The New York Times reporting that Google has joined forces with the National Security Agency in an effort to track down who was behind the attacks on its cybersecurity last year.

As the paper correctly puts it, ” The collaboration between Google , the world’s largest search engine company, and the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance raises both civil liberties issues and new questions about how much Google knew about the electronic thefts it experienced when it stated last month that it might end its business operation in China, where it said the attacks originated.”

Google’s ability to track and keep track of our most personal doings on the Internet is scary enough. But when you add to the mix the cooperation between Google and a giant U.S. spy agency, the possibilities are truly mind blowing!

Google apparently was the one reaching out to the NSA. Of course, the NSA was reportedly more than happy to agree.

As might be expected, the paper says a Google spokeswoman would not further comment on the matter, while an NSA spookswoman reportedly said the agency is also not able to comment “on specific relationships we may or may not have with U.S. companies.”

That alone is a statement worthy of further exploration: What exactly does she mean by relationships they “may or may not have” with other U.S. companies? Phone companies, perhaps?  Media companies, maybe?

We are, as a society, already well passed the danger point of becoming a police state. The blending of Google with the National Security Agency is just the latest, but, perhaps, most troubling example.

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Tags: new, york, times,, google,, national, security, agency,, china,, cyberspace, attacks,

He did have some typical fighting words indicating that he wanted the reform measures to pass Congress and end up on his desk sooner rather than later.

But he didn’t much sound like someone who believes his own message anymore. A number of side remarks the President made during the speech seemed to indicate that , while he would like to see health care reform this year, he is resigned to the fact that that may not happen..especially in the form that he had hoped.

He didn’t, as some argued he should have, stand up there and basically say–this is the plan I think is good for the country and ,therefore, what I want you to pass.

Rather, he put  the emphasis , as he often does, on trying to get bi-partisan support by saying he would entertain any proposal that offers an alternative to his, whether from his own party or from the Republicans, that accomplishes his basic goals.

But considering that the Republicans haven’t yet made known an alternative plan to the President’s, I think it likely Obama knows that is not going to happen anytime soon.

My guess is,  comprehensive health insurance reform is pretty much dead for 2010. Hope I am wrong, though.

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How else can you explain how badly he and his administration screwed up health care reform by not paying attention to what was going down in Massachusetts until it was too late to make a difference?

A more experienced politician (say LBJ) would have realized how vital the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy was and would have made frequent trips to that state prior to Tuesday’s special election to drum up support for the Democratic candidate.

Instead, Obama was on his Hawaii vacation (he didn’t even bother to return to Washington after the Christmas day attempt to blow up an airliner landing in Detroit) when he should have been bundled up against the northeast cold helping to sell his party’s nominee for the senate seat to the voting public.

Instead, the President and those below him were asleep at the switch.

And now, the Democrats have lost their all important 60th vote, the one needed to prevent a Republican fillibuster…not only against health reform, but any other piece of legislation as well.

Obama was probably a damn good college law school professor. And, from most accounts, a pretty good Chicago political street organizor.

But none of that prepared him to wage wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and God knows where else in the months to come.

None of that prepared him to deal with Wall Street so that Main Street doesn’t get screwed, as it has, by the worst economic climate since the Great Depression.

And, obviously, none of that prepared him to effectivly butt heads in Congress to get the health care reform bill he said he wanted when he was campaigning for the Oval Office.

The nation needs health care reform. Badly. But the one person who should have been spearheading its victory through the Congress turns out to be the same person whose spectacular political incompetence has probably led to its premature demise. And, that person is non other than one Barack Obama, President of the United States.

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Of course, should Republican Scott Brown win, it could derail the Democratic Party’s (and President Obama’s) health reform legislation by denying the Democrats the 60 votes needed in the Senate. They would have to resort to either trying to push the House to accept the Senate plan as is so there would be a a quick vote, or else, they’d have to use parliamentary tricks to try and push the legislation through. Either way, not a pretty thing!

