SAR #13247

Having delusions is remarkably useful. 

 
As Night Follows Day: Wonder what our national interest is in Syria? Remember why we are in an undeclared slow-motion war with Iran? Oil. Natural Gas. Ours, because it makes our empire run. Oh, you didn't know about the Syrian-Iranian natural gas pipeline to the Mediterranean? Maybe you've forgotten the non-US approved pipelines through Afghanistan, too.

Out Of The Bottle: Project GENIE, the US offensive cyperoperations effort, plans to control at least 85,000 malware bots in computers in Iran, China, North Korea and Russia by the end of this year. We've been doing it since at least 2008, but -as NSA and the Pentagon are quick to point out – not for economic gain or advantage. Why the hell not?

It's Only Business: Turns out that Great Britain sold Assad nerve gas component chemicals ten months after the current upheaval began. At least they sold it; we gave Saddam the stuff.

Relatives: If you think Big Brother is bad, check out Ma Bell. NSA keeps phone call data (and the actual calls) for nearly every American, but only for five years. Ma Bell not only keeps the data on all of their customers and anyone whose call goes through ATT switching stations and for going on 26 years. And they also keep track of locations, which NSA says they do not do. And Ma willingly shares all of this data with DEA. Why not, apparently DEA and the White House have been paying for the program. 
 
About Those Minimum Wage Kids: Only 88% of US workers who would gain from a higher minimum wage are over 20, more than 30% are over 40, more than half are working full time and nearly half have at least some college education. Meanwhile, the top 1%... argh.

Way-Back Machine: Remember Fukushima, two years ago? No, it's not “old news”. Three reactor cores are still melting away, eating into the earth, and the molten radioactive mess has to be constantly cooled for the next few centuries. Or longer. So far they've got 400,000 tons of contaminated water stored in 'temporary' tanks and they are adding 400 tons a day. But they're not running out of room that fast because 300 tons of highly radioactive crapola is leaking into the ocean every day. And there are puddles sitting around the tank farms that have 'hot-spots' with radiation rates that deliver a five-year level of exposure in one hour. Others are simply lethal. What, me worry?

Kill Self After Reading: Just because the Feds (1) set you up to be a patsy in a fake terrorist ring and (2) used electronic intercepts maybe or maybe not approved by the FISA court, don't think that your lawyer can get to see the evidence against you. He can't. Because, the court says, secret evidence is secret and the Feds say they can pretend they didn't use that particular set of illegally obtained information in framing you. Are you old enough to remember when we at least pretended trials were fair?

Puritanism: Some are complaining that mandatory drug testing as a condition of receiving various welfare benefits is a costly failure, that the tens of millions spent degrading the poor and unlucky neither catches druggies nor saves the state money. As though that were the point of the exercise.

The Parting Shot:

 Vapor trail