Mark Udall
Americans deserve to know govt's secret interpretation of US #surveillance laws. Govt overreach is never good. #COpolitcs
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Truest statement of the week
If Americans are surprised by Obama’s deliberate attack on the Constitution, they have only themselves to blame. From his first months in office, Barack Obama has consistently demonstrated his contempt for Americans and their Constitution, as well as an intention to have his administration -- and especially Attorney General Holder’s Justice Department --treat them in a lying and lawless manner.
-- Michael Scheurer, "Bin Laden Predicted Obama's War on the 4th Amendment" (Information Clearing House).
Truest statement of the week II
If one good thing has come out of Barack Obama’s ascension to the White House, it is that his rise has exposed the appalling backwardness of the Black Misleadership Class – a petty and puny-minded cohort whose worldview is so narrow, it can accommodate only one issue: the political fortunes of the First Black President. Nothing else matters to these incredibly parochial political midgets – not issues of war and peace, nor the precarious state of planetary ecology, not even the economic well-being of the masses of Black Americans. Certainly, not civil liberties. Only Obama.
Congressman James Clyburn is supposed to represent the interests of more than half a million South Carolinians, the majority of them Black. One might expect a Black congressman to have more than a passing interest in the Bill of Rights and protection of civil liberties. The revelation that Uncle Sam is building up a dossier on everyone with a telephone and a computer connection should be at least mildly upsetting to anyone that calls himself a Black leader. But Congressman Clyburn has but one priority: to protect the image and legacy of Barack Obama.
--- Glen Ford, "Rep. Clyburn: Putting Obama First – and Civil Liberties, Peace and Justice, Last" (Black Agenda Report).
Congressman James Clyburn is supposed to represent the interests of more than half a million South Carolinians, the majority of them Black. One might expect a Black congressman to have more than a passing interest in the Bill of Rights and protection of civil liberties. The revelation that Uncle Sam is building up a dossier on everyone with a telephone and a computer connection should be at least mildly upsetting to anyone that calls himself a Black leader. But Congressman Clyburn has but one priority: to protect the image and legacy of Barack Obama.
--- Glen Ford, "Rep. Clyburn: Putting Obama First – and Civil Liberties, Peace and Justice, Last" (Black Agenda Report).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Another Sunday.
First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:
The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
So a brand new person for a truest. Those who complain it's always the same people should be especially glad this week.
Glen Ford also gets a truest.
If you saw this when it first went up, the long title had a different title. The t-word was not supposed to be in the headline. C.I. had requested that. I came up with a working title using the t-word and promised to change it. I forgot and it posted with the original and C.I. saying, "I didn't agree on that word!" It's fixed on that now.
Ava and C.I. take on the shallow and sick NPR. They really need to get a handle on their problems real damn quick because no one needs 'cooking' or 'boozing' segments from NPR. In fact, when CNN offered cooking segments, there was outrage. Why is no one outraged outraged by NPR's nonsense?
We needed an Iraq piece but we also needed to go to sleep. (We haven't yet!!!) Ava said she'd do a dialogue piece and rounded up volunteers. This really turned out well. Everyone did a good job.
'Experts,' NPR, need to know what they're talking about. The clown NPR brought on to call whistle-blower Ed Snowden a liar last week? She didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
Dona did another of her Report on Congress features. You'll note this one is very different than they usually are. It also led to my scrapping the editorial we thought we were running and us re-writing it.
Senator Mark Udall.
I moderate a roundtable because the e-mails keep asking when we're going to do another one.
We really liked the truest this week and we also liked his list of the scandals.
C.I. argued for this. There wasn't any real objection. We're reposting Betty's review of the new Superman film. Those of us who saw it already (including me) think it sucks.
Repost from Workers World.
Senator Patty Murray and Senator Kelly Ayotte's bill.
Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it.
Peace.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
Editorial: Barack's unconstitutional spying on America and the betrayal of the Congress
The revelations of Barack Obama's spying on the American people are only matched by the lack of spine on the part of Congress.
Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) broke the news: two weeks ago about the NSA collecting metadata on all Americans phone calls. Then came the news that the NSA and FBI were using PRISM, a program collecting data from the internet -- video, photos, e-mails, you name it. (Justin Rainmondo of Antiwar.com is calling it "Datagate").
This was enough for a functioning Congress to call for public hearings.
But we don't have a functioning Congress, we have a self-serving one where the biggest concern is, as Senator Mark Kirk wanted to know two weeks ago, is the government spying on them?
They don't give a damn about representing Americans.
They only care about themselves.
Are they being spied on?
And the only thing worse than those self-obsessed are the ones like Senator Dianne Feinstein who lied to the American people last week in the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing when she declared that any listening in on phone calls would require a court order. As the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committe, she'd already been briefed months ago that the NSA was not bound by that. A fact other members of Congress were only briefed on last week.
Dianne Feinstein intentionally lying to members of Congress and the public should result in, at the very least, an investigation into her actions by the US Senate Select Committee on Ethics.
That won't happen.
Because no one in the Congress seems to give a damn about either the American people or the US Constitution.
People like Dianne Feinstein have been actively attacking the Constitution and ripping it apart in the supposed name of 'protection.'
The American people were not consulted.
Here's a lonely voice that should instead be a chorus of Congressional voices:
Thank you, Senator Mark Udall, for giving a damn.
It's a shame there are so few of you in Congress, but thank you.
There's Senator Ron Wyden, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Rand Paul. But the most vocal politician may be former Vice President Al Gore who told The Guardian newspaper last week, "I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way. Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It's really something that Congress can make so very clear their distaste and disdain for the "security guard" profession (see this "Iraq snapshot" and this "Iraq snapshot"); however, the assault on the Constitution is something they need to ponder at length.
Though they appear to have forgotten, they took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Instead, the likes of Dianne Feinstein have worked overtime to shred and spit on the Constitution.
And they have the nerve to attack whistle-blower Ed Snowden?
The ones who belong in jail are them: Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and every other member of Congress who broke their sworn oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Those idiots, those assholes, need to be real careful right now. They're tossing around the word "treason" and applying it to Ed Snowden.
Treason? That would include failing to uphold a sworn oath so they need to be real careful about using the T-word.
---------------------------------
Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Predator of the United States."
Media: The Continued Self-destruction of NPR
Harry Shearer made a very important film entitled The Big Uneasy. It's easily one of the most important documentaries of the last decade. So promoting it should have been a breeze. Harry accepted an offer to appear on NPR's Talk of the Nation and hoped that other NPR shows -- like Morning Edition and All Things Considered -- would book him as a guest as well.
That didn't happen.
"Instead," then-NPR ombudsperson Alicia C. Shepard wrote in September of 2010, "Shearer learned how territorial NPR shows can be. Shearer appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation (TOTN) on Aug. 26. TOTN airs on 328 public radio stations and reaches an audience of 3.2 million a week."
By choosing Talk of the Nation, he wasn't able to go on Morning Edition or All Things Considered due to a "Dibs List" policy which prevents the same entertainment guest from appearing on more than one NPR produced program (unless, of course, they're an NPR on-air hawking a book, then the "Dibs List" 'rule' is tossed aside).
The policy was supposedly about creating a level playing field for all of NPR's shows.
It was a joke when Shepard was explaining it in 2010 and it became more of a joke last week.
At the end of April, we offered "Media: NPR Chatter (Because NPR Can't Do News)" and we noted how NPR's Morning Edition booked faded TV star Jerry Seinfeld and guffawed at his statements -- even the ones that were obvious lies. There was no reason to book him but how they howled with laughter while he plugged his new series -- a web series because even NBC isn't interested in Seinfeld anymore.
It was one shot for Harry and his important documentary. But with bad web shows, it's twice the promotional effort which is how Jerry showed up last Thursday on Morning Edition again to promote his bad web series.
