BP - John McAfee vs.The NSA

Here Is A Story That Underscores a Certain Problem in the Obama Administration

Trey Smith

More than two years after sensitive information about the Osama bin Laden raid was disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers, Pentagon and CIA investigations haven’t publicly held anyone accountable despite internal findings that the leakers were former CIA Director Leon Panetta and the Defense Department’s top intelligence official.

Instead, the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office is working to root out who might have disclosed the findings on Panetta and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers to a nonprofit watchdog group and to McClatchy.

While the information wasn’t classified, the inspector general’s office has pursued the new inquiry aggressively, grilling its own investigators, as well as the former director of its whistle-blowing unit, according to several people, including a congressional aide.
~ from ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Leak Investigators Now Target of Leak Probe by Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay ~

See the problem, here? Members of Team Obama can leak like crazy -- including classified information -- and EVEN when they are identified, they have nothing to worry about. Not only are they NOT prosecuted, it would appear they aren't investigated, reprimanded or merely chastised.

Oh, but if you expose the culprits or any degree of wrongdoing, that's when the boot of government comes down and it tends to come down very hard. You almost can guarantee that you will be investigated and, in most cases, prosecuted or punished in some other way. It is a proverbial case of shooting the messenger, not the party who actually is culpable.

Yes, indeed. The Obama presidency is the most transparent in US history...NOT! He makes one almost long for the days of Dubya!!

TYT - New Corporate Powers In Secret Trade Deal

As Sticky As Flypaper

Trey Smith

Google may have been, until now, the Obama of hip internet monopolies. No matter how many nations the President bombs, people still put Obama peace-sign stickers on their cars. No matter how many radical rightwing initiatives Google funds, people still think it’s a “progressive corporation” — How could it not be? It’s making progress!

Google is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union, and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation.

And there’s more really bad news: Google is funding ALEC, the powerful, secretive, and destructive lobbying force from which many companies concerned with their public images are fleeing.
~ from I Googled “Evil” And It Took Me to Google by David Swanson ~

It's interesting how certain ideas stick in people's minds, facts be damned. Here's another current one for you: President Obama is a closet socialist working fervently to do in the country.

It may sound good to some folks, but there is no documentation to back it up! (Heck, most of the minions who repeat this refrain over and over again could not define the word, socialism, if their life depended upon it.)

A truly socialist president would advance policies to shrink the growing divide between poor and rich. Under Obama, the chasm continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

A truly socialist president would champion universal health care. Under Obama, the public option -- a weak facsimile of universal health care -- was taken off the table BEFORE the national debate even got underway.

A truly socialist president would expand the Food Stamp program to insure that everyone has enough to eat. Under Obama, the program has been cut, even though a record number of people are signed up under the program.

A truly socialist president would do everything in his/her power to protect Social Security. Under Obama, the president has shown time and again that he is chomping at the bit to hand over the program to the private sector.

A truly socialist president would favor the institution of progressive taxation. Under Obama, the most recent proposal is to cut -- yet again -- the top rates, so that the marginal rates for the rich go down even further.

You see, on the issue of economics -- socialism is an ideology based on economics -- Obama has proven to be anything but a socialist and yet the idea that he is one persists unabated.

TYT - Obama 'Really Good At Killing People'

BP - America Was Once a Super Power

If You Thought You Could Get Away With It

Trey Smith

Conor Friedersdorf has an interesting column about the potential for utilizing data gathered from NSA spying to impact the political process. As so many pundits do, he writes that President Obama is above suspicion in this regard, but a future president might not be so ethical.

I don't know why Obama should be given a free pass. When it comes to these pervasive surveillance programs, he and his minions haven't been all that truthful in their official utterances. This president maintains a secret kill list that we wouldn't know about except for a leak. In fact, as many commentators have noted -- including Friedersdorf himself -- we haven't witnessed such a secretive president since Nixon!

From what I can discern, the rationale most often employed by the NSA under Obama (and Bush too) is that anything goes as long as nobody finds out. No idea is too far-fetched as long as they think that they can get away with it. If not for Edward Snowden, all of the programs that have been revealed recently would have stayed hidden and no one would be talking seriously about reining in this rogue agency.

