Snowden Reveals NSA Spying On Americans

In the movie Baby Boy the self-described OG named Melvin played by Ving Rhames sneers at his possible future stepson. Melvin says that everything that the younger man is currently experiencing on the streets, the older man has already seen. To him, he boasts, it's just a rerun. 
I thought of that scene when I read the latest news that contrary to what its apologists have been saying about the NSA and the associated security structure, the NSA and FBI actually are spying on American citizens with political views and/or ethnicity that are out of the ordinary. This is something that Americans have seen before with surveillance (legal and extra legal) on civil rights and anti-war or left-wing activists from the 50s through the 80s. Rinse and repeat. Additionally the NSA is NOT just collecting metadata but actual data that lays bare the lives of millions of Americans who are neither suspected of or charged with criminal activity. So when the NSA spokesmen say they don't collect the actual contents of Americans' communications they are lying. These lies were obvious. Of course if anyone ever bothers to ask the President about this I am sure he will say that he knew nothing about it and is outraged. He will launch a commission to get to the bottom of it. Maybe. Someday. He will want to be perfectly clear that no one is more outraged than him. Yada, yada, yada. Rinse and repeat. Look over here there's news about Kim Kardashian! Look over there there's news about that celebrity's love life! Buy this pill it will make you a sexual dynamo! Start this secret Hollywood diet to lose weight to fit into this dress! These are the things that most Americans care about much more than the NSA activities, unfortunately.

I'd like to share Glenn Greenwald's challenge to people who serenely state they have nothing to hide from the government. If you have nothing to hide and just can't understand why other people don't want the government snooping around their personal effects I think you're lying to yourself. Self-deception is not the worst thing. We all do it sometimes. But on the off chance that you're not lying to yourself, please drop me an email with all of your financial, employer, personal email and social media passwords, intimate communications between you and the provider(s) of your nookie (pictures are preferred), medical records, discussions with close family members, your resume, academic transcripts, job performance reviews and of course a picture of you bending over and coughing twice. We just can't be too sure these days. Don't want to do that? Think it's a little odd that someone wants that info? Don't trust me? But you must trust the NSA because they are getting all of that exact information. Without a warrant. Without your consent. Just like Snowden said they were. Who's the liar now? Hmmm. Similarly, while the NSA is casting a wide net to vacuum up sexy pictures that women sent their boyfriends or husbands, it and the FBI are specifically targeting prominent Muslim Americans. These people have not been charged with a crime.  Five of the Americans monitored were willing to step forward.

The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans—including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers—under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies. According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;
• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;
• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;
• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;
• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments.

“I just don’t know why,” says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email accounts were monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. “I’ve done everything in my life to be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the government, was active in my community—I’ve done everything that a good citizen, in my opinion, should do.”

In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: “Mohammed Raghead.”

LINK

There have been people who have questioned the validity of Snowden's claims or whether or not he is a whistleblower. Some of those people are quite expert in law, commerce, government or military. I respect their concerns. Truly I do. But I think that these latest revelations should end that discussion. The government is lying to its citizens. The NSA and FBI are out of control. The NSA can't be trusted with the information it has. No government could. Snowden revealed and has proved that your government was and is lying to you. He's a whistleblower in my book. The entire alphabet soup framework of security apparatuses and government agencies needs to be dismantled and brought back under strict constitutional control. I do not view this as a partisan issue. There are Republicans who are outraged by these reveals and Democrats who couldn't care less. And vice versa. A lot of Republicans like invasive overreaching busybody government as long as it's not trying to provide birth control. Although I rag on President Obama in truth this issue is something that didn't start with him and won't end with him. It's a problem that has gotten worse with each President in the 20th century but took off after WW2 and the creation of the national security state. This security state may indeed see itself as independent of whoever is in the White House. Presidents change but security interests and institutional interests, as defined by spies and law enforcement, do not. 

The bottom line is that in a free country we can't allow the government to spy on its people in this manner. Citizens who are afraid to express themselves politically, who censor private communications for fear of government surveillance, who consider other citizens unworthy of robust constitutional protections, are citizens who may have forgotten what it means to be American.

What do YOU think about these latest revelations?

George R.R. Martin Tells Fans What He Thinks

Have you ever reached a point when someone has worked your last nerve and made you lose your religion? Of course you have. Likely we all have at some point. Maybe it's your controlling blameshifting micromanaging boss who tells you for the fifteenth time to do something which you already did. Maybe it's a spouse or significant other who just HAS to have the last word in an argument and simply won't let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe it's someone smoking or spitting after you've asked them not to do that around you. Maybe it's a devious work rival who patiently waits until the department meeting with upper management to publicly ask you a question which is solely designed to make you look bad in front of the big shots. Maybe it's a child in the back seat who asks you "are we there yet?" every twenty minutes on a four hour car ride. Maybe it's a relative or alleged family friend, who upon the very day of a loved one's death has the gall to ask you if you've decided what you're going to do with their prized collection of books/cars/musical instruments/photographs/writings/etc. Maybe it's an underwriter who's calling you for the third time in an hour to ask about the $100 withdrawal you made from your bank account three months ago. Maybe it's an internet troll who is impervious to the most basic logic and can only communicate in slurs and profanities. Whatever or whoever it might be we all have our limits and for lack of a better word berserk buttons. Even the most mild mannered milquetoast man can occasionally lose his patience and wonder if it's time, as H.L. Mencken wrote, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

Who knows if fantasy author George R.R. Martin is a mild mannered man or not. I don't know him. I do know that he has no patience with people speculating on his work ethic, his writing style, his weight, his age, his mortality or how likely he is to finish A Song of Ice and Fire before he leaves the planet. But just in case people didn't know, Martin very helpfully shared what he thought of his fans who ponder those questions or worse, ask him directly...

