Trump's Dereliction And Nuclear Security Risk Shows The Electoral College Needs To Be Scrapped

At the end of last year, I warned that the Electoral College had ceased to be what it was intended for: the final backstop or check against "mischief of faction" and an unqualified,  Queens' real estate  con man getting into the highest office to defile it and ruin the nation.  The electors - members of the  Electoral College - had one chance, and one only, to prove once and for all it wasn't an archaic, useless anachronism and they blew it. That chance occurred on December 19th  last year when electors had the ability (and responsibility) to prevent a totally unqualified nitwit and looneytune from occupying the highest office in the land. And they fucked it up big time, let's not mince words.

Alexander Hamilton himself-  in Federalist #68 -  saw the need to stop such an egomaniacal, autocratic demagogue from becoming President,  so why not an ordinary citizen elector? Especially when, as Kathleen Parker noted in a column days before the Electoral College met:

"Without consulting advisers or “sleeping on it,” for which he is not known, Trump can authorize a nuke upon the slightest provocation — or none. All previous presidents have had the same authority, of course, but all have also been experienced statesmen, nary a reality-show celebrity (nor snake-oil salesman) among them."

Hamilton for his own part was blunt and to the point and his words in The Federalist  #68  bear directly on Trump's entanglements with foreign businesses and diplomats:

"Nothing is more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to a cabal, intrigue or corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.

How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?"

Hamilton was particularly emphatic when he wrote:

"the office of President shall never fall to the lot of any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications"

"Shall never fall to any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications". The words could not be any clearer! What has  manifested since Trump's inauguration is that he is the very embodiment of the classless rabble rouser and degenerate the founders feared taking office - which is WHY they established the electoral college.

The mutt not only lacks the requisite qualifications but poses a mortal danger to the Republic, as is becoming ever clearer with time. Especially when the sources inside the White House question whether Jim Mattis or Gen. Kelly will be so brave as to "tackle" Trump if he tries to execute a nuclear all out first strike (a la the fictional character Greg Stillson- who imagined it in the film 'The Dead Zone').

This is something that my Revolutionary War ancestor (Conrad Brumbaugh) would see in a heartbeat, and why he'd also agree Trump needs to be removed from the seat of power now.  He has mutated to the most severe national security risk this country has ever faced. Far exceeding any threat from Iran, North Korea or Russia. Why? Because he has exclusive access to the nuclear codes which he can punch in at any time his ginormous ego  and sufficient pique "demands" it

Don't believe me? Think this is over heated imagination or partisan puffery? Then you need to read conservative columnist Michael Gerson's recent piece in The Washington Post ('Republicans, It's Time To Panic')   In the following passage he puts it perhaps best:

"It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims. A main task of the chief of staff seems to be to shield him from dinner guests and telephone calls that might set him off on a foolish or dangerous tangent. Much of the White House senior staff seems bound, not by loyalty to the president, but by a duty to protect the nation from the president. Trump, in turn, is reported to have said: “I hate everyone in the White House.” And also, presumably, in the State Department, headed by a secretary of state who apparently regards his boss as a “moron.”

Adding:

"The security of our country — and potentially the lives of millions of people abroad — depends on Trump being someone else entirely. It depends on the president being some wise, strategic, restrained leader he has never been.

The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. Already, Trump’s protests of eternal love for Kelly are a bad sign for the general’s future. The American government now has a dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell — perhaps as thin as Donald Trump’s skin. "

And yes, I've deliberately bolded the words so they stand out. I want them to embed themselves in people's minds.

What it all adds up to - as the nation (including Puerto Rico) unravels on account of Trump and his deranged policies -  is that we are living on borrowed time. It also means that the Electoral College has proven once and for all to have been a useless artifact of the past. It did not live up to the intentions of the founders to prevent an outright fool, fraud and mentally  unfit reprobate from taking office. The electors became mere rubber stamps as opposed to proactively acting in the nation's interest.

Note the poll result in the graphic at the top. What it discloses is that more citizens realize the person holding the highest office lacks the mental capacity and emotional stability to do the job. He is as out of his depth as a sociopath con man would be commanding our armed forces, Wait! That's the situation we have!

Bottom line? You don't just put into office those who appear to have captured the zeitgeist of some deranged notion of populism. We need men or women who are mentally and emotionally capable of taking criticism, of learning on the job (including reading all PDBs, or presidents' daily briefs), and being capable of remaining focused on the security of this nation. By contrast, Dotard has shown himself incapable of even providing security for the American citizens of Puerto Rico - while  insisting "FEMA can't stay there forever". Oblivious that no Puerto Rican wants FEMA or the military to remain there "forever". They just want them there until the island territory of the U.S. is stabilized and in particular to deliver drinkable water and food NOW!

Then there is Dotard's "decertifying" of the Iran Nuclear Accord when that nation has been in technical compliance as even Rex Tillerson admitted. France, Germany and the UK all have repeatedly confirmed Iran's compliance and that 98 percent of nuclear fuels for weapons have been disposed of.  Trump's circus act also alienates all the European signatories to this deal and effectively converts the U.S. to a rogue state on the nuclear scene - and one that can't abide by treaties. (The trope that it needs "Senate confirmation" to be a "real treaty" is codswallop as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists notes,)  John Kerry - then Secretary of State who worked on it - put it bluntly:

"This is a reckless abandonment of facts in favor of ego and ideology."

As for Gen. John Kelly's boffo spin performance the other day - to squash the source reports Dotard is unravelling-  no one with an IQ over room temperature believes a word of it. In fact, all Kelly has succeeded in doing is proving the opposite: that if a chief of staff has to go out and clean up the doo doo there really is an unfathomable shit storm going on behind the scenes.   As Council Of Foreign Relations member Max Boot put it two nights ago in an MSNBC interview:

"The message is not credible. If you're having to call a press conference to deny that you're leaving the administration and that the president is unstable,  that's kind of like Richard Nixon calling a press conference to say I am not a crook. The very fact that you're denying it seems to confirm it. 