For all we know, the NSA or one of its many contractors has impacted political races already. Since they are hoovering up EVERYBODY'S data, this would include current officeholders and candidates running for office. Not only could the NSA or a contractor use this ill-gotten data and information to swing an election to one candidate or the other, they could just as easily utilize some embarrassing information uncovered to try to intimidate certain lawmakers to vote a particular way.

More than anything else, it would be absolutely shocking to discover that this has never been done to date!

Breaking Bad (For Jesus)

Trey Smith

In a move sure to please religious conservatives, President Obama's Justice Department filed a brief in the Supreme Court in favor of allowing overtly Christian prayers before city council meetings. It's an inexplicable move, and it's one more befitting a Republican administration than one headed by a Democrat and a constitutional scholar.

The case is Town of Greece v. Galloway, and it's set to be argued in the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Greece is a suburb of Rochester, N.Y. Until 1999, its Town Board opened meetings with a moment of silence - a practice that excludes no one. But then Town Supervisor John Auberger initiated a policy change, and the town began inviting clergy to open meetings with a prayer.

These prayers were decidedly and explicitly Christian. From 1999 to 2007, the town invited exclusively Christian ministers, most of whom included explicitly Christian content. Some elaborated on Christian theology, including such discussions as "the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross" and "the plan of redemption that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ."

These prayers were delivered to an audience of local citizens, including children and adults, who attend meetings at the Town Board's invitation or direction. Children's athletic teams are invited to be publicly honored, police officers and their families attend to participate in oath-of-office ceremonies, people come to speak about local issues of great personal importance, and would-be business owners come to request zoning permits.

All of these people - Christians and non-Christians - are asked to stand and bow their heads for many of these prayers. But Muslims, Jews and nonbelievers cannot in good conscience participate in a prayer to Jesus Christ, and doing so shouldn't be the price of civic participation.
~ from Why Is the Obama Administration Bowing to Religion? by Erwin Chemerinsky ~

What will conservatives say now that the "Kenyan-born", "secret Muslim" and "ardent socialist" Obama is arguing THEIR side before the US Supreme Court?

This report has me so dumbfounded that I don't know what to say. 

Why even get involved in this hot-button political issue when you don't have to? What is he thinking?  Is he trying to manufacture a political firestorm in an attempt to move NSA and FBI misdeeds off the front page?

Not a Particularly Good Argument

Trey Smith

The US National Security Agency was forced on Sunday to deny that its director ever discussed a surveillance operation against the German chancellor with President Barack Obama, as the White House tried to contain a full-scale diplomatic crisis over espionage directed at allied countries.
~ from NSA Denies Discussing Merkel Phone Surveillance with Obama by Paul Lewis ~

Oh, the tangled webs they've weaved!

The Obama administration finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Germany and much of the EU -- as well as quite a few other nations -- are incensed that it has been revealed that the NSA routinely has been spying on the leaders of our allies. Obama can't very well say that either he ordered this spying or, at least, was apprised of it because that would create a serious diplomatic rift with some of our staunchest allies. But the above contention is just as bad, if not worse.

If the NSA has been conducting this sort of spying and the president is not in the loop, then this buttresses the argument that US spy agencies are out of control and must be reined in -- something the Obama administration is strongly opposed to. It says that they are behaving like outlaws in the wild west.

One or the other and neither leaves the US government in a very good light!

You've Got To Own It

Trey Smith

Unlike so many other Americans, Della and I do not need to sign-up for health care at the government website. Both of us are already on Medicaid. So, we have not been impacted by its much reported website woes.

There is no question that healthcare.gov isn't working as well as it is supposed to. Even President Obama has admitted as much. What I find remarkable is the excuse trotted out by liberals: It is the fault of the private contractors hired to develop the site. Don't blame Team Obama -- it's not their fault!

But who hired these contractors and who is responsible for overseeing their work? Team Obama! And this result shouldn't be all that surprising anyway. Such results are typical when a government service is privatized. It tends to cost taxpayers more money and the results tend to be lacking.