Book Reviews: Doctor Sleep

Doctor Sleep

by Stephen King

Some things are obvious upon reading Doctor Sleep, Stephen King’s follow up to his novel The Shining. The first is that King is and always has been an incredibly masterful writer. The second is that (and he states as much in the epilogue) King is still rather peeved at Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining. He thinks Kubrick got some very basic things wrong. King appears to resent that the film is probably better known in the American zeitgeist than the book. King seems to have made it his goal to change that in his remaining time on this planet. The final obvious takeaway from this book is that apparently King did not spend much, if any, time around black people during his formative years. I don't think he can easily(?) write realistic black characters. Many of his black characters are either literal Magic Negroes or creations that are just white characters dipped in blackness. For example, Dick Hallorann is the hero's mentor and I suppose, literally a Magic Negro. All four of Dick's grandparents were black. Despite this Dick unironically describes his paternal grandfather as “Black Gramps” because the man was bad. This grandfather was a child molester and all around evil man. Dick describes his maternal grandmother as “White Granny” because she was good. It’s from her that Dick inherited his psychic abilities. OK. Imagine a Jewish character describing one Jewish relative as “Jew Uncle” because he was cheap, petty, vindictive and grasping and another one as “Christian Auntie” because she was kind, polite, friendly and helpful. Does that ring true to you? Well YMMV but it certainly didn’t give me a warm comfortable feeling. Anyway. 

If you haven't read The Shining you're missing something good. Nevertheless reading The Shining is not necessary to enjoy Doctor Sleep. The inevitability of death and the circle of life are important themes in Doctor Sleep. We also get King’s first hand knowledge of the pain of alcohol abuse, broken bones and the helplessness of being hospitalized and immobilized. King was hit by a van in 1999. This accident almost took his life. He narrowly avoided losing limbs to amputation. 

Dan Torrance (the little boy Danny from The Shining) is all grown up now. He still remembers the horrific events that took place in the Overlook hotel. His parents are now deceased. Unfortunately Dan is still fighting the demons his father fought. It’s not the literal demons of the Overlook, though a few still crop up from time to time. No Dan has become, just like his father before him, a quick tempered violent alcoholic who has trouble keeping a job or saving money. Dan hits bottom one night when he steals money from an equally destitute one night stand partner and has an unpleasant encounter with her son. Afterwards Dan starts trying to make his life better. He drinks to dull his psychic abilities. One would not imagine why a person with such abilities would wish to do that until you consider how much "fun" it would be to look at someone and know the time and fashion of their death or see in Technicolor all the ugly things they’ve done in their life or have unwanted visits from and conversations with people who are long dead. Still, Dan decides that he must stop drinking. Starting a new job as a carnie and later as a hospice orderly in a New Hampshire town, Dan gets his life together with the help of AA. And his powers, his shining as it were, also start to become stronger. He helps to ease patients' transition. His shining becomes stronger not only because he’s no longer drinking but also because he’s (initially unknowingly) in the vicinity of a young girl, Abra Stone, whose shining ability dwarfs Dan’s own, just as Dan’s strength once made his mentor Dick nervous. As a baby, Abra foresaw 9/11 and as a toddler was able to read minds and amuse herself by levitating spoons, telekinetically playing the piano or making every channel on the TV play The Simpsons. Her parents try not to believe in her powers but her great grandmother does, along with Dan, obviously. The shining is strongest in children. And Abra is something of a prodigy.

Unfortunately for Abra there is another group of people who know the power Abra possesses. They seek out children like Abra. Calling themselves the True Knot and led by a beautiful but sadistic and evil woman known as Rose the Hat, these people are not human any longer. They are psychic vampires of the sort featured in Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort or F. Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle. They travel incessantly across the US. They literally feed on people’s pain and fear. 9/11 was a bouquet for them. But what they most enjoy, what gives them sustenance and power, is to consume the pain and soul of a child with the shining. After hours of torture, just before death, the True Knot are able to consume what they call “steam” or the essence of such a special child. This gives them power and something approaching immortality. Most of them are hundreds of years old but can appear as old or as young as they please. When Abra clairvoyantly sees Rose leading the True Knot in a ritual murder, Rose becomes psychically aware of Abra. But when Abra is able to smash Rose aside as easily as you or I would an annoying gnat, Rose decides to take a special interest in locating Abra. Rose thinks Abra's power could sustain the True Knot for decades if not centuries.