And we see the confirmation with our own eyes. Let's not forget  yesterday the president of the United States said it was crazy that a news outlet can write whatever it wants to say. He is attacking the first amendment. And today he's attacking the people of Puerto Rico 86 percent of whom still have no electricity. This is not normal and lends a lot of credence to these stories that yes, he is spinning out of control."

Make no mistake that is one aspect of  why the founders proposed an Electoral College, i.e.  as a rational check on popular over exuberance, the other being mischief of faction.  Recall the latter was noted by James Madison in The Federalist #10. As Madison described it:

"Mischief of faction is when citizens - whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole - are united and actuated by a common impulse of passion to cast their votes adverse to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community". 

This is exactly what the Trump voters did, motivated by inflamed passions, gullibility and moral recklessness via Trump's often violent rallies to give a middle finger to the rest of the country. They thereby militated against the majority's interests.

The Electoral College was established to pull the plug on such popular recklessness, to prevent its expedient, hastily chosen 'avatar' from assuming power.  This was not achieved because the electors did not do their due diligence. They opted instead to simply rubber stamp the state electoral tallies without question.

But given the parlous pass Dotard has taken us to - which any sane citizen can see- then the dereliction of the electors' actions is self evident in retrospect.  Thus, the Electoral College  never fulfilled its primary directive to halt the assumption of power by an unqualified, mentally unbalanced person defined by breathtaking moral turpitude. Since it did not fulfill that mission then it is clearly useless, and indeed, dangerous to the nation - since we cannot assume that if citizens commit mischief of faction once they won't repeat.

It is time this dereliction and insanity now be corrected and the most likely vehicle will be the  25th Amendment to the Constitution,

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jefferson-morley/75705/is-the-25th-amendment-a-solution-to-trump-madness

And:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/kali-holloway/75715/10-examples-of-trump-unraveling-before-the-current-unraveling-began

Grim News: The Fix May Already Be In For GOOPs To Steal The 2016 Election

No, not by using the voter I.D. ploy, now popular in many Southern states, but by the same ES&S voting machines used to snatch the 2004 election from John Kerry in Ohio, as presented in the superb documentary 'As Ohio Goes, So Goes The Nation'.   At the time I recall being enraged that John Kerry and running mate John Edwards didn't fight to pursue an investigation when mounds of evidence were available (including tens of thousands of uncounted "provisional" ballots) that showed the OH electoral votes were stolen. But then, given Kerry didn't fight back after being slimed by the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth', it made a kind of perverse sense he wouldn't raise a hue and a cry after being brought down by electronic voting machines in Ohio.

According to Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, in their latest piece on smirkingchimp.com:


"There are two things we all need to know about the upcoming 2016 election:

1. Millions of likely Democratic voters have already been stripped from the voter rolls in critical states like Ohio. The key reporting on this has been done by the great Greg Palast, who has shown that a computer program coordinated by the Republican secretary of state of Kansas is being used in some two dozen states to steal from a substantial percentage of the citizenry their right to vote. The raw numbers are high enough that they could have a significant impact on the presidential, US Senate, House and many other elections this fall. The ACLU has now sued Jon Husted, Ohio’s secretary of state, over the stripping of two million citizens from Ohio's voter rolls.

2. There is no way to verify the official tally on the electronic machines on which the majority of Americans will vote this fall. Nearly all the machines are a decade old, most are controlled by a single company (ES&S, owned by Warren Buffett) and the courts have ruled that the software is proprietary, making the vote counts beyond public scrutiny. In fact, they are beyond all independent monitoring altogether. In many key swing states (including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona) GOP governors and secretaries of state will have a free hand to flip the vote count to whatever they want it to be without detection or accountability. This could turn control of our government over to the GOP come November, as it did in 2000 and 2004.

These two critical markers of the upcoming national election are at center stage in our compendium The Flip & Strip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft (www.freepress.org / www.solartopia.org), which we’ll be publishing at the end of April.
For some reason many on the left have had a hard time accepting these realities. But they’re in fact far more critical than the question of who will make the better Democratic candidate.
In the interim, the usually solid Josh Holland has published a piece at The Nation with which we must take issue. It challenges writings that have put forward the idea that Hillary Clinton might be stealing the primaries from Bernie Sanders."

Why isn't there a mammoth, outsized outcry? As opposed to the smug MSM take that this election is "in the bag" for Hillary (as the most likely Dem nominee- especially if she wins New York by a sizeable margin)? The most likely reason is that this news simply isn't being reported - for whatever reason - in the corporate media. Perhaps that media doesn't believe the existing evidence validates it but if people aren't aware - they can't act in time (though the ACLU is trying to by filing suit in Ohio against Jon Busted.)

Watch this space, and for the piece in its entirety go to: www.smirkingchimp.com and look for the title header: 'Why Can't The Nation And The Left Deal With Election Fraud'.

Will You Soon Be Classified as a “Terrorist”? Marianne Williamson’s Concerns – And Mine!

"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America. And we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” - Sen. Frank Church, referencing the NSA in 1975.

 

Marianne Williamson is absolutely spot -on correct when she was quoted in a recent Los Angeles Magazine (June, p. 110) as noting her major worries included “diminishing civil liberties, expanding corporate influence, political corruption and the rise of domestic surveillance.” All those were given as reasons she planned to run for congress in California. (Whether she wins or loses, her voice will have been heard and her concerns are legitimate.)

