Republicans Caterwaul as Obama Renames Mount McKinley

The political correctness brigades haven’t been able to force the Washington Redskins to change their team nickname yet but now Mount McKinley is no more. To commemorate a visit to Alaska, Emperor Barack Obama has announced that he would be changing the name of America’s highest mountain from the one given to it in honor of the nation’s 25th president back to its traditional native name “Denali”. It marks the culmination of efforts by Alaskans to restore the original name and Obama will be treated like a god my many during his visit to the land of the midnight sun.

The Guardian provides detail on Obama’s surprise announcement “Barack Obama to give Mount McKinley back its Native American name” from which I excerpt:

Barack Obama has said he will be changing the name of the highest mountain in North America from Mount McKinley to Denali.

He announced that he will be returning the mountain’s traditional Alaskan native name on the eve of a presidential visit to Alaska.

Denali is an Athabascan word meaning “the high one”. The name has long been a sore spot for Alaskans, who have informally called the 6,200m high mountain Denali for years.

The mountain was more recently named after a former US president, William McKinley. There have been several efforts by Alaskan politicians to change it back to Denali but politicians from McKinley’s home state of Ohio have always opposed the move. Obama is citing the Interior Department’s authority to make the change.

The decision has brought praise from Alaska’s governor, Bill Walker, a Republican turned independent, and Republican elected officials, who more typically are critical of an administration they see as hostile to their state’s oil and gas interests.

“I’d like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change to show honour, respect and gratitude to the Athabascan people of Alaska,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who led the fight for the name change in Congress.

Alas, it is just more of Obama’s pandering to harvest votes for the Democrats next year but it set off howls of outrage, especially in Ohio where President McKinley hailed from.

As reported by Politico in the story “GOP blasts Obama's Denali Name Change”:

Republicans are criticizing President Barack Obama's decision to rename the tallest mountain in the United States to Denali, after the peak bore the name of Republican President William McKinley for more than a century.

The outcry was particularly strong in Ohio, McKinley's home state.

House Speaker John Boehner, who has represented his Cincinnati-area district for more than two decades, decried the decision in a statement.

"McKinley served our country with distinction during the Civil War as a member of the Army. He made a difference for his constituents and his state as a member of the House of Representatives and as Governor of the great state of Ohio. And he led this nation to prosperity and victory in the Spanish-American War as the 25th President of the United States," the speaker said in the statement. "I’m deeply disappointed in this decision.”

While renaming a major landmark isn’t something that happens very often, it can’t be all bad if it pisses off the gutless orange-tinted juicer Boehner. The sob sister RINO Speaker of the House will be crying in his beer today as he curses Obama but you can bet your bottom dollar that they will soon kiss and make up in order to keep the federal government open later on in September.

With the entire country going to hell in a bucket you would think that Barry would have other priorities but he is determined to spend his last year or so in office doing his victory tour and poking his bony finger into the eye of opponents. Hell, it could always be worse – at least he didn’t name it after the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, just think of how Boehner's head would have exploded then.

Obama Heads For Vacation at Elite Enclave Martha's Vineyard

With Congress having already blown town for their latest extended vacation that taxpayers are on the hook for, the Emperor himself wasn’t far behind. Barack Obama is packing up the plantation for a trip to the posh enclave of the wealthy in Martha’s Vineyard and he is starting a day earlier than planned. One of the greatest perks of being POTUS, outside of the costly security, cool helicopter rides and that big white party crib at 1600 Pennsylvania NW is that when it comes to taking vacations the sky’s the limit. 

There is no shame on Barry’s behalf in making the jaunt up the coast to the Vineyard where he can do the shuck and jive with all of the high rollers who have raked in the cash over his coddling of Wall Street criminals. He will also be sucking down a good share of free drinks while getting slapped on the back for that abomination of a job-killing trade deal that he just crammed down the throats of Americans.

As reported by AP via Yahoo News “Obama Gets Jump on Martha's Vineyard Vacation”:

President Barack Obama's summer vacation has begun.

