Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast, bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are also available on i-Tunes, and may not be safe for work.

The Nation Conversations: Robert Reich on Mitt Romney's Casino Capitalism

Citizen Radio: What Jamie Dimon and Aaron Sorkin have in common.

Vox and Friends (The American Prospect): The Scotus Blockbuster

Responding To Climate Change: Are Women the Key to Moving Climate Change Debate Forward?

Open Thread below...

She's Coming Home / I Must Move

How many songs can you think of with the words move/moving in them?

Alternative titles for this week's episode:

"Mexico: It's Not Just the Water That Will Make You Crap Your Pants."

"Debby Does Florida and Rick Scott Undoes it."

ENJOY! And leave a comment!!!

She's Coming Home / I Must Move

How many songs can you think of with the words move/moving in them?

Gov. Christie, who promised a full investigation of these private prisons, is truly an addle-brained chump if he thinks he can bully his way past this -- unless, of course, he's going to leave and run for vice president. (Naturally, it was done on a Friday - on a holiday weekend.)

But even if he already has that particular escape hatch nailed down, there's no way the national press corps will ignore this story if he gets the nomination:

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie today limited an effort by the Legislature to learn more about the state's halfway houses, which have been criticized for being rife with mismanagement and violence.

In their budget proposal, Democrats inserted language that would have required the state Department of Corrections to report quarterly on the halfway houses, including the number of inmates convicted of violent and non-violent crimes, and the number of days they were imprisoned.The Democrats also sought information on the amount of money reimbursed to halfway houses for taking inmates, the rate of reimbursement, the number of escapes and the number of incidents involving physical violence.

The governor, however, struck out language that would have required the department to report the actions taken to protect inmates imprisoned for non-violent crimes from those imprisoned for violent crimes. Christie also batted back a request for disciplinary actions against inmates accused of violence, and actions taken to prevent violence.

Christie said in his veto message that those requests would compromise the safety and security of the facilities and the inmates. But Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said in a statement the governor's moves were "concerning and troubling."

More likely, it would compromise the safety and security of the information about how much money was pouring into the pockets of Bill Palatucci and other donors. God, I'm such a cynic!

"This language was placed in there to ensure the public safety of the general public, inmates and employees, and according to recent reports is sorely needed," Oliver said, referencing a recent series by the New York Times on problems at the state's halfway houses. "The Assembly will certainly be moving forward on plans for hearings."

The governor also deleted a provision that would have required the corrections department to make quarterly reports. As it stands, the budget does not specify when or how often the reports must now be made.

The rest of the Times series here and here.

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This Friday during his New Rules segment, Real Time host Bill Maher went through the list of potential running mates for Mitt Romney and finally ended up suggesting... the Real Time host himself, Bill Maher. As Maher noted, they disagree on almost every issue, but so what? Romney's already disagreed with himself on every issue as well with his flip flopping.

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Fox is always terrible when it comes to letting little Joe McCarthy Jr. Bachmann run amok with wild accusations against the Obama administration, but this one with Uma Pemmaraju from this Saturday's America's News Headquarters was particularly awful. Bachmann is now calling the Mexican drug cartels "terrorists." She's pretending that Republicans have an ounce of concern for gun control or that the problem with the guns showing up in Mexico is not something they and the NRA have created themselves with terribly weak gun control laws.

She asserts criminal behavior because President Obama used his powers of executive privilege all of one time to ward off a Republican witch hunt, never mind the fact that she made no such assertions when her best buddy George W. Bush invoked it six times.

She also thinks there is some conspiracy theory behind the media giving more attention to the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act instead of the contempt vote against Eric Holder, blaming the media of course and ignoring that John Boehner was the one who decided to intentionally schedule the vote on the same day, knowing full well it would get buried because he wanted it to be.

She also had the audacity to complain about the administration leaking given her track record, or the fact that it's ridiculous to pretend that they all don't leak when it's politically convenient for them. Regardless of Bachmann's assertions here, this is not the first or the worst, or sadly the last administration that's going to leak classified information when it suits them. The fact that this woman was given a spot on the House Intelligence Committee is a tragedy in its own right.

Rough transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Um, not so much. Read on.

This is a really fascinating story, which points out the FTC, while motivated, is ill-equipped to track online privacy breaches. (Their technologists can't get unfiltered computers to use for web surfing, for one.) Although they of course would like the tech industry to think they're watching everywhere, the FTC has "just a handful of iPhones and Androids that are kept under lock and key in the basement," the report says.

Kudos to ProPublica for digging out this story:

Jonathan Mayer had a hunch.

A gifted computer scientist, Mayer suspected that online advertisers might be getting around browser settings that are designed to block tracking devices known as cookies. If his instinct was right, advertisers were following people as they moved from one website to another even though their browsers were configured to prevent this sort of digital shadowing. Working long hours at his office,Mayer ran a series of clever tests in which he purchased ads that acted as sniffers for the sort of unauthorized cookies he was looking for. He hit the jackpot, unearthing one of the biggest privacy scandals of the past year: Google was secretly planting cookies on a vast number of iPhone browsers. Mayer thinks millions of iPhones were targeted by Google.

