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lambert strether is doing the best post by post analysis of what went wrong. It is clear from the posts that he has experience with IT and web implementation projects, so it is written from a techie's point of view.

Lambert Strether has a tremendous post-by-post analysis of what when wrong.

Feds to use "consumer reporting agencies" to determine eligibility despite penalty for perjury.

ObamaCare Clusterfuck: How bad is it? Megan McArdle gets it right on the exchanges

ObamaCare Train Wreck on the Twitter: Administration PR Team Launches Google Hangout to Online Derision, Part II

And why would this guy go to Hong Kong of all the places he could go?

Six reasons why choosing Hong Kong is a brilliant move by Edward Snowden.

but some readers might be interested in Un-Corrupting Congress: A System-Changing Solution

Aaron Swartz at risk

Preliminary Sequestration Exempt Classification by OMB account and type of Budgetary Resource

that our elites have been moving in this direction for a while.

this post shows how business models for mobile community are a threat to the neutral net.

You obviously haven't been tasered before, doesn't hurt at all. Just debilitating. Like losing control of your body or something. It's a very odd feeling. But the sound and speed of the weapon makes it scary. You are afraid of something you don't understand, Mr. AC.

I'm sure we can all agree with you that it doesn't hurt at all.

The Great American Bubble Machine

http://www.correntewire.com/great_american_bubble_machine_0

Matt Taibbi, in his article The Great American Bubble Machine, asserts that the next bubble will be the carbon trading scheme. Perhaps that's how the Government and Wall Street plan on keeping carbon credits artificially high. That is until the bubble bursts and they raid our tax dollar barrel... again.

http://www.correntewire.com/great_american_bubble_machine_0

FTA:
The new carbon-credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that's been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won't even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.

Here's how it works: If the bill passes; there will be limits for coal plants, utilities, natural-gas distributors and numerous other industries on the amount of carbon emissions (a.k.a. greenhouse gases) they can produce per year. If the companies go over their allotment, they will be able to buy "allocations" or credits from other companies that have managed to produce fewer emissions. President Obama conservatively estimates that about $646 billions worth of carbon credits will be auctioned in the first seven years; one of his top economic aides speculates that the real number might be twice or even three times that amount.

The feature of this plan that has special appeal to speculators is that the "cap" on carbon will be continually lowered by the government, which means that carbon credits will become more and more scarce with each passing year. Which means that this is a brand-new commodities market where the main commodity to be traded is guaranteed to rise in price over time. The volume of this new market will be upwards of a trillion dollars annually; for comparison's sake, the annual combined revenues of an electricity suppliers in the U.S. total $320 billion.

Goldman wants this bill.

I'm puzzled by the Overton Window theory. The way it's presented in some places -- like this one -- the US is an extreme right-wing country. ("far to the right of any objective political spectrum.") I'm not sure what "objective political spectrum" that author means. Is it maybe based on the theoretical extremes of government power (ie. absolute dictatorship/communism vs. absolute anarchy/capitalism), or maybe the historical extremes (pretty similar)? Or a non-objective scale of where we are relative to Finland?

If we've got the various governments of the US confiscating an estimated "30.8% of the nation's income for 2008" [Wikipedia] and providing food, housing, education, pensions, and medicine to millions of people, is that really an extreme ultra-capitalist system? Seems to me that we've got one party that accepts massive government redistribution of wealth but feels guilty about it, and another that does the same but is honest about it. Calling the US political parties "rightist" is weird without making it clear what the scale is supposed to be.

Beware the Overton Window! A very important concept, although I haven't seen it mentioned here yet.

Briefly, you can game the belief that the middle ground is where the proper solution lies by adopting an extreme version of your actual beliefs so that the 'middle' is closer to what you actually want.

Utah cop tasers a guy without provocation and then lies about it.

Robert Dziekanski died in Vancouver after senseless tasering by four cops. The Vancouver police department later lied about what happened.

To me it looks like the pigs are using the tasers not as less-lethal instruments to be used against dangerous suspects instead of guns, but as whips are used to herd the cattle by a bunch of cowboys (or jackals, that's what it looked like in case of Dziekanski.)

We are the cattle, and the pigs are the cowboys herding us. We are not human to them.

I always saw cops as the force used by those in power to control the masses and not for public protection, now it is only more apparent.

1. Make sure head of company that supplies voting machines is a vociferous supporter of your party

Victor Romero is a Doctor of physics who specialises in statistics and randomness at the National University of Mexico. He studied the electoral commission computer results closely and he believes there is strong evidence of interference. Dr Romero explained to me a very unusual statistical pattern he noticed with the PRD vote as the tallies came into towards the end. "The PRD was winning and then suddenly at about 70% they start losing and never even gained .01 of a percentage," he explained. It seems incredible that as the last 30% of results came in, the PRD share of votes never increased. "It could be like this and then like that," Dr Romero explains, moving his hands up and down, "More of one party and less than another. But not in order. The order here is completely unexplainable."

By carefully examining how Republicans parse their statements about Bush's warrantless, openly felonious, and treasonous[1] domestic surveillance program, and combining that with network engineering knowledge available through open sources, alert reader philosophicus has advanced our understanding of the NSA surveillance system Bush set up. Long story short: (1) Internet surveillance is Bush's goal, not voice calls; (2) the Republican "wiretap" talking point is a diversion, to voice, away from from Internet surveillance; (3) Bush's domestic surveillance system would pose no engineering challenges whatever to NSA. No rocket science--or tinfoil hats--required.