The only fact there is that Barack's meeting with a privacy board. "To reassure Americans" is conjecture. "To clamp down on the outrage" would also be conjecture but it would have the higher probability of being true.
It's really funny to watch the vanity at play here. You've got administration people who refuse to insist the obvious to Barack and you've got Barack's own vanity convinced he can smooth this over with as few steps as possible.
The spying scandal doesn't go away now. We said here that Barack needed to do a press conference -- a hostile one -- that the American people saw. That wouldn't have made them like the scandal any better but some of them who liked Barack would have said, "Well, he faced a tough crowd, I'll give him credit for that." But Prince Vanity refused to do that. And no one in the administration had the guts to tell him he had to do it.
You'd never have to tell Bill Clinton he had to face a tough crowd. He knew it. Because he understood politics and no one handed him a Senate seat or the Democratic Party's nomination for president. He had to work for everything and he had to know people and know how to communicate. One of the reasons Bill was forgiven by Americans for the 'sex' 'scandal,' for example, had to do with the fact that Bill faced the hostile press. A lot of us (including me) were of the opinion that what happened between two consenting adults was nobody's business. But the fact that Bill faced the hostile press added to that. And if he got testy with the press, America largely didn't care because the press was genuinely hostile to him.
The little Cult of St. Barack babies live in a dream world because Barack's first term was not difficult press wise. He was given the kind of ride that most presidents only get for their first 100 days. (And with Bill, he didn't even get that. He was savaged by the press during his first 100 days.) The whining and moaning from these little baby bitches has been hilarious to anyone who can remember other White House occupants. No one ever had it so easy. And no one ever accomplished so little.
Now, because he's so vain and because the administration is so scared of him, Barack's got the spying scandal attached to him forever. He waited too long. He refused to do what was needed. He's a real idiot about campaign politics. He hires a good team who then works overtime to destroy everyone in front of him. But he can't campaign. Even now, if the beloved teleprompter isn't present, he goes cold and can't communicate. He won't ad-lib. He won't go off the cuff. Our Modern Day Spock must have control of every moment at every time. You honestly have to wonder if there are some autism issues there, I'm not joking. This goes beyond control issues to an area where someone struggles to function if everything is not pre-planned.
Barack's got a little over three more years in office. There will be another scandal.
That's a given.
And because he failed on the spying scandal, all new scandals come with the built-in factor of "the bum lied about the spying!"
Because that's what you are to the American people when you refuse to face the music. Richard Nixon became that most infamously. But even 'beloved' Jimmy Carter struggled because he refused to face the music.
I don't care for Ronald Reagan but, like Bill Clinton, Reagan knew when to get in front of the press. I'm referring to press confrences not those bizarre attempts at seduction Barack likes to do with other men -- and Jimmy Carter was the same way. What was the 'lust in my heart' but an attempt to seduce Robert Scheer. Get serious. That doesn't make you a bad person but it does go to control issues and it does hurt you. Anais Nin, for example, was also one of those who had to be one-on-one because she thought she could seduce and influence that way. It allowed for her to have some very vocal cheerleaders among the press (literary press) but it is why the same press still struggles over how to fit her into the larger scheme of writers. (I love Anais' writing.)
I wanted Reagan impeached over Iran-Contra. He didn't get impeached. And a relative and member of the press told me he wouldn't because the country just couldn't go through that?
Huh?
No, the reality was that Reagan appeared to be facing the press and that took the sting (for them) out of what he'd done.
Reagan and Bill both knew how to communicate to the people. They knew that meant that sometimes they had to personally lose control in public (Reagan could get as confrontational with the press as Bill could) and that they had to take hostile questions and not having a dreamy cult meeting. Reagan and Bill earned respect because they could take the tough punches.
Barack is still so effete, he's still tossing the nose in the air (and apparently unaware he's doing it), he's still looking down his nose. He's a priss. And because the administration has treated him like veal, he's never toughened up, he's never developed a needed thick skin and he's like a little middle school girl crying over a slam book entry.
What an idiot surrounded by idiots.
I hated Reagan. But Reagan wasn't p.r. That's all Barack is. He and his advisors treating him like a product to be sold, kept in a pen.
Ben Brumfield (CNN) is reporting this morning. He's actually reporting as opposed to what Reuters is doing. This is from his report:
A watchdog group meant to guard Americans' right to privacy against overreach by government cyber intelligence has been around for years.
If that makes you feel safer, consider this:
It had no leader until May, and lawmakers delayed for years to fully staff it.
President Barack Obama
meets with the group for the first time Friday over the two-week old
phone and e-mail record-gathering scandal involving the National
Security Agency.
And the claims by the administration of the value the spying has offered?
Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall released the following joint-statement:
Wyden, Udall Issue Statement on Effectiveness of Declassified NSA Programs
“Over the past few days the Intelligence Community has made new assertions about the value of recently declassified NSA surveillance programs. In addition to the concerns that we have about the impact of large-scale collection on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans, we are also concerned that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 collection program (which allows collection of phone or internet communications, and involves the PRISM computer system) and the bulk phone records collection program operating under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT are being conflated in a way that exaggerates the value and usefulness of the bulk phone records collection program.
