SAR #15153

"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." Edward Snowden

Shadow Boxing: Don't get to excited now that NSA's domestic spying fig leaf has expired. They will keep on keeping on, pretending that someone somewhere had the authority to secretly approve the wholesale violation of the nation's constitutional protections. 
 
Pat pat pat: The next time you're standing in line in your socks, holding up your beltless pants with one hand and waiting for a tray to put your worldly possessions in, remember that this is just daycare for adults. If they were really concerned about anhything except your docility, TSA would try to stop more than 5% of the weapons and explosives that can make it through security. And don't worry about that guy over there, the one with the stolen security badge...

Perfection: Fifa is the future of capitalism. A complete monopoly, it distributed enough of its “sponsorship income” to the executives of the world's national soccer associations to insure its continued stranglehold on the pot of gold. The level of corruption in Fifa was known and accepted by the world's elite, as is the level of corruption elsewhere in around the globe.

The Way We Are: Six years into The Recovery^TM , 47% of American families cannot handle an unexpected $400 expenditure without selling something or borrowing money – from “non-bank alternative sources”, a polite way of saying pawnshops, payday loan sharks, or those car title loan places, at rates that reach 200% a year or more. Legally. And it is not just the poor who are getting repeatedly raped by the system; 48% of “middle and upper income households” also use these Shylocks.

Smoke/Fire: A Waco judge has agreed to set most of the bikers arrested following what looks more and more like a police riot go free... if they will not sue the city for their wrongful arrest. As though they could be kept in jail following their wrongful arrests? At least one biker has filed a civil rights case against the authorities.

Roadkill: In the US, cops kill at least two people a day, unarmed blacks at twice the rate of whites of course. The latest includes the Oklahoma cop who shot a man to keep him from drowning. 
 
Conscience Money: The US is giving Israel another $1.9 billion in weapons to use on the women and children in the Gaza strip. Why? How long before we've paid off our guilt from WWII?
 
Wording: Spain has agreed to “permanently host” 2,500 US Centurions at Morón Air Base. “Permanently”.

Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation for the rise and continued existence of powerful drug cartels in South and Central America, and especially Mexico, is to accept that the political elites of all of the countries involved, including the US, have benefited from the drug trade. And the only way the drug cartels could move all those drug profits is with the willing cooperation of the world's largest banks. But that can't be right, because...