Look at prisons across the nation. This governmental function was privatized on the arguments that it would save taxpayer dollars AND that prisons would be run more efficiently. But that's not what has happened at all! Private prisons predominantly cost taxpayers more. Not only are private prisons more expensive, but the services provided tend to be degraded. The mega corporations that run many of today's prisons are making a lot of public money, while treating their workers and the inmates like dirt.

In other words, some of the blame should fall on the shoulders of the contractors that developed the government's health care website. The major onus, however, falls on the Obama administration. They readily embraced privatization and so they've ended up receiving basically what they asked for: a major political headache with a hefty price tag!

Somebody's Grandmother, Somebody's Mother

Trey Smith

I offer the following two snippets without comment (because they speak for themselves).

An eight-year-old girl provided Amnesty International with the quote that leads its latest report on targeted killing in Pakistan's tribal regions. A drone strike killed the girl's 68-year-old grandmother as the old woman gathered vegetables last autumn. "I wasn't scared of drones before," the little girl said, "but now when they fly overhead I wonder, will I be next?"

Her uncertainty is understandable. An elderly matriarch's death is inevitably tragic for her grandchild. Her survivors are made to bear an even greater burden when the death is cloaked in mystery. Was the strike a murder? A terrible mistake? Did the grandmother inadvertently do something to make the drone pilot suspicious? How can other innocents avoid her fate? The U.S. doesn't just refuse to explain its actions (or to compensate the families of innocent people it wrongfully kills). Our government cloaks the killings in extreme secrecy, refusing even to acknowledge its role. Of course little eight-year-old girls wonder if they're next. What would you think if a Hellfire missile arbitrarily blew up your grandma? I wonder if an eight-year-old girl is next too. It would make no more or less sense.
~ from 8-Year-Old Girl on Drones: 'When They Fly Overhead I Wonder, Will I Be Next?' by Conor Friedersdorf ~

The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.

Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.

Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 67-year-old grandmother of nine.

My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.

But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.

I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 67-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.

Most importantly, we want to understand why President Obama, when asked whom drones are killing, says they are killing terrorists. My mother was not a terrorist. My children are not terrorists. Nobody in our family is a terrorist.
~ from Please Tell Me, Mr. President, Why a US Drone Assassinated My Mother by Rafiq ur Rehman ~

TYT - Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes - Devastating Report

Black and White

Trey Smith

In the early 1980s veteran pollster Stan Greenberg, conducted a focus group in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb, of former Democrats who had switched allegiance to the Republican Ronald Reagan. After he read a statement by Robert Kennedy about racial inequality, one participant interjected: "No wonder they killed him."

"That stopped me and led to a whole new analysis of Reagan Democrats," wrote Greenberg in a recent report, Inside the GOP. "I realised that in trying to reach this group of people race is everything," he told me.

While conducting a focus group with Republicans over the summer he had a similar revelation, although it came not from a sole outburst but almost throwaway comments, often left on cards after the session.
~ from Race Is Central to the Fear and Angst of the US Right by Gary Younge ~

It is quite normal for opposing political parties to try to block each other's paths. It is also typical that the minority party will try their darnedest to impede the agenda of the president. What is abnormal this time around is that the rabid right is so bent on thwarting this particular Democratic president that they are more than willing to turn even non-controversial issues into controversial ones.

Though the mainstream media predominantly refuses to state the obvious, anyone paying attention should know what fuels this type of behavior. Those on the far right simply cannot accept the fact that Americans twice elected a black president!

Many of these same sorts of people went after the prior Democratic president (Bill Clinton) too, but they didn't do it with such vitriol. While they may have viewed Clinton as a tax-and-spend liberal -- it is hard for me to fathom how -- he has one thing going for him: he's a white guy. Obama is not and so they have not been constrained in the least.

While I find this sort of attitude despicable, I also understand that these folks are in the minority. This is certainly not to suggest that racism is dead -- far from it -- but, just like with the issues of homosexuality and marijuana, the younger generation appears to be far more accepting than the old guard. And that goes a long way toward explaining WHY the old guard is being so loud and onerous today. They realize this might be their last gasp.