As Shepard explained the policy, Harry's one appearance on Talk of the Nation meant nothing else for five months. Yet Jerry's been given two prime spots on Morning Edition to promote his bad show. It's a cheap-o series that you wouldn't even indulge a 14-year-old over but there was Linda Wertheimer praising it like it was Bergman and Truffaut:
Now, I have to say though that the thing that I thought was enormously appealing about this program is how much you appear to love doing it. And after all of those sort of years of kind of deadpan comedy that we're used to from you, there you are, you're just laughing your head off at things that people say to you.
Love doing it?
Love tired smut and discrimination passed off as funny, you mean? Inside the car, Sarah gets excited.
Sarah Silverman: Ew, these switches!
Jerry Seinfeld: Isn't this kind of cool? James Bondy?
Sarah Silverman: So old timey! Oh my God, my nephew, when he was little, would have gone crazy for this. Does your son like windshield wipers?
Jerry Seinfeld: No.
Sarah Silverman: Is he gay?
That's funny? Whether 10-year-old Julian or eight-year-old Shepherd is gay? That 'joke' is so old that it predates the internet.
As Sarah Silverman demonstrates, lonely gals tend to be obsessed with gay men as an 'oddity' and have to reference them as such. So when Jerry brings up sense of humor, Silverman naturally has to return to the topic.
Sarah Silverman: It's almost like homosexuality. Like, gay men are pretty much born gay.
Jerry Seinfeld: Mmm-hmm.
Sarah Silverman: And women too. But then there are some women that kind of like --
Jerry Seinfeld: They pick it up.
Sarah Silverman: Pick it up.
Jerry Seinfeld: Mmm-hmm.
Sarah Silverman: But it's like you're either kind of born that way --
Jerry Seinfeld: Men are pretty much born gay.
Sarah Silverman: Not all men.
Jerry Seinfeld: The 'pretty much' bothered me.
Sarah Silverman: Why?
They both laugh.
But the only thing funny is that this episode was the focus of NPR's Morning Edition for over seven minutes.
"The program looks like it's very simple," offers Linda Wertheimer to Jerry Seinfeld.
You ain't just whistling Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song," Linda!
Sarah Silverman shares of the car she drives, to just picture, "any classic lesbian car." She then goes on to discuss her friends who do not wipe their bottoms very well -- only in more graphic detail.
This is programming NPR sees fit to plug twice in three months.
Silly Harry Shearer! Wasting everyone's time with soil and flood-control experts when he should have been talking about fecal matter or how 'strange' gay people are. That would have led to saturation coverage on NPR. But making a movie documenting how the government failed a people? Well that just lacks the infotainment factor NPR now requires.
And it just gets worse. As if Morning Edition's new 'cooking' segment wasn't bad enough -- it's not a cooking segment, it's an attempt at being cute and clever (an attempt far beyond NPR) -- now comes the news that they're about to start a segment called "the Booze Round. We want to see the strange mystery bottles that are hanging out in your liquor cabinet, so head on over to npr.org/cupboard, shoot a picture and submit it." It's hard to imagine that they could get any further from their vision statement:
It's hard to imagine that they could get any further from their vision statement but, we're sure, given a few more months, they'll manage to not only get even further from the statement but to also to become even more useless.
That didn't happen.
"Instead," then-NPR ombudsperson Alicia C. Shepard wrote in September of 2010, "Shearer learned how territorial NPR shows can be. Shearer appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation (TOTN) on Aug. 26. TOTN airs on 328 public radio stations and reaches an audience of 3.2 million a week."
By choosing Talk of the Nation, he wasn't able to go on Morning Edition or All Things Considered due to a "Dibs List" policy which prevents the same entertainment guest from appearing on more than one NPR produced program (unless, of course, they're an NPR on-air hawking a book, then the "Dibs List" 'rule' is tossed aside).
The policy was supposedly about creating a level playing field for all of NPR's shows.
It was a joke when Shepard was explaining it in 2010 and it became more of a joke last week.
At the end of April, we offered "Media: NPR Chatter (Because NPR Can't Do News)" and we noted how NPR's Morning Edition booked faded TV star Jerry Seinfeld and guffawed at his statements -- even the ones that were obvious lies. There was no reason to book him but how they howled with laughter while he plugged his new series -- a web series because even NBC isn't interested in Seinfeld anymore.
It was one shot for Harry and his important documentary. But with bad web shows, it's twice the promotional effort which is how Jerry showed up last Thursday on Morning Edition again to promote his bad web series.
As Shepard explained the policy, Harry's one appearance on Talk of the Nation meant nothing else for five months. Yet Jerry's been given two prime spots on Morning Edition to promote his bad show. It's a cheap-o series that you wouldn't even indulge a 14-year-old over but there was Linda Wertheimer praising it like it was Bergman and Truffaut:
Now, I have to say though that the thing that I thought was enormously appealing about this program is how much you appear to love doing it. And after all of those sort of years of kind of deadpan comedy that we're used to from you, there you are, you're just laughing your head off at things that people say to you.
Love doing it?
Love tired smut and discrimination passed off as funny, you mean? Inside the car, Sarah gets excited.
Sarah Silverman: Ew, these switches!
Jerry Seinfeld: Isn't this kind of cool? James Bondy?
Sarah Silverman: So old timey! Oh my God, my nephew, when he was little, would have gone crazy for this. Does your son like windshield wipers?
Jerry Seinfeld: No.
Sarah Silverman: Is he gay?
That's funny? Whether 10-year-old Julian or eight-year-old Shepherd is gay? That 'joke' is so old that it predates the internet.
As Sarah Silverman demonstrates, lonely gals tend to be obsessed with gay men as an 'oddity' and have to reference them as such. So when Jerry brings up sense of humor, Silverman naturally has to return to the topic.
Sarah Silverman: It's almost like homosexuality. Like, gay men are pretty much born gay.
Jerry Seinfeld: Mmm-hmm.
Sarah Silverman: And women too. But then there are some women that kind of like --
Jerry Seinfeld: They pick it up.
Sarah Silverman: Pick it up.
Jerry Seinfeld: Mmm-hmm.
Sarah Silverman: But it's like you're either kind of born that way --
Jerry Seinfeld: Men are pretty much born gay.
Sarah Silverman: Not all men.
Jerry Seinfeld: The 'pretty much' bothered me.
Sarah Silverman: Why?
They both laugh.
But the only thing funny is that this episode was the focus of NPR's Morning Edition for over seven minutes.
"The program looks like it's very simple," offers Linda Wertheimer to Jerry Seinfeld.
You ain't just whistling Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song," Linda!
Sarah Silverman shares of the car she drives, to just picture, "any classic lesbian car." She then goes on to discuss her friends who do not wipe their bottoms very well -- only in more graphic detail.
This is programming NPR sees fit to plug twice in three months.
Silly Harry Shearer! Wasting everyone's time with soil and flood-control experts when he should have been talking about fecal matter or how 'strange' gay people are. That would have led to saturation coverage on NPR. But making a movie documenting how the government failed a people? Well that just lacks the infotainment factor NPR now requires.
And it just gets worse. As if Morning Edition's new 'cooking' segment wasn't bad enough -- it's not a cooking segment, it's an attempt at being cute and clever (an attempt far beyond NPR) -- now comes the news that they're about to start a segment called "the Booze Round. We want to see the strange mystery bottles that are hanging out in your liquor cabinet, so head on over to npr.org/cupboard, shoot a picture and submit it." It's hard to imagine that they could get any further from their vision statement:
- NPR, with its network of independent member stations, is America's pre-eminent news institution.
- We strive to inform our democracy and culture by bringing important stories, insight and delight to audiences everywhere.
- NPR innovates and leads; we discover and develop new talent and ideas.
- We seek out new audiences and search for ways to be more essential, using every available platform of communication - across the nation and around the world.
It's hard to imagine that they could get any further from their vision statement but, we're sure, given a few more months, they'll manage to not only get even further from the statement but to also to become even more useless.
