Because we have to be our own media, as the one we have is as useful as a hemorrhoid.



This is your Wednesday morning open thread.

It matters if one diplomat finds out another thinks his breath smells bad, it does in the relationship between the two people, scale it up it can matter in the relations of nations.  There was something about the truth speaking to power and tree shaking Edward Snowden is doing that truly disturbs me and I wanted to discuss it around a story.

It is now apparent about a 75% of Edward Snowden’s story is completely untrue.  From his CIA exploits in Switzerland, his salary, and his disclosure to China and Russia small bits of information along with big yarns of spin do nothing to help the impression one has about his integrity.

It’s fairly obvious the potential damage done to our relationship with Switzerland. We are currently trying to get them to drop veils of secrecy and help us chase down the 1% tax cheats an effort I’m sure Snowden didn’t help.  Thankfully the leadership in Switzerland seems to be laughing at Snowden’s story.   I want to compare what’s going on with what almost happened in 1983 during an exercise called Able Archer.  It’s my intention to show how close we came to all out nuclear Armageddon over the same themes of misinformation and mistrust that seems to infect both left and right.

Yep - seems to be theory RT @ChadAustinSD If you don't submit to the most brutal, sprawling prison state on earth you are a coward.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 16, 2013

Pretty soon he's going to be wearing a sandwich board on Copacabana saying "The End Is Nigh".

This is your weekend open thread.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t like Glenn Greenwald and haven’t for some time.  The incident that put him on my permanent shit list occurred when I was just a little bird deciding to see what this Twitter thing was all about.

There’s a presence out on those twitter streets that goes by the handle @angryblacklady if you aren’t following her I would suggest you do I was an open fan of hers before I tried to hop out the twitter nest. I was introduced to her by her political writing which has graced places like The Grio among others, I guess I could hit her bio and find tons of other stuff but I didn't need anyone’s validation then and just trust me she’s wicked wicked smaht.  

One day I’m enjoying watching ABL dissect Glenn Greenwald live and before the world on the issue of the NDAA one of her arguments happened to be the Patriot Act is of far more impact, and scary and is going to bite us first let’s work on that.  I wonder if the fact she was right means anything now anyway. 

I know she was taking him apart because he and his followers decided that the issue of the NDAA was no longer the topic of the day but rather the character of Obama supporters.  I once took philosophy way back in High School (I know huh?  Public school taught philosophy) where we went over all the forms of logical fallacy in argument.  Mr. Navarro spoke to me from the dim mists of time and said that’s an Ad Hominem Adept, an attack against the person not the topic means the person has nothing to say on topic.

That’s ok, as I said ABL was destroying him all day, it wasn’t that he engaged in Ad Hominem it’s what the attack was.

Glenn Greenwald said the supporters of Barack Obama would watch Barack Obama rape a nun on the cameras of MSNBC enjoy it and defend the action by saying Obama merely wanted to illustrate the evils of rape

Read about Glenn Greenwald use rape imagery to silence Black women

Scratch the record the police are here the party is over everyone has to go home.  Wait a minute you say a Black lady, an Angry Black Lady who fights for feminist causes like just about no other would enjoy watching a rape, in the face of being destroyed in argument? Yes, yes he did.

No he never apologized mollified or adjusted the tone of the statement it stands just like that right now, so when Greenwald steps to me, I don’t care much about what he has to say, so there I did it, I don’t like him find him to be a man that has no integrity and uses rape imagery to silence the dissent of women.  He does it for the same reason men rape as a power cudgel, and I will never play nice with such a person.

Did I shoot the messenger?  I got nothing else to say about the message?  Let’s do that!

First, in the interest of full disclosure I’m an Obamabot.  Not just an Obamabot I’m the model T-1000 with the liquid skin and frickin lasers for arms.  That’s not the point of this expose, but I don’t mind saying Barack Obama excretes excellence and gets the shit done.  I feel no need to criticize him and would keep it to myself if I did.

That out of the way I’d like to examine a meme that has become pretty prominent in the controversy regarding the exposure of our NSA’s methods and practices by a 29 year old who believes highly in American civil liberties, yet donates money to Ron Paul  a man who opposes the civil rights acts.

That is that Barack Obama is a liar.  That he promised some kind of hope and change that he horns waggled a group of the reality community by his pretty words.

I submit the words of the President are kryptonite to said people to be ignored and substituted with what they want to TELL him to do.

Cross-posted on The Obama Diary.