Obama arrived on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard on Friday, a day earlier than originally scheduled, for a 17-day break before he plunges into a busy September and fresh battles with the Republican-controlled Congress over Iran, spending and other issues.

Obama, Michelle Obama, daughter Sasha and dogs Bo and Sunny flew aboard Air Force One to the Coast Guard station on Cape Cod, before boarding helicopters for the short hop to Martha's Vineyard, the summer hangout for the wealthy just to the south.

The president arrived at his vacation home in Chilmark, the same seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom property he rented last year, after a 20-minute drive over the picturesque island's gently rolling hills and verdant green spaces.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama realized he could spend Friday night on the island after all and "get started on his vacation first thing (Saturday) morning" so he decided to go for it.

With no official appearances scheduled, Obama will fill his days with leisurely rounds of golf, beach outings, bike rides and hikes with his wife and daughers, and dinner with Mrs. Obama and their friends at some of the island's top restaurants.

He traveled with a small group of aides, including national security adviser Susan Rice, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and others, who will update him as developments warrant.

There is a chance that Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination to succeed Obama, will see each other on the island. They are expected to attend a birthday party for Ann Jordan, the wife of Democratic adviser Vernon Jordan.

Obama and his aides are hoping for a more relaxed summer getaway. Last year's vacation began as the U.S. started launching airstrikes against Islamic militant targets in Iraq. He interrupted the vacation several times to address political developments in Iraq, the beheading of American journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants and violent protests that erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old black man by a white police officer.

Obama later was criticized for heading to the golf course immediately after condemning Foley's killing.

He also returned to the White House in the middle of last year's vacation to attend meetings. There are no plans for a similar trip before Obama's vacation ends on Aug. 23.

It’s nice to see that we are all having to pay for his entourage to make the trip as well, haven’t Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice ever heard of teleconferencing? It's all about getting over in Obamastan.

The locals will no doubt be in a state of rapture with not only Obama but Queen Hillary both bestowing the gift of their royal presence upon them. In between golf outings, lobster dinners, clambakes and bacchanals that would make Roman emperors envious there will be plenty of time for fundraising. On the bright side, it is the last end of summer vacation that Obama will take before leaving office but with the GOP party bosses about to dump the only candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton she and Bill will be happy to continue the tradition until 2024.

Dumbed Down and Out in Obamastan

Not that a population that elects a Teflon-coated bullshit salesman like Emperor Barack Obama and then turns around and actually re-elects him can be deemed to be highly intelligent but there are dumbasses and then there are even dumber dumbasses. A few interesting stories caught my eye over the past few days that are a slice of present day Americana. While these are certainly amusing at face value they offer up a grim testimony of how far that we have fallen as a nation.

First, in honor of the recent Fourth of July/Independence Day weekend, a prodigy from Maine named Devon Staples managed to accidentally suicide himself by shooting off a firework from the top of his head. As reported by AP via Yahoo News “Man shoots off firework from top of his head, dies instantly”:

A 22-year-old man who was drinking and celebrating the Fourth of July tried to launch a firework off the top of his head, killing him instantly, authorities said Sunday.

Devon Staples and his friends had been drinking and setting off fireworks Saturday night in the backyard of a friend's home in eastern Maine, said Stephen McCausland, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety.

Staples, 22, of Calais, a small city on the Canadian border, placed a reloadable fireworks mortar tube on his head and told his friends he was going to light it, McCausland said. But his friends urged him to stop.

"Apparently, he thought that was a great idea," McCausland said. "His friends they thought dissuaded him from doing it, and the next thing they knew, he ignited the fireworks and he was killed instantly."

Staples's brother Cody told the Daily News of New York that he was a few feet away when his brother lit the firework and was the first to come to his side after it exploded.

"There was no rushing him to the hospital. There was no Devon left when I got there," said 25-year-old Cody Staples, who called it an accident.

"Devon was not the kind of person who would do something stupid. He was the kind of person who would pretend to do something stupid to make people laugh," he said.

