No Excuse For Insufficient Backups…

12/28/2018 by J. Nelson

Between my hosting company, WordPress, and yours truly, every last one of this year’s blog entries went missing about two weeks ago and has yet to be recovered. Have I been fed a string of “complicated” excuses? Yes, but…

This is due in part to my not having backed things up for a while, so in terms of returning the missing content to the site, I have only myself to blame. I have no excuses, but neither do I have any reason not to continue. So I’m working to redesign and update the site for 2019 in the hope that whereexcusesgotodie.com may remain a worthwhile visit.

I was recently bitten by a dog for no discernible reason: nasty one too. I went to the hospital and everything. I’d just been cruising down the sidewalk when a big retriever shredded my pants and started gnawing my thigh before its owner even realized what was going on. If only its leash had been a little shorter. When I encountered a similar looking dog few days later, synapses in my brain fired in the direction of my crossing the street, but I didn’t. I forced myself to walk past the dog despite the pinch of anxiety I felt.

Data loss feels like an existentially inexcusable dog bite. I was mad at first, then self-pitying, but in no way do I intend to surrender this humble platform.

Now then! As far as 2018’s Excuse of the Year, well, here ‘ya go:

“Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders…Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, after 2nd child dies in U.S. Border Patrol custody.

No way, Nielsen. Regardless of how they came to be in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a law enforcement agency you oversee, Homeland Security is responsible for the care of its detainees. There’s no excuse for negligent healthcare anywhere in the American penal system, whether through ICE or in privately owned jails and prisons funded by American taxpayers.

Enjoy, and I’ll see you in 2019 with an Excuses site revamped and ready to rout chintzy rationalizations.

Apple’s Grapple

02/29/2016 by J. Nelson

Creation of Homeland Security not enough?

Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day?

Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?

Did D.A.R.P.A. go dark?

Has the Patriot Act pooped out?

Nope. Nor have the corporations and power brokers of the surveillance state yet tapped out American taxpayers.

In other words, the FBI does not need the Genius Bar.

From Feds to street-corner cops and home security companies, law enforcement has more than enough control, technology, and boots-on-the-ground for continued counterterrorism success. And probably lots of fun civil liberties secrets, too.

The FBI has all the tools it needs and plenty more to keep American citizens safe. And when I say “safe,” I mean relatively safe, just as we’ve been since September, 2001. Stuff will happen; that’s just the trajectory of history, especially when we’ve been messing around with it as much as we have. But in trying to force Apple to write new software that will help them unlock an iPhone belonging to the perpetrator of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, the Bureau is overstepping its constitutional bounds. Apple worries that, if they comply, anyone who can grab or mimic their software will have access to every confidence Americans hope to keep electronically secure. Read more

A Felon, Just Like Me

02/13/2016 by J. Nelson

Having written fundraiser remarks for disgraced LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, and having been big-bro bear-hugged by him after confessing to teleprompter typos, it’s hard to hate the man who ran a law enforcement mafia.

He hugged me because he was relieved to be offstage. Fifty-cent words weren’t easy for Baca, I’d been warned, and this was a big night. Just before he’d taken the podium, I realized I’d failed to yank one word in particular, and sure enough he flubbed it. Regardless of how I felt about his Men’s Central Jail deputies — or anything else related to that American flag-wrapped night at the Beverly Hilton — I was the show writer. I had to tell him it was my mistake, not his. Read more