Abra turns to Dan for help. As Abra is only twelve, it's difficult for the forty something Dan to assist without tripping everyone's pedophile alert. But Dan intends to help Abra just as Dick once helped him. It’s something he feels compelled to do to make up for past sins. And once he discovers that the True Knot has a link to the Overlook Hotel, it becomes very personal indeed. Much like Stoker's Dracula and King's Salem's Lot, a small circle of heroes attempt to protect an innocent against supernatural evil. The twist is that although this innocent is far more powerful than her protectors, seeing herself as Daenerys Targaryen, Abra lacks experience and may not be as wily as she thinks she is. The bad guys are very bad indeed, and you won’t want to put the book down. It moves quite quickly despite being over 500 pages. Children are harmed in this book. It’s not the most explicit thing King’s ever written but he’s not writing at the shallow end of the gross out pool either. Doctor Sleep is not as scary as The Shining. Black House, which like Doctor Sleep revisits a grown up special child, was much scarier. Unlike a lot of modern horror or fantasy authors King places virtually no grey in the bad characters in Doctor Sleep. Rose and one or two other baddies have a brief hint of complexity but they are and remain monsters. This book is Tolkienesque in that "Evil" is generally depicted as something twisted and broken which is produced by bent people, not something which is part of everyone's heart. So if you want a respite from more cynical authors, this might be worth reading. If you believe that death is not the end or that the arc of the universe does indeed bend towards justice you may be satisfied with this story. I did like the shout out that King gave to a villain in his son Joe Hill’s book NOS4A2, which I need to get around to reading sometime soon.

Book Reviews: Swag, The Lives of Tao

Swag
by Elmore Leonard

The late novelist Elmore Leonard grew up in Detroit and set many of his stories in and around the Metro Detroit area. I've read some of his works in the distant past. I was inspired to read this particular book after having a discussion about old time Detroit with a friend from New York, who although he's never been to Detroit, is a huge Leonard fan. Go figure. My friend recommended this book in the strongest possible terms. So not having read any Leonard in a long time, I decided to give this book a read. I picked it up used for cheap. This was a good book. It wasn't great but it was good. I am glad that I read it. I had forgotten how much Leonard was, like Stephen King, a master of description, of realistic conversations, of storytelling. He actually makes you think that you are there, that you are part of the story. This is a something that not every writer has but I really enjoy reading works by those who have it. Even if the plot sometimes drags or gets off course I still continue reading because I want to see what happens next. Before describing the plot though I do want to briefly tell you about Hudson's. Hudson's was the centerpiece jewel of downtown Detroit. It was the tallest department store in the world. And for my money it was the classiest. The internal architecture was a intoxicating mix of Art Deco and pseudo-Gothic. For a long time in Detroit, anything you ever wanted to have you could get from Hudson's. And not cheap crappy stuff made in China or Malaysia either, mind you. I'm talking 100% American son! Or Hudson's sold Old World high quality stuff that didn't fall apart six months after you bought it. Hudson's heyday occurred before I was born but when I was a young lad I still remember my mother taking me and my siblings there on Saturdays. Good memories.

Hudson's is long gone now. To show the kind of nostalgic appeal the Hudson's building had for SE Michigan residents of a certain age, before it was demolished and even afterwards people "liberated" fixtures, nameplates, elevator gate doors, even bricks, to remind themselves of a glorious time now gone forever. I think one of my relatives might even have a nameplate lying around somewhere. You can read more about Hudson's here if you like. Ok I went down that little detour in memory lane because as Swag is set in mid seventies Metro Detroit, Hudson's plays a key role in the story.

There are a number of characters in the story but I am only going to mention two, both because I don't want to spoil the story and because I am trying to write shorter reviews.
Frank Ryan is a Caucasian (race is a factor in this tale) used car salesman who is middling successful at his job. But he wants more. Frank has seen all the tricks when people try to steal cars and he's used all the tricks when he tries to (legally) steal people's money by selling them cars. So when Frank catches a guy who is driving a car off the lot without having checked with Frank he knows the game. Still he lets the fellow get off the lot before calling the police. When the car thief is arrested Frank refuses to identify him. As the thief was not actually arrested in the stolen car the case falls apart. Frank seeks the thief out. The thief is Ernest Stickley, another white man, but most people call him Stick. Stick is initially worried that Frank is gay and is coming on to him but it's not that. Frank has been doing some research about the numbers of armed robberies committed in and around Detroit. Quite a few robberies are never solved. Frank has a proposition for Stick. Frank has come up with a number of rules for armed robbery that he thinks protect the smart criminal from getting caught. If some of those (presumably black) idiots in Detroit can get away with it, then surely two men such as Frank and Stick can do well and avoid capture. Stick is not all that impressed by the voluble Frank but it seems like this plan just might work.