Well nobody was laughing at Devon's career ending trick as an amateur entertainer and it must have been one hell of a fucking mess to clean up as well. Next we go to Texas where another yahoo who had been drinking developed that ten feet tall and made of steel attitude that often goes manifests itself with the potent combination of too much testosterone and excessive boozing was killed by an alligator(s) that he was reported to have been mocking only minutes earlier. As CNN details in the story “Man mocks alligators, jumps in water and is killed in Texas”:

A man who apparently mocked alligators, then jumped in the water -- despite warning signs -- is dead after being attacked in Texas.

Orange County Police were called to Burkart's Marina near the Louisiana state line early Friday morning after reports that Tommie Woodward, 28, and an unidentified woman were swimming in a bayou and had been attacked by a large alligator.

Woodward's body was found several hours later. The woman was not injured.

Orange County Justice of the Peace Rodney Price told CNN affiliate KFDM that Woodward ignored verbal warnings and a posted "No Swimming Alligators" sign and seemed to mock the deadly creatures before going in the water.

"He removed his shirt, removed his billfold ... someone shouted a warning and he said 'blank the alligators' and jumped in to the water and almost immediately yelled for help," Price said.

The "No Swimming Alligators" sign was posted this week after a 10-foot alligator was spotted in the bayou waters.

There is not much to say about someone who is so damned stupid that he would intentionally jump into a body of water that is infested with alligators. Hey, even the pros can get killed interacting with dangerous wildlife as the deceased Steve Irwin aka the “Crocodile Hunter” could attest to were he not stung to death on camera by a poisonous stingray.

Another lurid saga comes out of the great state of Florida where I happen to reside. Hey, the place has its ups and downs as far as where to live – you sure as hell can’t beat the weather during winter – but with a population of nearly 20 million there are a boatload of really dumb and angry people who live here too. A Bradenton man was arrested for "battering" his ex-wife because she chose to masturbate with a dildo rather than have sexual relations with him. The website the Smoking Gun ran the story “Cops: Florida Man Battered Ex-Wife After Accusing Her Of Cheating On Him With A Sex Toy”:

A Florida man battered his ex-wife after accusing her of cheating on him with a sex toy, according to police who arrested him yesterday for domestic battery.

As detailed in a probable cause affidavit, Triston Horne, 36, was visiting his former spouse’s Bradenton home last Wednesday when the pair began to argue. Misty Clark told police that Horne does not live at the residence, though she “does invite him over to the house.”

Clark invited Horne over on July 1 to spend the night because “he was going to take her to work” the following day, cops noted.

While in Clark’s bedroom, the duo quarreled. When Clark repaired to the bathroom, Horne barged in and “began accusing her of cheating on him. He told her that she was cheating on him with a sex toy,” according to the affidavit.

After allegedly twisting Clark’s hand, Horne returned to the bedroom, where he “grabbed Misty’s sex toy and went back to the bathroom.” Horne then "snapped the sex toy in half and walked away."

Sounds like Misty Clark had a reason for choosing the dildo over the dude that went farther than sexual satisfaction. And what would dumbness be without a story that involves our over-policed fascist society although at least the SWAT team didn't get called out for this one. An Ohio woman was arrested after calling 911 to register a complaint about shitty Chinese food. This one also comes from the Smoking gun in the story “Ohio Woman, 44, Arrested For Calling 911 To Complain About Subpar Chinese Food”:

Meet Tracey McCloud.

The 44-year-old Ohio woman was arrested yesterday after she dialed 911 to complain that food she ordered at a Chinese restaurant was not up to her standards.

According to the Alliance Police Department, McCloud called 911 from the Main Moon Chinese Restaurant around 4:30 PM Monday.

When a dispatcher asked, “What’s your emergency?,” McCloud replied, “I had bought some Chinese food and it’s not to par to me.” McCloud explained that restaurant workers were refusing to give her a refund.

The incredulous operator requested the caller’s name and asked, “And this is why you called 911?”

“Umm, what am I supposed to do? Jump over the thing and beat em up and get my money back?,” McCloud responded.

After cops were dispatched to the restaurant, McCloud was arrested for misuse of the 911 system. She is scheduled to appear in Municipal Court on Friday on the misdemeanor charge.

