The single biggest misconception about Canada’s Healthcare system.

“I just think with the amount of shortage of doctors in this town, and that it’s a government provided service, I don’t really feel that they should be able to deny,” she said.

Chambliss said he recently spent time with NSA officials and was assured that the programs Greenwald describes have been exaggerated.
“I was back out at NSA just last week, spent a couple hours out there with high and low level NSA officials,” Chambliss said. “And what I have been assured of is that there is no capability at NSA for anyone without a court order to listen to any telephone conversation or to monitor any e-mail.”

After all, a couple of hours with Nanny ought to be enough to sooth anyone.

… but after some 5000 years of human history where governments turn on their own people, why would anyone be surprised when their own government proves not to be a friend.

“Snowden, I don’t like him at all, but we would never have known what happened if he hadn’t told us.”

ht

Ohio.com;

“We don’t want to quit, we were forced out of the business. We can’t spend enough money to comply,” he said. “We’ve been farming for 117 years. I’m the third generation and we’re being put out of business by the government. We can’t comply with all of the safety laws. We haven’t poisoned anybody with an ear of corn for 117 years and we’ve shipped it all over,” he said.
“I can fight the bugs, I can fight the lack of rain, but when the guy comes with a clipboard what are you going to do?” Bessemer said.

Related: More Welfare Recipients Than Workers In The US

Telegraph;

As people digest what the leaks mean, ripples are going out into the business community. Firms were moving towards free, American, reliable cloud-based services; now things are screeching to a halt, as they think “do we want the NSA having access to this?”
[…]
Perhaps the hardest hit is Canadian phone manufacturer RIM, who make the Blackberry phone. One of the last things going for the struggling firm was the perceived security of the Blackberry handset, and particularly the BBM instant messaging system. However, following on from the allegation last week in the Guardian that British intelligence was regularly “Penetrating the security on [G20] delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their messages and phone calls”, rivals to Blackberry in the secure messaging market have seen sales surge.

Via

I can see Senator McCain’s lips moving.
Maybe try an immigration bill that doesn’t have a 1200 page ‘ammendment’ and will enforce laws and border security before any legalization.

Brazil appears to be the latest nation where the people have grown fed up with their corrupt, elitist, out of touch politicians. Interesting comments, in English, from a Brazilian vlogger.
Update: More videos from Brazil here and here.

The sorts of people who dig through medical journals to find some ingenious nanny state micro solution from the UK, Japan or South Africa that increased or decreased some petty statistic by some petty percentage don’t think in terms of people. They think in terms of statistics. They see people the way that Intel engineers see computer chips and they’re just trying to engineer them to get the best and most efficient performance out of them.
The modern nanny state is a diseased bastard child of Sociology, Marketing and the efficiency experts who used to roam the halls of GM and IBM back when companies still had company songs. It has an Asperger’s level of understanding of actual people, but is an incredible whiz with statistics.

The rest is here. (h/t Adrian)

They gamed votes.
They’re gaming functions of the IRS.
They’re gaming the rules governing the EPA.
What’s left? Oh…the Justice system. (Via Ace).
Benito would be proud of the modern-day black-shirts.

“To do so, he may need to do more than to promise to bolster embassy security and to shut down the IRS targeting operation. He may need to forcefully condemn the half-truths and distortions disseminated under his name.
He may need to fire people who can’t get his story straight.”