Based on the evidence that we have seen, it appears that multiple terrorist plots have been disrupted at least in part because of information obtained under section 702 of FISA. However, it appears that the bulk phone records collection program under section 215 of the USA Patriot Act played little or no role in most of these disruptions. Saying that “these programs” have disrupted “dozens of potential terrorist plots” is misleading if the bulk phone records collection program is actually providing little or no unique value.
The Intelligence Community notes that the massive collection of phone records under Section 215 has provided some relevant information in a few terrorism cases, but it is still unclear to us why agencies investigating terrorism do not simply obtain this information directly from phone companies using a regular court order. If the NSA is only reviewing those records that meet a “reasonable suspicion” standard, then there is no reason it shouldn’t be able to get court orders for the records it actually needs. Making a few hundred of these requests per year would clearly not overwhelm the FISA Court. And the law already allows the government to issue emergency authorizations to get these records quickly in urgent circumstances. The NSA’s five-year retention period for phone records is longer than the retention period used by some phone companies, but the NSA still has not provided us with any examples of instances where it relied on its bulk collection authority to review records that the relevant phone company no longer possessed.
In fact, we have yet to see any evidence that the bulk phone records collection program has provided any otherwise unobtainable intelligence. It may be more convenient for the NSA to collect this data in bulk, rather than directing specific queries to the various phone companies, but in our judgment convenience alone does not justify the collection of the personal information of huge numbers of ordinary Americans if the same or more information can be obtained using less intrusive methods.
If there is additional evidence for the usefulness of the bulk phone records collection program that we have not yet seen, we would welcome the opportunity to review it.”
Oops. The spin got called out. And as Eugene Robinson (Washington Post syndicated columnist) explains:
From the evidence so far, there's no good reason to let the National
Security Agency continue its massively intrusive practice of logging our
private phone calls. Congress should pull the plug.
I'm not
ignoring all the officials, including President Obama, who swear that
the NSA's electronic snooping has foiled dozens of terrorist plots and
saved untold lives. I'm just listening carefully, and what we're getting
is a lot of doublespeak and precious little clarity.Last night at the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and James Ball's latest expose went up:
Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.
The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.
The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.
The procedures cover only part of the NSA's surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The issue isn't going away.
And the damage it's done to Barack is now baggage he forever carries with him.
On the spying scandal, we have been noting it in the morning entries (like today) -- Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The snapshots focused more on Iraq than they have, I know. That's due to three Iraqi community members noting that Iraq has once again fallen off the world's media radar -- and how quick that was. That the only thing the media ever seems to care about is the death toll, not the destruction of rights and liberties in Iraq. And it was pointed out that when the 12 provinces had their April elections it was treated - by the media - like the most important thing in the world. We were told - before a vote was cast, weeks before -- over and over we were told -- that this was where Nouri consolidated his power, his legacy, his everything. He was going to be the huge winner!
As a group, they were wrong about the 2010 elections in Iraq and they were wrong about the April elections in Iraq. We weren't wrong here.
We didn't pimp that lie, check the archives. You'll find I said the predictions weren't going to come true but that I wouldn't play that game because Nouri wasn't on the ballot. These elections were not going to be about Nouri. When Nouri's State of Law did so poorly -- especially compared to what the world press insisted would happen -- I did not go, "See, I told you Nouri wasn't popular!"
He's not popular. But that's not demonstrated by the April elections. He wasn't on the ballot. He wasn't the issue. He may have had some impact on the results but he wasn't even the primary motivation.
Yes, it would have been so easy to accept the press lie -- accept it after the election -- and cite the results as proving I was right. But those results had little to do with Nouri and I don't play that nonsense game. Unlike our uneducated press that tries to 'cover' elections and polls, I actually took courses in that as an undergraduate and as a graduate student. You'll find "I can be wrong and often am" all over this website because I can be wrong and often am. But I don't think you'll ever find me offering that about the social sciences. I'm not talking about my guesses or my hunches. I'm talking about the basics of social sciences. I double majored in them as a undergraduate (poli sci and sociology) -- not because I planned to but because I don't like people telling me what to do. I had to pay for my education and the last thing I was going to do was take orders from some 'faculty adviser.' I think I met once to declare a major before the start of my first semester. I was late to that appointment, by a day, and he informed me I must be a poli sci major because poli sci students never came to the first day of class. Well that sounded good to me (skipping class), so that's why I became a poli sci major. (I'm not joking.)
I refused to major in journalism -- and had always been clear that I wouldn't -- but my parents believed I would change at the last minute. Nope. As part of their 'effort' to get me to change it, they informed me, right before the fall semester started, that they weren't paying for college after all -- unless I declared journalism as my major. Nope. And I wasn't going to not declare but lie to them. I don't like people trying to force me into anything. So I worked two or three jobs each semester the first two years (while taking a full load of courses). Then the trust fund kicked in and I no longer had to work to pay for college. (Though I still did work when not doing political activism.)
