Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / The End of Privacy and the First Drone

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    Jrod

    I admit to some surprise that the jackass has the skill and coordination to put together a peanut butter sandwich, much less a goddam surveillance drone.

  7. 7.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    I want to build one just so that I can sell google maps some updates. I also wanted to buy a toy plane for one of my kids for Christmas that has a mounted camera, he didn’t want it though.

  8. 8.

    gelfling545

    Well, every boy needs a hobby; but what does he DO with them after building? Are the neighbors complaining yet?

  9. 9.

    Culture of Truth

    To get to the bottom line, my drone has taken its first flights, the results of which you can see in a video of my office at Stanford.

    Those weren’t the drones I was looking for

  11. 11.

    Culture of Truth

    “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” J. M. Keynes

    A real necon would have kept the faith. You don’t see Vlad Cheney worrying about a few broken eggs do you?

  12. 12.

    Culture of Truth

    Have drone manufacturers spread the world that Obama wants to make them illegal? They’d be crazy not to.

  13. 13.

    The Dangerman

    Put me squarely in the “ok, whatever” column; it’s an RC craft with a camera. Calling it a drone is rather misleading.

    OT, is Santorum really making a run at being a viable not-Romney? Can the Republicans be that stupid (kinda rhetorical question; we know they are stupid, but are they THAT stupid). I guess I’m still in the it’s either Romney or Brokered camp.

  15. 15.

    geg6

    Francis “The End of History” Fukuyama? The one who Jacques Derrida slaughtered here:

    For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth.

    That Francis Fukuyama? Fuck him. He’s an idiot. Hopefully, he’ll be as incompetent at this as he is at discerning the end of ideology and the triumph of capitalism and neoconservatism. And that he’ll take himself out with one of his drones.

  18. 18.

    Culture of Truth

    second comment at his site

    Thanks for getting this out before DOJ and DOD make it illegal for us to have counter-big-brother tech.

    rocket scientists there

  19. 19.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @geg6:

    never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity.

    I had an old classmate tell me the other day that Obama is the worst spender ever because the debt is larger under his watch than at any time in US history. When pressed, his argument was based on absolute dollars, not spending that occurred under Obama.

    The argument you are highlighting seems the same thing: There are now 7billion people on the earth. As much as I don’t want anyone to die from wars or starvation, which we are capable of preventing, to argue that we are worse now than in any other time of history is bogus.

  20. 20.

    Brachiator

    Is anyone surprised that Francis Fukuyama, noted neocon and Bush supporter (he recanted both positions after the war went bust), Reagan advisor and Stanford professor, likes to build surveillance drones as his hobby?

    Unless he is confessing that he is using them for upskirts videos or something, this is an un story.

  21. 21.

    Jrod

    @The Dangerman:

    Put me squarely in the “ok, whatever” column; it’s an RC craft with a camera. Calling it a drone is rather misleading.

    Wat would you consider a drone then? I mean, that’s what a surveillance drone is: an RC flyer with a camera.

    Not that I really disagree that this isn’t a big deal, but it’s worth a sardonic chuckle. At least until every pervert and busybody on your block has one of these, and it stops being so funny.

  22. 22.

    Kyle

    I’ve long thought that anyone shameless enough to commit to paper such triumphalist, Villager-flattering bullshit as ‘The End of History’ can pretty much be written off as a pandering hack, and this does not change my mind.

    Maybe this will become a new neocon hobby, they can call them ‘Freedom Eyes’ watching down on us. Rick (with the silent P) Santorum can build one designed for peering though bedroom windows and slut-shaming at the pharmacy counter.

  26. 26.

    mistermix

    @Jrod: What’s funny is that *Frank* calls it a “drone”, when it’s really a RC toy. That’s the neocon in him coming out.

  28. 28.

    Veritas

    So, word on the street is that the big Romney Super PAC campaign against Santorum begins tomorrow. It will be a vicious, brutal, unmerciful hammering the likes of which have never been seen before in any Presidential campaign in terms of size and scale. We’re talking a MASSIVE campaign funded by MILLIONS in unlimited corporate cash. By the end of this negative ad campaign, with its MASSIVE multi-state ad buys, web sites, direct mail campaigns, even a DVD documentary, Santorum is going to be (metaphorically) laying on his back in a bloody pool, howling and wailing that he wished he never won those caucuses.

    And that will be just foreplay compared to what’s coming for Obambi.

  29. 29.