And for a short period of time the two men become successful armed robbers. They go where the money is but they're really more about volume than one big score. However as time goes on Frank gets the idea that he really is a criminal mastermind. He starts breaking more of his own rules. Stick remembers why he's not crazy about Frank in the first place. They get in over their heads and make some mistakes. Big ones. There are the normal amount of double crosses, set piece betrayals and prostitutes with hearts of gold. This was a quick read. I loved the constant invocation of local landmarks, hotels and streets. Obviously much has changed since the times in which this book was set but I enjoyed knowing exactly the areas where the lead characters were. It made the book real to me.





The Lives of Tao
by Wesley Chu

This book combines light satire of corporate life with James Bond type spy adventure, sci-fi Matrix type derring do, Hero's Journey and even a little romantic humor. Occasionally the transition back and forth between all these different tones can make the reader a little queasy but for all that it is an entertaining story if you can get past that. As I think is too common these days it's the first in a trilogy but it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone book.

Humanity is not the most intelligent species on the planet. Not by a long shot. That title actually belongs to the Quasing. The Quasing are a group of extremely intelligent aliens whose spaceship crash landed on Earth eons before the first humans even existed. Their bodies are not designed for this environment as they find it bone crushingly cold and too high pressure. In fact their bodies are little more than gaseous membranes, that are highly susceptible to earthly weather patterns. The Quasing thus can't survive on our planet for longer than a few minutes unless they take refuge in a living being's body. Animals are possible but humans are preferred. This is not quite possession per se but the Quasing are in part the source for many human myths and religions. They've started a few religions for their own purposes. The Quasing doesn't need permission from a human to enter a human body and it's unclear as to whether a human can expel a Quasing. They almost never voluntarily leave. Over time though the human and Quasing will enjoy a sort of symbiotic bond with each other. As long as they can jump from body to body (they are naturally expelled upon their host's death) a Quasing is effectively immortal from a human's point of view. The Quasing also has total recall access to all of its previous hosts' experiences and memories and can share those with its current host, if it is so inclined. They can communicate with their human host via telepathy.

The Quasing really don't like being on our planet. They want to go home. Very badly. Unfortunately they are unable to rebuild or "rebreed" their destroyed spaceship. Again, our environment is poison to them. So they decided, hundreds of thousands of years ago mind you, that as humans looked like they would be the dominant native species on this planet, the best thing to do was to help humanity increase its level of technology and science so that some day in the near future (near future by Quasing standards), humans would be able to recreate the Quasing ship and the Quasing would all leave. That was the plan anyway. Looking at early human behavior patterns the Quasing decided that humans would best be motivated to achieve scientific and leadership advancement by war. So for most of human existence the Quasing did their best to increase war and conflict by any means possible.

However around the 1300s some Quasing had an epiphany. They began to think that going down the path of violence, dominance and war might not be best for Quasing or humans. These aliens called themselves the Prophus. They were however, greatly outnumbered by the orthodox Genjix, who didn't care if every human died as along as they could get off this horrible planet. The two sides began a vicious civil war that hasn't stopped yet. One of the Prophus leaders, Tao (he invented T'ai Chi and was the Quasing of Genghis Khan) must quickly find a new host after his previous host is betrayed and killed. Unfortunately the closest host he can find is Roen Tan, an Asian-American lazy overweight out of shape IT analyst, who initially doesn't believe anything the voice in his head is telling him. And even if it is all true Roen has no interest in getting in shape and joining the Prophus service. That is unless it means he will meet pretty women. Roen starts to believe though when shortly after he hears Tao's "voice" strangers start following him and try to kill him. He also is impressed that Tao, having invented the coding language and processes which Roen uses, is able to perform 8 hrs of Roen's work in about 20 minutes. Tao has more important things for Roen to do. Roen is thrown into training and ultimately a war. Similar to The Matrix, some of his allies are a bit dismissive that the great Tao is really inside such a physically and mentally poor specimen as Roen. This was a fun book. It ran a little long at 450 pages. It's both creepy and funny that Quasing can't control humans except when the humans are asleep. Roen is none too pleased when he wakes up one morning to find that Tao has thrown out all of his sweets and junk food.

Delinquent Water Bills, Detroit and The United Nations

I do my best to pay my bills on time. I expect the same from others. If I use a service I pay for it. If I loan money I want the money returned. I don't think that's too much to ask from other adults. Things can get a little tricky with relatives or other intimates because the relationship warps our understanding of money. So I avoid loaning money to people in those categories. If they need assistance I will give it to them, if I can. But people close to me know that I like my money very much and don't like giving it away. So that preserves the balance.
But where there's no personal relationship there is no misunderstanding of what money means. With people who lack a personal relationship with me there is never any expectation on my part that money loaned won't have to be repaid, regardless of who is the creditor and who is the debtor. My bank expects monthly mortgage payments. The bank is entirely uninterested in my problems making that payment. All they want is their money. I work for pay at my company, not because I enjoy the witty repartee. So, as is incredibly obvious to most adults, when you make a deal or purchase goods or services, you are supposed to live by the deal or pay for the goods or services you bought. Unfortunately in my home town of Detroit, the Water Department is running into some pushback as it seeks to either obtain payment from delinquent customers or shut their water service off. 

