The Breakfast Club (Holiday Weekend Sailing Edition)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Breakfast Tunes

Breakfast News

In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are

Files provided by Snowden show extent to which ordinary Web users are caught in the net

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents.

The surveillance files highlight a policy dilemma that has been aired only abstractly in public. There are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages – and collateral harm to privacy on a scale that the Obama administration has not been willing to address.

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US Fourth of July weekend marred by spate of gun violence

Houston gunman opened fire on crowd at music festival injuring four, as Chicago and Indianapolis saw at least 28 people shot

The Fourth of July weekend was marred for some by a spate of gun violence in at least three cities across the US.

In Indianapolis, Indiana, seven people were shot – including one who was critically injured – early Saturday morning in an area known for its nightlife, police said.

An Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer heard multiple gunshots at around 2.30am Saturday in the city’s Broad Ripple neighborhood, police spokesman Lieutenant Christopher Bailey said in a press release.

One man is in critical condition at a local hospital, Bailey said. Five other men and a woman also were shot, but do not have life-threatening injuries.

Meanwhile, at a music festival in Houston, Texas, authorities say six people have been injured in a shooting.

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When does the civilized world step in and tell both sides of this to stop killing children over a land dispute?

Palestinian teen burned to death, autopsy shows

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) – An autopsy showed an Arab teenager who Palestinians say was killed in a revenge attack was burned to death, officials said Saturday, while Palestinian militants fired two rockets toward a major southern city deeper into Israel than any other attack in the current round of violence. [..]

Palestinian Attorney General Abdelghani al-Owaiwi said he received initial autopsy results from a Palestinian doctor who was present at the autopsy in Tel Aviv. He said it shows that 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir, whose death has sparked large protests in his east Jerusalem neighborhood, suffered burns on “90 percent of his body.”

“The results show he was breathing while on fire and died from burns and their consequences,” al-Owaiwi said.

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Ahmad Chalabi: from pariah to Iraq’s next prime minister?

The controversial ally of the Pentagon was cut loose after the 2003 invasion. Now some see him as the country’s only hope

He was a presidential patron, then a pariah; an alleged fraud, then an economic saviour. And, perhaps more remarkably, he was groomed by Washington, lured by Iran, and is now being courted by both as a man who could rescue Iraq.

The mercurial career of Ahmad Chalabi has been central to much of the turmoil that Iraq has gone through in the past 20 years. From guerrilla leader in exile in the Kurdish north to the pinup boy of the Pentagon’s war plans, Chalabi was more responsible than any other Iraqi for the ousting of Saddam Hussein more than a decade ago.

His Iraqi National Congress (INC) fed much of the false information about Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaida and non-existent weapons of mass destruction. And for many years before that, Washington had funded the group’s subversive efforts.

The 2014 World Cup takes a breather until Tuesday when the semifinals start but in other sports news:

Tennis

Petra Kvitova Routs Eugenie Bouchard for Wimbledon Title

WIMBLEDON, England – Eugenie Bouchard arrived at Centre Court with cool confidence and a ruthless tennis game to match. Bouchard, a 20-year-old Canadian, had captured the affection of her country and of the British tabloids, her looks, play and marketability drawing gawking comparisons to Maria Sharapova.

Bouchard now has something else in common with Sharapova. She, too, has been dominated by Petra Kvitova in a Wimbledon final.

Kvitova won her second Wimbledon championship with a near-perfect deconstruction of Bouchard on Saturday. The 6-3, 6-0 victory took only 55 minutes, the quickest women’s singles final in 31 years.

Two Generations of Tennis Stars Collide

WIMBLEDON, England – The best of two generations of men’s tennis will collide Sunday when Roger Federer plays Novak Djokovic for the Wimbledon title with Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker looking on as coaches of the finalists.

The top-seeded Djokovic, at 27, is in his prime, while Federer is weeks shy of his 33rd birthday. He is already the record-holder in career Grand Slam titles, with 17, but he is without one since he won here two years ago. Djokovic, a 2011 Wimbledon champion, has not won a Grand Slam event since the 2013 Australian Open.