 

Ms. Williamson went on to note that – added together – “these threats constitute such a powerful force of darkness that it could put American democracy in a death spiral” from which we may never recover.  Indeed, it may already be too late. Especially when one beholds the sheer mass of lily-livered “citizens” railing against Ed Snowden – after his recent interview- one even calling it an “infomercial for traitors” - as some dumb shit yahoo did on the Denver Post site, while others insisted he must "come home and face the music”. Yeah, right! A Kangaroo court where as Snowden observed in his Brian Williams interview,  no exculpatory evidence would be permitted on the grounds it is “classified”. Gimme a break! As Pentagon Papers hero Daniel Ellsberg pointed out on 'Andrea Mitchell Reports': "Snowden isn't running from justice, he's fleeing from INJUSTICE!"

 Williamson’s fear is reasonable, but  while she named the U.S. government (“We’re cool as American people, but it’s the U.S. government that’s bringing us down”) she might also want to have a look at some of the goobers that pass for citizens who are ALSO bringing us down because they’re playing right into the security state’s shameless exploitation of terrorism to destroy civil liberties.

As Snowden, as well as his lawyer (featured on Steve Kornacki’s ‘UP’ on Sunday), pointed out, there isn’t one scintilla of evidence the gov’t has presented – despite all its histrionics (or should I say, John Kerry’s hysterics),  that any real harm has come to anyone from Snowden’s leaks.  Oh lots of embarrassment – of course! But let’s not conflate embarrassment with actual harm. (And if you're going to jump on this "harm" bandwagon, you better also have the decency and consistency to put the five Taliban commanders - just released from Gitmo in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl - on the same radar.)

 
Now, skip to the latest disclosed NSA outrage (one must wonder how many more are needed to get our consumers…..errrr citizens to sit up and take note).  That is that the National Security Agency is collecting “millions of images per day” from photos shared online for use in its advanced facial recognition programs. The New York Times reports that the agency culls millions of faces from “emails, text messages, social media, video conferences and other communications,” gaining “tremendous untapped potential” to track intelligence targets throughout the world. 

In other words, let me spell it out for you. They take your Facebook, instagram, and text message et al  photos and compile them into nefarious “facial recognition” programs for which you lack even clue one on the collateral uses (and abuses) that could metastasize.

What if they are putting them all into the COG template – then what? Recall COG (continuity of government) allows authorities to identify as “domestic terrorists” all those assembled under its provisos. In regard to the last, the definition of "terrorist" was expanded to "domestic terrorist" by congress in 2001, to include:

"“activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States"


According to the ACLU, “this definition is broad enough to encompass the activities of…prominent activists, campaigns and organizations.”  That includes Occupy Wall Streeters and anyone who protests the Keystone XL pipeline, GMO foods or any fracking well drilled near their home!

Think I’m exaggerating? According to one 2010 document, cited and quoted by the Times.

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information that can help implement precision targeting,”

But you’re just a noble citizen ‘good guy’ so you got nothing to fear. Okay, fair enough, let's go with that myth. So let’s say for argument’s sake that a frack rig goes up near your home, e.g.

 The noise is ear splitting and the pollution god-awful. Half the night you’re choking on dust and your kids are getting rashes that won’t heal. Worse, your water can be lit on fire coming out of the tap and you dare not drink it. Finally pissed, you summon the backbone to take to the streets,  joining a protest on Main St. and lo and behold some scurvy little bum from a national or local security outfit is there taking photos of all protesting  n’er do wells. The photos are compiled and then compared to facial recognition captures made from FB, instagram, emails and so on.

Bingo! You’re ID’d and you, Mr. "Good Guy" , are a domestic terrorist! Now, you officially graduated to the Main Core database! According to investigator Christopher Ketcham who first exposed it:

"the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

Meanwhile, the spooks are working overtime to assuage fears from skeptics and cynics - including those like me, and even Marianne Williamson. One NSA spokesperson told the Times:

“the N.S.A. would be required to get court approval for imagery of Americans collected through its surveillance programs, just as it must to read their emails or eavesdrop on their phone conversations.”


But let’s bear in mind getting permission for such intrusions would be no biggie, not since the 1978 FISA law was “updated” to become basically a rubber stamping joke with nothing barred. So in reality, none of the new FISA courts will refuse anything. More than anything else, however, the revelations are a reminder of our increased vulnerability to being tracked online by any number of interested parties.  Snowden's lawyer appearing on Kornacki's  'UP' last Sunday, also noted how many clients of the NSA (seeking private information on citizens) are corporate sources. Of course, this is despicable.

I mean, Jeezus, trading on terror hysteria to sustain  and justify intrusive systems that raid citizen information for private, corporate consumption.  How low can  you go? See more from the Times:

Civil-liberties advocates and other critics are concerned that the power of the improving technology, used by government and industry, and they should be! According to Alessandro Acquisti, a researcher on facial recognition technology at Carnegie Mellon University:

  “Facial recognition can be very invasive. There are still technical limitations on it, but the computational power keeps growing, and the databases keep growing, and the algorithms keep improving.”

As if that’s not enough, state and local law enforcement agencies are relying more and more on a wide range of databases of facial imagery, including driver’s licenses and Facebook, to identify suspects. The F.B.I. is developing what it calls its “next generation identification” project to combine its automated fingerprint identification system with facial imagery and other biometric data.


The State Department has what several outside experts say could be the largest facial imagery database in the federal government, storing hundreds of millions of photographs of American passport holders and foreign visa applicants. And the Department of Homeland Security is funding pilot projects at police departments around the country to match suspects against faces in a crowd.

The N.S.A., though, is unique in its ability to match images with huge troves of private communications.  So why the continual dismissive tone and naïvete regarding NSA programs? Because people - too many -  have regressed into consumers as opposed to active, skeptical citizens who ought to be keeping government on a short leash. Back in the day, like ca. 1975, there still existed a majority of real citizens instead of pretend ones, and so a Senator like Frank Church could articulate genuine fears on the NSA's powers even then (see quote at the top). 