The reason for the Water Department's new aggressiveness in going after delinquents is probably related to the city's bankruptcy. Not only has the Emergency Manager made it clear that business as usual can't continue but of course the Detroit Water Department can't be privatized or merged into a regional service provider unless it shows that it can actually get customers to pay their bills.  I mean would you invest in or purchase a business where customers used the product but refused to pay for it? No you wouldn't. These decisions make sense for the entire organization but inevitably there are going to be some people that get hurt and may not even be deadbeats.


On July 1, the department is planning to relaunch its dormant financial assistance program with the help of the Heat and Warmth Fund, also known as THAW. The program is funded by 50-cent donations from paying water customers. More than $800,000 is available.THAW will help determine how much customers who qualify for assistance must pay. DWSD officials stressed that all customers will have to pay something toward their bill. Water service to 7,556 Detroit customers was cut off in April and May, according to the department. Now, the department officials said enough shutoff crews are in place to halt service to 3,000 delinquent accounts per week.

The overall effort to collect on more than 90,000 active accounts owing $90.3 million past due has drawn criticism from activists and a coalition of welfare rights groups. On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, called the shutoffs inhumane and “economically short-sighted.” The department’s shutoff campaign is targeting customers — residential and commercial — who are more than 60 days late on their bills and who owe at least $150. The average monthly bill for water and sewer service in Detroit is $65, according to the department. An 8.7% increase effective next month is expected to increase bills by $5 a month. The rate hike was partially blamed on delinquent bills. City Councilman Gabe Leland, who supported the rate increase, said the financial assistance program’s availability next month — about three months after the shutoffs began — reveals how the DWSD sets its priorities. “It seems like right now the department is taking no prisoners,” Leland said, adding that people should pay their bills. “To shut people off, that’s one thing. Let’s do it with some more preparation.”

LINK

Of course this being Detroit, a welfare rights organization even attempted to get the United Nations involved on the theory that water is a universal human right or that disparate impact theory showed that the people harmed by shutoff notices would be mostly black and thus therefore the shutoff policies were racially discriminatory. This kind of logic makes my head hurt. I'll leave that to lawyers who are actually qualified to discuss it. Bottom line as I see it is if you use a service you pay for the service. All else is folly and laziness on an individual level. If you want to collect water in your backyard from the rain and use that water to brush your teeth, go to the toilet, clean your body and for your drinking needs you go right ahead and do that. But if you want to have clean safe treated water that runs the gamut of your preferred temperature range delivered instantaneously to your home, well you need to pay for that, just like everyone else does. Now, all of that individual responsibility stuff out of the way there are at least three systemic issues here:

1) What happens when an economy simply doesn't need as many people as it used to? Unemployment in Detroit is chronic. This is in large part because the high-wage, relatively low skill auto jobs that built and sustained the middle class in Detroit have vanished thanks in part to automation, globalization and departure for the suburbs or southern states. This didn't happen overnight but honestly there is nothing the current President or either political party is doing to change employment patterns in the "inner city". You can have all the individual responsibility you want to but if you lack money, some bills get dropped. It's a related issue that I haven't touched on for a minute but this is also why I am opposed to "immigration reform". There are too many American citizens that are falling by the wayside. We can't provide jobs for our own and we want to bring in more people? But seriously, what if late model capitalism simply doesn't require the workers that its predecessor model used to? How do we handle that as a society?

2) Isn't there some residual pride left in people? Is it really a human rights violation to have your water shutoff? Again, we may decide that it is. But in that case we will all have to pay additional taxes to provide water "free" of charge to all. I have no issue doing that for seniors or people of extremely low means. But for your run of the mill American, poor or not, I would balk at doing that until I had more information on their circumstances. Housing in Detroit is not exactly expensive. 

3) Related to number one, a black man with an associates degree has roughly the same economic chances as a white man with a high school diploma. Education pays for everyone but it pays better for some people than for others. Again, if we (that is the US) have through history and current practice shut large out numbers of people from the employment market then we're going to end up with some unknown proportion of them not being able to pay water bills. So again, we need to provide jobs for people, even those who do not have a college degree. And the highest need for jobs is in the black community.

I don't have all the answers on this. I think that we have to distinguish between the truly destitute, for whom we can find assistance, and the person who simply doesn't think his or her water bill is something they have to pay. Unfortunately the only way to make that distinction is to shut off service to delinquents. If they want the service, they'll pay their bill. If they can't step forward and let's have a discussion about what happens next. I am sympathetic, especially as the Detroit bureaucracy has a well deserved reputation for notoriously bad record keeping and organization. There will definitely be a high number of false positives caught up. But there will be many more folks who just got used to paying late and are screaming because the free ride is up.

What's your call on this situation?