America’s history is written in blood and sacrifice. We have two holidays—Memorial Day and Veterans Day—which commemorate the sacrifices made by our military. But, we have only two national martyrs whom we acknowledge with holidays: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Both of our great martyrs died trying to expiate the sins of slavery and racism. Without their work, the America in which we live would be unrecognizable. In fact, there might very well be no America, as it would have split along the fissures caused by one of its two original sins, that of slavery.

Which is why it’s quite curious that Chris Hayes, on his show last night, brought up the memories of Dr. King and Rosa Parks when speaking of NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

 
Cross posted on The Obama Diary.

Unless you’ve been under a rock (and more on that later), the “high-information” portion of our Republic has been treated to days of OHMYGODTHENSAISSPYINGONMYGOATPORN.

The current hero of the “left” “libertarians” is Edward Snowden, leaker of NSA collection of phone records and Internet traffic, with an able assist from his glibertarian guru Glenn Greenwald. For all of an hour, the hashtag #IStandWithEricSnowden trended on Twitter on Sunday, after he revealed himself as the freedom-loving mole in the heart of the Big Brother Beast.

Let me pause for a moment to share with you a quote from one of the best novels of recent years, World War Z. Yes, it’s a zombie novel, but it also serves as a commentary on modern day politics.

When you think of the CIA, you probably imagine two of our more enduring and popular myths. The first is that our mission is to search the globe for any conceivable threat to the United States, and the second is to believe that we have the power to perform the first.

…We can’t just spread ourselves thin looking for, and hoping to stumble on, new and possible dangers. Instead, we’ve always had to  identify and focus on those that are already clear and present.

Replace “CIA” with “NSA” and you have a picture of where we are now.

Republicans thought they won one over the President by forcing him not to nominate Susan Rice to be Secretary of State, because, you know, BENGHAZIIII!!! But you really don't want to screw with Barack Obama like that. The President just promoted Susan Rice to National Security Adviser.

Hailing her longtime role as a “trusted adviser,” President Barack Obama formally named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as his next national security adviser on Wednesday.

Obama tapped Rice, a target of Republican criticism in recent months, to succeed Tom Donilon; the president also nominated Samantha Power, a longtime foreign policy adviser, to take over Rice’s role at the United Nations.

In the president's national security and foreign policy teams, the National Security Adviser plays a pivotal role, often the crucial role of integrating the two. The president's words were carefully chosen, but not minced.

Susan was a trusted adviser during my first campaign for president. She helped to build my foreign policy team and lead our diplomacy at the United Nations in my first term. I am absolutely thrilled that she'll be back at my side leading my national security team in my second term," he said.

So, doughty warrior of the glibertarians Glenn Greenwald has a MAJOR SCOOP: the National Security Agency obtained a warrant from the FISA court to have Verizon Business hand over millions of phone records. SHOCK! ALARM! OBAMA IS SPYING ON YOU!

Now, I don't mean to be glib myself. The expanded powers given to intelligence agencies in the wake of 9/11 are a valid subject of debate. Barack Obama's NDU speech in which he wants to work to curtail the Presidency's expanded powers is an indication on where he stand on this issue.

But comparing the NSA's latest data mining to what was occurring under the Bush administration is an exercise in the purest sophistry, and a way for Mr. Greenwald to drive clicks to his Guardian website. (And, really, Guardian, why do you employ a writer who BEGS FOR DONATIONS on your website? )

When the warrantless wiretapping regime was uncovered, the administration was forced to defer all data collection to the FISA court, much to its chagrin. And that's where all decisions on data collection have resided since 2007.

I get so tired of idiots on the Left constantly attacking this president and the White House instead of going after right wing nutjobs. And so it happened again, with a protester from tie-yourself-to-the-White House-fence gay rights group "Get Equal" heckling the First Lady at a DNC fundraiser. Michelle Obama wasn't going to stand there and take it - not as the better half of the first president ever to declare support for full equality. She got in the face of this heckler, and put her in her place.

Reports CBS:

According to a pool report from a reporter who attended the event, an audience member started shouting in support of an executive order on gay rights halfway through Obama's remarks.

"One of the things I don't do well is this," the first lady said.  According to a pool report of the event, she then left the lectern, moved toward the protester and said the person could either, quote, "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving."

Of course, Madam Heckler was suddenly very surprised that anyone would actually dare respond to her heckling. She didn't know what to do. She was shocked, shocked I tell you!

In an interview, Sturtz told the Washington Post, that she was stunned by the first lady's response to her heckling.

"She came right down in my face," Sturtz told the Post. "I was taken aback."

