On Repeat: NSA Slow Jam

Edward Snowden is back in the news after his exclusive interview with NBC's Brian Williams on Wednesday night. 

Reason TV's Snowden-inspired music video was originally released June 14, 2013.

Original lyrics below:

LYRICS

You see me rolling around in a black Mercedes
cruising around town and it's packed with ladies
Gotta keep it going yeah I'm roaming the map
No I never stop until I find something to tap

Awww yeah…

[CHORUS]
Nokia, iPhone, Galaxy 3
Facebook and your search history
Gmail, voicemail, I'm gonna grab it
if it's got an on/off switch, baby, I'll tap it

I'm making a list, checking it twice
it doesn't matter the message or even kind of device
Every pic your daughter sends? We've got it ingrained
Why do you think Anthony Weiner wants back in the game?

Surveilling reporters, don't ever forget it
I got so many AP docs you'd think I'm getting college credit
Yeah we're saving your searches, that's just a reality
"Yes We Can" ain't just a slogan it's our view on legality

[CHORUS]

I'll tell you this, sir, I greatly abhor
your violating the Constitution upon which you swore
and a full investigation is needed and more
You ever Google Justin Bieber pics? I yield back the floor…

Look, this is not a big deal? Why are you having a cow?
Look at all these innocent people we can focus on now?
Who cares about civil "rights?" I mean, do we all really need em?
So you'll oppose the individual mandate? Why do you hate freedom?

Look, with front-facing cameras our intel has grown
Look at the video we've collected from this year alone
This is outrageous, we should be able to use the bathroom freely!
Look just the other, wait, hello? Hi. How'd you get this number? Really?

Nothing is private anyway, we're posting on walls
So what's the big deal if the government is saving your calls?
We share our info with companies, this debate should be chilled
Everybody come quick! A straw man has been killed!

So the next time you're up late and you're surfing your phone
Let me reassure you, girl, that you're not alone
But if you don't think the surveillance state is really ideal
Text yourself about it, let us know how you feel.

 

Comments

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

Uh, first?

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Last.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Nope.

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

I have a fever.

[kibby]

So?

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

And the only prescription is more cowbell!

[kibby]

Were you seriously waiting around to use that? *sigh*

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

You should know me well enough by now to know the answer to that question.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

This may help: http://www.break.com/video/ugc.....oks-384390

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Victorian-era British politician W. E. Gladstone is more than a trivia answer, he helped sap Britain's defenses in the name of freedom and reduced spending, and as a result we had the two World Wars.

http://dc-web2.commentarymagaz.....ce=twitter

[Irish]

Yeah, what Europe really needed in the early 1900s was an even greater arms race prior to World War One.

It's definitely true that Britain should have rearmed when Hitler was rising to power, but I hardly think British defense spending in 1910 would have prevented WWI, a war fought largely due to international jingoism and an arms buildup.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

but I hardly think British defense spending in 1910 would have prevented WWI,

If anything it probably would have contributed to it, given the nature of European politics at the time.

It's definitely true that Britain should have rearmed when Hitler was rising to power

It's pretty easy to see in hindsight, but what Germany unleashed at the outset of WW2 was mobile warfare in a way that was unknown to the industrial world up to that point. The French army was quite large, if of questionable quality, and their eastern pointing defenses were indeed formidable to the type of threat that they anticipated. Given that putting together a land force was considered the easy (-ish nothing in war is really easy) part of the equation and that they anticipated any German invasion to require months to develop and likely get bogged down at some point I can understand why the powers that be miscalculated the measures that were going to be required in the face of a real threat.

[Irish]

I understand that, but there were a number of people who foresaw what the technological advances could mean to warfare. Churchill saw what it could mean and advocated rearmament. Admittedly, Churchill was an old school Tory who was always advocating rearmament.

But all they had to do was read the treatises coming out of the German military to understand what the Germans were going to do with tank warfare. Heinz Guderian had been publicly speaking and writing about his vision for mechanized tank units since WWI. Pretty much everything he advocated was later carried out by Rommel and Guderian.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

Actually England's own B.H. Liddell Hart was one of the people that help inspire Guderian and he was quite influential in British military circles at the time. However the underpinning philosophy behind the British strategic position in the 30s was minimalist, with a focus on defending the nation, especially through naval and aviation assets while keeping the army small, and a strong aversion to becoming decidedly engaged on the continent.

This remained their focus until very late in the game, really until the invasion of Poland, when reality began to hit home.

The biggest culprit to me is actually the French, who were decidedly unmoved by the dawn of a new age of warfighting and went down in a heap because of it. If they had been able to hang on for a year even the character of the entire war changes dramatically.

[PapayaSF]

The French had planned an in-depth defense based on the Maginot Line plus mobile units that could respond to breakthroughs or attacks around it. Unfortunately, they funded the former but not the latter.

[Dances-with-Trolls]

The world at large was dealing with an economic crisis at the time which definitely impacted decision making in the run up to the war. The thing is that the French (and mostly everyone save the Germans) as a matter of doctrine were still stuck viewing tanks as infantry support, rather than using them to define the battlefield with the infantry in support of them.