HBO Game of Thrones: Season Four Differences Between Book and Show

Ok, Season Four of HBO's Game of Thrones saw more differences between the books and show than I could remember or to be more precise more than I would care to write and certainly more than you would care to read. Presumably the series creators believed that their choices, minor or not, were necessary for the narrative advancement. As Game of Thrones has become HBO's biggest hit ever, officially surpassing The Sopranos, Benioff and Weiss deserve all the praise they receive for successfully translating Martin's textually dense and narratively complex works into the visual medium. That doesn't mean I wasn't irked at some thematic alterations. The biggest and most disappointing change to me (and apparently quite a few book readers judging by vicious comments on fan blogs) was something that I can't in good faith detail here because it's not been 100% officially ruled out of Season Five. I can say that there was some Stark revenge from an entirely unexpected source which was left out of Season Four. My heart turned to stone upon watching the last few episodes of Season Four and realizing the show dropped something big. If you've read the books you know exactly what I'm talking about! But in the admittedly unlikely event that next season includes it, keep quiet about it here. For this post I want to mention some of the more important, interesting or shocking changes from the book to the screen. I'm not interested in a character's name change or a man with no manhood trying to run some game on a woman who was actually a little girl in the books. Those are small potatoes. But when you change a character's knowledge or his motivations for patricide, I think those changes matter a little bit more.

I will shy away from discussing nearly certain future events or even future events that appear to be generally likely. If you've read the books I hope that you will share that restraint as well. However the very nature of this post requires listing some events which didn't happen in the show. For all I know the show creators could rectify some of this next season. So if this entire discussion is something you consider vaguely spoilerific, well you know what to do regarding this post. The first book in A Song of Ice and Fire was published in 1996 while the most recent was published in 2011. So read the doggone books. Of course if everyone read the books I wouldn't be this guy any more so there's that. Hmm. I strongly believe that the series' first three books had a quality and pace not matched by the last two releases. I would have preferred more televised fidelity to the high quality source material of the first three books. I will be less concerned with how the show handles the upcoming adaptations. Next season I think the show from necessity as opposed to convenience will invent more of its own story lines, prune back some of Martin's and create even more surprises for book readers and show viewers alike.


Lysa, Littlefinger and Sansa

In the show Lysa Arryn (Tully) is hot to trot for Littlefinger and can't wait to share some of her crazy pie with him. Once they are alone Lysa reminds Littlefinger of how long she's been pining for him and what she did on his orders. These acts included murdering her husband Jon Arryn (Hand to the King and Ned Stark's/Robert Baratheon's godfather) and then writing to her sister Catelyn Stark to blame the murder on the Lannisters. These actions helped set the stage for war. More than a bit discomfited, Littlefinger suggests they not talk of these things. No one hears them. However in the book Lysa does not mention any of this to Littlefinger in private. It's when Littlefinger has interrupted her attempt to throw Sansa from the Moon Door that a hysterical distraught Lysa angrily reveals both her adultery with Littlefinger and all she's done at Littlefinger's behest. See the difference? Sansa hears ALL of this. Now Book!Sansa is only about 13 and may not have realized all that she heard. I mean if you're trying to avoid being tossed from 600 feet by your crazy aunt, your total attention is likely dedicated to that task. Still, if Sansa ever stops to remember a few things that Lysa was saying or put two and two together she will know that Littlefinger is her family's single greatest enemy. It was Littlefinger who manipulated the Stark and Lannisters into a war which saw the destruction of Stark hegemony. Revenge for "losing" Catelyn Stark may have been among the motivations for Littlefinger's actions. It's not in the show but the reader learns that one reason that Lysa was willing to help destroy her blood family and her sister's family might have been because her father Hoster Tully tricked Lysa into getting an abortion before marrying her off to Jon Arryn. Lysa was carrying Littlefinger's child.

On his death bed a delirious Hoster Tully tries to apologize but sadly doesn't realize he's talking to Catelyn, not Lysa. Lysa refused to visit her dying father. And Catelyn's never able to figure out what her father was rambling about. Lysa's last words to Sansa, gloating over the deaths of her sister and father, certainly indicate some long hidden malevolence.

There was no near miss with Arya and Sansa at the Eyrie. I understand why the show wanted to set this up but in truth it's logically incoherent. The Stark name is well known in the Vale. Although the Vale stayed neutral in the war because of Lysa's orders (which is say Littlefinger's orders) the titular ruling Lord is Arya's first cousin, the previous Knight of the Gate was Arya's great uncle, the Blackfish, and there are several other powerful Lords who were close friends to or mentors of Ned Stark who were quite vexed at being forced to stay out of the war. Upon hearing that Ned Stark's daughter was at the gate, no one would have let her leave. The conversation wouldn't have stopped with news of Lysa's death but would have continued. "I.e, your aunt is dead but your father's good friend Lord Royce is here and rumors say your sister is as well." Under those circumstances would Arya and The Hound have left? There would have been safety for Arya and a promise of recompense for the Hound. In the book there was a patsy for Littlefinger's murder of Lysa, a troubadour named Marillion, who had previously attempted to rape Sansa and was singing to drown out Sansa's screams as Lysa tried to kill her. And speaking of Sansa, in the books released so far she never ever reveals her identity to the Lords of the Vale. There are a few Lords and others who are suspicious of Sansa's identity.