Should Democrat Martha Coakley come from behind (where polls show her to be as of this writing) and win the vacated seat, while that would mean almost sure passage of the President’s health reform measures…a sure win for him…the fact that this even became a close race ,in and of itself ,has politically damaged the President and the Democratic Party.

The White House bungled this one badly.  The administration clearly confident initially that a Democrat would, of course, win in a state often referred to as a “Democratic state.”

But, as news reports have pointed out, this is only part of the story. Sure, the state legislature is controlled by Democrats, but Massachusetts voters, more and more considering themselves Independents, elected a Republican governor not all that long ago…so a Republican senator would not really be such a big leap.

Also, Massachusetts already enjoys a unique state run health care system providing universal coverage at a reasonable cost…so why would voters there want to risk losing that in favor of an untested federal version?

No matter what, the months forward will be interesting,indeed.

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While there are, of course, exceptions, many U.S. airlines have some of the oldest fleets on the planet. I think even Vietnam’s commercial air fleet tends to be newer.

After years of cutbacks and slim downs and dips in and out of bankruptcy courts, pilots and flight attendants alike tend to be in really foul moods nowadays.

And, while they like to complain often that passengers have become unruly, I beg to differ. From what I have observed in recent months, flight crews are getting away with murder!

They no longer have to serve food on most domestic flights. They’ve often even cut back beverage service. I one time even caught three flight attendants in the back of the plane chatting and even filling out the New York Times crossword puzzle while passengers up front were waiting to be delivered precious plastic bottles of water.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of incidents where passengers deemed “unruly” by flight crew standards have practically been arrested on suspicion of terrorism.

Since when does a paying customer complaining about horrible service constitute a crime against national security?

I fear that flight attendants, many of whom are not exactly the brightest stars in the known universe, will increasingly use the fear of terrorism as an excuse to , in effect, “punish” passengers who complain about their flight experience.

Frankly, I think it is time for some of the so-called legacy airlines (United, American, Delta, to name a few) to give up the ghost and finally go out of business!

They no longer do a good job and are not likely , given the economics of modern air travel, to ever recovery anything that approaches their former glory. Newer airlines, such as Jet Blue and Virgin America, do a much better job and have employees who actually still enjoy being there. Either that, or they are just better actors!

Whatever.

The fact is, no matter what the nonsense the airlines and federal government like to spoon feed us through the media, you have a far greater chance getting hit by a comet falling through your roof and killing you than you have being the victim of a terrorist attack on a U.S. airliner.

People like the former Homeland Security Secretary who go around telling anyone who will listen that the skies are so unsafe that full body scanners need to be placed at every airport in the world, conviently forget to tell people that their private security companies represent some of the largest manufacturers of these machines.

Can you say–PROFIT MOTIVE!

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But maybe the prez is over thinking this–the way he tends to do about issues large and small. Maybe there is a real simple answer. Maybe, the so-called intelligence experts were just stupid!

I mean, when you review all the missteps made in the days leading up to the Detroit incident, you sought of have to conclude that the U.S. has no shortage of stupid people working at various intelligence agencies.

I know we are looking for far more complicated explanations. Maybe it makes us feel better if we believe that the events that Christmas Day were almost impossible to  head off because of the complexities of the alleged plot.

However, if we accept the notion that there was nothing complicated about this at all…that we just are employing a lot of really stupid people in intelligence, then we start to collectively feel really bad.

Of course, maybe we should!

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We are still at war in Afghanistan and bent on escalating it with the addition of a lot more troops. We have expanded our “secret” war in Pakistan while also now taking  more than a closer look at Yemen and even Somalia. And, of course, we still are in Iraq!

The unemployment rate is still really ,really high–even if the pace of actual job loss has slackened somewhat in recent months.

More and more people face foreclosure of their homes.

More and more people are now on food stamps.

Commercial flying has become an even bigger pain ( I know…who’d have thought that possible?).