Today, too many have become poppets, simple-minded consumers, so accept everything the gov't tells them like they accept everything companies tell them about their illustrious products. This regression also explains how a useful tool like Bill Scher ("Liberal oasis") could actually believe these intrusive, mass dragnet NSA programs are beneficial and "doing good". (As he did on Kornacki's show on Sunday.) Is Scher THAT terrified of a bunch of ragtag idiots he'd prepared to sacrifice most civil liberties? Evidently he is, at least from the claptrap he spouted against Snowden last Sunday morning.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And whether you consider Marianne Williamson a ‘flake’ or not you ought to seriously consider her words when she describes such indiscriminate mass surveillance as a “lack of basic respect” for citizens and the addiction to doing it “sociopathic”.

Snowden Gets His Say And the Traitors, Weasels and Neolib Cowards Go Nuts

WHO are you gonna believe? A patriot defending your 4th amendment rights like Ed Snowden, or a weasel and cowardly 4th amendment traitor like 'Lurch' Kerry?

"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open." - Thomas Jefferson, in 'Notes on Virginia'.

Last night, Edward Snowden finally had his say on network American TV ('Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden', NBC) in a prime time interview by Brian Williams. Even before the interview aired, Williams - on NBC Nightly News - in previewing the interview, noted many viewers had written the network expressing their disgust and they may never watch it again. They also labeled him a "traitor".

My reaction? These are mock Americans who don’t  deserve liberty. These are what I call sheeple as opposed to free-thinking people. (Brian Williams at the end of his interview said:  "Many Americans are upset at Snowden because they can no longer sleep soundly at night" - on account of terrorists now getting the better of us.  Awwww....boo hoo hoo, poor little babies! Give 'em a sippy cup and a change of diapers!) They’ve meekly followed and imbibed the propaganda spewed by the corpora-media and the security state which is the real culprit in terms of trashing the 4th amendment. As Snowden pointed out to Williams,  in a real democracy we ought not be tolerating any "security state" - the two are mutually exclusive. So again, as Ben Franklin posed it - do we want liberty or security?

Anyway, it's the whining,  infantilized wusses who’ve followed the lead of the American puppet media by making Snowden and his travails, asylum seeking and persecution the story instead of the vile overreach he disclosed – which as others have pointed out – leads the way to tyranny (especially via the COG program).


What does that make these mock Americans? In my book it makes them “Good Germans”. Go back to the end of World War II and the American occupation of Germany in the years after 1945. We assailed the “weak” German people and mocked them for not standing up to the growing metastasis of Hitler’s Reich which they obviously saw but did nothing about. These vermin actually praised the Gestapo and helped rat out their neighbors to them, usually for speaking against Hitler or hiding Jews.

Who would have believed 80 years later, a coterie of weak-blooded, meek, pseudo-patriot,  pussified "Americans" (and I use that term very loosely - hence the scare quotes) would emulate the Gestapo-loving Germans of the 1930s? But there it is!

Then there was the weasel, coward and 4th amendment traitor John Kerry, mouthing off on the same news segment and bellowing about the "damage" Snowden caused (he likely meant more the embarrassment at being caught out) and calling him a "coward and traitor".  Imagine Kerry's nerve calling Snowden a "coward" when he essentially burned all his bridges to leave a comfortable life behind to alert too many underserving 'Muricans what was being done in their name.

Meanwhile, the real coward is Kerry, who in the 2004 Presidential election ran with his tail between his legs - instead of standing and fighting - when the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' unloaded on him.  Then, after the violations of voting rights were disclosed in Ohio (including suppressing minority voters by limiting polling places and making many use "provisional" ballots), this weasel never followed up and demanded a full -on investigation. He just punked out like the punk he is.

Kerry is also a hypocrite and 4th amendment traitor. Recall back in March Lurch's boffo performance in actually claiming:

"It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

Kerry clearly displayed  NO historical memory at all.  In a blog post at the time I had to give this delusional chump a hint about this nation's  "willful choice to invade another country" and using a "completely trumped up pretext" as in "WMD" to do a shock and awe in Iraq. A "war" and invasion which was illegal from the get go.

But Kerry's treachery, as well as that of most of congress, inheres in changing the law (the 1978 FISA law) originally there to protect us from overweening surveillance, following the exposure of illegal wiretapping by Bush. The latter was then rendered "legal" via a revised FISA law,  effectively  gutting the 4th amendment and paving the way for dragnet NSA surveillance.  As Robert Scheer noted in a June 25, 2013 blog post on smirkingchimp.com, ‘The Good Germans in Government’:


"Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation”

How important is that individual conscience in terms of ethics? At the Nuremberg War Crimes trials we informed the Nazis it trumped all else, even government regulations, laws and orders! The operating Principle (VI) came to be known as the Nuremberg Code and clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name.

Moreover, Snowden has since been vindicated. Judge Richard Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington December 17, 2013, vindicated Snowden by arguing that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the U.S. constitution,  Judge Leon also declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.

This remark alone shows Snowden is not the villain the Neolib traitors make him out to be but a fuckin' HERO!  Now, add to that - if that wasn't enough -  the issuance of  a  300-page report  by a commission appointed by Obama himself - not any screwball, terror loving commie symps. The report made 46 recommendations including that the NSA be stripped of its power to collect phone records in bulk.  In addition, the panel advised that the NSA be banned from attempting to undermine the security of the internet- themes pounded by tech companies when they met with Obama last December. (Which makes a mockery of what one talking head "national security" specialist said on CBS' Early Show this morning, i.e. Snowden "hurting tech companies" - when he in fact revealed how the NSA had done so, by unraveling their security systems!)