    The Dangerman

    @Jrod:

    Wat would you consider a drone then?

    Not sure, but him posting that he built a drone is a weak attempt in a dick measuring contest.

    I suppose if I took a shot at a drone definition, it would be something with a real security/military component, not a hobby shop toy.

  31. 31.

    MikeJ

    @Jrod:

    I mean, that’s what a surveillance drone is: an RC flyer with a camera.

    Most of what people call drones are autonomous. Also, military drones have a range of tens of thousands of miles. It’s difficult to fly homemade RC planes beyond line of sight. I can be done if you have a live video downlink and a strong transmitter.

  35. 35.

    The Dangerman

    @Veritas:

    We’re talking a MASSIVE campaign funded by MILLIONS in unlimited corporate cash. By the end of this negative ad campaign, with its MASSIVE…

    Speaking of a weak attempt in a dick measuring contest…

  36. 36.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    Well after all, those ivory tower professors who style themselves after the German Idealists, especially of the Hegelian variety, they do tend to drone on and on and on… They just Kant help themselves.

  42. 42.

    Comrade Mary

    @Veritas:

    So, word on the street is that the big Romney Super PAC campaign against Santorum begins tomorrow. It will be a vicious, brutal, unmerciful hammering the likes of which have never been seen before in any Presidential campaign in terms of size and scale. We’re talking a MASSIVEcampaign funded by MILLIONS in unlimited corporate cash. By the end of this negative ad campaign, with its MASSIVE multi-state ad buys, web sites, direct mail campaigns, even a DVD documentary, Santorum is going to be (metaphorically) laying on his back in a bloody pool, howling and wailing that he wished he never won those caucuses.
    __
    And that will be just foreplay compared to what’s coming for Obambi.

    Boom-chicka. Boom-chicka wow-wow. Now with 27% more rape imagery!

  43. 43.

    Veritas

    And Santorum may have his multi-millionaire, but Romney has Goldman Sachs and the Koch Brothers. Who do you think wins?

  45. 45.

    The Dangerman

    @redshirt:

    MASSIVE VICTORY
    TAKE IT TO THE BANK
    OBAMBI

    If Romney does a MASSIVE faceplant in Michigan, you think Veritas will treat us all to a GBCW post?

  46. 46.

    WJS

    It will be interesting to see the marketing campaign. If someone really wants to get the American people to accept the presence of drones, all they have to do is create an incident where a drone saves a puppy or a kid in a runaway hot air balloon or something like that. If they really want to go the whole way, all they have to do is make the claim that a drone caught a child molesting occupy wall street protester and dumped him into the county jail with the tip of a wing.

    Once the general public gets a whiff of “safety from the watchful eye above,” it’ll creep into use. Cop cameras on street corners is how many degrees of difference from a drone anyway, right?

  49. 49.

    dmsilev

    @Comrade Mary:

    Now with 27% more rape imagery!

    That number really does get around, doesn’t it?

    And “word on the street”? What does Veritas think this is, some cheesy 90’s era cop TV series?

  51. 51.

    Jay S

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent):
    Sorry, current FAA regulations do not permit the use of drones for commercial purposes. They can only be used as for non commercial hobbyist purposes (ETA or some government uses). They are supposedly considering new licensing rules.

  52. 52.

    Bruce S

    This comment:

    Chris Anderson says:
    February 13, 2012 at 5:49 pm

    Glad you’re doing this. You might want to check out our community at DIY Drones, where there is a lot more of this. 22,000 members and counting!

    diydrones.com

    These things could be very useful for making sure those kids stay off one’s lawn. I want mine to come equipped with high volume speakers and a recording of John McCain’s voice…

  55. 55.

    fasteddie9318

    @Veritas: Nobody cares if you’ve got some sick fantasy about Romney’s massive whatever leaving you in a bloody pool on the floor. All we ask is that you stop sharing.

  58. 58.

    redshirt

    @The Dangerman: That implies any Repuglican is capable of admitting they were wrong. To be a Repuglican by definition is to deny reality, so, no. Doubt it.

    More likely, Veritas will re-brand himself and become the top super happy awesome Rih Santorum supporter.

  59. 59.

    scav

    hmmm, the campaign of UNLIMITED BOLDING has shown up to its usual afternoon of light entertainment and Desperation Ice Follies revue.

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @The Dangerman:

    Put me squarely in the “ok, whatever” column; it’s an RC craft with a camera.

