Undernews: June 24, 2013

How Obama's secret trade deal will hurt housing and healthcare

They can spy on your cellphone even when it's turned off

Anger in the cities

Tens of thousands hired to run Obamacare

Travon Martin case update

Personal to NSA: Forget Snowden, the president is cutting deals with Al Qaeda

Rebuilding America: Use music

David Gregory joins journalists who refer the NSA to the Constitution (or journalism)

Word
@emptywheel - The administration that has not prosecuted a single major bankster is lecturing Hong Kong about the rule of law.

@MitchBenn - Edward Snowden's been charged with espionage for refusing to spy on people? And they say Americans don't do irony.

@SenSanders - The real issue is not Snowden, the real issue is what he revealed

Quotes
Whenever a fellow tells me he is bipartisan, I know he is going to vote against me -- Harry Truman

Pocket paradigms
Conservatives believe in the sanctity of life from conception until exit from the birth canal. Progressives believe in the sanctity of ife from birth to death. - Sam Smith

If you watch good people closely, their good comes as naturally as evil came to Eichmann. It does not have to be propped up with memories of great wrongs; it is just the everyday unconscious behavior of those graced with honor: the banality of decency. - Sam Smith

US Attorney threatens Montana medical pot growers with life sentences

Why reading fiction is important

Thoughts on (and from) the Bible

Obama's war against ultimate frisbee

Energy use by type of housing

US training Syrian rebels

Quotes
It takes some perspective to think in billions. Keep the following in mind: one thousand seconds is about 17 minutes. One million seconds is about eleven and a half days. One billion seconds is about 32 years -- Tim Weiner

Pocket paradigm
We live in an era not without ideas and a sense of history but what ideas and what history. It's as if the worst of the past had been resyndicated and put on Channel 20, with none of the other stations working. We draw from the economics of Morgan, Mellon and the British East India Company, the morality of Comstock, the civil liberties of Palmer and McCarthy, the civil rights of Tara, the lifestyle of Babbitt and Gatsby, the religion of Gantry, the political ethics of Teapot Dome, the business ethics of Ponzi, the gentleness of Nietzsche, the altruism of Ayn Rand, the ecological sensitivity of General Sherman, the spiritualism of Warren Gameliel Harding, the imagination of Rutherford Hayes, the brilliance of Franklin Pierce, the expressiveness of Calvin Coolidge and the evolutionary theories of William Jennings Bryan. - Sam Smith

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing - Edward Snowden has disappeared. The NSA whistleblower, who was presumed to be on a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow and thence to Havana did not board the flight to Havana. Some doubt whether he actually went to Moscow and suggest that though he had left Hong Kong, his alleged flight to Russia was a feint, misinformation to throw the press and governments off his tail. Ecuador's Minister of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador.

WikiLeaks Assange: we are aware of where Snowden is, he is safe and "his spirits are high". We cannot reveal what country he is in at this time.

Andy Borowitz - Agency Busy Spying on Three Hundred Million People Failed to Notice One Dude Working for It

Glenn Greenwald - The Espionage Act is a 1917 statute that was enacted under the Woodrow administration, designed to criminalize dissent against World War I. And for that reason, it has been used very sparingly before Barack Obama became president

Supreme Court sends affirmative action case back to lower court

The mixed story of Martin O'Malley

First day in court: The murder trial of George Zimmerman got off to an explosive start today as the jury heard that the words and thoughts of the defendant before he shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin were: 'F***ing punks, these a**holes always get away'.

Word
@RBReich - Recovery? US has 2.4 million fewer jobs than when recession began, real median wage 5 percent lower, and 58% think we're in recession.

On the other hand...
A collection of 32 classic Monica Lewinsky items is up for auction, each of which was originally gifted by Monica to her former high-school teacher, Andy Bleiler, whom she had a 5-year affair with. These artifacts became evidence in the Kenneth Starr investigation to impeach President Clinton.

Quotes
A fertilizer bomb that kills hundreds in Oklahoma. Fuel-laden civil jets that kill 4000 in New York. A sanctions policy that kills one and a half million in Iraq. A trade policy that immiserates continents. You can make a bomb out of anything. The ones on paper hurt the most. - Raj Patel

Pocket paradigms
We need a museum of the good, curricula in decency studies, and practice in its skills and rhythms. We need peace experts instead of military experts on Fox and MSNBC. We need mediators instead of just lawyers on Court TV. We need movies, heroes, moving stories that win Academy Awards, and models for our children that lead them to the contentment of cooperation and fairness rather than to brutal examples drawn from the play-by-play of violence and wrong that appears with every other click of the zapper. - Sam Smith

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