SAR #14193

This is not our finest hour. 

 
Status Quo: Senior Congressional Republicans refused to even consider Obama's request for additional funds for the problems on our southern border. After all, things are working quite nicely from their point of view and they are certainly not going to help ameliorate the problem. And that's a big part of the problem. 
 
Indian Givers: A student in California discovered a “strange device” on his car when he took it in for an oil change. Pictures posted on the web identified it as an FBI tracking device. Now the FBI is demanding their property back.

Messenger, Shooting The: Australia's Agriculture Minister says that the animal rights group that put footage on line that showed sheep being beaten with hammers, thrown against walls, having their necks stamped on and having wounds sewn up with no aesthetic are a bunch of 'extremists' who use questionable practices. 
 
How Dare You! The US upset with Germany for kvetching about the CIA's spying on them, 
 
Bill Of Particulars: The NSA spies on politicians, generals, judges, lawyers, citizens and nearly everyone else. For example, they began collecting information on Barak Obama when he first ran for public office and continued to do so through his run for the Presidency. And there is no reason to suspect they have stopped. It is also naïve to believe that this is merely harmless collection, that those who hold the information do not use it for their benefit. And the NSA passes data on American citizens, including members of Congress to Israel. It seems likely that the NSA is blackmailing its putative Washington overseers. There is no record in history when such surveillance was not used to control the people, but there is always a first time. 
 
Rotten Apples: Pope Francis says that only 2% of Catholic clergy are pedophiles. That's only about 8,000 of 'em. He finds “this state of affairs intolerable." No steps to reduce or abolish this criminal behavior have been announced.

As Expected: The pedophile scandal in Great Britain is now washing up against the Sainted Maggie Thatcher's regime, with multiple accusations that she of knowingly suppressed information about cabinet level involvement. 
 
Contestants: If Monsanto is only the third most-hated company, who's in first place? BP, Bank America? 
 
Nearer My God To Thee: Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, and Desmond Tutu, one of the world's most eminent religious figures, have lent their support to a campaign to legalize the right to die, claiming that assisted suicide as a way of preventing pointless suffering is “not-anti-Christian”.

Does Not End Well: France told Amazon that its free delivery was not legal. So Amazon instituted a one-cent charge. The French are not going to be amused. 
 
Fine Point: It is not the universal surveillance that is so damning – much, if not most, of the 'surveillance' is simply watching what goes on in public spaces (depending on the definition, of course). The compromising part is not the gathering of our behavior, but the subtle and imaginative analyses and correlation of that raw data that computers make possible. We are judged by our actions. “It is not the basic information often that matters, it is the analysis and the quality of it.” We are condemned by our actions, by the very visible details of living.

Making a Point: The UN claims that 3 out of 4 people killed by the IDF in Gaza have been civilians, many of them women and children. Israel wants to know what all the fuss is.

A Sense Of proportion: A teenager has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for killing a police dog. The retired Florida cop who killed a man for using a cell phone in a movie theatre is out on bail. And no one in charge of any of the big fine-paying banks has gone to jail for massive fraud that destroyed the economy.

Porn O'Graph: Growth shrinks.