    Yeah, no kidding. There’s even an app for that.

    @Jim Pharo:

    Isn’t the scary thing that the DOD requested authority to use drones within the continental US?

    Uh, no. They not only have authority to fly fully nuke-armed bombers within the continental US, but they do so as a matter of policy. The point of having drone authority over the US is so that they can train and test.

  61. 61.

    pragmatism

    R-C/veritas is like a U of Michigan fan taunting Ohio state fans because the Michigan offense (in his opinion) is beating up on the Michigan defense in an intrasquad game.

  62. 62.

    Yutsano

    @Veritas:

    Balloon Juice: Your internet home for middle school toilet humor since 2002.

    LULZ.

    Now go sit down before you hurt yourself.

    @eemom: OOH! OOH! Can I tell him cash does not equal votes this time? Huh? Can I? PLEEEEEEASE??

  63. 63.

    eemom

    @Veritas:

    You are never entertaining at all, ever.

    Though that may change next November, after Obamazilla meets Rombambi. Stomp. The End.

  64. 64.

    Martin

    @Bruce S:

    These things could be very useful for making sure those kids stay off one’s lawn. I want mine to come equipped with high volume speakers and a recording of John McCain’s voice…

    My mom has her husband use one to chase the rabbits out of her garden. It was my win/win solution to her plinking them with a bb gun. The rabbits live, and her husband gets to play with more toys.

  65. 65.

    The Dangerman

    @Veritas:

    Balloon Juice: Your internet home for middle school … humor since 2002.

    Posting “Obambi” is so much more mature.

    Fuck off.

  68. 68.

    Yutsano

    @Martin: He can only do so much with the material at hand. It’s not like Willard is this huge inspiring figure or anything.

    @Veritas: Angry?

    At YOU?

    BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

    Nah, just mocking you derisively. You’re too dense to notice the subtlety.

  69. 69.

    dmsilev

    @Yutsano: I hope he’s at least getting paid for this. After all, those OCEANS OF CORPORATE CASH have to be spent on something, and it’d truly be a pity if he were doing this for free.

  71. 71.

    scav

    Kinda ironic (in a very cheap giggle sort of way) too in that, to make his material even superficially more plausible, r_c always reaches for the make it blacker button. Near is the new convincing.

  73. 73.

    poco

    Oy! Why this slam on Derrida? Some of us really like his writings and the way he is able to uncover the hidden political ramifications of stuff that everybody had taken for granted. Hegel is very hard to read, too, so much so that Fukuyama couldn’t manage basic comprehension in his “End of History” bullshit, but no one bothers to slam Hegel for being so difficult!

    Re Fukuyama, recently he reviewed Tony Judt’s posthumous book in NYTimes Sunday review–damning with faint praise. Except there was this priclesss passage in the review:

    The prolonged discussion of public intellectuals toward the end of the book shows off Judt’s least pleasant side. He argues that it is an intellectual’s duty to “speak truth to power” no matter what, and there is no doubt of his willingness to endure withering castigation for his own views. In return, he skewers many people — Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Michael Mandelbaum, Judith Miller, Leon Wieseltier, Michael Ignatieff, myself included — for being ignorant at best and willing dupes of power at worst, never conceding that his opponents could be honestly wrong or that his own views might deserve more introspection.

    Heh! He and Judith Miller–honestly wrong!! Fail on so many levels.

  74. 74.

    Brachiator

    @Veritas:

    So, word on the street is that the big Romney Super PAC campaign against Santorum begins tomorrow. It will be a vicious, brutal, unmerciful hammering the likes of which have never been seen before in any Presidential campaign in terms of size and scale.

    I am giddy with hope that you are right, here. I would just love to see the GOP hopefuls batter each other. The more brutal, the better. And the more it helps the Democrats.

    @WJS:

    Once the general public gets a whiff of “safety from the watchful eye above,” it’ll creep into use. Cop cameras on street corners is how many degrees of difference from a drone anyway, right?

    Drones are primitive and inefficient. They are the last thing that privacy freaks need to worry about.

  78. 78.

    burnspbesq

    @pragmatism:

    He’s a little chickenshit, and he’ll be gone at the end of the season. Standard Chartered is pissed, and you don’t fuck with a global brand.

  81. 81.

    Another Halocene Human

    Fukuyama renounced his former positions after some delusional fascist trolls used them as a blueprint for American foreign policy? Oh, how convenient for them.