And, the government has, once again, proven itself incapable of actually doing anything in a smart fashion–witness the debacle of the botched terrorist attack on that Delta/Northwest jet over Detroit Christmas Day. Various government agencies, including the CIA, had enough information they could have–should have–connected the dots which is, after all, what they get paid to do! Instead , they did what they always seem to do…drop the ball.

The government is apparently even going after some bloggers who managed to break some news—with leaked information on government plans to beef up security on commercial planes as well as in and around the nation’s airports. Wouldn’t the government spend its time more effectively going after the actual would-be terrorists?

In a few, short hours, it will be 2010 and we have another full year ahead to watch in amazement as more officials screw up and as President Obama continues to party and play in Hawaii!

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This is all because of the alleged Christmas Day terror attempt on a Delta-Northwest airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Going through airport security was already a drag…and obviously didn’t do a hell of a good job stopping the latest nut job with an alleged explosive device strapped to his leg or inside his underwear.

Now, the TSA wants to make each airport a different experience for the passenger…the idea is to throw the would be terrorist off. Doubtful. But it will certainly make it that much harder for your average passenger to plan how long it will take from the time they arrive at the airport till the time they can finally show up at the gate of their departing (and maybe departed) plane.

As for the new rule on international flights, time for some rebellion here folks!

Just say NO!  to having to remain seated for the last hour of the flight, and with nothing on your lap, including, it would seem, reading material to pass the time away!

Way to go!  Why not make flying even more of a miserable experience than it has already become!

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The Democrats in the U.S. Senate are congratulating one another for a job well done because they managed to pass something they can call health care reform. And, in many ways, it is certainly that.

But it is a far cry from what the President said he wanted when he ran for office, and even from what the more liberal wing of the Democratic party said we needed in order to make health care reform real and not a shallow victory.

Many economists, Congressional budget analysts and , of course, members of Congress, had spent months telling us all that real health reform would require the creation of the so-called public option. Indeed, the House version of health care reform still has that as a provision and it must now be worked out with the just passed Senate version which does not! It will vanish.

Anxious to demonstrate that they can actually accomplish something, the Senate Democrats ( no Republicans went along with this one)  did vote in favor of health care reform but stripped anything remotely resembling a public option from the measure, even a proposal to allow some under retirement age to buy into Medicare.

They caved to the lobbyists from the insurance industry, they caved to the GOP and, most important, they caved to the more center and right wing of their own party. Needless to say, President Obama did not exactly take a strong stand on a public option to help it along. To the contrary, he sent signals early on–first through underlings, then directly from his own mouth, that he would be willing to throw the public option overboard just so that he can claim some sort of victory. 

Once the House and Senate fully engage in an effort to forge a single piece of legislation from their two, separate bills, it is considered a done deal that the public option provision in the House measure will be chucked in order to make Senators happy.

Yes, there is no doubt that the legislation that will emerge from this will make health insurance in this country more on par with what is offered in just about every other civilized Western (and even non-Western) nation; it’s just that it could have been so much more meaningful.

All that can be done now to salvage the situation is to use these victories as a foundation for future alterations that may, someday, actually bring the American health care payment system firmly into the 21st century.

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Rove is referring to a USA Today/Gallup Poll showing 49 % of those who were polled approve of Obama’s performance on the job, while 46% do not!

I haven’t looked up all the opinion polls going back God knows how far to know whether Rove is accurate or not . But I do know that some of his arguments for why the President’s popularity seems to be in free fall among some, make sense.

As much as I would like to disagree with someone like Rove, he is right when he points out that Obama is far from the post-partisan politician he wanted all of us to believe he was when he was running for the Oval Office.

He is also right when he points out that Obama criticized the Bush administration bank bailout as flawed, only to then hire  or continue to back some of the very people who helped design it–among them–Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner.

Like I said, I’d like to call Rove out on this. But I am afraid his arguments do hold up and that, indeed, spells bad news for Barack Obama!

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