Even Jim Sensenbrenner, who helped write the Patriot Act, declared that the intent of the law was never to allow the NSA the latitude of mass surveillance that Snowden revealed.  I was also delighted to see Colorado Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the NSA overreach who said - in his own words:

"The  (Leon) ruling underscores what I have argued for years: [that] the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the US constitution and has failed to make us safer,"

The problem with the NSA and its troglodytes is they think that because they have the techno tools to spy into every nook and cranny of the world, they are mandated to do it, 'cause otherwise them 'thar terrorists win! Which is utter horse pockey.  You can't use the terrorist bogeyman as an all encompassing excuse to rob people of their rights.

Besides which, the odds of any such attack are slim and none.   Gideon Rachman in a Financial Times piece two years ago, i.e.
observed that the number of Americans killed by terrorists since 1960 is "about the same as the number killed over the same period in deer accidents".

 He also  showed "the average American had only a one in 500,000 chance of being killed in a terrorist attack".  By way of comparison, the chance of dying in an airline crash is one in 346,000 and the chance of being annihilated by a large asteroid (> 0.5 km dia.) in its collision with Earth, is the same, according to Sir Martin Rees ('Our Final Hour'). 

So why have so many of our compatriots mindlessly branded him a traitor? Because those forlorn consumers have lost track of their rights as well as obligations as citizens, and basically surrendered them to the state. They may also be deliriously ignorant of the warp and woof of the rights inherent in the Fourth Amendment - and we know that polls taken after 9/11 disclose 3 of 5 Americans couldn't name three of the Bill of Rights. The 4th amendment is VERY clear that specific warrants must be issued, not mass warrants! I don't give a fuck how "inconvenient" it is or how long and arduous that process might be. Tough shit! Either adhere to the principles or admit you're traitors to your constitutional oaths. People can read the words of the Fourth for themselves below:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Read it slowly and carefully, especially the emphasized portions over again. Clearly, the NSA MASS-grabbing of data embodied in PRISM, 'Boundless Informant', XKeyscore, etc.  directly violate the 4th amendment, and yeah, I'm as much a stickler about the 4th as the gun people are about the 2nd.

Am I a civil liberties “extremist”? Damned right if that means a citizen who understands that the Constitution is not just “a piece of paper” (as Bush once called it) and that the rights inherent in the Bill of Rights are real, apply to individuals, and not mere “compromise abstractions” but rather hold the key to American identity – what truly sets us apart. And once those rights are gone, believe me they won’t be coming back! Once they are gone we will cease to be the nation my ancestor,  Conrad Brumbaugh,  envisaged and fought for in the Revolutionary War as one of the Pennsylvania Regiment.

We all owe Snowden a debt of gratitude and those who say otherwise have no business calling themselves patriots or Americans. They belong to the same class of vermin as Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goering, and the other Nazi scum who used (via the Gestapo) their own extensive methods to grab up power more than 70 years ago.

As for 'Lurch' Kerry, he isn't even fit to lick the bottom of Snowden's shoes. Kerry, a Neolib punk who wouldn't even stand up for himself against a torrent of abuse in an election - doesn't  belong in the same room with a real patriot and hero.  The fact Kerry could brand Snowden a "fugitive" and demand he "man up" (to turn himself in and face Kangaroo court justice) shows how little he grasps of the core issues at stake here. But if this fool, tool and hypocrite couldn't even grasp that the U.S. violated international law when it illegally invaded Iraq (while branding Russia the bad guy for occupying Crimea) then we see what a poseur he is. It's Neoliberal weasels like John Kerry who will spell the end of this Republic, not red-blooded American heroes like Edward Snowden!

-----------
Footnote: The NSA claims it's only been able to recover "one email" of Snowden's to the effect he made any effort to bring his concerns to the attention of higher ups. Now, if anyone really believes that this is all the spooks could really turn up, well, I have some prime beach front property in Barbados to sell you for a song!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/alfredo-lopez/56122/usa-freedom-act-has-nothing-to-do-with-freedom-phone-surveillance-reform-bill-passed-by-the-house-is-

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/watch_highlights_from_edward_snowdens_interview_with_brian_williams/

John Kerry Does a POE of a Hypocritical Political Hack

"Now, hear me out! You don't just invade another country on a completely trumped up pretext! (Uh, forget Iraq, folksies!)"


The parade of Neoliberal tools and fools continued yesterday, as John Kerry made assorted appearances on the Sunday talk show circuit to spiel about how him and his Neoliberal cohort were going to teach those Russkies a lesson!  Out of his own stupid mouth - instantly turning him into a parody ('POE') of a hypocritical Neoliberal hack (or more likely, a Neocon puppet):

"You just don't invade another country on a completely trumped up pretext!"

HA HA HA HA hahahaha! Pardon me while I roll on the floor howling with laughter at the staggering chutzpah of this deaf, dumb and blind tool!  So, Kerry.....what? Did Victoria Nuland the neocon give you your parroting script? Just wondering! To top that off he blurted:

"It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

Hey, LURCH! Errrr......Kerry, do you have any historical memory at all?  Can I give you a hint about a  MEGA- Example of a "willful choice to invade another country" and using a "completely trumped up pretext" (WMD)?   Need another clue? I-R-A-Q!

As one salon.com blogger,  Lindsay Abrams, noted:

"In the seriousness of the situation, the irony of Kerry’s next comments may have gone missed. ”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he said. He went on to repeat the assertion on Meet the Press, keeping a straight face as he told host David Gregory: ”You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests.”