The Iraq Dialogue
Ava: We're going to be chock full of dialogue/transcript pieces this edition. My apologies for one more; however, we need to cover Iraq. So we're doing a discussion piece. Here's who is participating: Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts; Ann of Ann's Mega Dub and me, Ava, of The Third Estate Sunday Review. This is a relative small group and this is a rush transcript. For those who don't know any better, the Iraq War is over. Kat, want to grab that?Kat: Sure. Through yesterday there have been 211 violent deaths this month according to Iraq Body Count. If the war is over, someone forgot to tell Iraqis that fact. In addition, let me quote from C.I.'s June 7th snapshot:
December 6, 2012, the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department Defense of the United States of America was signed. We covered it in the December 10th and December 11th snapshots -- lots of luck finding coverage elsewhere including in media outlets -- apparently there was some unstated agreement that everyone would look the other way. It was similar to the silence that greeted Tim Arango's September 25th New York Times report which noted, "Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to [US] General [Robert L.] Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."
Kat (Con't): When the US government is sending US troops back into Iraq and signing MoUs stop claiming the Iraq War is over unless you're a cheap, dirty whore.
Trina: Hello, CODESTINK!
Betty: Amen to that.
Trina: CODESTINK repeatedly lies to the American people and tells them that the Iraq War is over. CODESTINK fails to tell Americans that, just last fall, Barack sent another unit of Special Ops back into Iraq. CODESTINK is not about peace. And I think C.I. nailed that this week with regards to Kim Rivera.
Ava: I agree but talk about that.
Trina: CODESTINK's Jodie Evans appeared on KPFK's Connect the Dots with Lila Garrett Monday. Jodie was using her usual diversionary tactics to protect Barack -- whom Jodie bundled millions for to get him into the White House. She's not a neutral party or anyone concerned with peace. She's really just a cheap whore for the Democratic Party who will whore for war when Democrats are in charge.
Ann: Can I jump in?
Trina: Sure.
Ann: Jodie Evans has a blog post at CODEPINK. I just left the following comment:
Ann (Con't): Let's see if I make it out of moderation and my comment actually hits their blog. If it doesn't, we'll know they're fakes. But maybe they truly are so dumb and so stupid that they have missed this news.
Trina: I think that's a good test. I also think Jodie Evans is full of s**t. Listening to her prattle on about how we have to do this and do that and if we say that Bradley Manning is in front of a Kanagaroo Court we are failing him, failing the movement and, swear to God Jodie said this to Lila last Monday, failing the world.
Ava: Talk about Kim Rivera, Trina.
Trina: Sorry. Kim Rivera is a war resister. Jodie Evans failed Kim and felt no need to speak of how failing Kim would be failing the movement or the world. C.I. noted this Thursday:
Supposedly, Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin created a group for women opposed to the war. Kim Rivera is a war resister. She and her family went to Canada because she refused to go back to the Iraq War which she found to be criminal. In September of 2012, she was informed she would be deported back to the US. We covered that repeatedly here, check the archives. CODESTINK? They had time to issue, among other nonsense, "Two Women Wrongfully Arrested for Standing on Sidewalk Holding Pink Bras in front of Bank of America." They never issued one damn press release on Kim. April 29th, Kim faced a court-martial. They were too busy with the Bush library and with their idiotic hunger strike (are they dead yet?) to cover Kim.
Trina (Con't): They did nothing for Iraq War resister Kim Rivera, no action, not even a press release. So spare me the pretense that CODEPINK gives a damn.
Ava: We've all heard the Lila Garrett interview. Trina noted Jodie's comments regarding Bradley Manning. For background, and I'm copping C.I.'s summary that she uses in various snapshots, Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the Collateral Damage video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions. February 28th, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks. This month, Bradley's court-martial finally started. Mike, can I grab you for this since you're an attorney?
Mike: Sure. But I really don't have anything to add that C.I. hasn't said. David Coombs is an idiot and a vain glory who's done a lousy job fighting Brad's case in the court of public opinion so I guess it's not a surprise that he's a failure in the courtroom as well. He made the decision to forgo a jury. With a jury deciding, you can make a variety of arguments that appeal to a variety of emotions. But Coombs wanted no jury. That means a military officer is presiding over the court-martial and deciding. Jodie Evans babbled away to Lila Garrett about how great it was that Coombs made this emotional appeal about how Bradley's this little guy and confused and blah blah blah. You do that for a jury. When you skip a jury, when you have a judge deciding, you make the argument about the law. C.I. outlined that in the June 3rd snapshot. She's correct. If you can't make an emotional appeal, as a defendant, your next choice is to make an appeal with regards to the law. Argue that this law is in conflict with another law and invite the judge to enter into that debate, let the judge have a sense of importance, a sense of, "Yes, I must rule because clarity is needed so my great and mighty brain is needed." You're appealing to the judge's sense of vanity and if you've ever argued a case in front of a judge, you know damn well that there is no such thing as overestimating a judge's vanity.
Ava: So, Mike, you're in agreement that it's a kangaroo court?
Mike: It's a lost cause. It's lost because Coombs is an idiot.
Ava: Isaiah, so what's wrong with what Jodie Evans is calling for?
Isaiah: Everything. She's lying to people, for one thing. Pretending like they have the ability to influence a military court. They don't. A jury? Maybe. Judge Denise Lind? Nope. And with the way Coombs is 'arguing,' it's already over. But Evans is arguing that this should be our sole focus for the next 12 weeks, she makes that argument on the show. Outside of the regular events in your daily life, this must be the most pressing issue. It's stupidity. There are many other issues and they are more important.
Ava: Mike, C.I. made a point last week, regarding Evan's claims. C.I. stated that Jodie's lying about the importance of this case. C.I. pointed out that it's a military court and a court-martial in a military court does not become a precedent in a civilian court.
Mike: That's correct. That's also something I miss from C.I. She's overtaxed to the max. But she can pick out stuff like that if you run it past her. I run a lot of my cases past her and she'll find the weak point immediately. But back in, say 2006, at The Common Ills, when there were less demands on her, she would be offering that all the time. I can remember her stuff about the outing of Valerie Plame for instance. A lot of legal talk about that did not stand up. C.I.'s does. She has a very sharp mind. And, yes, she's correct, Bradley can be tossed in a military brig and it's not going to effect Boston versus Joe Blow next week because it will not be precedent setting or important to a civilian court.
Stan: What Evans is doing is arguing for WikiLeaks but pretending to care about Brad. The reality is that Julian Assange appears to have helped in the access or transfer of the leaked documents. That is what the prosecution argued.
Ava: And that would have civilian implications?
Mike: Possible. But not. C.I.?
C.I.: Sure. If Bradley Manning testified that Julian Assange helped him leak the documents -- or helped him access documents he was having trouble accessing -- that's no longer a press issue. Assange's legal team is insisting WikiLeaks is a press outlet. A press outlet has certain protections. They are not, however, able to assist in stealing documents. If Bradley were to testify to that in his court-martial, he would be expected to testify to that in a criminal trial against Assange in civilian courts. If, however, Bradley does not testify to that, the government's got nothing.
Ava: Okay, Brad is an Iraq War veteran. We do support Brad but there's a better use of our time. I agree that we can't afford to go under trying to save someone that we can't save. It's a pity we can't save him but that's the reality of it. If a functioning attorney had been hired, things might be different. It's amazing how Jodie Evans has no concern about the Iraqi people and helping them. Wally, tell us about what's going on in terms of protests.
Wally: Sure. The Iraqi people took to the streets starting December 21st. That was a result to the tensions over many issues including a lack of public services, a lack of jobs, a lack of a responsive governmet, but the spark was two things: Reports that girls and women in Iraqi prisons and detention centers were being tortured and raped and Nouri arresting staff members and bodyguards of Rafi al-Issawi on December 20th.