Brienne, The Hound and The Mountain

There was no fight between Brienne and The Hound. They never even met. It was one of those things that was great for the show in that it settled who was a better fighter but to me it felt like fanservice making up for the mostly inaccurate accusations of show sexism and generally accurate accusations of excessive mammary gland display. I didn't like the scene because I thought that it made the Hound a bit more noble than he is. Although no one noticed it at the time he openly admitted that he was protecting Arya with no hope of compensation. While that may have been the case it's extremely doubtful that the Hound would ever have admitted that. In the book The Hound's disabling and possibly deadly wounds were obtained in the inn fight with his brother's men depicted much earlier in the show. He and Arya part ways before they get anywhere close to the Vale. Also although it's lost in the "women can fight too!" hoopla around the Brienne character her defining characteristic arguably may not even be her astounding strength and endurance but her rock solid morality and sense of honor. Although the show depicts Cersei sneering at Brienne's honor and implying that it's heavily mixed with lust for Jaime, book Brienne is an oft melancholy but surprisingly durable and honorable warrior. Her loyalty is beyond question. Ironically she may well be the "true knight" that Sansa had idealized. Fortunately so far Brienne has been a tad more pragmatic than Ned Stark. And speaking of the Hound's brother, the thuggishly evil Gregor Clegane, the poison which Oberyn used was so incredibly painful that the man's unending screams were heard throughout the castle. Responding with her normal sense of compassion and solicitude, Cersei had the Mountain moved to the dungeons so he wouldn't disturb her sleep. The Mountain wasn't lying in bed peacefully. Oberyn specifically chose a poison that would make the Mountain's last days on earth unimaginably painful. In the book while displaying the spear to Tyrion and explaining his planned duel tactics he tells Tyrion not to touch the spearhead..no matter what. The duel between Oberyn and The Mountain lasted a little longer. Oberyn's speed and dexterity wore The Mountain down.




Tyrion and Tywin Confrontation

Along with incest and violation of guest right, kinslaying is one of the greatest taboos in Westeros. It's just not done. There are exceptions to this rule but it's safe to say that most people would think twice before doing it. In both book and show it's hinted broadly that Tywin uses the farce of Tyrion's trial to get around the otherwise ironclad prohibition on kinslaying. Think about it. Tywin Lannister, who uses monsters like Amory Lorch and the Mountain, who has exterminated entire houses for revolt, and who is known far and wide as a vicious and ruthless pragmatist, still did not dare to kill his son, though he clearly hated him and had countless opportunities to do so. Similarly, Tyrion, who has every reason to hate his father and wish him ill, still takes his father's side in the war with Stannis Baratheon and Robb Stark. When left on his own Tyrion doesn't try to cut a deal with Stannis for King's Landing. He does not free Sansa Stark or broadcast news of his siblings' incest though he knows all about it. In Westeros it takes a LOT to turn someone against their family. In the show Jaime frees Tyrion and explains that Varys has a ship waiting. Tyrion, upset about his narrowly averted fate, walks upstairs, finds his father's apartments, kills Shae, after she grabs a knife, and kills his father. Tywin is incredulous that Tyrion loved a dead whore (Shae).

In the book this was handled a little differently. Jaime frees Tyrion but makes the mistake of saying he owed Tyrion a debt. Tyrion presses his brother on this statement. Jaime admits that Tyrion's first wife Tysha, whom Tywin had ordered gang-raped, was not a whore. Jaime lied on Tywin's request. This is critical because Tyrion's entire adult personality is based largely on the belief that he is unlovable because of his deformity. It is why he only sleeps with prostitutes. He has horrible self-esteem. To find out that no, a non-prostitute really did love him and that his father and brother lied to him sets him over the edge. Angered beyond measure by this revelation that the ONE Lannister he thought he could trust betrayed him, Tyrion decides to hurt Jaime with a mixture of lies and truth. He tells Jaime the truth about Cersei, that she has been sleeping with their cousin Lancel, many other men at court and for all Tyrion knows the court jester as well. Tyrion also lies and tells Jaime that he murdered Joffrey and was quite happy to do so. Jaime leaves. It's then that Varys finds Tyrion and leads him away. However Tyrion figures out that they are beneath the Tower of the Hand. He wants to know the path to the bedchambers. Varys shows him the secret passageway while invoking his inner Willy Wonka saying there's no time. Tyrion arrives at the bedchambers and murders Shae. There is no hint of self-defense. And when Tyrion murders his father it's his father's ugly dismissal of Tysha, not Shae, that causes Tyrion to pull the trigger. These are small but extremely important differences. 

The reveals between Tyrion and Jaime permanently alter the relationship among all of the Lannister siblings. There are legitimate questions about what Varys' purpose was in releasing Tyrion. Cersei never confesses incest to her father. Tywin had no intention of giving up The Mountain to Oberyn Martell. Jaime never agreed to leave the Kingsguard and marry to save Tyrion's life.


