"I am not a little girl from a little town making good in a big town,
I'm a big girl from a big town making good in a little town." - Mae West
- Edward Snowden is a fugitive on the move:
A former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, charged by the United States with espionage, was allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday because a U.S. extradition request did not comply with the law, the Hong Kong government said.
Edward Snowden left for Moscow on Sunday and his final destination may be Cuba, Ecuador, Iceland or Venezuela, according to various reports. The move is bound to infuriate Washington, wherever he ends up.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a source at the Aeroflot airline as saying there was a ticket in Snowden's name for a Moscow-Cuba flight. Itar-Tass cited a source as saying Snowden would fly from Havana to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
- Back in March, Reuters also noted the Administration proposed linking the NSA databases with those of America's financial corporations:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.
The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.
If you think all the data about you held by private corporations belongs to you, think again. Its theirs. And they have no problem at all giving it to the government, or selling it to anyone else, with or without your consent. Because they don't need your consent to give or sell something that doesn't belong to you. Think about that.
- In my view, this whole thing is not a privacy problem. The privacy was ceded a long time ago. Instead, it is a property rights problem. Your data, movements, profiles, pictures, etc., should belong to you. Personal data should be property just like your house or car. We need a new law that says so. The White House's consumer data privacy proposal is a start, but not even close to where we need to be. It might even be counter-productive considering how complex and unworkable it is.
- Clueless GOP is still clueless on how to win a national election.
- Conservatives say even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, they will ignore such a ruling. Is there any reason to even be nice to these people?
- Will companies opt for the penalty instead of the coverage?
Once new health insurance exchanges are up and running in October, companies with 50 or more full-time employees will face a choice: Provide affordable care to all full-time employees, or pay a penalty. But that penalty is only $2,000 a person, excluding the first 30 employees. With an employer’s contribution to family health coverage now averaging $11,429 a year, taking that penalty would seem to yield big savings.
- Oh no...Hannah Montana is hanging out with black people! Bring the fainting couches!
- Last week I had the pleasure of watching the irreplaceable (Brooklyn born and raised!) Mae West in I'm No Angel (1933) with Cary Grant and directed by Wesley Ruggles. Mae is at her sexy, hip-swinging, "come up and see sometime" best. In this movie she was 40 years old, but looks half that, and boy does she lay the wisecracks, double entendre, and witty one liners on thick. You'll enjoy this fun, charming story.
Something you might not know about Mae West's moxie: When her building refused admittance to her black boyfriend, she just bought the building. She was far, far ahead of her time on both gay & transgender rights and interracial marriage.