Not to suggest that all or any of these morons are either liberals or actually voted for Obama but they are but a sampling of the hundreds if not thousands of stories of nincompoops that are reported every day in the USA circa 2015. There is an underlying reason for why our institutions are failing that goes beyond the greed, incompetence and corruption of our politicians and bureaucrats. 

What is that old saying about getting the democracy that we deserve? Sucks but this is exactly what we get in a land full of idiots who get dumber by the day and breed like rabbits. Popular culture is chock a block with movies, video games and television shows about a zombie apocalypse but what we really should be terrified of is the already spreading dummy apocalypse.

The Revolving Door Spins Again as Eric Holder Returns to Gig at White Shoe Law Firm

Former Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t out of work for very long. He has now - like so many others who have undermined American democracy in the imperial Washington sewer - passed back through that gold-plated revolving door between government and the private sector. Mr. Holder, who turned over his duties of giving away get out of jail free cards to Wall Street looters to Loretta Lynch in May, has returned to the same white shoe law firm where he worked prior to heading up the Justice Department as the nation's top law enforcement official.

As reported by the website The Intercept in the story “Eric Holder Returns As Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks”:

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

The Obama regime has had several of the figures who bailed out the banksters at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer quit their public gigs only to cash in big after a brief period by taking jobs in the same industry - an enormous betrayal of the American people. There was former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who scored two jobs with firms that benefitted from his management of the printing presses. 

Helicopter Ben nailed down gigs with bond firm Pimco as well as hedge fund Citadel and his Quantitative Easing programs have inflated the largest stock market bubble in history - one that is inevitably going to burst but probably not until Obama has joined Holder on the golf course. Then there is former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitnher who ended up at private equity firm Warburg Pincus and departed Press Secretary Robert Gibbs who scored a position with McDonalds along with many others of a lesser profile.

The conflict of interest is stunning but predictable for a rat and longtime fixer like Holder. It would have been nice had he at least waited for a few months but the stench of impropriety is so thick in the D.C. air that it isn't even noticed anymore. This is a very serious breach of the public trust for Holder who was in the position to act on behalf of all Americans who got ripped off by these big banks but unethical Eric had all of their backs. With the news that he is officially back on their team now it is pretty evident why there were no meaningful prosecutions of the Wall Street racketeers.

Secret Court Reinstates Obama’s NSA Stasi Domestic Phone Spying Program

Just in time for Independence Day the Obama occupying government provided another example of just how “free” that we really are. In a ruling on Monday the ultra-secret surveillance court "temporarily" reinstated those “illegal” domestic phone data collection programs what were allegedly reformed by the USA Freedom Act last month. So much for that happy horseshit about surveillance reform bandied about by all of the political phonies and liberal elitists with their premature victory lap. It is easy to trump the courts and silly privacy advocates when the government has their own secret courts to fall back on.

Emperor Obama never wanted to do anything about his rogue NSA Stasi and now they are right back in business under the pretense of winding down the spying on everyone. This is of course another big lie straight out of Hitler 101 because in another few months the programs will simply be extended again after more anonymous government sources leak rumors about alleged terrorist plots to the corrupt and compliant media.

The website the Intercept is reporting that "Bulk Phone Surveillance Lives Again, To Die In a More Orderly Fashion in Five Months” from which I excerpt the following:

A federal judge with the top-secret surveillance court on Monday breezily reinstated the NSA bulk domestic surveillance program that was temporarily halted a month ago, allowing the agency to go back to hoovering up telephone metadata for five months while it unwinds the program for good.

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Michael W. Mosman wrote in his ruling, using the French phrase that means “the more things change, the more they stay the same” to summarize the legislative and judicial back-and-forth that led to the temporary reinstatement.

In his decision, Mosman also flippantly dismissed a major appellate court ruling in May that the program was illegal. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which was the government’s legal cover for bulk collection, didn’t authorize any such thing. The decision hinged on the common-sense conclusion that when the Patriot Act gave the government power to obtain phone records “relevant to an authorized investigation,” that wasn’t power to collect all phone records everywhere.