This is precisely the type of privacy violation the Federal Trade Commission aims to protect consumers from, and Google, which claims the cookies were not planted in an unethical way, now reportedly faces a fine of more than $10 million. But the FTC didn't discover the violation. Mayer is a 25-year-old student working on law and computer science degrees at Stanford University. He shoehorned his sleuthing between classes and homework, working from an office he shares in the Gates Computer Science Building with students from New Zealand and Hong Kong. He doesn't get paid for his work and he doesn't get much rest.

If it seems odd that a federal regulator was scooped by a sleep-deprived student, get used to it, because the federal government is often the last to know about digital invasions of your privacy. The largest privacy scandal of the past year, also involving Google, wasn't discovered by federal regulators, either. A privacy official in Germany forced Google to hand over the hard drives of cars equipped with 360-degree digital cameras that were taking pictures for its Street View program. The Germans discovered that Google wasn't just shooting photos: The cars downloaded a panoply of sensitive data, including emails and passwords, from open Wi-Fi networks. Google had secretly done the same in the United States, but the FTC, as well as the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees broadcast issues, had no idea until the Germans figured it out.

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What a shining example this is of Mitt Romney's policy ideas. In his stump speech yesterday, he mocked President Obama's vision of fairness and opportunity for all by saying he agreed with it. It's mockery because of course he does not agree with it, as he reveals a few short words later. Here is America, according to Mitt:

Let me tell you though, there's one thing the President said in his speech I agree with. He said that every American deserves a fair shot and I could not agree more. I think this is a land of opportunity for every single person, every single citizen of this great nation. I want to make sure we keep America a place of opportunity, where everyone has a fair shot, they get as much education as they can afford, with their time they're able to get it, and if they have a willingness to work hard and the right values, they ought to have a shot at realizing their dreams.

Some definitions, so that his statement may be parsed more clearly:

1. "Every single citizen" means people who reside in this country legally but also excludes those who are undocumented workers, especially if they are brown or black.
2. "Place of opportunity" means a place where one navigates all barriers with no safety nets or possibility of a hand up. It is a meritocracy where one must have at least one special advantage (obsequiousness is helpful) in order to grasp the opportunities in that place.
3. "Willingness to work hard" means they may not ever join their collective voices in a union or expect fair wages or any benefits whatsoever, but instead accept jobs with substandard pay and scrape together whatever they possibly can to advance to the next rung on the ladder. It is especially important that these people with this willingness also agree to pay their dues to Wall Street and the bankers.
4. "Right values" means these people must, at all times, look down on others who are poorer, less educated, and have fewer advantages than they. They must not, under any circumstances, view women as equals. That goes for LGBT as well. It's fine to pay lipservice to both groups but when it comes to matters of consequence, it's critical that Those With Right Values turn their backs and discriminate as much as they possibly can. Right Values also include God and Guns.

Provided a person meets those requirements, Mr. Romney then affirms that they should have as much education as "they can afford."

This is a man who wants to privatize our K-12 education system, who slashed Massachusetts' education budget by large margins, increased class sizes to unmanageable levels, attended an exclusive private school, exclusive private colleges, and has the means to send his children to any college they can afford so that they too, can make tons of money by stripping other people of their jobs and futures.

...they should have as much education as they can afford...

This, from the man who thinks it's just so easy to go borrow money from Mom and Dad for that startup no one with real money will fund. This, from the man who thinks borrowing from Mom and Dad for college is just as simple as a trip home for dinner.

In two months my two youngest kids will both be in college at the same time. One lives at home; the other will be living at school. When they were born, we resolved that as far as it depended on us, our kids would have a 4-year degree without debt. Anything after that would be their responsibility. Back then, tuition was about $500 per semester at California State schools and about three times that at University of California schools. Now we will be paying close to 30 percent of what we earn to make sure those kids get their degree, and that's after the grants, scholarships, on-campus work credits they earn.

It was shocking to see the financial aid numbers fly around us this year. The suggestion most often advanced was that the student should borrow $5,000 per year personally and her parents should borrow another $23,000 or so. For one year. It doesn't take a math major to figure out what that totals. For a STATE university, my friends. That's all the education we can't afford but will figure out how to get anyway.

Imagine what that would be like if Mittens had his way. It wouldn't just be college, it would be K-12. Those who merit, get the good education. They can afford it. Those who don't, don't.

That's unAmerican.

Police in Arizona are investigating whether self-poisoning may have caused the death of former Wall Street trader Michael Marin in a Phoenix courtroom on Thursday. “They are leaning towards that,” said Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jeff Sprong. “We cannot verify that at this point, and we’re not going to be able to until the toxicology report comes back in two weeks.” The 53-year-old former Wall Streeter was found guilty of arson Thursday. Marin was heavily in his debt, and he quickly came under suspicion when his $3.5 million Phoenix-area mansion went up in flames in July 2009. In video of Marin taken minutes after the verdict, Marin claps his hands to his face and appears to “put something in his mouth,” Sprong said.

[Via KTVK]