Roose, Ramsay and the Greyjoys

There is no aborted rescue mission by Yara (Asha in the books) Greyjoy to the Dreadfort. The Dreadfort is not easily reached from the Iron Islands, being even further away than Winterfell. Once captured by Ramsay, Theon doesn't see his sister again in Book 3. The show pulled events ahead from later books and invented some storylines here. And believe it or not the show greatly reduced the sexual violence which Martin describes in horrific detail during many of Ramsay's hunts of women.  It's safe to say that even cable couldn't include all of Ramsay's depravities. Martin goes above and beyond to be as disgusting and as disturbing as possible describing Ramsay's activities. It is important to realize, as the show did not make clear, many of the women Ramsay hunts are former residents of Winterfell. In the book there was no "Locke". Instead the man who crippled Jaime was a sadistic and psychotic mercenary who routinely switched sides between the Lannister and Stark forces. In the books this man ultimately came to a nasty end presided over by The Mountain, not killed in the far north by Bran-Hodor. Bran and company are never captured by Night's Watch mutineers. Given that Show!Roose was upset that his son had maimed and degraded a less important hostage like Theon, it's doubtful that Show!Roose would have kept Locke around. Locke maimed the much more important Jaime Lannister. Roose Bolton knows what his best interests are. Employing someone who irritates and angers Tywin Lannister is neither prudent nor smart.

Anyway there were many more differences but that's enough for now.

Hillary Clinton: Clueless, Dead Broke and Not Well Off

When Mitt Romney was caught on tape speaking dismissively of the 47% of American citizens who did not pay income taxes and presumably would be immune to his appeals for their vote, it's safe to say that that was a game changer, or at least one among many for his campaign. It locked in many people's perception that Mitt Romney was an out-of touch plutocrat with a disdain for the working class and the impoverished. Obviously this perception was fanned and fed by the Obama campaign and its surrogates supporters in the media who went out of their way to make sure everyone knew about the Romney quotes. That's politics after all. If you trip and fall into a ditch, know that your opponent will go out of his/her way to run over you with the bus. Strangely enough presumed 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton seems to be going out of her way to make some of the same mistakes that Romney made. As she is not a declared candidate nor are we in a Presidential election year her gaffes may not have the same bite that Romney's did. Additionally, outside of a few extremely progressive/leftist circles she is not quite yet seen as relentlessly pro-plutocrat as Romney was. Romney looks like the caricature of the evil businessman who buys up a widget company, fires all of the semi-moral midlevel executives and then moves 90% of the manufacturing to slave labor camps in Sri Lanka, that is right after he gets a tax break for dumping mercury in ponds.

But just as a woman CEO at Duke energy shows that crony capitalism and ignoring of pollution costs is not something that is hindered by gender, perhaps Hillary Clinton's continued unforced error statements concerning her wealth will show us that gender doesn't prevent you from saying stupid things.
You would think that someone with a net worth (depending on whether you include her husband's or not) of anywhere from $21 to $100 million would recognize that no matter how they achieved it, they're doing very well compared to the vast majority of Americans.
Yet Clinton not only claimed that she was dead broke when she and Bill left the White House but recently went on to claim that despite what you might have heard, she and Bill are NOT truly well off. WTF?


Everyone always wants more. I get that. It's just human nature. The writer wonders if he could have been a musician. The actor daydreams about being a professional athlete. The musician decides that she wants to act. The fellow who pays tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for each classic car in his collection is jealous of the guy who takes a weekend flight to a Paris art auction to drop three million on some obscure Romantic painting. And so on. But there are still a few ground rules:

• If you can pay your mortgage off with one check...you're well off.
• If you don't have a mortgage...you're well off.
• If people overpay your daughter for a job she's unqualified for just to do you a solid...you're well off.
• If you never have to choose which bill gets paid late this month...you're well off.
• If unexpected car repairs don't damage or destroy your budget...you're well off.
• If creditors aren't leaving blood curdling threats on your phone...you're well off.
• If you can send your daughter to Sidwell Friends School without any financial assistance..you're well off.
• If people pay you $200,000 to hear your verbal ramblings...you're well off.
• If your net worth description has "million" anywhere in it... you're well off.

I did not vote for Hillary Clinton when she ran for President. I think it was a mistake for President Obama to bring her into his administration. I don't think Clinton has any real achievements or accomplishments during the Obama Administration. I think her continued gaffes around her wealth point to someone who has no reason to run for President other than personal aggrandizement. Clinton is quite cynically trying to cast herself as just "regular folks". This is nonsense. I do not believe that great wealth necessarily makes you moral or immoral. The same is true of poverty. Ironically Clinton's pattern of statements on this issue give credence to the idea that the only way to appeal to some Americans, in this case Democratic voters, is to pretend that, despite your great wealth, you're really not all that wealthy. In fact you're just like them. Well FDR was extremely wealthy. And so was Bobby Kennedy. They never ran from that. They succeeded in connecting not by downplaying their wealth but by emphasizing shared values and a political program, things that are so far absent from Clinton's public appearances. Maybe she will rectify that. Maybe she won't. But in any event let's not pretend that someone possessing Clinton's wealth is not well off. To paraphrase Michael Corleone, that insults my intelligence. And it makes me very angry...

Thoughts?