One thing is certain: Whatever stylistic influence Edberg has had on Federer and Becker on Djokovic in the brief times they have been partnered, a celebration of the serve-and-volley tennis played by the retired Wimbledon champions (Becker in 1985, 1986 and 1989; Edberg in 1988 and 1990) is unlikely.

Cycling: Le Tour de France

Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France in doubt after crash on stage one

• Manxman suffers ligament ruptures as Marcel Kittel wins stage

• Decision due on Sunday morning on whether Cavendish races

After Andy Murray’s exit at Wimbledon and England’s premature departure from the World Cup Britain’s unhappy summer of sport continued as Mark Cavendish’s dream of winning stage one of the Tour de France and wearing the yellow jersey ended with a crash that may put him out of the race due to injuries to his right shoulder.

The Manx sprinter lost control of his front wheel as he attempted to emerge from the pack by shoving the Australian Simon Gerrans with his head and shoulders; he hit the deck heavily 250 metres from the finish line while the German Marcel Kittel sped to victory in a repeat of his win in last year’s opener in Corsica.

A statement from Cavendish’s Omega-Pharma-Quickstep team said x-rays had shown “ligament ruptures with an AC-joint dislocation”, which was causing Cavendish “a lot of pain”. The team added: “A final decision on his participation in [Sunday’s] stage will be taken tomorrow morning.”

Formula 1 Siverstone England

Nico Rosberg takes British F1 GP pole after Lewis Hamilton backs off

• Hamilton sixth after failing to take last lap on drying track

• Vettel’s Red Bull on front row with Mercedes’s title race leader

The closer the fight the more the errors count, as Lewis Hamilton may yet discover to his cost when he effectively surrendered pole position for Sunday’s British Grand Prix to his world championship rival Nico Rosberg. It remains a finely balanced duel – and there is a long way to go – but if Hamilton fails to take the chequered flag here and does not win the title, he will not enjoy fond memories of this Saturday afternoon at Silverstone.

Hamilton thought he had it in the bag after he had gone quickest in the first runs of Q3, during a qualifying session on a track that veered between dry and wet conditions as showers peppered the old airfield throughout the hour. The top spot looked locked in, but on the final, almost speculative, runs, Hamilton bailed out of his last hot lap, believing he could not go quicker, and went into the pits – only to see a slew of cars, including Rosberg’s, gain clumps of time in the dry final sector and demote him to sixth.

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Must Read Blog Posts

Common Sense Thomas Paine

Fourth of July Open Thread: What does it mean to be an American? Lambert, Corrente

The crux of the biscuit OPOL, Humanitarian Left

The Colossus Elliot. My FDL

Out there, in the dark: Life Itself Dennis Hartley, Hullabaloo

You’re so cute when your angry riverdaughter, The Confluence

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The Daily Wiki

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship (or sometimes sportspersonship) is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one’s competitors. A sore loser refers to one who does not take defeat well, whereas a good sport means being a “good winner” as well as being a “good loser”.

Sportsmanship can be conceptualized as an enduring and relatively stable characteristic or disposition such that individuals differ in the way they are generally expected to behave in sport situations. In general, sportsmanship refers to virtues such as fairness, self-control, courage, and persistence, and has been associated with interpersonal concepts of treating others and being treated fairly, maintaining self-control if dealing with others, and respect for both authority and opponents. Sportsmanship is also looked at as being the way one reacts to a sport/game/player.

A competitor who exhibits poor sportsmanship after losing a game or contest is often called a “sore loser” (those who show poor sportsmanship after winning are typically called “bad champs”). Sore loser behavior includes blaming others for the loss, not accepting responsibility for personal actions that contributed to the defeat, reacting to the loss in an immature or improper fashion, making excuses for the defeat, and citing unfavorable conditions or other petty issues as reasons for the defeat. A bad winner acts in a shallow fashion after his or her victory, such as by gloating about his or her win, rubbing the win in the face(s) of the opponent(s), and lowering the opponent(s)’s self-esteem by constantly reminding the opponent(s) of “poor” performance in comparison (even if the opponent(s) competed well).

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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The cure for anything is saltwater – sweat, tears, or the sea.

Isak Dinesen

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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee

In Hate my Life

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Cross posted at Docudharma and Voices on the Square