    I’ve always wondered how FF didn’t get laughed out of the room for both the title and the thesis, but apparently there are just that many rich, influential members of the chattering classes with a need to believe idiotic horseshit.

    But it’s nice he can admit his little experiment was wrong, after the disastrous impact in lives and treasure.

    Somehow, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of him.

    In fact, I smell a “Iraq war led to Arab Spring”-style rationalization readying. Kind of how Reagan ended the cold war by wrecking the budget spending on defense contractor balloon juice.

  83. 83.

    pragmatism

    @burnspbesq: it was like watching a car wreck. i was yelling at the TV “don’t do it Suarez!” i am seriously underinformed on racism in uruguay.

  84. 84.

    MonkeyBoy

    I’ve read his latest 2011 book The Origins of Political Order and I thought it quite good with only slight taints of right wing ideology, as opposed to swimming in it as one might think.

    Though good, he punts on the question of how the noble class arose – as I recall he gave some hand waving about more qualified people assuming leadership position.

    He failed to mention the protection racket scenario progression:

    1) Heavily armed bands of raiders make a living by attacking and plundering small communities.
    2) The raiders and communities reach an agreement where tribute is paid to prevent attacks.
    3) The raiders move into the communities as a hereditary noble class that do no work other than leading the fighting of the community.

  85. 85.

    pragmatism

    @burnspbesq: yeah doesn’t look right. i did like Sir Alex trolling man citeh by reinforcing that Pool is ManU’s main derby. Veritas, that’s how you troll. Take a lesson.

  86. 86.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    OT:

    Erickkk, Son of Erickkk, has a post up at Redstate that is f’ing hilarious. It seems that the college kidz at CPAC are drinking, partying and having sex too much. Or something. Erickkk describes the ladies at CPAC: “too many of whom were even more scantily clad than some of Fox News hosts” and in the post he puts up this funny regarding his first visit to CPAC as a blogger:

    “That is part of life on the college circuit. Young men, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, are intent on having sex, being boys, getting drunk — doing what young men in college often do. All to (sic) often there are also a few young ladies willing to shame their parents if their parents only knew.”

    It’s funny how the boys are only being boys but the girls are acting shamefully by helping the boys be boys. I think that Erickkk should be celebrating that young, virile Republican males are chasing that sweet (wretch) young Republican tail and possibly mating, thus increasing the size of their shrinking flock.

    If they don’t abort it or use any contraception. Details, details…

  87. 87.

    Mark S.

    @Veritas:

    You’re more entertaining when you’re engaging in psychotic rants about Catholics

    Geg6 has a very good reason for hating the Catholic church.

    Fuck off and die.

  88. 88.

    burnspbesq

    @pragmatism:

    I sometimes think the Onion writes the football pages of every major newspaper. Did you see that Argentina has named its first division after the warship that was sunk by the Royal Navy during the Falklands war?

    Yup, the Admiral Belrgrano Liga Primera.

    Sigh.

  93. 93.

    burnspbesq

    @pragmatism:

    “i did like Sir Alex trolling man city by reinforcing that Pool is ManU’s main derby”

    Inspired by the Cameron Crazies, who chant “Not Our Rival” every time we kick Maryland’s ass at home.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @pragmatism:
    I hope he feels as I do: it was most unsportsmanlike and an embarrassment to Liverpool FC. It suggests that the support the club gave him in the wake of Patrice Evra’s initial accusation mey have been misplaced. However good he is, he shouldn’t get to leave his manners behind in the dressing room.

    Liverpool’s shirt sponsors, Standard Chartered Bank, were unhappy enough to complain to club management. I don’t think this is serious enough that StanChart need to consider dropping their sponsorship, but they were right to make their displeasure clear to the club. I also think the club should have reacted faster to this, instead of letting it look like they were tolerating Suarez’s bad public behavior.

  95. 95.

    trollhattan

    I guess I have to get back to my home-built SAM hobby. Eat that, Fukuyama, I’ve got your asymmetry right here!

  96. 96.

    pragmatism

    @burnspbesq: did not see that. those argie bargies are crazy. why not just troll the world and name it after one of the nazis (yes yes, godwin i know) that found a home there?

  98. 98.

    dmsilev

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: You’re assuming of course, that the young Republican men are chasing after the young Republican women. It’s entirely possible, probable even, that a good-sized chunk of the young Republican men are chasing each other.

  99. 99.

    WJS

    @Brachiator: Drones are primitive and inefficient.

