loophole than other corporations, but its still a loophole. They paid a fair amount of taxes in 2012 because the writing is on the wall -- even McCain understands that corporations simply aren't paying their fair share.

Also, I'm not sure when corporate accountability became unfashionable, but you need to cut that shit out. America needs a reasonable tax base to take better care of its needs and if it allows every major corporation to avoid paying taxes, we won't have the money for important things like transportation infrastructure and an educated populace that can compete in the future economy.

You can't sell iPads to people who can't read, or who spend all of their money on inefficient ways of commuting and car repairs.

(These are general ideas and may not be technically accurate... feel free to correct me)

There are several problems with WiFi technology itself. First, there is no contention management for wireless. When you're wired in, collisions are detected quickly, so you can saturate the connection near its theoretical limits without too many errors. (There's a promotional video about this from Meru Networks, but it is fairly educational.) By contrast, WiFi will roll through a larger bit of data and then ask for confirmation of receipt, which can lead to a lot of problems as radios talk all over each other. This is not a problem in regular office environments, where walls, floors, and furniture can provide separation so the radios can "hear" things that are closer. However, get into an open air environment and add a bunch of devices at once, and everything flatlines as the access points attempt to orchestrate several hundred devices in range, including interference from other radios within "hearing" distance on the same channel.

The second issue is one of limited channels. Originally WiFi was designed to move a tiny amount, and I think you could actually split off 802.11b into 11 discrete channels. As data needs grew, they consolidated 11 channels into 3 discrete channels for 802.11g (4 in the EU, I believe) and that's where it stands: a 3 lane road for 2.4GHz. 5GHz has more channels, depending on where you are in the world, but right now they are unreliable as the requirement for many of them is to be compatible with DFS, which means that if there is a certain signal being broadcast, your access points are expected to abandon that channel immediately. I think there are changes in the works from the FCC and although it only introduces 30% or so of new spectrum, it happens to cross multiple channels, so it may be like going from 9-12 channels to 20 or so. Combined with the more limited range of the higher frequency, having 20 discrete channels opens up a lot of options for basic broadband in public spaces. (Well, it did until the new ac standard came out, and I haven't even bothered to read it because these massive spectrum widths are going to be a nightmare, and I'm in a different line of work these days.)

However, none of this solves the "microcell" design of WiFi, where the client makes the decision on what radio to connect to instead of the access point. Your cell service, for instance, works well because the tower instructs the client so it can perform handoffs, reduce the data rates, and make other adjustments to keep things from choking up. I have sat and watched an iPhone cross over multiple access points and hundreds of feet to connect across a stadium for no explicable reason. (That's true for every wireless device, but I'm picking on iOS because they are notoriously noisy, always flooding the air with useless beacons, trying desperately to connect to stored wireless networks even when they aren't around.)

I have deployed Xirrus, Aruba, Extricom, Unifi, and some other products in dense situations, but as far as I know, the only pseudo non-microcell options available are from Extricom and Meru. Although I haven't used Meru, I can say that Extricom has been the most reliable in very dense environments, since they use some tricks to keep the air quiet, and they do not introduce beacon traffic with the addition of more radios. (Disclaimer: I have worked with the guys from Extricom quite a few times, and I think they are very capable, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.) Xirrus works pretty well in corporate environments, and their reporting interfaces are great, but I was disappointed that their sales staff continued to deny problems in 2.4GHz long after it was obvious that they didn't have a workable solution for super dense deployments. But maybe they just didn't know.

Anyway, ignoring all of that technical garbage, the reason WiFi sucks is because everyone has their radio turned up to the max on non-standard channels. Especially in the 2.4GHz frequency, this leads to so much co-channel interference that wiring is almost always a better option unless you're in a townhome or something less dense. 802.11ac and super-wide spectrum will probably kill off the decent speeds that 5GHz is currently providing, especially since very few people seem to understand the basics of channel planning, radio strength, and sensible tuning. Imagine if FM spectrum was completely unlicensed and everyone was broadcasting all over each other, turning every station into nothing but noise. That's pretty much the story with 2.4GHz, and it's in the post for 5GHz.

Until there's a higher frequency option for "indoors" use (like 24GHz used in the Ubiquiti AirFiber units) air quality will continue to degrade. But if you want to be a good neighbor, turn down your radio. Use InSSIDer to plan around channel interference, and maybe gather friends in the building to get everyone on lower power, standard channels. You'll be surprised at the difference it can make.

Do you have the right to privacy?

Do you have the right to a fair trial?

There were 50,000 police raids for the last year we have data. In the 1970s, there were 3,000. In the 1960s they didn't exist.

About 10 minutes ago I was flagged SSSS for a "random" bag check, supposedly by the airline. Could I find out if in fact I was flagged by the US government, who then requested the Airline search me? No, that information is classified. For national security. In any case, my personal belongings were searched. They not only invaded the privacy of my things, but the privacy of my person by offering me the choice of a full body scan, or to be touched all over my body by a government agent. This is dignity only in a fascist system.

I know the reason why I was flagged. Two years ago coming back from another international trip, after being away from home for four months, I took a picture of a sign that said, "Welcome to America" with two flags on it.