Kat: Rafi al-Issawi serves as the Minister of Finance, although he has since announced he's resigned but who knows there. He's a Sunni and a member of Iraqiya. Iraqiya beat Nouri al-Maili in the 2010 elections which means one of them should be prime minister right now but Nouri refused to surrender the office of prime minister and Barack backed him on that and had the US negotiate a contract, The Erbil Agreement, that went around the Iraqi Constitution and its requirements for how someone becomes prime minister. The arrest of al-Issawi's staff echoed an arrest the year prior of Tareq al-Hashemi's staff.
Ava: al-Hashemi is the Vice President of Iraq who went to the KRG and then Nouri announced charges against him. Tareq has not returned to Baghdad. He was convicted and sentenced, four or five times, to the death penalty. Protests have been all over Iraq but primarily in Nineveh Province and Anbar.
Wally: And Nouri punished them by declaring that they couldn't vote in the April provincial elections. Supposedly, they're about to vote now but, with Nouri, always wait and see.
Betty: Iraq's supposed to hold parliamentary elections next year. There are calls for early elections this year and that might happen but they're supposed to hold elections next year. I don't know that that does any good. Nouri refused to honor the 2010 elections, why should anyone believe that he'll honor these elections.
Trina: Exactly. I mean, in February 2011, he promised he wouldn't seek a third term and now his attorneys, his Dawa Party and his State of Law political slate are all saying he'll seek a third term. It's like The Erbil Agreement, he signed that to get his second term as prime minister and then refused to honor the promises he made in that document. Why should anyone ever expect him to keep his word at this late date?
Ava: I think we're all pretty much in agreement regarding what Trina just said. Iraq's suffering from a number of crises currently. After the 2010 elections, when Nouri's State of Law lost to Iraqiya, there was a political stalemate that lasted over eight months. Nothing could move forward, Nouri refused to step down. In November 2010, the US-brokered Erbil Agreement allowed things to move forward. As we noted, Nouri used it to get a second term and then stalled saying he'd implement the various provisions later and then he just refused to implement them.
Betty: To this day.
Ava: To this day, yes. Martin Kobler, the UN Special Envoy to Iraq who is now being moved over to the Congo, has -- like the US government -- insisted that Iraqis need to come to an agreement about their future, that Iraqi politicians need to make sacrifices. Ann, what's wrong with that thinking?
Ann: In 2010, Iraqi politicians were told the same thing and they did make sacrifices. That was The Erbil Agreement. It wasn't honored. Nouri got his way and honored none of the sacrifices he put into that contract. So you've got political blocs who have already given and already made sacrifices and now you're asking them to make more sacrifices and to do when Nouri has never to honored his promises in The Erbil Agreement. That's like if Cedric and I had a dispute with a neighbor and ended up making a legal agreement saying that Neighbor Barney gets five additional feet in the backyard and we get three additional feet in the front yard but Barney takes the five while never giving us the three. Now John Kerry and Barack Obama are at my door saying, "Ann, you and Barney need to sit down and work this out and compromise." No, 'we' don't. I kept my part of the bargain, I gave the five feet in the backyard. Until Barney forks over the three in the front, I don't have anything to say. Barack doesn't care that Nouri never implemented Article 140 of the Constitution, as he promised the Kurds he would, they just want the Kurds to give up more and more. That's not fair.
Elaine: Right and that's what C.I. means when she's talking about the re-setting of the clock. That keeps benefiting Nouri. No one else. The other sides compromise and make good faith effort and Nouri never gives anything. That's not fair. I also feel like C.I. with regards to The Erbil Agreement. It was stupid to sign it. Look at the Kurds. What did they want in exchange for agreeing to give Nouri the second term? They wanted Article 140 implemented. They wanted that in The Erbil Agreement. It was put into the agreement. Why? Article 140 is part of the Constitution and it is supposed to be implemented no later than the end of 2007 -- that's in the text of the Iraqi Constitution. If Nouri wasn't going to honor his oath to the Constitution -- and he wasn't, he became prime minister in 2006 and, by 2010, still hadn't implemented it -- if he was going to honor his oath to the Constitution or the Constitution, why the hell did the Kurds think putting it into The Erbil Agreement would really make a difference?
Kat: I agree. Although it's also true that the White House was telling the political blocs that The Erbil Agreement was a legally binding contract and that it would have the full backing of the US government. That was a lie and they've never pressed Nouri to honor his promises.
Elaine: True. But also true, they shouldn't have believed the White House to begin with. State of Law comes in second and instead of arguing for Nouri to step down, the White House default position is Nouri must get a second term? That should have told the Kurds right there and then that the US government wasn't really concerned with fairness.
Kat: Point taken.
Isaiah: Wally, Kat, Ava and C.I. talk to various groups and organizations about the ongoing wars -- including the Iraq War. I'm wondering how that's going?
Wally: In terms of?
Isaiah: I'm thinking of Barack sending US troops back into Iraq, for example.
Wally: That's never been a problem because C.I. can cite from memory, so when anyone had a question, she would say whatever day of the New York Times it was that Tim Arango's article ran and whatever page it was and for them to look it up. But one thing I do now is carry copies of "Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights" from the Congressional Research Service. I explain that this is Congress' think tank, this is who gives the facts to Congress and if they have a friend who might be doubtful, they can grab one of these copies from me and use it to back up the claims. I usually end up giving out at least five of those every time we speak.
Kat: And he gave out none when he would say, "If you need to back that up, you can refer to this."
Wally: Right. If I sell it as, 'In case your friends doubt you,' they'll grab it.
Isaiah: It's really amazing that you four have to be like Paul Revere, riding through the country, proclaiming, "Barack's sent troops back into Iraq!" and you're having to do that because other people won't do their job. I'm thinking of Phyllis Bennis, for example.
Stan: I would agree with that. And these people present as experts. Does Phyllis grasp how many people stop listening to her on Syria or whatever this week's pet cause is after she lies that all US troops are out of Iraq? I don't think she does. But if she can't get that correct, why would we expect her to get anything else right?
Ava: I want everyone to name one of the most pressing needs facing Iraq right now. You don't have to develop it -- and we don't have time for you to -- but let's do that and, if possible, try to avoid repeating someone else's answer. Betty, you start.
Betty: Alright. I think there needs to be an answer as the treatment of Iraqi girls and women in prisons and detention centers and I think this needs to be a public process to ensure the abuse doesn't happen again.
Ann: Okay, I'll jump in. I would say that Nouri has to answer for the April 23rd massacre in Hawija. And precautions need to be created to prevent any other civilian protests from being targeted.
Mike: I'll go with that but in terms of the Iraqi military needs to get out of the Iraqi cities. It should not and must not be used to penalize the Iraqi people. The longer this takes place, the less chance Iraq has of ever being a democracy.
Elaine: I would say the most pressing issue has to do with Nouri being in charge despite repeatedly being caught running secret prisons where Iraqis are tortured. Nouri needs to step down or be voted out. Even if that means calling early votes.
Trina: I would go for something very basic because I do think the basic things have incredible importance. So, for me, I would argue the most pressing issue is fixing the infrastructure so that Iraqis can have dependable electricity and drinking water and so that heavy rains don't mean water standing up to the knees or higher in areas like Sadr City of Baghdad.
Isaiah: I'm glad Trina grabbed that. It's important and I wouldn't have thought of it. I have a related issue. Stop gutting the ration card system. The US government wanted that done away with but that system provides Iraqis with free flour, tea and a few other items each month. It used to be a lot more but the system's been gutted and gutted and guted.
Stan: I'm going to piggy back on Mike. Niqash has a new article about the votes in Anbar and Nineveh and whether Nouri's standing army occupying those two provinces will influence the vote? So I would call -- as the citizens of those two provinces have been doing -- for the military to get out.
Kat: The protesters have been protesting since December 21st. They count as a victory that Kobler's being removed as the Special Envoy to Iraq. But that's the UN. They've had demands on Nouri and he's refused to do anything. I would say the most pressing issue is that Nouri's government needs to start making concessions to the protesters.