    Really? That sounds nuts and stupid to me all at once.

    The signals collection package on a drone is really quite impressive. Look up some of the newer ones.

  101. 101.

    pragmatism

    @Amir Khalid: king kenny isn’t doing himself any favors with this either. i saw today that LFC said that Suarez’ apology wasn’t forced by Standard Chartered, but by the club. i don’t really believe that.

  102. 102.

    The Dangerman

    @Veritas:

    Yeah, that’s why you typed “Fuck off” in response to me.

    Actually, just a friendly suggestion on how you could use your time more productively; since you rejected my first suggestion, perhaps you can go jack off to a picture of Mitt to keep yourself occupied?

  104. 104.

    WJS

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: Erickson’s post is a classic in the genre, a masterful example of how a backcountry hick who felt up girls in the back seat of his Dodge Duster has now grown up to be a country club Republican who is deathly afraid someone will feel up a daughter of his (or someone he pretends to pray in church with) in the back seat of a (shudder) Scion.

    They are terrified someone is having sex. Absolutely terrified. They are Puritans without the wardrobe, and to them no one in America should be having any fun anywhere forever.

  105. 105.

    Librarian

    It is somehow fitting that a neocon like Fukuyama would have drone building as a hobby, because it is a perfect hobby for somebody like himself who, although he is one of the more sane and rational neocons, has no moral or ethical qualms about anything he does. Drone building to him is a cool thing to do, and the idea that using them for surveillance, either by the government or by a private individual like himself, might be ethically wrong never occurs to him. He still doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong.

  107. 107.

    Amir Khalid

    @pragmatism:
    Neither do I. It shouldn’t have taken the club two days to figure out that Suarez made them look very bad. Kenny should have made him apologize right after the match — personally to Evra, if possible, as well as to the public.

  108. 108.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @MonkeyBoy:

    I’ve read his latest 2011 book The Origins of Political Order and I thought it quite good with only slight taints of right wing ideology, as opposed to swimming in it as one might think.

    Ditto that. In fact there is more than a little bit of liberal ideology in it (and not the economic neo-liberal kind either), which sort of surprised me. IIRC by about Chapter 2 he’s already compared today’s Libertarians with Marxists (“people hankering after a stateless utopia”) and just up and tells them to move to Somalia if they can’t stomach the modern Euro-American welfare state.

  110. 110.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @dmsilev:

    Good point. Erickkk is decrying the fact that these young men are the future leaders of the party.

    If that’s the case, you just might be right. :)

    @Rafer Janders:

    That’s what my wife wanted to know. I’m sure Erickkk can explain it in a way that makes sense…

    to conservatives.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    They won’t be for long. The technology around them is advancing very quickly.

    So are counter measures. Again, much ado about nothing compared to more simply and easily deployed tricks.

    @WJS: RE: Drones are primitive and inefficient.

    Really? That sounds nuts and stupid to me all at once. The signals collection package on a drone is really quite impressive. Look up some of the newer ones.

    Yeah, whatever.

    Some Balloon Juicers have an absolute fetish about the supposed danger of drones, and yet there is more threat from the info most of you freely give up every second of every day from your cell phones, your FaceBook postings and all your social media activity. Who needs a freakin’ drone when the authorities could simply dip into “Where’s WJS” on an Android or iOS device?

  112. 112.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @WJS:

    Erickkk owning a Dodge Duster and in the back seat? Naah, more like a ’61 International pickup and in the rusty bed of it.

    I’m sure that Erickkk went through his own sowing of oats (sans livestock) as a young man, probably groping a few things in the dark when he could. Now he is afraid someone else will do the same thing, maybe with his kid, and learn to enjoy it.

    Unlike him.

  113. 113.

    MonkeyBoy

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    @MonkeyBoy:

    ’ve read his latest 2011 book The Origins of Political Order and I thought it quite good with only slight taints of right wing ideology, as opposed to swimming in it as one might think.

    Ditto that. In fact there is more than a little bit of liberal ideology in it (and not the economic neo-liberal kind either), which sort of surprised me. IIRC by about Chapter 2 he’s already compared today’s Libertarians with Marxists (“people hankering after a stateless utopia”) and just up and tells them to move to Somalia if they can’t stomach the modern Euro-American welfare state.

    As I recall he also blasts Enlightenment thinkers and many such as Libertarians who hold the individual primary and that society and politics arises from them agreeing to band together for mutual interests. Humanity from our monkey ancestors on has always consisted of social groups and social progress to a large extent consists of weakening ties to smaller groups while strengthening ties to larger groups.