By the time I had made it down to the escalator, I was asked by two armed men to follow them. Apparently I wasn't quite out of customs, and I had been "observed using an unauthorized device in a restricted area." They asked me why I took a picture of the American flag. I told them that I take pictures of a lot of things.

Then a TSA agent interrogated me for 30 minutes. What were you doing in Costa Rica? Who were you with? Why were you there? I made the mistake of mentioning I had spent time time with people from Berlin. They wanted their names, but I refused. They scanned everything, and even asked if had hidden illicit substances or explosive devices in the jars organic chocolate spread -- it looked like Nutella. Two jars were taken for samples. The rest were X-Rayed and returned to me.

They went through my phone. Thankfully they didn't get all the way to the end, where a prankster friend of mine had taken a picture of his junk at my birthday party. They then asked why I had lied about taking one picture -- the HDR feature was turned on. After five minutes of explanation and a demonstration, they finally accepted that answer, and then required me to delete "both" pictures of the sign with the American flag. The only other thing in the picture was the sheetrock behind it.

"Are you serious?" I asked.

"Absolutely," she replied.

When you travel internationally, there are two customs areas if they do a lot of travel to the United States. One is for the invasive security theater that other citizens do not accept as legitimate. But, you and I, we have a special line. We have special, secret courts. Our government has secret laws, and secret information gathering, and not-so-secret meetings called "Terror Tuesdays" where our president is presented with biographical information of "suspected terrorists," and then he decides who to assassinate. Two of those individuals have been US Citizens. To protect Freedom, and Justice, and whatever nice words the Homeland Security office needs to convince us is more important than the basic human rights democratic citizens have had for hundreds of years.

No trial. No attorney. Just 1,300 dead humans, who have all been classified as terrorists either by one man, or just after the moment they are dead for guilt by association.

So, I'm about to hop a flight back to the United States. And I have already booked my flight to leave it again, for as long as possible. It is a prison to me. I lovingly call it San Quentin, since the guards and the wardens who run my life, tell me what I can and can't do with my own body, and ruin the lives of regular citizens for minor offenses that harm no one make me hate every inch and every second of my life when I am in America.

I bought a steak and a margarita. When I get back, I will try to soothe my anxiety with technological trinkets, cat videos, coffee drinks, endless television, hard liquor, and anything else that can help me forget that any moment some officer of the government could break in to my private residence, without even knocking, and "accidentally" shoot me, with no repercussions. I try to dull the thought that right now, innocent people I have never met are going to die with the weapons my tax dollars pay for.

But no matter what I do, there is one undeniable truth when I am in America: I am not free.

I recently wrote a long post about the subject:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4016327&cid=44388965

As a nation, we need to come to terms with what our country has become.

After re-reading it, I would only change a few things: our goon squad isn't the most oppressive by any stretch, but it is the most well-armed. And while I believe that America is in reality a fascist totalitarian state, it's important to remember that there is no central plan that makes it so. It is the combined effect of corruption, institutional failures, and political apathy that make it effectively a fascist totalitarian state.

That's good, because it's less easy for any one individual to take over the entire system. But it's also bad because it can hide in plain sight.

This is what torture is not, according to the United States government.

Be honest with yourself: have you spent more time watching television or being politically active?

This is also a criticism I aim at myself, but the first step is to be honest about the situation. Americans are politically lazy, and we have the government we deserve. I don't think there has been a massive nationwide protest here since the 70s, with the possible exception of the anti-war protests before the invasion of Iraq.

The people who run the show aren't going to give it up because we're complaining about them on the internet. It's not difficult to convince yourself to hang on to millions of dollars and unchecked power when there is no real penalty from the populace.

This is really the central issue. There are few American values outside of money any longer, and this moral hazard is in the process of destroying the country.

In this case, we have a whistleblower providing evidence that

1) The American government is spying on American citizens without obtaining any warrants, unless you count secret court orders that have no judicial oversight*

2) This program is even kept as a secret from other parts of the government

3) Parts of the government have been lying to congress about what the spying program is about, who they have collected information on, and how they go about collecting it

*(This is a hugely important point. One of the favorite tricks of a totalitarian regime is to legitimize anti-democratic activity by simply making it legal. But if the constitution says we are free from unreasonable searches and seizures, a secret law passed by a secret court shouldn't hold sway. The only difference between our government and despotism is that they get more than one person to declare the government's will, pass it around in secret to co-conspirators who share the same backwards worldview, and then pretend that the theater they just acted for has some legitimacy.

The stark reality is that our government is corrupt and therefore does whatever it wants. As Nixon famously stated: When the President does it, it's not illegal. Then the question has to be asked: if that's the case, what is the difference between a President and a King?)

In essence, there is a part of our government that has approved its own spying program in a process that the public has no chance of knowing about.