Must I really REALLY point out the irony to which she refers? Must I?  Ok, I will. The Bushie-neocon driven invasion of Iraq, sanctioned by a bipartisan balless congress in 2003.  Instead of summoning the political courage to stop these vermin, most of congress signed on as willing supplicants to the ensuing Bushie horror show.  And who were the key perpetrators? Why, the neocons including Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and the other usual suspects - now at work now to incite strife between Russia and the West.

I won't recite all the noisome aspects of the Iraq debacle, as I already recounted most of them two posts ago. All the sordid details of exactly how Bush and his neocon filth drove the U.S. into Iraq under a WMD pretext. However, let me only point out that while Obama spent yesterday calling up all the Western Neolib-driven puppets.....errrr....allies...to back up his  anti-Russian crusade - even while dispatching Lurch to generate POEs, none of this faux unity comes close to what we beheld with over ten million citizens from nearly every nation on Earth marching against the imminent invasion of Iraq back in early 2003. You don't believe me? Then let this composite photo tell the story! (A picture's worth a thousand words, after all.)

In other words, a mass of humanity marched  around the world protesting with one voice the imminent  U.S. plan to invade another sovereign nation, but they were ignored. The mammoth  assembly against the invasion wasn't merely from token, puppet U.S. state tools but real people.  People moved to voice their opposition based on what they perceived another war would do - and they weren't amiss in their fears at all - as things have turned out. The U.S ignored them and invaded Iraq anyway, pounding Baghdad under a 'shock and awe' entry that would have made the Wehrmacht proud.

I post this to expose Lurch Kerry's staggering chutzpah and mind boggling hypocrisy about what he's claiming Russia is doing, as well as reminding Americans of past history - which these days is so easy to forget in the Twitterati world.

DO I "hate" my country? Of course not! I hate hypocrisy! I hate when we preach one standard for the rest of the world while we adopt another ("exceptional") one for ourselves. If there is one uniform moral principle at work and a defined law to support it, then ALL nations must comply! There can't be any exclusions! Thus, I hate it that our politicos mouth accusations against other nations that they themselves haven't adhered to!  I also hate the  Neoliberal, anti-citizen, inequitable 'system' under which the country operates which is not the same as the nation itself. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/america-haters-uhhno-system-haters.html

 Excerpt - quote from Charles Reich ('Opposing the System'):

"The System is not America. It is not the land we love, and indeed not a land at all. It does not merit our loyalty, affection or respect. However much the System may attempt to disguise itself in patriotic trappings, or set itself up as a source of authority, or cloak itself in the vestments of 'the community', it is none of these. We should always be ready to fire the System if it does not serve us well."

Hell, why the fuck would I "hate my country" when an ancestor of mine - Conrad Brumbaugh - fought in the Revolutionary War?   I am more inclined to believe I am channeling Conrad's own principles - which he himself  shed his blood for -  and would be demanding of the nation if he were alive today.

Would Conrad applaud or jump on the bandwagon of clueless Amerikkan Neolibs who don't live by the standards they demand of other nations? Would he cheer on a parroting tool like Kerry,  yapping away and exposing his own historical ignorance and national hypocrisy? No, he'd likely puke his guts out. He would not recognize what the country he'd fought for had mutated into - a polarized, plutocratic  oligarchy where a few billionaires control most of the wealth and all of the politics. Where a system designed to increase economic inequality also features an in- built predatory security state- spy system to monitor everything citizens do in case they might get "uppity" - like Occupy Wall Street back in '11.

On that score, if he saw the future and what had been wrought, including a nation that now believes it is above the law but can impose it on all others, he'd be aghast. Moreso, on learning how it had destroyed the cornerstone of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment - by its wanton and indiscriminate spying on people all over the world - and particularly its own citizens.

And he'd surely despair at how the promise of a democracy had degenerated into a Corporatocracy.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54558/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis

Excerpt:

"(Victoria)Nuland was soon at work planning for 'regime change,' encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn’t seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square had hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles."


and :

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/54562/oligarchs-triumphant-ukraine-omidyar-and-the-neo-liberal-agenda

Excerpt:

"American policy is based upon -- dependent upon -- a raging, willful, arrogant ignorance of other peoples, other cultures, history in general, and even the recent history of U.S. policy itself. The historical and cultural relationships between Ukraine and Russia are highly complex. Russia takes its national identity from the culture that grew up around what is now Kyiv; indeed, in many respects, Kyiv is where "Russia" was born. Yet one of the first acts of the Western-backed revolutionaries was to pass a law declaring Ukrainian as the sole state language, although most of the country speaks Russian or Surzhyk"


http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/shamus-cooke/54559/the-profit-at-stake-obama-s-far-right-foreign-policy

Excerpt:

"The conflicts in Ukraine, Venezuela, and Syria have one thing in common: the U.S. government is in favor of the groups who aspire to topple — or who have toppled — the government in power. Thus, U.S. politicians are giving either political, financial, or military support to these “opposition” movements. But in all three cases there are leading groups steering the “opposition” that want absolutely nothing to do with democracy — these groups are as far-right as politics gets."

And the detailed policy basis for the Iraq War- Based on the Neocon 'Project for the New American Century':

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

John Kerry's Clarion Call for Climate Action - And Confronting U.S. Hypocrisy

Secretary of State John Kerry's recent calls for action on climate change were notable as he referred to climate change as "the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction". In this he wasn't exaggerating, not one bit, despite the fact oblivious 'Muricans (in a recent poll) rated global warming - climate change is only 19th on the list of Americans' concerns.   This is pathetic, but I'm not terribly surprised given that too many fellow citizens remain woefully uninformed, or mal-informed!

In his speech in Jakarta, Indonesia, addressing a group of students and government officials, Kerry also said that  scientists predicted that melting ice caps could push sea levels up by more than three feet by the end of the century, putting half of Jakarta underwater and displacing hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Also, changes in ocean temperatures and acidification of the seas could also reduce fish catches in Indonesia by as much as 40 percent, he said, while typhoons such as the one that struck the Philippines last year could become the norm and “wipe out entire communities.”