  114. 114.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Nutpicking some gems from Erickkk’s CPAC SEX! thread:

    A response by a member to someone complaining about Erickkk using a double standard:

    I didn’t think Eric was writing about the tendency of some young men with approbation. There usually is a greater degree of responsibility placed on young women because, short of rape, to them falls the greater degree of responsibility to keep the hormones in check. It may not be fair, but it is life (and has been for a very long time).

    Another “gem’ about appropriate dressing:

    As the mother of a young man in college, I can’t say I blame the young men for at least looking (or maybe leer is the more appropriate word) based on the lewd way some young women dress, act and talk these days. Apparently, there are more than a few moms and dads who don’t care how their daughters dress. They’re the same ones who complain when little Johnnie looks at little Susie in an inappropriate way.

    You damned women and your sexy clothes!! Oh, and your damned raging hormones!!

    Someone makes an actual funny:

    I always wondered where you first met Moe.
     
    In line at the CVS. :-)

    Neither Erickkk nor Moe have denied it so it must be true!

  115. 115.

    WJS

    @Brachiator: Yeah, whatever.

    Some Balloon Juicers have an absolute fetish about the supposed danger of drones, and yet there is more threat from the info most of you freely give up every second of every day from your cell phones, your FaceBook postings and all your social media activity. Who needs a freakin’ drone when the authorities could simply dip into “Where’s WJS” on an Android or iOS device?

    It’s not a fetish. Passive collection from drones is databased and stored and searched; it’s a great tool. But there is no guarantee that the information collected and disseminated from the collection platform is handled in an ethical way because, well, it’s a form of data mining. This is where it becomes a legitimate privacy concern–who’s watching the watchers and where is the oversight? Now you want to put that in the hands of a local law enforcement department? Or the state police in all 50 states? I think it is prudent to question what’s happening.

    And your “social media” profile is no where near as interesting as your bank account.

  116. 116.

    WJS

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I can’t see Erickson owning a pickup because that would make him legitimately cool or genuinely interesting.

    He would have to have something incredibly lame that his daddy let him have to make it work. I should have gone with the Pacer or the Dodge Dart or maybe even the Trans Am, but when you make Trans Am jokes, you have the potential to offend a lot of people who have recovered from their illness and have entered society after making peace with their issues. I’m not going to do that unless I can really get a cheap laugh.

  118. 118.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @WJS:

    You have a point, maybe it was a ’65 Olds Vista Cruiser station wagon he had in high school.

    Now that’s uncool.

    I had a ’67 Plymouth Barracuda in high school. My back seat was a busy place. ;)

  119. 119.

    WJS

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: He could have been forced to borrow his Grandma’s car on a regular basis. But we’re assuming there were women of loose morals in his life at that time; perhaps he found that clutching his bible and worshipping Barry Goldwater left him alone and isolated, unable to relate to the hellions of his youth.

  120. 120.

    Brachiator

    @WJS:

    It’s not a fetish. Passive collection from drones is databased and stored and searched; it’s a great tool. But there is no guarantee that the information collected and disseminated from the collection platform is handled in an ethical way because, well, it’s a form of data mining.

    We’ve been there and done that with access of data cached from smartphones. And very recently the Path photo sharing app had to be slapped for how it uploaded user’s entire address book by default without permission.

    Various nations are demanding that access hooks be granted for various apps and products. Even the nice nations.

    Canada’s conservative government has re-introduced an Internet surveillance bill that would allow the government to obtain information about Internet subscribers—without a warrant. The legislation would require service providers to provide law enforcement with IP addresses, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and other information on demand.
    __
    The bill would also “require ISPs and cellular phone companies to install equipment for real-time surveillance and create new police powers designed to obtain access to the surveillance data.”

    Who needs drones when the best survelliance tool is the one in your pocket? And it is designed to accumulate and aggregate data. And all athe government has to do is get someone to flip a switch.

    And your “social media” profile is no where near as interesting as your bank account.

    I think the man who is facing a death penalty for Twitter blashemy would disagree with you.

    So let’s see. What, the drone is gonna follow you around, take some pictures and videos, and the authorities are going to have to figure out who the people you talk to are. Or the cops take a leisurely look at your FaceBook timeline, get your entire biography and already tagged and sorted photos of everybody connected to you, and use facial recognition to ID everybody.