“Second Circuit rulings are not binding on the FISC, and this Court respectfully disagrees with that Court’s analysis, especially in view of the intervening enactment of the USA FREEDOM Act,” Mosman wrote. “To a considerable extent, the Second Circuit’s analysis rests on mischaracterizations of how this program works and on understandings that, if they had once been correct, have been superseded by the USA FREEDOM Act.”

The truth is that the Orwellian surveillance/police state that was put into place after the September 11, 2001 attacks is NEVER going to end. There is too just much damned money in the business of fear and the political elite need these programs to target domestic dissenters who choose to work outside of the official scam that passes for a political system. The mass surveillance is also needed for the day that the Federal Reserve built economic house of cards finally collapses and troublemakers can be quickly identified and if need be rounded up before they can organize for change and demand that the criminals responsible be held accountable.

Who are they targeting now? Right Wing “hate groups” including those planning civil disobedience after the Supreme Court turned every opponent of gay marriage into a bigot and potential enemy of the state. The recent moves to eradicate the Confederate flag, a political agenda cynically exploited after nine worshippers were slaughtered by a lone gunman in a Charleston church two weeks ago has allowed the government to identify more potential enemies as well. These are the people who will bear the most watching by Obama’s Stasi. The New York Times ran two editorials in the space of a week lumping in domestic “extremists” with the likes of ISIS and al Qaeda so the propaganda is already being laid down.

If that takes a bit of luster off of those Fourth of July celebrations this weekend it should because we have now come full circle and are right back under the yoke of a tyrannical government just like the one that the Founding Fathers broke away from.

Newspeak in America: Thug is Now a Racist Term

English writer Eric Arthur Blair who is more famous for his pseudonym George Orwell is often invoked as America continues to collapse from within. Orwell’s dire predictions of a totalitarian future dystopia as put forth in his masterpiece “1984” eerily foresaw the rise of a society in which no opposition to fascist big government was tolerated, citizens were turned into rats and snitches, war was perpetual and privacy was eradicated to the point of where “nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull”. Orwell’s novel also introduced the concept of “Newspeak” which was the intentional manipulation of the language to literally transform reality into what the state deemed to be acceptable which was in direct opposition to anything resembling freedom.

As anyone who is paying attention can clearly see in the Homeland of Obamastan circa 2015, the wars continue, the NSA and government favored corporations conduct mass surveillance on the population and the range of acceptable discourse shrinks daily. Then there is the perversion of language which combined with the ongoing process of the dumbing down of America is a potent one-two punch to whatever remains of our evaporating vestiges of liberty.

The transformation of language in America is often the result of the rise of the censorship called political correctness and is typically enforced by liberals who fancy themselves as being some sort of intellectual elite instead of the feckless drones that they really are. Their efforts only aid and abet the rulers of the fascist police state and their alarmingly successful attempts to slowly twist and morph the definition of “terrorism” to include all critics of the corrupt state. They work in tandem although the useful idiot liberals can’t seem to understand it.

The latest example of the perversion of the English language are the ludicrous and quickly spreading attempts to transform the word “thug” into a racist term and to render it taboo. This is particularly evident in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots when a pack of thugs and criminals exploited the Freddie Gray funeral to run amok. As disturbing as this latest outbreak of racially tinged malevolence has been, what is worse are the attempts to glom onto it by many to advance their own agendas. They are much like the travelers and parasites who leeched onto the XXXL carcass of bad seed Michael “Gentle Giant” Brown in Ferguson, Mo last year and manage to pop up in whatever city where the police are accused of using excessive force against young black men.

As CNN reports in the story “After Baltimore riots, some leaders slam 'thug' as the new n-word”:

A term used by President Barack Obama and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to characterize rioters has given new life to a debate over the word "thug."

"Of course it's not the right word, to call our children 'thugs,'" Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront." "These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us. No, we don't have to call them thugs."

"Just call them n-----s. Just call them n-----s," he said. "No, we don't have to call them by names such as that."