All of which is true, and not an issue of contention for 97% of climate scientists, researchers. Indeed, Kerry took pains to identify and isolate those yahoo researchers who aren't serious when he referred to those who denied the evidence of climate change as “shoddy scientists and extreme ideologues.”

Though I am not sure about "shoddy" scientists, it's more like bought out scientists!  See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/03/at-least-we-now-know-why-this-guy-spins.html

Kerry also went on to say:

"It’s absolutely true that industrialized countries have to play a leading role in reducing emissions, but that doesn’t mean other nations have the right to repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s not enough for one country or even a few countries to reduce emissions when other countries continue to fill the atmosphere with carbon pollution as they see fit

If even one or two major economies neglects to respond to this threat, it will counteract all of the good work that the rest of the world does. When I say we need a global solution, I mean we need a global solution.”

Which elicits the question of why he more or less overlooked the U.S. own shoddy record on climate change.  I mean, we're senselessly fracking so much land now, with injection wells, that there's a definite tie in to the 94 earthquakes Oklahoma experienced last month alone - if Rachel Maddow's report last night is to be believed. 

Then there is the disturbing recent report, 'How the U.S. Exports Global Warming' in Rolling Stone, (Feb. 13, p.32.).  the U.S. is now outsourcing, exporting high polluting, cut-rate, climate damaging fuels to other nations! In other words, while we portray ourselves as the cleaner and cleaner nice guys, we are happy to foul up the rest of the planet as we embrace the error that "there's no fossil fuel we will leave in the ground".

I've already noted the fracking obsession which is destroying the country from one end to the other, polluting water sources (even in drought-stricken areas like here in Colo.) as well as ravaging the landscape and fouling the air. For more on that see: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/07/gasland-ii-too-intense-for-wifey-to.html

and:  http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/07/gasland-ii-fracking-is-worse-than-you.html

In the RS piece, we learn (p. 32):

"Despite the controversy over Keystone XL - the stalled pipeline project that would move diluted tar sands bitumen to refineries on the Gulf coast - the Canadian crude is already a large and growing part of our energy mix. American refineries, primarily in the Midwest, processed 1.65 billion barrels a day in 2012, up 40 percent from 2010."

How many even know of this? Until reading the RS article, I didn't!  And let's get clear what we are talking about here, some of the most vile stuff ever to emerge from the ground. Think of tons of coal, then think of it being melted and pumped out. That is what you have with this crap.  The RS piece referred to its evidence in play as "heaping piles along the Calumet River". It's the latest toxic effluent, that goes by the name "pet -coke" for petroleum coke - a "filthy byproduct of refining gasoline and diesel from Canadian tar sands."

The article goes on to note:

"Petcoke is like concentrated coal - denser and dirtier than anything that comes out of a mine. It can be burned just like coal to produce power, but petcoke emits up to 15 percent more climate pollution. It also contains up to 12 times as much sulfur not to mention a slew of heavy metals."

The article notes that in Canada "the stuff is largely treated as a waste product, the country has stockpiled nearly 80 million tons of it".

Meanwhile:

"Here in the U..S., petcoke is sometimes burned in coal plants, but it's so filthy the EPA has stopped issuing any new licenses for its use as fuel. Literally, "it's the dirtiest fuel on the planet".

So where does this crap go if it's of no use, or legal use, here?  Well, it's exported overseas!

As noted (ibid.)

"American companies have seized on the substance as a coal alternative to export. The market price is about one third that for coal"

In other words, the perfect fuel to dump on poor nations that can't afford anything better....or other nations that want to build their industrial base on cheap energy. According to RS (ibid.) : "Petcoke exports have surged by one third since 2008 to 33.4 million metric tons. China is now the top consumer and the demand is exploding."

Now, before anyone jumps on China's ass here, let's try to get our bearings.  China is the largest holder of U.S. debt and also anything they can buy from us, lowers our debt burden with respect to them. Hence, one can easily see why the administration would go for broke in selling this petcoke as a means to minimize trading liability. It's a way to also offset the tons of stuff Americans buy, made in China.

While the monetary factors are partly understandable, the article points out that "despite the dangers of petcoke, the Obama administration turned a blind eye to its proliferation". The piece also references a 2011 State Dept. report that actually "treated petcoke as if it were an inert byproduct".

The gist of it is that Kerry's speech in Jakarta rings hollow if these things aren't known - or (as the case here) they ARE known and nothing is done about it. (Kerry certainly had to be aware of the State Dept. report treating petcoke as an inert product. And if he's able to spiel on climate change, one presumes he knows that's false!)

If indeed, the State Dept. and Kerry are serious about climate change being "the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction" then what about petcoke exports?  Given it's the "dirtiest fuel on the planet" why do we continue to export it which, in effect, means we are offloading massive CO2 loads to other nations?

If Mr. Kerry (or anyone else in this country) is going to next bloviate about the dangers of climate change, especially the rest of the world's responsibilities, they better damned well make sure our own house is in order first!

That means NO more petcoke exports!

D-Day: Democrats Be WARNED! You may have to CONTEST the Election!

One of the reasons I became an independent (to be specific, a Socialist, like Bernie Sanders) is that I've always doubted Democrats had the 'fire in the belly' especially to fight for their constitutents and demographic constituencies when the time arrived. We beheld this sort of wimpish behavior in both 2000, when Gore conceded too early and didn't demand ALL FLA counties to be recounted, and also in 2004, when obvious chicanery in Ohio to do with provisional ballots and Diebold voting machines went unaddressed by Kerry. Many on the Left, including me, took this to mean that Kerry truly was the wimp (as opposed to real warrior) depicted by the Swift Boaters. The sting of that failure still remains, which is one big reason we don't wish to see the Ds punk out again in arguably the most epochal election in our lifetimes.

