I am pretty sure if you commit a domestic crime but any related deposits go through a foreign Automated Clearing House or routing number that crime qualifies for what’s being called “eavesdropping” aka “search and seizure” of information under the Patriot Act. Basically commit a crime, deposit it in a bank, you are being hunted like an international terrorist.

there’s an inordinate amount of data being collected by our government. It’s too data much for our government to process and the burden of proof to be this invasive is obviously not met. There is a larger and larger mode created by these laws (Patriot Act, Stop and Frisk , War Powers Act, DNA swabs for any kind of arrest, Approvals for military action in lieu of declarations of war) that congress should be closing as a result of laws like the Patriot Act that allow executive prerogative to take the place of legislative and judicial process.

This is always a creeping extension of federal power. It’s been going on for decades and it makes us less Democratic.

What was Sturtz’ step 2? To yell some more angrily at an HRC event?

When your conversation goes something like this:

• Code Pink: This is an injustice
• GetEqual: I know. real bullshit
• Code Pink: what do you want to do about it
• GetEqual: go to fundraiser of a political ally, heckle them so they know I wish someone they are related to would do what i want right now
• Code Pink: great plan, here’s the cash for the fundraiser. Happy Heckling

Your not looking to get anything but noticed. It’s a one off.

Everyone knows Sturtz’s behavior, less know her issue, less know how they can help achieve equality in federal contracting for LGBT sub contractors. Heckling can be used as activism, but it’s low on education, low on communication of some theme (her words are reported rather than heard) and low on persuasion. Not everyone is angry to the point of boorishness. Especially when yelling at one of the most popular public quasi-political figures, the First Lady Michelle Obama at a fundraiser where people paid cold hard cash to go to a lesbian couple’s house to hear Michelle Obama speak. Sturtz was surprised that Obama made people choose between FLOTUS and One of many hecklers of the United States and basically they told her to GTFO. Especially when this was hosted by lesbian partners at their home.

Then she goes into the whole “she put her big hands in my face” code language which is race baiting in it’s reductive of Michelle Obama’s humanity.

What are your direct demands, your next measures? What was supposed to happen after everyone knows you’re upset about something having to do with LGBT rights and you getting old.

Take a note from Sandra Fluke vs. sluth shaming Limbaugh or Dan Choi vs DADT or Occupy Wall Street in Oakland, Portland, and Washington State on behalf of longshoremen unions. Do not take notes from Code Pink and Occupy Wall Street almost everywhere else. Protest needs to occur with focused purpose and a progression of action to achieve justice, not a flailing reaction to injustice. Especially when trying to recruit allies or push current allies to action, yelling at them like they are imbeciles is not it.

In the end, most hecklers are all about letting people know they can’t stand it anymore, not what they actually stand for. That’s fine, but it doesn’t do us much good.

Where someone argues not being repaid is worse than getting paid back early:

Tesla’s runaway success, by contrast, is demonstrating how making venture capital–style investments in risky companies—without demanding venture capital–style compensation in return—can end up costing taxpayers even more. In Silicon Valley, one Google pays for a dozen Pets.com. The government made the key mistake of loaning money to Tesla without insisting on receiving stock options, options that could have allowed the Department of Energy to pay for the Solyndra losses several times over.
[…] Today, the Energy Department defends the massive discount it offered as perfectly appropriate. “The loan program wasn’t intended to generate profit; the goal of the program is to provide affordable financing so that America’s entrepreneurs and innovators can build a strong, thriving and growing clean energy industry in the United States,” says a department spokeswoman.
Yet isn’t affordability the exact reason stock options are standard in normal venture capital deals? When a company is struggling, the options can’t be exercised and thus are perfectly affordable, not draining a dollar of cash from a startup company. Unlike a loan, stock options only cost the company money if it goes on to success—at which point it can afford to share that success with its early investors.

That’s not a mistake, that’s a feature. A venture capital firm has a responsibility to make money. The EPA has a responsibility to create a better energy future. This is not a revenue source for the government.Taxes are.

The deal may not have extracted the optimal profit, but it did help get an American automaker focused on energy efficient cars off the ground and that’s ok. That’s the EPA’s job.

In May MSNBC behind FoxNews, CNN Lite aka NewsCenter and CNN…MSNBC is not even a 24 hour news network:
What’s wrong with MSNBC is that it’s dominated by Lockup and Caught on Camera or something all weekend. It gets 3rd in line rating because they have the 3rd most news content.

BTW, CNBC is a business news station and seems to do okay. More like that MSNBC.

They finally seem to have begun to figure out that airing the same hour long episodes about a brutal rape and kidnapping from 10 years ago or the worst shanking, guard wrestling, fecal throwing, raping criminals in SuperMax directly after Rachel Maddow just dutifully explains to us how controversial a failure of the Violence Against Woman Act isn’t really what the lefties, liberals or the average American want from their news station.

In addition most CNN is on in the background in public places and reception areas and during holidays when ESPN Sportscenter gets clicked off. Pay your anchors to work from church time right up to say midnight. See how it works out when the family can say watch it without seeing any of that B.S.

Also, this is summer time. FoxNews is in full “Democrats are ruining America because of Healthcare, Obamacare implementation, Benghazi, Contraception covered by Healthcare, Homos, Tea Baggers in Townhalls, More women being top bread earner in the household” mode.

Also when Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes are top rated: more like that on weekdays please!

Judge rules against Obama/Bush Plan B contraception photo-id ruling. Go read it. He rightfully berates the administrations counsel for trying to defend a policy designed to appease religious and anti-sex/slut shaming zealots. It’s also interesting to note this case is being argued as three women enslaved as teens by three brothers are found after 10 years in a house. Hypothetically: if a woman in their situation was able to escape her rapist/slaver earlier and been in a strange area and tried to get Plan B at a pharmacy under this Bush Administration proposed, Obama Administration enacted health care regulation, they would have been legally denied as they probably were stripped of photo id. Good for Judge Korman. (Note: Plan B is contraceptive treatment, not an abortive treatment).