The Rev. Jamal Bryant drew the same comparison Wednesday morning on CNN. The President and the mayor are wrong, he said. "These are not thugs, these are upset and frustrated children."

"It's amazing. You don't call six police officers who kill a man without probable cause 'thugs,' but children who are frustrated and don't have an outlet, you call them 'thugs.' 'Thugs' is the 21st century word for the n-word. And it is repulsive and it is offensive to every person who is a parent trying to raise children interpreting what's taking place in this hour."

When even dear leader is calling a spade a spade and a thug a thug then it just must be racism and we just can’t have the public getting any ideas rather that those dark-skinned hooligans in the streets are lawless marauders. As for the word “thug” if you look at the Merriam-Webster online dictionary here is the definition:

Thug

noun \ˈthəg\

: a violent criminal

a brutal ruffian or assassin :  gangster, tough

There is nothing even remotely racial about it. In fact what the hell else can be said about the scum that took to the streets in Baltimore to ransack stores, destroy other people’s property and steal beer and toilet paper? They were thugs and there isn’t a damned thing that is racially offensive  in calling them such in the context of their actions. It is as clear as black and white.

Now that “thug” is on the verge of becoming a racist pejorative it shows the danger of the childish insistence of the refusal to use the word “nigger” in favor of the ubiquitous references to the “N word”. What the fuck is this, fucking third grade on a national level? When is enough enough? Not that I personally find the term “nigger” to be socially acceptable, no more than I do a gay man being called a “faggot”, however it is far more offensive to see the  ongoing bastardization of the English language by political correctness Nazis, slimy politicians, activists with an agenda and government stooges in the corrupt state-corporate media.

The hip hop culture that black youth are too often immersed in actually glorifies what can accurately be called “thug life” and why is it socially acceptable for many young blacks to regularly call themselves “niggers” or as is the hip slang “niggas”? This can be a career-killer, and have the scarlet letter of racism carved into the foreheads of white folks who don’t kowtow to political correctness and use the “N” word instead? The hypocrisy is boundless.

Always remember, Big Brother is watching you so watch what you say.

Secretive Senate Committee Rubber Stamps CISA Cybersecurity Bill

There is an acronym that is very descriptive of life in Obamastan and that is BOHICA which stands for Bend Over Here It Comes Again. The most recent example is the secretive Senate committee that just put their seal of approval on the brand new cybersecurity bill. It is just the latest stomping down of the big government jackboot on the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens. Not that the average American even has a say in the shredding of the Constitution by our rancid and rogue political system because when you have thinks like secret courts, secret panels, secret deliberations and secret deals then how can you really have a "free" country? The merger of state and corporate power has a name and that is fascism. The coming accord between big government and big business to put Americans under the watchful eye of big brother is just another step closer to the edge of that abyss.

According to the leading tech website CNET in a story entitled “Senate panel approves controversial cybersecurity bill”:

The Senate Intelligence Committee approved a controversial cyberscurity bill on Thursday that's designed to help companies and the federal government better defend against the growing threat of data breaches.

Approved by a 14-1 vote, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) aims -- by providing expanded legal liability protections to companies sharing data -- to encourage US companies to share information about security breaches with each other and government agencies. Supporters argue that the legislation is necessary to reduce the impact of an uptick in the theft of customers' personal information.

"This current bill is critically important both for our agencies that keep the country safe, and the institutions that hold millions of Americans' personal information," Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican and chairman of the panel, said in a statement.

The committee passed a similar bill last year by a 12-3 vote, but the measure stalled after privacy advocates raised concerns that it would reinforce government powers to conduct surveillance on US citizens, particularly after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of the secret spying programs.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the only lawmaker to vote against the new bill Thursday, said the measure "lacks adequate protections for the privacy rights of American consumers, and...will have a limited impact on US cybersecurity."

"This information-sharing is only acceptable if there are strong protections for the privacy rights of law-abiding American citizens," Wyden said in a statement. "If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections, then that's not a cybersecurity bill -- it's a surveillance bill by another name."