But those first 2 years when some people want a Daddy or Mommy? I didn't. And my attitude was, "I'm taking a full course load, I'm sleeping three hours every 24 hours and working two or three paid jobs. I'm paying for these classes, you're not going to tell me what I'm going to take."
So I usually took 16 hours a semester (fall and spring) and grabbed a few courses in the summer and when everyone was graduating the next semester is when I finally went to see a faculty advisor. I needed one course (one required course had to be taken) and that was it -- I had over-elected. At which point he said, "You have enough in Sociology to declare a double major." But I spent my time as an undergraduate taking what I wanted because I was paying for it. And what interested me the most were the social sciences. And my response to the advisor's news that I only needed one course wasn't to just take one course that last semester. I took five -- four more topics that I was interested in and that class that I wasn't.
Which was geography. I have no idea what that falls under. But it was to meet some requirement for my degree. My professor passed me, I didn't pass that course -- he even put me in his office to take the final and put me in front of a map. He came back in and asked me why I had turned and faced the other way and I said, "You didn't realize you had me in front of that map." Yeah, he did realize that. He was a very kind man. (I also had a professor in a math course that was far too kind to me. I showed up for the first class. But I never showed up again until the final. This was a semester when I had to do third jobs and the only third job I could find was during the afternoon -- when that class was taking place. I meant to drop but never had the time and then thought, 'Oh, I'll just take the failing grade.' Then it was the week of finals and I figured, what the heck, take the exam. But when I showed up, he said he'd heard about the death in my family -- there'd been no death and I hadn't ever contacted him about my absenses -- and he knew how hard that was so not to worry about the final. And he passed me for the course -- the course I skipped all but the first and the last day of. Thank you for that kindness.)
With social sciences? No, I've never doubted my abilities there because I had wonderful (and tough) professors who taught, really taught. I never had to fight with poli sci professors, for example, and all but one were conservatives. They argued their point of view and were welcoming when I argued mine (because I backed up my point of view). That was in stark contrast to the English and World lit professors who did not want to acknowledge that women writers had ever existed. With those (and with one sociology professor), I had to go round and round. But my poli sci professors were geniuses and really smart and gifted people are usually the most encouraging of various viewpoints. And I gladly soaked up as much as I could from them. (Which didn't make me a genius but did let me understand the areas I studied.)
What 'general studies' major journalism students never get is the social science. They should cringe, for example, before any election if they're running with the pack. There is never one possibility or one outcome ahead of an event. But they act as though there is only one and then they fail to show their work. And that's because they don't get that there is work there. One of my favorite poli sci professors was not just conservative but 100% on the opposite opinion end of everything I believed in. But that was never an issue and when we'd review the tests for the semester afterwards, he'd always say "for a perfect answer on that essay question see" mine.
Journalists have no clue about the social sciences or elections -- as a pack, they have no clue. They don't know what the hell they're talking about. A few of them will seek out an 'analysis' from an 'expert' (who often times isn't an expert in that field -- woops!) and then quote that person but it's clear that they don't even grasp what they're quoting.
Social science is about probabilities and outcomes. And most people are not trained in that. Journalists do not learn that, many other fields do not learn that. Someone majoring in history, for example, learns facts and figures. The social sciences are about possibilities. You have to learn the framework and then you have to be able to analyze and speculate -- and everything before an event (an election, the introduction of a bill, the public's possible reaction to the declaration of a war) is speculation. It's not wild speculation, it's informed speculation based on previous events and learning how to rank those events (a poll, a public response to a previous incident that has similarities, whatever). And that's a form of critical thinking that we need more than ever -- which is why the attacks on liberal arts education are so appalling -- and it's one that so few get trained in.
As a group, they were wrong about the 2010 elections in Iraq and they were wrong about the April elections in Iraq. We weren't wrong here.
But that may be why they were so silent about this week's elections. Maybe they're upset because they have egg on their face. Or maybe they were a little too vested in the outcome?
I honestly think they were judging by their writing. Had the turnout been 45% even (back in April) and had State of Law not squeaked to a victory but had the decisive and overwhelming victory they presented as the only possible outcome, they might have spent time on the elections.
Instead, the only US outlet that did reporting on the elections was AP.
But three Iraqi community members rightly pointed out to me that the elections in Anbar and Nineveh were not getting attention so we tried to break from the pack here and emphasize those in Wednesday's snapshot and make them the focus in Thursday's. (Anbar and Nineveh voted yesterday.)
The following community sites -- plus Tavis Smiley, Antiwar.com, Cindy Sheehan, The NewsHour, Pacifica Evening News and Ms. magazine's blog -- updated this morning and last night:
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq reuters steve holland cnn ben brumfield the washington post eugene robinson the guardian glenn greenwald james ball iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraqiraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq iraq