    And there’s stuff like this:

    Nortel Networks suffered a security breach that for almost a decade gave attackers with Chinese IP addresses access to executive network accounts, technical papers, employee emails and other sensitive documents at the once-thriving telecommunications firm, The Wall Street Journal reported (subscription required).

    Cyber data is worth more to all kinds of people, including law enforcement, than passive drone observations. And it is far more easily obtained.

  123. 123.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @b-psycho:

    And one primarily fed up with the war-and-corporate-welfare state should _____?

    Either move to a nation that has no imperial pretensions, or lobby the one you’re currently in to tone it down via a mainstream political ideology that isn’t hopelessly infected with utopian anti-statist ideas.

  124. 124.

    b-psycho

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Seriously, what is so inherently “utopian” about anti-statism?

    I don’t look particularly kindly on people. I actually think they tend towards being assholes. Yet that doesn’t lead me to “we need the state to protect us from assholes”, it prompts a question as to just what the hell prevents assholes in a society with a force monopoly from obtaining control of it & entrenching themselves as a ruling class. To me it’s utopian to sanction concentrations of power under the idea that they’ll be held by people who care about anyone other than themselves.

  125. 125.

    Kevin

    Fukuyama is universally reviled in my Department. The whole idea that liberal capitalism has brought us to the ultimate level of awesome, so much so that there will be No More History ™, no more emancipatory dreams. All that’s left is infinite tinkering with the total badassery that is neo-liberalism. I hear he has a new book out. I’m out of toilet paper anyway.

  127. 127.

    MonkeyBoy

    @b-psycho:

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Seriously, what is so inherently “utopian” about anti-statism?
    …
    what the hell prevents assholes in a society with a force monopoly from obtaining control of it & entrenching themselves as a ruling class. To me it’s utopian to sanction concentrations of power under the idea that they’ll be held by people who care about anyone other than themselves.

    In a healthy state you need a well tuned balance of power between various independent and respected institutions and social groups so that if one starts behaving badly the others can act to correct it. Unions used to be a major player however they have been demonized and much destroyed. Organized crime also used to be quite influential but they have little clout these days. Bored middle class housewives who had nothing to do in the 1800s (because they had servants) became do-gooders involved in charities and were the major force in the abolitionist movement.

    The “state” is not only made up of the various branches of government but also all the groups and institutions that reside within it and in some sense are part of it and help balance or unbalance it.

    The right wing strategy for a long time in the US has been to exclude groups, such as women or Negros, from really being part of the state or to work to actively eliminate institutions such as unions.

    It is nonsensical to be “anti-statist” because a state will always exist even if it is just a state of pure anarchy. What you really object to is the current right-wing definition of a state as just Capitalism led by big business (largely white males) with some role for small businesses and the mostly white employees who have been convinced that this setup is the best.

  128. 128.

    MonkeyBoy

    @Kevin:

    Fukuyama is universally reviled in my Department. The whole idea that liberal capitalism has brought us to the ultimate level of awesome, so much so that there will be No More History™, no more emancipatory dreams. All that’s left is infinite tinkering with the total badassery that is neo-liberalism. I hear he has a new book out. I’m out of toilet paper anyway.

    Fukuyama had one valid point in his “end of history” argument. So far the history of the world has been mostly about wars. However since establishment of “liberal democratic states” there have been no fighting wars between them, in part caused by globalism which makes them economically interdependent. If one assumes the rest of the world will come into the fold as equal players (unlike today where the rest are essentially colonies to the globalists) then there will be no more armed wars and no more history defined as a chronology of wars.

    I think this vision of Fukuyama will eventually happen on the Earth if things go well. Maybe in 100 years, but then again if global warming makes things nasty I could see many country governments reverting to dictatorships in order to occupy and exclude others from the new good places to live.

    I didn’t follow Fukuyama’s embrace by the neo-Cons so I have nothing to say about why and how he reciprocated. However I doubt that all of the people in this thread who have expressed their dislike for him have ever read a word he has written and base their dislike from hearing that some neo-Cons really liked him.

  129. 129.

    WJS

    @Brachiator:

    I think the man who is facing a death penalty for Twitter blashemy would disagree with you.

    Is this a guy in Alabama? If not, then who cares? Drones collect information passively, including information sent over cell phones. We don’t need them in the air, round the clock, giving Johnny Law more information than he actually needs. The potential for abuse is far too great.

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