So, why aren't we hearing about this in the media? Why are we instead hearing about his girlfriend, or his personal life? Because American media is no longer tasked with seeking the truth. Their primary concern is profit, and covering the birth of a British child is a lot more profitable than hiring skilled journalists to do journalism. Additionally, the Executive routinely threatens to cut off access to their staff for any news organizations that step out of line. For organizations like the Guardian, that risk is minimized, since they don't depend on empty stories to fill the vacuum of the 24 hour news cycle. For someone like CNN or Fox, the only thing that matters is the ratings, and that's best achieved by cheap, exasperated, stupid television. They can fill the airtime with "breaking news" about celebrities, or cat videos, or whatever pretend journalism is the cheapest to produce, but they feel like they need access so they can continue presenting the strained theater of left versus right. Every headline screams out: "Obama 'slams' GOP Leadership" or "Boehner threatens retaliation for 'nuclear option.'"

Boehner and his counterparts are barely able to communicate with regular voters, but that's because they have no idea what it's like to be a regular voter. They probably don't know what a loaf of bread costs, because they have servants and assistants who do that sort of thing for them. Half of congress is made up of millionaire lawyers, and the result of that is a bunch of outrageously overwrought laws that have nothing to do with helping anyone but their rich friends. Even now while they are discussing what tax breaks to keep, they have demanded that the proposal be kept a secret for fifty years . The reason is because if the truth were known, you could go down the line and see the leashes traveling from the election year donors to the politicians they have bought and paid for. Which would be great to know during the next election, but again, you don't matter. You don't exist, as far as they are concerned.

Back to the media... taking on the US government is expensive, and not only are the producers (who couldn't give two shits about our rights) not invested in the truth, but there's also probably an army of lawyers worried about getting entangled in expensive legal procedures. The DOJ enjoys lobbing lawsuits like financial bombs to keep everyone in line.

And don't forget that at the very top of that news hierarchy are a bunch of executives who regularly lunch with political celebrities. They don't want to embarrass their friends, and they gladly trade our right to know for their right to live luxuriously and rub elbows with important people. Never forget that inside the beltway, you mean jack shit as a regular citizen to the lobbyists and the long term players who couldn't give a damn about who gets elected. Republican or Democrat, the network of corruption is pretty much the same, though there are some important differences.

So, now you have a public that is receiving no actual information about what their government is doing. They vote for candidates who promise to close Guantanamo, or help reduce unemployment, or teach Wall Street a lesson. And none of it gets done after the election because the political parties run the show, and corporations run the political parties. If you don't toe the line decided by the party bosses, kiss your ass goodbye in the next election. Not one person who participated in the CDO ponzi scheme that destroyed the world economy has been put behind bars, because the hundreds of millions of dollars pumped in by the financial sector is too important for the Ds and Rs. They may only give a few million to each candidate, but just think about how many elections there are.

Simply put, corporations own our representatives, and therefore, they own us. Why do you think they don't pay any taxes? Why do you think money is worshipped like a God in this country? Why do you think tax cuts for corporations for hundreds of billions of dollars receives not a second glance, but trying to spend tens of millions on breakfast for needy children is decried as wasteful? There is no such thing as enough for these people, and I use the term loosely. They are infantilized adults who cannot conceive of the needs or wants of anyone but themselves.

Now you may be thinking how this relates to the NSA. Why would corporations care about the security state?

Edward J. Snowden's employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States.

Over the last decade, much of the company's growth has come from selling expertise, technology and manpower to the National Security Agency and other federal intelligence agencies. Booz Allen earned $1.3 billion, 23 percent of the company's total revenue, from intelligence work during its most recent fiscal year...

In January, Booz Allen announced that it was starting work on a new contract worth perhaps as much as $5.6 billion over five years to provide intelligence analysis services to the Defense Department. Under the deal, Booz Allen employees are being assigned to help military and national security policy makers, the company said. ...
Mr. McConnell has been an advocate for increased federal spending on cybersecurity. He told the CBS News program "60 Minutes" in 2010 that foreign governments had the capacity to bring down the country's power grid and financial system.

"The United States is not prepared for such an attack," he said.

And this is unfortunately how America has ended up in this hole. There's no actual evidence to suggest such an attack is feasible, but it doesn't matter. The news organizations have a new eye-catching headline. Who cares if it's complete bullshit. The check still cashes. The politicians have another weapon of fear to scare voters to the polls. Terrorism is just another boondoggle for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and all of the other security contractors who make a living by convincing everyone that the world is about to end. According to WikiPedia, our 2012 expenditures for "defense" are between $1.030 and $1.415 trillion dollars.

Who are we afraid of? Nations like Iran that literally have speedboats in their navy? The nation of Venezuela, that can barely keep their own government running? Adults choosing something besides alcohol for recreational drug use?

Throw a citizen in jail, and a private corporation makes a profit. It's not a coincidence America has more prisoners than all other nations on earth combined.

Start a war, and a private corporation makes a profit. It's not a coincidence that we outspend the rest of the world combined.

Get sick, and a private corporation makes a profit. It's not a coincidence that we have the least effective and most expensive healthcare system in the industrialized world.

Militarize a police force, and a private corporation makes a profit. It's not a coincidence that we have the most oppressive and well armed goon squad on the face of the earth.

The world is a scary place when fear equals profit, especially when profit is the only thing that matters.

So, there you have it. America, in reality, is a fascist totalitarian state. But don't worry about it. It's a boy!