DN - U.S. Eases Rules on Exporting Military Technology to Secure Role as World's Leading Arms Dealer

Left Unmentioned

Trey Smith

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met in the Oval Office Friday with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakastani girl who was shot in the head on her school bus by Taliban gunmen for criticizing their rule, including banning education for girls.

The White House says the first couple invited Malala -- the youngest ever nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize -- to the White House "to thank her for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls education in Pakistan."

In a statement, the White House says the United States "joins with the Pakistani people and so many around the world to celebrate Malala’s courage and her determination to promote the right of all girls to attend school and realize their dreams."

In a statement released after the meeting, Malala said she was honored to meet with Obama, but that she told him she's worried about the effect of U.S. drone strikes. (The White House statement didn't mention that part.)

"I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees," she said in the statement. "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact."
~ from Malala Yousafzai Tells Obama Drones Are 'Fueling Terrorism' by Lesley Clark ~

Hmm. I wonder why the White House would fail to mention Malala's concern about drones? Maybe it is because it would prove to be quite embarrassing!

It's not the kind of message the Obama administration wants Americans to think about. No, talking about education is a more neutral topic and it certainly makes for a nice photo op.

What a Comparison!

Trey Smith

Despite a promise of transparency, President Barack Obama has run a secretive government that’s chilling the flow of information to reporters while it tries to channel its version of news through its own government media, according to a new report from a journalists’ group.

The report says the Obama administration has curbed the disclosure of government information, limited the use of the Freedom of Information Act, launched a program of internal surveillance to stop people from talking to reporters and conducted an unprecedented number of investigations of journalists.

The search for leaks, the report’s author said, is the most aggressive since President Richard Nixon.

“In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press,” says the report by Leonard Downie Jr. for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“There’s no question that sources are looking over their shoulders,” Michael Oreskes, a senior managing editor of The Associated Press, says in the report.

The AP is one of the news organizations that’s been investigated, its phone records used to find and prosecute a former FBI agent who pleaded guilty to revealing information about a foiled terrorist plot in Yemen.

Since Obama took office, his administration has conducted felony criminal prosecutions of six government employees plus two contractors, including Edward Snowden, whom it accused of leaking classified information to the media.

There’d been just three such prosecutions in U.S. history before Obama, the report notes.

“The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” said Downie, who was an editor at The Washington Post when it investigated the Watergate scandal under Nixon.

“The 30 experienced Washington journalists at a variety of news organizations whom I interviewed for this report could not remember any precedent,” he added.
~ from Press Group: Obama Is Worst Since Nixon in Going After Leaks by Steven Thomma ~

All presidents are concerned with the kind of legacy they will leave. Consequently, I would guess that Obama is enraged that this group has compared him to Nixon! But if the shoe fits, you gotta wear it and this shoe fits snugly.

In fact, in some ways, one could say that Obama is worse than "Tricky Dick". Nixon, by most accounts, was a very insecure man who all throughout his political career thought people were out to get him. From a psychological standpoint, the man may have been certifiably paranoid. So, you could say that Nixon came by his need for secrecy naturally.

Obama doesn't come off as being this way at all. He exudes self-confidence. So, Obama's need for secrecy is different than Nixon's. I think he does it because he believes that he (and his cohorts) is better than the rest of us. Sort of like a king!

TYT - Politicians Caught On Mic Discussing Shutdown Strategy

TYT - Why Is A Socialist Begging Corporate America?

Driving People Insane

Trey Smith

In an angry speech before the United Nations General Assembly, a democratically-elected president had this to say.

In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy. In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations.

In year's past, if you were to guess that these words were spoken by the sitting US President, no one would fault you. US Presidents are known to say lots of noble things. But these words were spoken by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and they were directed AT the United States! Her words were targeting the massive surveillance of world citizens by the NSA.

What she said should be a no-brainer: A lack of privacy is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Dictators, despots and demagogs do not want their citizens to think for themselves. No, they want the unwashed masses uncritically to toe the party line. They want people always to be looking over their shoulder and to be too frightened to utter any degree of dissent.

