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.
Open thread - President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate
Labels:
Barack Obama,
open therad
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Able Archer and the Cost of Mistrust
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.
Open thread - Peak Greenwald edition
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.
Labels:
Glenn Greenwald,
open thread,
wingnuts
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The NSA FISA and Glenn Greenwald Did he Lie to Anyone?
The NSA FISA and President Obama Did He Lie to Anyone?
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 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.
Letter from a Hong Kong hotel suite
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.
A few thoughts on Snowden, Greenwald, and the NSA
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.Replace “CIA” with “NSA” and you have a picture of where we are now.
…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.
President Obama Pokes the GOP in the Eye
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.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.
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.
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.
Intelligence agency conducts intelligence. News at 11.
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.
Labels:
FISA,
Glenn Greenwald,
NSA
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Michelle Obama is Teh Awesome, and The LGBT Agitators Can Stuff It
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.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!
"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."
In an interview, Sturtz told the Washington Post, that she was stunned by the first lady's response to her heckling.Yeah, how dare the First Lady talk back to me when I'm trying to heckle her? OMG! Like, get! Out!
"She came right down in my face," Sturtz told the Post. "I was taken aback."
Privilege
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.
A few thoughts on cynicism
Cross posted on The Obama Diary.
“Cynicism is no more mature than naïveté. You’re no more mature, just more burned.”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.
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War
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.
Labels:
culture,
cynicism,
politics
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One in Four Liberals Still Suffering from Obamacare Derangement Syndrome
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.
Labels:
Affordable Care Act,
Obamacare,
polls
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Obamacare's Real Death Panel: Killing the Tea Party by Civil War
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.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.
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."
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- Open thread - President Obama at the Brandenburg G...
- Able Archer and the Cost of Mistrust
- Open thread - Peak Greenwald edition
- The NSA FISA and Glenn Greenwald Did he Lie to Any...
- The NSA FISA and President Obama Did He Lie to Any...
- Letter from a Hong Kong hotel suite
- A few thoughts on Snowden, Greenwald, and the NSA
- President Obama Pokes the GOP in the Eye
- Intelligence agency conducts intelligence. News at...
- Michelle Obama is Teh Awesome, and The LGBT Agitat...
- Privilege
- A few thoughts on cynicism
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