Wally: C.I., Mohammed Tawfeeq works for CNN, right?
C.I.: Yes.
Wally: Okay, I got it up on my laptop. This is Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) from last July, "Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has struggled to forge a lasting power-sharing agreement and has yet to fill key Cabinet positions, including the ministers of defense, interior and national security, while his backers have also shown signs of wobbling support." So I'd argue the most pressing issue is filling those three security positions -- especially at a time when Iraq's seeing its worst violence in five years.
Ava: And now I'm screwing my dear friend over. I was going to let C.I. go last but I'm sure she's got a longer list than I do. All that's left on my list is one thing so I'm jumping in now. The most pressing issue is addressing the vast and dangerous pollution from the war and weapons like White Phosphorus and Depleted Uranium. The birth defects and rates of cancer are out of control. In the immediate future, the World Health Organization needs to release its report on this issue that it's kept under wraps for some time now. Now, C.I., you get that last word.
C.I.: Okay. It emerged, as last week wound down, that Iraqi journalist Zamil Ghanam was assassinated in Baghdad last Sunday and that the government had and was sitting on details about his death. This is a little more blatant than usual but there's been no effort to solve these murders. As Helena Williams (Independent) noted recently, "According to the CPJ," Committee to Protect Journalists, "Iraq continues to have the world's worst record on impunity, with more than 90 unsolved murders over the past decade and no sign that the authorities are working to solve any of them." That includes Hadi al-Mahdi who was assassinated in his Baghdad home September 8, 2011. No effort made to solve that murder. Let one of Nouri's thugs with a gun get killed and Nouri's threatening entire provinces with collective punishment. A journalist dies? He doesn't even pretend to give a damn.
Ava: Thank you. This is a rush transcript. Our e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Stupid Punk Ass Clown of the Week
C.I.'s been calling out NPR's garbage all last week including in "NPR tries to sway public opinion on spying." If you doubted her on how bad NPR was, let's note first that Declan McCullagh (CNET) reported yesterday:
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Now let's note 'expert' Carie Corderro in Steve Henn's report for Wednesday's Morning Edition:
SNOWDEN: Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email.
HENN: So is this plausible?
CARRIE CORDERO: No.
HENN: Carrie Cordero is the director of National Security Studies at Georgetown University Law Center.
CORDERO: The notion that this individual has the authority to go ahead and quote-unquote wiretap people is just ridiculous.
What's that Cordero?
We think it's the sound of your clown face cracking. Reach down and pick it up off the floor. You didn't know what you were talking about. You're an idiot and let's hope your students at Georgetown next fall heckle you.
Let's also hope you learn a lesson, dumb ass, that you need to close your mouth and listen and stop telling us what's what because your sheer stupidity is breath taking.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Now let's note 'expert' Carie Corderro in Steve Henn's report for Wednesday's Morning Edition:
SNOWDEN: Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email.
HENN: So is this plausible?
CARRIE CORDERO: No.
HENN: Carrie Cordero is the director of National Security Studies at Georgetown University Law Center.
CORDERO: The notion that this individual has the authority to go ahead and quote-unquote wiretap people is just ridiculous.
What's that Cordero?
We think it's the sound of your clown face cracking. Reach down and pick it up off the floor. You didn't know what you were talking about. You're an idiot and let's hope your students at Georgetown next fall heckle you.
Let's also hope you learn a lesson, dumb ass, that you need to close your mouth and listen and stop telling us what's what because your sheer stupidity is breath taking.
Report on Congress
Dona: We are back this Sunday with another "Report on Congress." Last week, there were two reported on Congressional hearings. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing held a hearing. C.I. reported on it in that day's "Iraq snapshot," Ava in "Shut up, Senator Barbara Mikulski," Wally in "Mikulski loves the sound of her own voice (Wally)" and Kat in "Senator Susan Collins Eats The Young." In Friday's "Iraq snapshot," C.I. touched on it again and also noted the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing she and Kat attended. Wally, who was the main witness at the Wednesday hearing?
Wally: The main witness was Director of National Security General Keith B. Alexander. The Committee Chair is the awful Senator Barbara Mikulski.
Dona: Mikulski really ticked you off. Not just Wally but all of you. Ava, look at the title of your piece.
Ava: She needs to learn to shut her damn mouth. She is a disgrace and a nightmare. She is every sexist notion of what a woman being a Committee Chair means. She interrupts other senators in the middle of their questioning to editorialize or share a joke or just let you know what the weather's like. She is so unprofessional and if anyone dared to treat her like this, she would have a very vocal fit. But she expects everyone on her Committee to indulge her.
Dona: She took time out in the hearing to trash some reporter who had Tweeted during the hearing.
Kat: Right. Tweeted that she, Mikulski, was attempting to prevent people from asking questions. She was furious about that.
Dona: And yet none of you mentioned that.
Kat: We don't usually go for the obvious unless it's key to the hearing. It was clear, after the hearing, that reporters were going to seize on that so that allowed us to focus on things that they were going to miss. That's what we do. There's no point in us writing about the one moment everybody else is covering.
Dona: You're right. And it really did up being 'the story' about the hearing so, yes, the four of you were better to cover other things from the hearing. C.I., among the things you focused on what Senator Patrick Leahy. What was key there>?
C.I.: Senator Leahy was questioning the scope. He was noting how wide the net was -- data on all phone calls -- versus the claim of "dozens" of terrorism cases stopped.
Dona: Claims.
C.I.: Right. We can't know a number. It's top secret. "Dozens." Alexander acted as though he were giving us the code to Fort Knox with that information. And it's a claim and they won't back it up because they can't.
Dona: Ava, you report that Senator Mike Johanns was attempting to question Alexander about spying on people's internet searches and that Mikulski cut him off and then, not only didn't let him resume, but tossed to Senator Dianne Feinstein to let her chatter on.
Ava: Yeah, Big Babsie didn't want anyone asking questions. As the reporter Tweeted. Babsie got really nasty. You know, C.I.'s complained in these discussions you moderate about us attending a State Dept hearing that never mentioned Iraq although the hearing was supposed to be about the State Dept's budget. And we've talked about how that's typical. A hearing, everyone goes off on whatever they want in the questions. Big Babsie had to keep informing everyone that the hearing was about cybersecurity. She is such a control freak.
Dona: And she was offensive. You noted that when Senator Mike Johanns finally got his time back, she was blabbering away about the law and he felt the need to remind her that he was a lawyer.
Ava: Right, he said it nicely but he shouldn't have. The whole Committee should just revolt against her. If I were on the Committee and asking questions and she pulled that crap with me? I'd say, "Oh, I'm sorry, am I taking up your time?" And when she said no, I'd respond, "Then let me have my time."
Dona: Wally, she cut off Senator Jeff Merkley as well.
Wally: Right. But she cut off everybody. She's a big blabber mouth that needs to learn to shut her trap.
Dona: I take it you have no plans to go to another of her hearings.
Wally: Hell no! Life is too damn short. That was our second encounter of Chair Barbara Babbles. Never again. I was just sitting there praying, "God, come down from heaven and punch her in the face." No, I never want to be at a hearing that she chairs again. Never.
Dona: Kat, you noted Susan Collins.
Kat: Senator Collins? What a trip. C.I. pointed out Senator Dick Durbin's disgust with whistle-blower Ed Snowden because Snowden was once a security guard. Collins found it disgusting as well. And let Alexander know how appalled she was that young people are being hired for jobs. He had to clarfiy to her that the military always hires young people. That was apparently a novel concept for the idiot.
Dona: You're mad.
Kat: Yeah, Susie Collins was one of the people who insisted that Snowden couldn't have listened in on phone calls and that this was a lie. Too bad for her crazy ass, US House Rep Jerry Nadler to CNET yesterday that, yes, Snowden or anyone else could, that the NSA briefed Congress on that last week.