Yeah, how dare the First Lady talk back to me when I'm trying to heckle her? OMG! Like, get! Out!

Cross posted on The Obama Diary.

Screw You MT @codepink: FLOTUS should have been coached, long ago, on how to deal diplomatically w ppl who stand up to protest govt policies
— Nerdy Wonka (@NerdyWonka) June 5, 2013

I did not grow up in an atmosphere of privilege. My dad owned his own barbershop, and my mom was a seamstress in New York’s garment district. I wanted for nothing, but I knew we were solidly working class. If I and my brothers wanted to go to university—and with our parents, it was expected—we would have to work for it. There were no college funds, and no rich uncle was going to swoop in and save us. All we had was each other, our willingness to work, and our native intelligences.

Not coming from a place of privilege, I know instinctively that most things in this life for most people come at a price, the price usually being hard struggle. The world gives up very little for free. Short cuts, when they do exist, are far and few between. As I said in my post yesterday, at first that made me a practiced cynic. Fortunately I grew out of it, and embraced the rewards that come with struggle; the struggle makes the reward all that much sweeter.

But just as cynicism infects our modern politics, so does a culture of privilege.

Cross posted on The Obama Diary.

“Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You’re no more mature, just more burned.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War

I was, in my callow youth, a practiced cynic. Perhaps it was due to the crowd with which I hung out, perhaps due to my own struggles, a combination of the two, or merely the condition of youth where one thinks oneself wiser than one really is. But my view of the world was dark, depressing, and pretty hopeless.

Or, at least, that’s what I put out. At a certain age, it’s quite hip and cool to pose with an cynical insouciance: you know the game, you know it’s rigged, there’s nothing you can do aside from letting “Them” know that you know. It’s your only power.

I, thankfully, grew out of my cynicism. There was no one “come to Jesus” moment to which I can point where I embraced hope and optimism to a deleterious despair. And I didn’t embrace a blind optimism; I’m too much a student of the world to believe that if we just wish hard enough things will magically conform to our ideas of the true and the good. It was when I started to work on all the things which made me unhappy, which stymied me, which made me think I’d never amount to anything, and when the work began to pay off, that it dawned on me that there was nothing “easy” about cynicism, that maintaining that mindset was actually hard work, much harder than evaluating yourself and saying “This is what I’ll change. I can’t stay where I am.” Doing that work—whether on yourself or on society—is much easier and more rewarding than staying in the rut where you’re convinced nothing will ever change because nothing has ever changed in the world’s history.

So, CNN released a poll yesterday on public support for the Affordable Care Act. The needle on overall support does not seem to have moved much, stuck at 43%. But while media outlets are trumpeting a 54% opposition rate for Obamacare, an interesting story lies in the breakdown of the opposition:

The survey indicates that 35% oppose the health care law because it's too liberal, with 16% saying they oppose the measure because it isn't liberal enough.

That whittles down to 25% of the liberals in the survey saying they do not support the president's health care law. You know which crowd this is - this is the Left's very own "kill the bill" and public option pony crowd.

Someone needs to tell me why the following somehow isn't "liberal enough:"

• A massive expansion of an actual public health care program - Medicaid - to cover everyone under 133% of poverty.
• Closing the Medicare prescription coverage gap.
• The end of the worst insurance company abuses, including pre-existing condition discrimination, gender discrimination, and price fixing.
• Mandated coverage for women's reproductive care, and no-copay coverage for primary care.
• Making large corporations pick up their fair share of their employees' health care.
• Letting individuals buy insurance from statewide pools, creating the largest subsidies for health care ever in American history to assist in the purchase of insurance for those with up to 400% of poverty-level income.

Well, here's one of Obamacare's best "fringe benefits":

Arizona's Republican Gov. Jan Brewer is stepping up her pressure on the GOP-led legislature to expand Medicaid by declaring a moratorium on legislating until they give in.

Brewer vetoed five unrelated bills on Thursday, according to the Arizona Republic, and threatened to keep blocking legislation until Republicans expand Medicaid to cover thousands of Arizonans, which Obamacare permits at minimal cost to the state.

"I warned that I would not sign additional measures into law until we see resolution of the two most pressing issues facing us: adoption of a fiscal 2014 state budget and plan for Medicaid," Brewer wrote in a statement explaining her decision. "It is disappointing I must demonstrate the moratorium was not an idle threat."

Bwahahahahaha. Obamacare just pitted a crazy Teabagger favorite governor against a crazy Teabagger legislature. Tea Party governors in many states are already at odds with their states' Tea Party legislatures and groups.