I just like to pile on the French cuz one of my favorite WW2 "what if's" is what if the French hadn't collapsed so swiftly. 🙂

The real key to the German success with armor had as much to do with Guderian's experiences and innovation during WW1 with battlefield communications, and the radio coordination of the German armored units down to the individual track level. Which was good for them, cuz German tanks in 1940 generally sucked.

[Ted S.]

Reginald Mitchell was another person who saw the future of warfare.

TCM just showed The First of the Few, in which Leslie Howard plays Mitchell, back on Memorial Day. I highly recommend it.

[Irish]

The very fact that Britain lacked an army capable of fighting the armies of Europe meant that Britain was unable to deter German aggression in either 1914 or 1939.

???

Britain alone had 8 more battleships and 110,000 more seamen than Germany and Austria-Hungary combined prior to WWI.

If that's disarmament, I don't know what Max Boot's definition of an armed society would be.

Britain did have a smaller army than France or Germany but that's largely because they didn't use conscription and had a much smaller population than either of those countries.

Britain had 4,000,000 people in the army by the end of WWI, which, according to a New York Times article from 1921 that I just found, was approximately 1/10th of the British population at the time. That's not counting the hundreds of thousands of people they had in the navy.

Where's the supposed disarmament again?

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Not disputing the overall point, but just wondering- how many of those 4 mil were from the colonies?

If you're not listening to the current hardcore history series, you're missing out. It keeps getting better, somehow.

[Irish]

That's a good point - there were a shitload of Indian and Australian soldiers fighting in WWI.

I still question Boot's premise that WWI occurred because the nations of Europe just weren't militarized enough.

[BiMonSciFiCon]

Yeah, I agree with you. If anything's to blame for WWI, it's the railroad. Oh, that and everyone in charge being completely moronic.

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

The weird thing about WWI was that all the colonial powers had implemented the machine gun and advanced artillery against primitive colonial insurrectionists to great effect.

And yet none of thought to think what would happen when those weapons were employed against nations that also had them, or in other words, against white people that could fight back with equal firepower.

[Derpetologist]

"Whatever happens, we have got. The Maxim gun, and they have not."

"Sir, they DO have the Maxim gun."

"Oh dear..."

[Irish]

And when they saw what would happen when the Russians and Japanese fought a war with battleships and machine guns, they wrote off the results because they assumed the Japanese and Russians were inferior to Western Europeans.

[PapayaSF]

WWI trivia: the Germans considered their Zeppelin and Gotha bomber raids on England to have been strategically not worthwhile, and so didn't develop long-range heavy bombers for WWII. The Brits, though, were very upset at being bombed, and so they did develop long-range heavy bombers for WWII.

[Cytotoxic]

A stupid article. We can't cut any defense spending because WW1! Or something! Given that angle, I'm shocked the WSJ came out in favor of GladStone. They must have overlooked his sane military spending and foreign policy. They're gonna freak right out when they find what's what.

[C. Anacreon]

I see anyone attending FreedomFest in Las Vegas next month will have the opportunity to meet video star Remy in person -- as well as Stossel, PJ O'Rourke, and a bunch of the Reason crew. I coincidentally had to be in Vegas on business that week and have arranged to stay over to attend the festivities. Anyone else in the commentariat planning on attending? Perhaps we could have a HitnRun meetup.

[jesse.in.mb]

Serious and kibby should see if Playa is still willing to put them up in Vegas...

[kibby]

We were discussing this a few days ago -- it would be so much fun to go!

*blinks innocently at Playa*

[jesse.in.mb]

He's gone a boozin. And will not be back until he's good and shitfaced. Try again tomorrow.

[kibby]

Remind me tomorrow, then. My head is too filled up with stupid job applications to remember much of anything right now.

[Irish]

Just in case anyone was wondering what Barack Obama's foreign policy philosophy is.

For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president, here it is: "Don't Do Stupid Shit." Playbook rarely prints a four-letter word -- our nephews are loyal readers. But we are, in this case, because that is the precise phrase President Obama and his aides are using in their off-the-record chats with journalists.

Not only is he one of America's greatest orators, he is one of our sharpest political thinkers.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

But it all depends on his definition of stupid.

[Episiarch]

DON'T CALL ME STUPID

[MJGreen]

Morons!

[Ted S.]

I guess it's not off the record any longer.

[Suthenboy]

"For those pining for an Obama Doctrine victory for the president, here it is: "Don't Do Stupid Shit." "

Sooo....when is he going to implement this doctrine?

[Derpetologist]

? Groovin'.... on a Sunday afternoon

I've seen a lot of derp in my day, but this derpiest herpaderp that ever derped:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAG2NQ0X7qs

[Derpetologist]

Ron Paul mops the floor with Paul Krugman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEmKIRqz9AI

[Derpetologist]

Paul Krugman vs. Keyboard Cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlEU6xh1ZKU

[buybuydandavis]

" But if you don't think the surveillance state is really ideal
Text yourself about it, let us know how you feel."

Sweet!

[Grand Moff Serious Man]

About to witness winner-take-all, sudden death hockey.

[Fist of Etiquette]

No brickbat. Not a good sign.