Dona: In the time when we've been doing this feature, even when focusing on Eric Shinseki's shortcomings as VA Secretary, I've never heard all of you this mad before. You are clearly mad. Am I wrong?
Ava: No. You're right. We're fed up. Kat and C.I. went to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing and Wally and I skipped it because we are fed up.
Dona: With?
Ava: A Congress that thinks it's better than the country or its people. A pissy little priss senator named Durbin who thinks that he can sneer at someone because their job is or was being a security guard. Oh dear Lord in heaven, what have we come to? They don't even try to hide it. Durbin and Collins were quite clear that they are so far above security guards. It was disgusting.
Wally: And when you have a Merkley or a Johanns or a Leahy trying to do the job, you've got Bib Babsie cutting them off.
C.I.: Excuse me, Wally, she didn't cut Leahy off. She's a stupid idiot but she was smart enough to know better than to try to interrupt his questions.
Wally: You're right, she didn't cut him off. He was the only one. She must be scared of him. But the idea that we as Americans can't know what's being done. All the secrecy comes from the fact that they're looking down on us. Last week it was Congress thinking they were better and above security guards, next week, it'll be nurses. fire fighters after that. What a bunch of uppity snobs who need to be kicked out of office.
Dona: Kat?
Kat: I'm agreeing with every word spoken. Sorry. I've never seen such pompous behavior in my life. And I was sinking in my seat every time Dianne Feinstein opened her mouth to distract and lie some more.
Dona: Feinstein's one of our senators.
Kat: And as usual she knows everything but forgot to protect the Constitution and now she seems determined to protect her own ass.
C.I.: Just to be clear on this. Kat's already talked about how US Rep Nadler has come out and revealed that Congress was told this week that any phone call could be listened to and, no, the NSA didn't even need to get a warrant for that. That was all of Congress. Dianne Feinstein is the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She's been briefed all along. Yet in the Senate Appropriations Committee, she flat out lied and stated that for any listening on phone calls a warrant would have to be issued first. She lied. She knew she was lying.
Dona: You called her out as a liar on that. And you know her.
C.I.: Yes, I do know her and I know her tell when she's lying. It was obvious she was lying in the hearing, even before Saturday's revelations. Dianne Feinstein, she needs to get honest and she probably needs to step down as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee because (a) she's provided lousy oversight and (b) she's now lied to the public and members of Congress.
Dona: Okay, I'm not going to pursue anything else on this topic because you four were there and clearly the major take away from that hearing was the level of disrespect from the Chair, from Durbin, from Feinstein and from Collins for the American people. As always, this is a rush transcript.
Tweet of the Week
Senator Mark Udall Tweeted the following today:
-
Americans deserve to know govt's secret interpretation of US
#surveillance laws. Govt overreach is never good.#COpolitcs
Roundtable
Jim: We haven't done a roundtable in a while. We're going to try to talk Syria, spying and scandals. We may not have room for everything. Remember our new
e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
Please note that is a change. Participating our roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the
illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): We've got a large number of topics on the agenda including privacy, war, spying, you name it. Barack decided to arm the so-called 'rebels' in Syria in their efforts to topple Syria's government. Government, not 'regime,' Deborah Amos. Thoughts?
Betty: My first thought was, "Wag the dog." Barack's mired in scandals and hopes this will get people talking about something other than the IRS scandal, the spying scandal, all of the scandals. Will it? I don't think so and I don't think anyone with any level of brains will applaud this b.s.
Jim: Jonathan Alter is praising it.
Betty: He's so stupid and he's so ugly. He ran Newsweek into the ground and I'm guessing Bloomberg News finally had enough him as well since he hasn't done columns for them in two months. He's an 'MSNBC analyst' which, more and more, is the equivalent of being the American Molly Luft. And he just gets uglier each year which is an issue if he's going to be on TV. I mean you look at him and you want to hurl. A quick glance of Amazon, Barnes and Noble and USA Today's charts makes clear that no one is buying his awful new book. His new, heavily promoted book isn't even in the top 100. In fact, at Amazon, it's at 310. No one wants to read him, no one wants to see him, he should do the world a favor and retire to some buffet where he can eat until he explodes.
Jim: So wag the dog -- where you misdirect people by creating some diversion -- is one response. Wally, what are your thoughts?
Wally: I'd argue that Betty's right and add that the Samantha Powers of the left need to start enlisting if they're so hell bent on sending other people to war. I'd further argue that this is about their own sexual impotency, these cheerleaders. I mean, look at Alter, he and his wife can't find his dick under all that fat. When little boys have surgery that requires them to have their penises taped down, as soon as the surgery is over, they're in a panic reaching around to make sure their penis is still there. So magnify that by about a thousand, maybe more than that since it's probably been ten years since Alter's seen his own penis, and you can understand the pathetic panic of Jonathan Alter.
Marcia: Or of War Hawk Susan Rice. Just look at those eyes and all the hate in them. She clearly has never had enjoyable sex in her life and that's left her bitter and eager to lash out.
Jim: Okay, not sure how serious you two are being, but thank you.
Marcia: I"m being very serious. Susan Rice has never enjoyed sex. I'm saying that as a lesbian, looking at her, I can tell. And she was out in full force lying about the use of chemical weapons. And when she starts ranting and raving, you can see that she almost gets off. Almost. It's the closest to an orgasm -- ranting and raving about destroying a country -- that she ever gets. I really think she should see a sex therapist before her faces freezes like that, with all those bizarre lines, and her chances at ever having good sex drop even further.
Jim: Edith M. Lederer of the AP reports Susan Rice states that sarin nerve gas was used by the Syrian government twice in March.
Marcia: I think what Susan Rice was referring to in that letter was her own unwashed pudenda. Get some soap and water, Susan, and give it some air as well.
Jim: KUNA reported that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "criticized Washington earlier in the day for its decision yesterday" Thursday evening "to arm the opposition as a result of concluding that chemical weapons were used by Damascus against the opposition and civilians in Syria." KUNA quotes the Secretary-General as stating that "the validity of any information on the alleged use of chemical weapons cannot be ensured without convincing evidence of the chain-of-custody." He further added that there was "no military solution to this conflict."
Kat: And there is no military solution to it. There's no point to it either. Syria is not a threat to the US. The 'rebels' are a motley collection of US-backed terrorists who've attacked the US in various countries. And that's who Barack is now openly arming. He was arming them before but now he's doing so openly.
Mike: And C.I. pointed out Tuesday that Jabaht al-Nusra kicking out al Qaeda in Iraq was just a for show effort to allow the White House to back these so-called 'rebels' and, sure enough, al Qaeda in Iraq announced yesterday that they hadn't left and that they weren't leaving, AP's Adam Schreck reported that.
Jim: Good points. And Kat's about a threat, once upon a time it was thought that a country should only get involved in foreign skirmishes when their own security was at stake. What is the overriding principle that demands that the US openly become involved in the battle in Syria?
Elaine: There is none. This is more imperialism and it's part of the 'grand chessboard' crap that Bully Boy Bush was speaking of. I actually, I was listening to gas bags on NPR, where they're treating this as though it is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, and I thought, "You hang around long enough and the past boomer rangs back to the future." To sell Vietnam, the lie of a domino theory was used. If the US doesn't go into Vietnam, like cascading dominoes, all of Asia will fall. And on NPR, they were talking about how this was needed to carry out "the domino theory" -- yes, they used that term -- of the Arab Spring -- or so-called Arab Spring. People talk about US exceptionalism all the time but miss the point of it. It's tended carefully like a garden of rare flowers because the reason it exists is to justify attacks on other countries. That's all it's really about, creating a 'noble' purpose for why the US must interfere in everyone else's business. Without the concept, we'd look like the nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched -- a busybody forever sticking their nose into other people's business.