Senator Wyden has consistently been one of the lone voices speaking out from inside the belly of the beast that is our Leviathan federal government. However, as the 14-1 vote to move closer to the inevitable cram down of this totalitarian wet dream shows, he is badly outnumbered. It’s notable to see how despite the official media narrative that Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over everything that when it comes to giving the federal government even more power to snoop on Americans they are in unison.

It’s the same way with foreign wars that have nothing to do with our national interests and everything to do with selling weapons to keep the campaign contributions flowing and not acting to control our porous borders. When do actual Americans have a voice on any of this crap? The idea that democracy still exists in the post 9/11 doppelganger of what used to be the United States of America is a hoax and a very sick one at that. Big time anti-American scams like the CISA bill and the coming ultra-secret Trans Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) show how much influence that the ordinary Joe and Jane really have anymore. Just go and ask the conservatives who turned out in droves back in November to make a statement for change. It didn't take very long for the same corrupt “leaders” to be put right back in charge and those campaign promises rapidly reneged upon.

The corrupted system is desperately working to immunize itself from any future efforts for change if and when the star spangled sheep are ever able to wake up from their slumber and mount a challenge. The cybersecurity bill which is an extension of the NSA Stasi government power into private industry will ensure that any dissent will be rapidly squashed.

Nicely Timed CENTCOM Social Media Hacking Smells Like a Rat

Today’s latest  installment in the National Security State’s relentless drive to implement even more surveillance and invasions of the privacy of law-abiding Americans comes courtesy of the military. Media hysteria is spiking today with a story that the social media accounts of the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) have been infiltrated and taken over by ISIS operatives. Pretty convenient if you have an onerous new cybersecurity bill that is ready to be crammed down the throats of Americans. This also comes on the heels of last week’s savage murders of ten members of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo and two cops by Islamist extremists that is being hyped 24/7 by the fear mongers in the media.

The Washington Post is reporting that “U.S. military social media accounts apparently hacked by Islamic State sympathizers”:

Social media accounts for the U.S. military’s Central Command appeared to have been hacked on Monday, with the command posting threatening messages on Twitter and YouTube to American troops.

The first rogue tweet was posted about 12:30 p.m. It appeared to come from sympathizers of the Islamic State militant group. The Central Command has orchestrated the U.S.-led airstrike campaign against the militants in Iraq and Syria and is beginning to train Iraqi troops to respond to the threat in the region.

The background and profile photo of the Centcom account were both changed to show an apparent militant and the phrases “CyberCaliphate” and “i love you isis,” using one of the acronyms for the militant group.

In a statement, the Central Command confirmed that its Twitter account had been “compromised” and said it “is taking appropriate measures to address the matter.” The statement did not elaborate on the extent or seriousness of the hack or who may have been responsible. The account was disabled by Twitter around 1:10 p.m.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Obama administration is “examining and investigating the extent of the incident.”

You can bet that they are “investigating” it alright as in investigating how best to fold it into Emperor Barack Obama’s big pre-State of the Union address sales pitch for even more invasive surveillance laws - wrapped in the cloaking of cybersecurity and that Sony hacking.  Hell, Obama might as well just take to the podium before Congress next Tuesday, roll out a portable shredder and proceed to feed the U.S. Constitution into it on national television.

The Washington Post reports that “this story is developing”.  What all of this hacking and demagoguery by the federal government is really "developing" is an overwhelming stench of bullshit. It is getting to be pretty sad when anything that comes out of the government must be treated with pure skepticism but when the lying by high officials is the first – if not only – resort such is the level that we have descended to in this once great country.

Republicans Now Have Cover to Fund the Homeland Security Gestapo

With Mitch McConnell and John Boehner having now been officially crowned as leaders of the new Republican majority in Congress it is time to begin to do away with all of those pesky promises. The most bothersome to the corrupt establishment is the threatening to withhold funds from the Department of Homeland Security. Back when the pork stuffed abomination that was the “Cromnibus” was rammed through, the GOP leadership effectively punted on challenging Emperor Obama’s decree granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.The argument at the time being that funding the government – and doling out graft – was too important to be held up over taking a principled stand against Obama's executive order. So it was put off until early 2015 when the funding of DHS could serve as a bargaining chip. This was always a loser and the reason why was very predictable because fear sells in America as is now evident in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack.