Now, fast forward to today - election day, or D-Day for Democrats - demanding every scintilla of moxie and courage they have to fight on, to contest the election - if needed. This applies to four "battleground" states, including Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado ....where we know Hart Intercivic machines are ensconced, as well as the Diebold and ES&S systems that helped steal Ohio for Bush in '04. Already, massive voter suppression tactics - i.e. scaling back early voting days - have failed to work in Ohio and Florida as judicial rulings have tempered the negative effects. But that means the electronic machines are the last firewall for a Repuke theft, or as I prefer to call it ...a coup.

Don't believe me? I noted in a blog some days ago about Repukes in Colo. beseiging Reep Secretary of State Scott Gessler to "recalibrate" all the electronic machines. This was even before we learned of the so-called  uncertified "computer patch" implemented in Ohio compliments of their Repuke Troglydyte, Jon Husted (who worked with Karl Rove in '04 on the OH theft). See the previous blog for more details on this current "patch", including articles and signed affidavits by computer techs.

Then, at precisely 8.30 Mountain time this morning, wifey and I stared spellbound while watching KOAA-TV, as the newscaster noted two electronic machines in Adams County had 'switched' voters' choices for President - from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney! Like smart citizens who check their grocery receipts for errors after each purchase, the voters checked their paper printouts and sure enough.....there on the paper was 'Mitt Romney (R)- Paul Ryan(VP)' instead of 'Barack Obama(D)- Joe Biden (VP)'. The voters complained and precinct specialists attempted to replicate the errors, but to no avail. However, they then performed the legit fail -safe action (demanded) of taking the machines out of commission. (Btw, to see Machine Vote Switching in action, check out the video at: http://wonkette.com/488754/watch-this-pennsylvania-voting-machine-hilariously-refuse-to-accept-a-vote-for-barack-obama

Three blogs earlier I described how this switching could be done internally via program cards, and even disguised by bogus paper records. In this case, obviously, the machines hadn't been "recalibrated" enough to deliver a bogus paper copy but the switched record - which the voters could then complain to poll workers about. Fortunately, enough voters complained of the switching to take the machines out of service.

But how many thousands of these machines, many of them Romney-based Hart Intercivic,  Diebold, or ES& S remain taking ballots in Colorado, Virginia, Florida and Ohio  to steal votes by switching them from Barack to Romney? How many voters will even check their actually cast votes against the paper records? Or, in how many cases will phony paper duplicates be generated by the machines (i.e. thanks to the new Ohio patch)  which mirror the voters' choice, but which were actually switched internally by the machines' program cards? There would be no way to check in the latter case!

This morning, Obama advisor David Axelrod was almost giddy on 'Morning Joe' when asked about Obama's chances in Virginia and Ohio, and he kept on referring to "increased voter turnout" in both states. But no one on the panel, not even the usually alert Tavis Smiley, asked about how Axelrod would ensure all the votes were correctly and faithfully tallied. No one even addressed the new computer patch in Ohio which will affect tallies in 39 counties. It was evident Axelrod simply assumed they would be, but such an assumption is unwarranted, as seen from the previous blog.

Here's the point: If the election is razor- thin close and Romney "wins" in Ohio, Colorado, Florida and Virginia, but Obama wins in the exit polls - then Obama's legal team has to take this to the next level. They cannot accept the exit polls as "non-conforming" but  have to officially contest the tallied vote counts in all those states and in addition, demand access to the internal program card records of ALL the electronic voting machines- then tally them against the paper records delivered to voters in those states. I don't give a flying fuck if it takes an extra year to get this all done, they have to do it - refusing to concede early - or be declared wimps and washouts like John Kerry in '04.

Just as critical is to ensure ALL provisional ballots are counted, especially in Ohio and Florida. We know in Ohio, for example, Husted the R-punk changed the rules so when one delivers an absentee ballot of any kind he or she now is obliged to fill out a special information and identity sheet which in times past was done by poll workers. If there is even ONE error, no matter how minuscule - the voter will have to cast a provisional ballot instead. Some estimates have been upwards of 200,000 for these ballots - many of which weren't counted in '04 and likely cost Kerry the election...but wouldn't have if he'd had the balls to fight on.

In this case, Obama's margin for victory may be 130,000 or less, and if at least that many provisional ballots are uncounted, he could lose Ohio, and with it the election. What we do know - is that the deadline to tally all the Ohio provisional ballots is Nov. 17th, which means the Ohio results would not be known  - and likely the national result- until early December. This means Obama's team has to have lawyers and others overseeing the critical provisional ballot vote tally to make sure every vote cast for Obama is actually registered.

Now again, efficiency - a typical American syndrome -  isn't the priority here. We do not need to know for sure who the winner is by tonight or even tomorrow morning. Much more important, and to make it emphatically clear this isn't just a media side show, is that EVERY last vote is counted. If it takes until December or longer to get a result, so be it. I'd rather the final reckoning be done slowly, methodically and correctly than with Jack Spradle haste - to suit the race fetish media - with the wrong result.

Unlike in 2004, miillions of Democratic voters - many of whom have waited seven or more hours in lines in Ohio and Florida - want to make damned sure their votes are counted this time. Provisional ballots or not! If they are not, and the Dems punk out of legally pressing a contested election with unseemly haste, then why should anyone bother next time? Answer me that!

As for the other Reepo-Teepee obstructionists, the 'True the Vote' assholes, trying to intimidate voters in key swing states - if any of these fuckers approaches you in line and demands to see Voter ID tell them to STFU, and if they really want a piece of you...you will meet them in the parking lot after wards!