Jim: Okay. Barack's spying on Americans remains n the news. We've seen a lot of embarrassing things. A few people have backbones. Rebecca, you wrote about the Friday.
Rebecca: Yeah, there's really just four people speaking to the issue of the unconstitutional spying with any real fire. Two are in office, Senators Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul. Then you have former US House Rep. Ron Paul, Rand's father, and former US Senator and the former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. That's it.
Jim: And, in fact, Norman Solomon's called out US House Rep. Barbara Lee for her lack of leadership on this issue.
Cedric: At last. Barbara Lee is a joke. She's done nothing for the last five years worthy of even a moment's praise. She's seen her job as being defense linebacker for Barack Obama. That's why, on the National Journal poll when Bully Boy Bush was in office, Lee was always in the top ten of the most liberal members of Congress but now that it's Barack, she doesn't even make the top ten. There's nothing liberal about Barbara Lee, she's just another cheap whore slinging her ass down the road. She's had her legs in the air for the last five years and has forgotten how to stand up. I'm glad Solomon called her out, I wish he'd done so louder. Barbara Lee of 2006 would call out Barbara Lee of 2013.
Jim: Which reminds me of something else, Cedric, the joint-post you and Wally did last week, "Ralph Nader is the problem!" and "THIS JUST IN! NADER HARMS THE U.S.!"
Cedric: Well he gave a speech where he noted Barack was the biggest con-man to occupy the White House ever. And then he wrote another one of his weak ass columns. I'm tired of it.
Ruth: Agreed. I can remember, for example, in 2009, Kevin Zeese going on radio shows, like Lila Garrett's or Cindy Sheehan's, and quoting what Ralph Nader really thought of Barack Obama. But we would never get that fire in a column. In a column we would get the weakest, blandest pretense at holding President Obama accountable. He moves from calling Mr. Obama "a con man" to writing a weak and an awful column that ends with, "If President Obama sweats the small stuff, he will empower the American people to take greater charge of their government and their future over the destructive and cowardly corporatism that now dominates Washington, D.C." Ralph Nader's become an embarrassment.
Jim: Ann and Jess, you both voted Nader for president -- everyone here but Ava and C.I. endorsed Nader in his 2008 run, I'm referring to prior to 2008. What are your reactions?
Jess: I don't disagree with Ruth. I've felt that way for some time now. Ralph needs to show leadership and he's shown none. He's demonstrated that he knows not to anger the little left media gods. Don't question Barack too much or Amy Goodman won't have you on as a guest! He plays the game the same as the rest of them and how sad is that? You'd think at 79 years old, you could tell the truth without worrying about the effects. But Ralph's done that the whole time.
Ann: If Ralph announced he was running for president in 2016, he'd be my first choice. I don't know who else would be running, but Ralph would be my first choice for who to vote for. That said, in the last five years he's been extremely disappointing. We've been the flame throwers here. We've taken the fall out for it. We're the ones who, from the left, have criticized Barack. We've done so in every kind of language imaginable and created a space that a bunch of cowards now tip-toe across. So the idea that Ralph's going to be such an embarrassment when everyone in this roundtable has shown more courage -- showed more courage in 2009 that Ralph shows today? I mean, it's embarrassing. It's humiliating. It's so bad it almost makes me want to apologize for voting for Ralph.
Jim: Trina, last week, the news was pretty bad. But you managed to find some humor.
Trina: Well, I came across some. It was Reductress' "Is The NSA Into Me? How To Seem More Interesting On Your Tapped Calls" -- a parody of the NSA spying scandal that was probably closer to the truth than many realize. In the parody, it's written in the style of those bad women's magazine articles about how to make a guy like you. But it's parody and it isn't because that's really what The Nation and others have spent the past five years doing. It's very funny. In these times when you want to scream or cry, a good laugh is important and I'd recommend that to anyone feeling like pulling their hair out right about now over the destruction of the US Constitution. This really does -- the spoof -- capture what the last five years have been like, an abusive male and a desperate, battered woman eager to forgive him anything just to get a kind word.
Jim: Isaiah, you have a great comic that's going up later this morning. It's on the spying scandal.
Isaiah: I actually prepared this week so that I could do a Sunday comic even if this went on forever. The way the writing editions here have the last few weeks. The spying scandal so far consists of data on our phone calls and also our e-mails and our internet traffic. So I've got Barack outside a couple's window, peering in and explaining that's just the starting point. And I really do believe we need to personalize it that way. We're acting like it's okay for the government to do various things but it's not okay -- in fact, it's especially not okay for the government to do these things. And we have to call it out and we have to personalize it because our members of Congress are not doing their jobs.
Stan: I would agree with that. Its why the Democratic Party looks so embarrassing. They've forgotten how to stand up for core beliefs. Barbara Lee, for example, has spent the last five years acting as if she was voted into the position of defensive tackle and as though her goal was a Barack Obama 2012 ring instead of supporting and defending the Constitution. I am ashamed of the Democratic Party and have been for five years. Everything we were supposed to believe in has proven to be a fraud.
Jim: How so?
Stan: We were told it was wrong, for example, that the 2000 election was stolen but we were told to shut up about the 2008 primary being stolen -- Hillary got more votes and should have been the nominee We were told that money corrupts elections but when Barack trashed public financing in 2008, we were told to shut up. We were told that unnecessary and illegal wars were wrong but Barack launched the war on Libya and even mocked the War Powers Act and we were told not to complain. Over and over. He's the worst president in history.
Trina: I would absolutely agree with that and I was in high school when Richard Nixon was in the White House. He's absolutely even worse than Nixon.
Ty: And yet, as Ann pointed out a little while ago, it's really been us and just a few others who've been calling him out from the left. Why is it that we hit harder than Ralph Nader? Even now, we're hitting harder than Nader. And Wally and Cedric used "Bitch Barry" the other day. And that wasn't the first time but I know the first time they used it, they had a long discussion about it.
Wally: Right. And then we thought, "Hey, we used it on Bush? What's the problem here?"
Cedric: And when we're doing that and hitting hard it's just disgusting to watch the timid. We've cleared the space, we've paved the road. It's relatively easy for you to criticize the War Hawk Barack now but even now you're afraid and even now you refuse to use your voices.
Ty: And this isn't about pat ourselves on the back. Clearly, no one's done more than Ava and C.I. who've criticized online and have criticized around the country. And done so when it was unheard of.
Ava: Yeah, it was something in January 2009 to be booed. We'd been speaking out against the wars under Bully Boy Bush and even when there were conservatives or whatever in the group we were speaking to, they didn't boo. Along comes 2009 and it is public booing. It just kind of shocks you.
Jim: So what do you do?
Kat: We didn't do anything the first five or six times. C.I. did. She was able to defuse the situation with a joke. After that, we realized that was the way to go and followed her lead on the seventh or eighth time but that was shocking. You're saying something like, "The Iraq War needs to end now, not in six months, not in two years --" and you're booed. If you'd said the same thing just a few months prior, it would have been applauded. The only thing that changed was now Barack was the one keeping troops in Iraq.
Jim: C.I.?
C.I.: Yeah?
Jim: Did it bother you?
C.I.: Not really. I'd been in that scene before. I started speaking out against the Iraq War in February 2003, a month before it started. People don't remember this now in some cases but Bully Boy Bush was hugely popular. Speaking out then? You had the same college kids, for example, booing and insisting Bully was a hero and all the other crap. If you can't handle being heckled, you shouldn't speak.
Betty: And note that they defused it with a joke unlike priss pot Michelle Obama who threatens to leave if a heckler's not thrown out.
Jim: Alright. Final thoughts, Ava?
Ava: What goes up, must come down. That was the whole point of the piece "Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)." We wrote that the day after the 2012 election and noted this was the last glorification phase for Barack. Enjoy it because reality was about to march in and that's when the rest of us could enjoy it.
Jim: Alright. This has been a rush transcript.