That the defunding of  any portion of the all-encompassing big government monstrosity that is DHS was ever considered a political possibility shows the idiocy of the political class. There was always going to be an excuse to protect what is the exoskeleton for full blown American fascism. That is so because in today’s world with the constant episodes of radical Islamists murdering people there would be an ample supply of bad-assed bogeymen to justify it's existence. So now with the assassination of twelve people at the headquarters of a satirical French newspaper the excuse has arrived just behind the 2015 New Years baby.

According to a story from The Hill entitled “Security chairman: Paris attack shows DHS must stay funded” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul issues a warning:

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) says the attack in Paris on Wednesday highlights the need to keep the Department of Homeland Security open through the battle over immigration.

Republicans are in the midst of figuring out a strategy to fight President Obama's executive action on immigration. Under the spending bill passed last year, funding for the Department of Homeland Security expires in February, allowing Republicans to revisit the immigration battle.

"Our leadership and I just got out of the meeting and had discussions about how to proceed," McCaul said on CNN's "Situation Room" Wednesday night. "We want to stop this executive action, but I think the responsible individuals like myself have no desire to shut down this department. It's too important to the national security interest of the United States."

"I think this incident today highlights why that's necessary," he later added, referring to the attack by masked gunmen on Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper in Paris, that killed 12 people.

Asked if a deal will be worked out to keep the Department of Homeland Security open, McCaul replied, "Yes."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also said the department will stay open, though it is unclear what a deal would look like at this point.

"It’s an important piece of legislation, and we’ll decide in February how to handle it, but at the end of the day, we’re going to fund the department, obviously," McConnell said at a press conference earlier on Wednesday.

The Charlie Hebdo attacks were like a gift from the heavens for good ole Mitch McConnell who despite his rhetoric to the contrary will sell out to Obama at the drop of a hat. Now he has political cover as does the resilient Boehner who just swatted down a challenge to his leadership. And the more fascistic Republicans who have always been backers of a gargantuan surveillance and police state have Mitch’s back. Most notably Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The Palmetto State princess is always sought out by the media for his strident defense of hard-core authoritarian big government which he defends in his best honey-soaked Gomer Pyle style drawl. According to a story from CNN’s website entitled “Paris attack quickly becomes Washington funding fight” Graham warns of using DHS funding as a way to derail Obama’s immigration policy:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told CNN after the Paris attack Wednesday that the party should rethink those plans -- or at least make sure they're narrowly tailored.

"I hope that we could challenge the executive action of the President in a mature fashion," he said. "I've never been for shutting down Homeland Security."

The Homeland Security Department's funding is due to expire Feb. 27 -- a date chosen by Republicans in December, as they hashed out a deal to keep the rest of the government up and running through much of 2015, specifically to force Obama into a confrontation over immigration.

Americans ceded their civil liberties to the federal government in the aftermath of 9/11 with nary a whimper and have been rewarded with a doomsday machine that could be used by a charismatic tyrant to carry out purges that Stalin or Hitler could only dream of. The Department of Homeland Security is a threat to every American and should be completely dismantled given the potential to be weaponized and turned against domestic political dissidents, journalists and government critics. Now that the case is being made to back down from using it as a bargaining chip and giving Obama his first big win after the voters demanded change in the mid-terms. Is it just me or does November 4, 2014 now seem like ancient history?

With scum like Graham working the media to feed their propaganda into the national dispersal system it will be politically impossible to even think about touching DHS funding. The star-spangled sheep, never ones to engage in critical thinking are being scared shitless by saturation coverage of the murder of twelve people that didn’t even occur on freaking American soil and the cynical Obama will soon join in by preaching from the bully pulpit.

We are one step further down the road to fascism, a place where elections don’t matter and the power of an ever metastasizing anti-Constitutional cancer continues to eat away at what was once a free country.

More proof that elections don't matter when the entire system is rotten.