McConnell said, "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this [domestic internet spying idea] until something horrendous happens."

Wouldn't you LOVE for something horrendous to happen, McConnell!!!?

You and your fellow Bush-ites would love for there to be a major terrorist attack just so you could full-throttle forcibly ram your Fascist evil crap down America's throat to even more of an extent than you have already!

Come to think of it, why wait for a terrorist attack? The Democrats in Congress will just give the Bush administration all it wants in this regard anyway.

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everyone should immediately make al jezeera their home page. Then every day when you get on the net do at least five searches for bombmaking. that ought to keep the motherfuckers busy. you can't police something that you can't keep up with.

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Ahh.. the California rule is to mandate intelligent meters in homes. The electric utilities hate this idea with a passion and so have launched an all-out "issue management" campaign to halt it.

Essentially, what these meters would do is to respond to price spikes (as per Enron, California, 2000-2001) by automatically curtailing energy use.

Most people have no idea what their electricity meters are doing, and have no way of checking on their own energy use. These meters would provide all the information, and would even have a built-in system for responding to energy pricing.

For those who worry about "the government and private corporations controlling your energy supply" - well, wake up. Unless you have an independent solar or wind system, you are entirely at the mercy of the government and the electric-coal-nuclear electricity corporations - and they don't want you reading your own meter.

You can see why there's an all-out effort by electric utility corporations to head off this idea, can't you?

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There is no equation at all between Orwellian Government spying and an attempt to control energy use.

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I can't believe what's happening in this country. I truly feel as if I've fallen into the Twilight Zone and can't get out. Or that I've just learned a very important secret that will save the world but no one will listen to me. Or one of those dreams where you try and try but you can't move to get away from impending danger...The government is keeping us uneducated, feeling hopeless, poor, uninsured, and afraid...that gives them the freedom to do whatever they want. Does this scenario remind you of anything?

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Instead of all this Machiavelli-meets-Screwtape stuff, what do ya suppose might happen if the most powerful nation on the earth started treating others with respect, generosity and restraint instead of metaphorically poking them in the eye with a sharp stick all the time?

Just a thought.....

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I read the linked NYT article and there are several conceits that the proponents are guilty of:
1. The CEC dude, Dr. Arnold Rosenfeld, claims that a) energy outtages (the need behind the justification of PCTs) are rare and b) when they occur spreading around the pain is a good thing because everyone shares the pain less. The good doc must not live in SoCal because outtages are not rare. So that leaves the question of pain-sharing.

I tried to contact Dr. Rosenfeld as to the specifics: how many degrees would PCT's be adjusted to save power to prevent an outage. No reply (yet). Nothing on the CEC website re: PCT's and specs on temp override requirements. Without specifics as to how much the Edison or PG&E can override customer settings, the doc's reassurances are useless.

2. Ralph Cavanagh at NRDC says, "most people given a choice of two degrees of temperature setback and 14th-century lviing would happily embrace this capacity." Hmmm... his evidence that overrides will only be "two degrees"? Again, I asked and neither Cavanagh nor the NRDC would respond. Again baseless assurrances are given.

Given that DOE guidelines are a bit more than "two degrees" different from minimal comfort zones (ask an asthmatic if 62F and 85F are safe let alone comfortable in temps that range from 40F to 110F), given that most people cannot afford (or even have the access to the right to do so) to upgrade their housing to where outtages and PCT's are moot, this whole idea smacks of one thing, the self-interested elite dictating life and death to Others of whose experiences that elite is wholly ignorant, based purely on their perverse perception of lived experience. Afterall to these folk shelter is just a "real estate investment," temperature control is "convenience," and poor people are "at fault" for their own troubles.

I have no problem with a PCT in theory, but for the classic and consistent pattern of human nature that those who-have ALWAYS think they know better than those who do not, and those who-have are almost ALWAYS wrong in their beliefs and assumptions about the Other they seek to control. Until that changes, I'm moving out of state.

Here's a better solution that PCT's which are a back-ass bandaid measure to begin with:

1. instead of all new or retrofitted housing having PCT's, all new or retrofitted housing must have solar/wind cogen and thermal mass improvement (efficiency) and the funding subsidies to ensure that it happens.
2. all older construction is systematically improved with corresponding subsidies to ensure all boats rise equally and efficiently.

Bandaid measures are the bloated effluent of the elites. Real measures cost more but they last longer and they work better. But it's always the guy at the bottom who can see that, NEVER the guy at the top.

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Would this surveillance be initiated before or after the Feds pay their unpaid phone bills?

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That he drops the 9/11 bomb just shows how weak McConnell's arguments are.

US national intel chief: 9/11 caused by weak domestic wiretap laws McConnell says Atta was trackable by US intel until he actually entered the United States at which point he gained all the rights and privileges of ordinary American citizens.

Sounds like a load of hogwash from a bureacrat too damn lazy to get a warrant!

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Uh, I'm one helluva lot more concerned about the real threat of global warming than I am about paranoid blog entries about attempts to save energy in California.

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can expect jail time? Welcome to Gulag Archipelago 2008. Who will write our history in blood on scraps of cloth?

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The government and corporations are seeing an unprecedented level of control and interference in people's daily lives, with wide-scale spying and invasion of privacy common place in both sectors, and collusion to enable each other's illegal activities.

The more they pry into people's daily lives, the more momentum they give to open source wireless communication services. I'm working on a P2P wireless project to provide free encrypted cellular and wireless internet service that doesn't have any subscription fees, any service providers, any tracking, any filtering, or any spying.

End government and business snooping! Help support free universal wireless standards & protocols, decentralized, open-source wireless communication services, and free public internet access!

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