Day: August 21, 2026

Lefties Must Pay

In my younger years, after Vietnam, I was an anti-war protester and as such I was a target of the government’s program, COINETPRO….a program that targeted protesters….I wrote about the program many years ago….

COINTELPRO: The Ghosts Of Protests Past

Thanks to this government program once I finished college I could get a good job….I settled for shoe store clerk then a bookkeeper the went to work for the state but thanks to the government that did not last long….then there was a string of similar jobs….all because the government used my anti-war stance against me then I got a good job as the manager of a pub that lasted 11 years but all that time I continued my protests against the government on many issues.

Sadly in today’s world the government has many ways of spying on protesters….from social media to phone conversations to face recognition….which makes their job so much easier than in the 70s.

That program never really went away they just used other terms to describe it and now with all the protests that is across the country the government is at it in a big way again…

Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.

Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.

Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.

The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-government-spied-anti-ice-protesters

Us so called ‘pinkos’ may not be the only targets of our government….you could be ….

The rapid spread of public surveillance cameras represents something far more consequential than a new piece of police technology. It represents a fundamental change in the relationship between the individual and the state.

These cameras allow government agents to record, identify, catalog and retroactively track the movements of people who have committed no crime, are suspected of no wrongdoing and have done nothing to invite government scrutiny. That’s not public safety. It’s an assault upon individual privacy.

Privacy is not a privilege granted by government. It is an aspect of personal liberty that the government exists to protect. It is a natural human right protected from the government in the Bill of Rights. The fact that a person leaves his home and travels upon a public road does not mean that he has surrendered that right.

There is an enormous moral and constitutional difference between a police officer who happens to observe a person in public and government surveillance that automatically and systematically records that person’s vehicle, location and movements; and stores that information for future use.

A free society doesn’t just protect people from crime; it protects them from arbitrary government. The presumption is liberty. Government is the negation of liberty. A person should not have to establish his innocence before the government leaves him alone. The burden always belongs to the government to justify all intrusions into personal liberty. Police cameras reverse that principle. They collect information about everyone the camera views and leave it to individuals to challenge the collections afterward.

A State of Surveillance

Be on your best behavior….Big Brother Is Watching.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That’s Right–40 Trillion

The news has come up that the deficit has risen to $40 trillion….up from about $29 trillion….what the Hell happened?

Of course the Repubs will blame policies and somewhere it will be Biden and the Dems to blame….after all there is an election coming and what better time to try and sway the more economically ignorant?

But the truth is more in-line with reality……

Congressional Republicans have seized upon news that the US national debt reached $40 trillion to bash what they described as “unaffordable socialist policies” and out-of-control spending.

But economists and policy analysts say Republican policy decisions—from massive tax cuts for the rich to disastrous wars of choice in the Middle East—are primarily responsible for the explosion of the national debt over the past quarter-century. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly promised to eliminate the national debt, has so far overseen an $11.6 trillion debt surge across his two White House terms.

“I have never been a deficit hawk, and I’m not about to change my religious affiliation now,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Thursday. “But whatever we think of debt and deficits, there is one point that should be very clear: It has been run up almost entirely due to Republican tax cuts and their inept management of the economy.”

Economist Paul Krugman similarly wrote that while the $40 trillion figure “has no special significance,” it underscores “the incredible irresponsibility of the Trump administration, with its unfunded tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, billions in wasteful military spending—redesigning aircraft carriers because Trump doesn’t like the way they look!—and more.”

“As Jared Bernstein and Bobby Kogan have shown, our deficit would be far more manageable if first [George W.] Bush, then Trump, hadn’t rammed through tax cuts that hugely favored high-income Americans,” Krugman added.

Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, estimated in 2023 that tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration and Trump’s first term were “responsible for 57% of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession are excluded.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/economists-trump-40-trillion-debt

All this deficit some of it can be blamed on our forever wars….I am not talking just about Repubs….Dems are just as damn guilty.

Another chunk of the deficit can be blamed on the constant passing of tax cuts over the years and yes the Dems are just as damn guilty here as well.

Maybe it is time for the American people to wake up to the lies and the reasons for this deficit….if we are to cut this deficit then revenues must be improved and a cessation of these lame ass wars.

And no tariffs will not change anything regardless of what the pseudo genius from Wharton tells you.

The rich have had a free ride for decades time for them to become contributing members of society (other than buying the Congress)….

That is that.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

News From The War

The US mash-up with Iran has all media outlets reporting all aspects of this conflict….the good the bad and the ugly.

I have found very little about the war started by Donny and his Israeli handlers that I can say is good….most of the news is bad and in many ways….then the is the ugly and that is what this post is about….

There are a few situations about this war that get very little coverage and this is one that is seriously lacking in complete coverage….

More than 750 US service members have been wounded since the US launched its war of aggression on Iran on 28 February, according to Defense Department casualty data updated on 19 August.

The update added more than 50 wounded US soldiers to the Pentagon’s war casualty database, bringing the official total to 757 wounded and 18 killed.

Those figures are drawn from two separate entries in the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, combining the totals listed under “Overseas Operations” with those recorded for Operation Epic Fury.

…

The Pentagon has not specified which war the Overseas Operations casualties relate to, nor where or how the personnel were killed or wounded, prompting further questions about the transparency of its reporting.

https://thecradle.co/articles/pentagon-says-over-750-us-troops-wounded-during-war-on-iran

This is a disservice by trying to hide the numbers….these are Americans serving their country and should be treated with more respect.

Is this what society has come to….I thought when we legalized gambling that it would become a frankenstein and so it is….

A small number of gamblers have made $8 million placing military and defense-related bets on the Polymarket prediction site, most placed by about 150 accounts that almost always bet correctly. The researchers say they suspect the accounts are linked to military insiders who could be flagged for law enforcement as “the most likely potential insiders,” researchers said in a new report.

When the most successful of those accounts bet on unlikely military events, researchers found, they won virtually every single time.

“Traders acting on specialized, non-public information possess an edge that is valuable only within a limited set of markets, and that produces win rates difficult to attribute to luck,” researchers with the Anti-Corruption Data Collective said in a new report released Thursday. The researchers studied the small number of bettors who met two criteria: ”The concentration of their betting within less than 100 markets and two topics, and unusual accuracy (over 75%) of their longshot bets.”

The same research group published a report in April that found a high risk of insider trading on military-related Polymarkets after observing that “longshot” bets on military operations won 52% of the time, which was four times more often than other types of markets.

(taskandpurpose.com)

This is getting creepy….we can now bet on cancer patients and now on war….this society is getting sicker by the year.

My stomach is turning….time for a step back….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”