In a manner of speaking, mass surveillance is a form of terrorism. It is not the kind of terrorism that directly can end life in a split second -- though, at times, it can lead to death -- but it IS the kind of terrorism that can lead to indiscriminate intimidation, imprisonment and torture. Mass surveillance terrorizes people from writing, saying or even thinking things that the government does not approve of. It is so terrorizing that real democracy becomes near too impossible.

Not only is mass surveillance a form of terrorism, but it also leads to wide scale mental health problems. If you know that you are always being watched, you are more apt to become paranoid. You may start to have delusions that may or may not be all that delusional. It would not be uncommon for people to develop trust issues and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

End of the Dream?

Trey Smith

The final chapter of America's Promise, a high-school textbook on American history, ends with a rallying cry to national mythology. "The history of the United States is one of challenges faced, problems resolved, and crises overcome," it states. "Throughout their history Americans have remained an optimistic people, carrying this optimism into the new century. The full promise of America has yet to be realised. This is the real promise of America; the ability to dream of a better world to come."

Such are the assumptions beamed from the torch of Lady Liberty, coursing through the veins of the nation's political culture and imbibed with mothers' milk. Their nation, many will tell you, is not just a land mass but an ideal – a shining city on the hill beckoning a bright new tomorrow and a dazzling dawn for all those who want it badly enough. Such devout optimism, even (and at times particularly) in the midst of adversity makes America, in equal parts, both exciting and delusional. According to Gallup, since 1977 people have consistently believed their financial situation will improve next year even when previous years have consistently been worse.

But when President Barack Obama was planning his run for a second term his pollsters noticed a profound shift in the national mood. The optimism was largely gone – and with it both the excitement and the delusion. The time-honoured rhetorical appeals to a life of relentless progress, upward mobility and personal reinvention didn't work the way they used to.
~ from The American Dream Has Become a Burden for Most by Gary Younge ~

And why has the dream come crashing down? Younge sums it up in his last paragraph.

The self-proclaimed leader of the free world is turning into a low-wage economy with a class system more rigid than most and a middle class that wavers between poverty and precariousness. More than half the people using the food bank in Larimer County, Colorado, that I visited last year were working. More than one in four families in New York's homeless shelters includes at least one working adult. In the absence of a living wage and an ethical pay structure, the work ethic, on which the American dream is founded, doesn't work.

Thomas Gaist boils down for us the hard figures.

A US Census Bureau report released [last] Tuesday, entitled “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012,” makes a mockery of President Barack Obama’s claims to be restoring “security and opportunity for the middle class” in the wake of the 2008 financial breakdown.

The report provides a snapshot of a society in immense crisis. Poverty is at a near-generation high of 15 percent, close to the high point since the 1965 War on Poverty, the 15.2 percent rate reached in 1983. According to Tuesday’s report, 46.5 million Americans, including 9.5 million families, live in poverty.

Some 20.4 million people live on an income less than 50 percent of the official poverty line, 7.1 million of these being children under 18. More than 48 million remain without health insurance.

More than 31 percent of the population experienced some period of impoverishment during the years 2009-2011. Median household income, at $51,017, was slightly lower than in 2011, and down by 8.3 percent from 2007. The number of people 65 and older living in poverty increased from 3.6 million to 3.9 million between 2011 and 2012.

Despite more than four years of so-called “recovery,” American society remains plagued by mass deprivation and entrenched poverty. The “recovery” under Obama is limited to the wealthy and the super-rich, who have recovered all of the losses they suffered in the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street crash of September 2008 and grown richer than they were before the financial crisis. Social inequality has deepened as a result of policies designed to further redistribute wealth from the bottom of society to the top.

The American Dream now lives on ONLY for a select few. This privileged minority rails against handouts and programs for the unwashed masses while, at the same time, they demanded ever more handouts for themselves. What's worse, they have all but abandoned the rhetoric of a trickle down economy. They no longer pretend to care about the community as a whole -- it is all about them and how much more they can get their greedy hands on.