Jim (Con't): We've got a large number of topics on the agenda including privacy, war, spying, you name it. Barack decided to arm the so-called 'rebels' in Syria in their efforts to topple Syria's government. Government, not 'regime,' Deborah Amos. Thoughts?
Betty: My first thought was, "Wag the dog." Barack's mired in scandals and hopes this will get people talking about something other than the IRS scandal, the spying scandal, all of the scandals. Will it? I don't think so and I don't think anyone with any level of brains will applaud this b.s.
Jim: Jonathan Alter is praising it.
Betty: He's so stupid and he's so ugly. He ran Newsweek into the ground and I'm guessing Bloomberg News finally had enough him as well since he hasn't done columns for them in two months. He's an 'MSNBC analyst' which, more and more, is the equivalent of being the American Molly Luft. And he just gets uglier each year which is an issue if he's going to be on TV. I mean you look at him and you want to hurl. A quick glance of Amazon, Barnes and Noble and USA Today's charts makes clear that no one is buying his awful new book. His new, heavily promoted book isn't even in the top 100. In fact, at Amazon, it's at 310. No one wants to read him, no one wants to see him, he should do the world a favor and retire to some buffet where he can eat until he explodes.
Jim: So wag the dog -- where you misdirect people by creating some diversion -- is one response. Wally, what are your thoughts?
Wally: I'd argue that Betty's right and add that the Samantha Powers of the left need to start enlisting if they're so hell bent on sending other people to war. I'd further argue that this is about their own sexual impotency, these cheerleaders. I mean, look at Alter, he and his wife can't find his dick under all that fat. When little boys have surgery that requires them to have their penises taped down, as soon as the surgery is over, they're in a panic reaching around to make sure their penis is still there. So magnify that by about a thousand, maybe more than that since it's probably been ten years since Alter's seen his own penis, and you can understand the pathetic panic of Jonathan Alter.
Marcia: Or of War Hawk Susan Rice. Just look at those eyes and all the hate in them. She clearly has never had enjoyable sex in her life and that's left her bitter and eager to lash out.
Jim: Okay, not sure how serious you two are being, but thank you.
Marcia: I"m being very serious. Susan Rice has never enjoyed sex. I'm saying that as a lesbian, looking at her, I can tell. And she was out in full force lying about the use of chemical weapons. And when she starts ranting and raving, you can see that she almost gets off. Almost. It's the closest to an orgasm -- ranting and raving about destroying a country -- that she ever gets. I really think she should see a sex therapist before her faces freezes like that, with all those bizarre lines, and her chances at ever having good sex drop even further.
Jim: Edith M. Lederer of the AP reports Susan Rice states that sarin nerve gas was used by the Syrian government twice in March.
Marcia: I think what Susan Rice was referring to in that letter was her own unwashed pudenda. Get some soap and water, Susan, and give it some air as well.
Jim: KUNA reported that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "criticized Washington earlier in the day for its decision yesterday" Thursday evening "to arm the opposition as a result of concluding that chemical weapons were used by Damascus against the opposition and civilians in Syria." KUNA quotes the Secretary-General as stating that "the validity of any information on the alleged use of chemical weapons cannot be ensured without convincing evidence of the chain-of-custody." He further added that there was "no military solution to this conflict."
Kat: And there is no military solution to it. There's no point to it either. Syria is not a threat to the US. The 'rebels' are a motley collection of US-backed terrorists who've attacked the US in various countries. And that's who Barack is now openly arming. He was arming them before but now he's doing so openly.
Mike: And C.I. pointed out Tuesday that Jabaht al-Nusra kicking out al Qaeda in Iraq was just a for show effort to allow the White House to back these so-called 'rebels' and, sure enough, al Qaeda in Iraq announced yesterday that they hadn't left and that they weren't leaving, AP's Adam Schreck reported that.
Jim: Good points. And Kat's about a threat, once upon a time it was thought that a country should only get involved in foreign skirmishes when their own security was at stake. What is the overriding principle that demands that the US openly become involved in the battle in Syria?
Elaine: There is none. This is more imperialism and it's part of the 'grand chessboard' crap that Bully Boy Bush was speaking of. I actually, I was listening to gas bags on NPR, where they're treating this as though it is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, and I thought, "You hang around long enough and the past boomer rangs back to the future." To sell Vietnam, the lie of a domino theory was used. If the US doesn't go into Vietnam, like cascading dominoes, all of Asia will fall. And on NPR, they were talking about how this was needed to carry out "the domino theory" -- yes, they used that term -- of the Arab Spring -- or so-called Arab Spring. People talk about US exceptionalism all the time but miss the point of it. It's tended carefully like a garden of rare flowers because the reason it exists is to justify attacks on other countries. That's all it's really about, creating a 'noble' purpose for why the US must interfere in everyone else's business. Without the concept, we'd look like the nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched -- a busybody forever sticking their nose into other people's business.
Jim: Okay. Barack's spying on Americans remains n the news. We've seen a lot of embarrassing things. A few people have backbones. Rebecca, you wrote about the Friday.
Rebecca: Yeah, there's really just four people speaking to the issue of the unconstitutional spying with any real fire. Two are in office, Senators Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul. Then you have former US House Rep. Ron Paul, Rand's father, and former US Senator and the former Vice President of the United States Al Gore. That's it.
Jim: And, in fact, Norman Solomon's called out US House Rep. Barbara Lee for her lack of leadership on this issue.
Cedric: At last. Barbara Lee is a joke. She's done nothing for the last five years worthy of even a moment's praise. She's seen her job as being defense linebacker for Barack Obama. That's why, on the National Journal poll when Bully Boy Bush was in office, Lee was always in the top ten of the most liberal members of Congress but now that it's Barack, she doesn't even make the top ten. There's nothing liberal about Barbara Lee, she's just another cheap whore slinging her ass down the road. She's had her legs in the air for the last five years and has forgotten how to stand up. I'm glad Solomon called her out, I wish he'd done so louder. Barbara Lee of 2006 would call out Barbara Lee of 2013.
Jim: Which reminds me of something else, Cedric, the joint-post you and Wally did last week, "Ralph Nader is the problem!" and "THIS JUST IN! NADER HARMS THE U.S.!"
Cedric: Well he gave a speech where he noted Barack was the biggest con-man to occupy the White House ever. And then he wrote another one of his weak ass columns. I'm tired of it.
Ruth: Agreed. I can remember, for example, in 2009, Kevin Zeese going on radio shows, like Lila Garrett's or Cindy Sheehan's, and quoting what Ralph Nader really thought of Barack Obama. But we would never get that fire in a column. In a column we would get the weakest, blandest pretense at holding President Obama accountable. He moves from calling Mr. Obama "a con man" to writing a weak and an awful column that ends with, "If President Obama sweats the small stuff, he will empower the American people to take greater charge of their government and their future over the destructive and cowardly corporatism that now dominates Washington, D.C." Ralph Nader's become an embarrassment.
Jim: Ann and Jess, you both voted Nader for president -- everyone here but Ava and C.I. endorsed Nader in his 2008 run, I'm referring to prior to 2008. What are your reactions?
Jess: I don't disagree with Ruth. I've felt that way for some time now. Ralph needs to show leadership and he's shown none. He's demonstrated that he knows not to anger the little left media gods. Don't question Barack too much or Amy Goodman won't have you on as a guest! He plays the game the same as the rest of them and how sad is that? You'd think at 79 years old, you could tell the truth without worrying about the effects. But Ralph's done that the whole time.
Ann: If Ralph announced he was running for president in 2016, he'd be my first choice. I don't know who else would be running, but Ralph would be my first choice for who to vote for. That said, in the last five years he's been extremely disappointing. We've been the flame throwers here. We've taken the fall out for it. We're the ones who, from the left, have criticized Barack. We've done so in every kind of language imaginable and created a space that a bunch of cowards now tip-toe across. So the idea that Ralph's going to be such an embarrassment when everyone in this roundtable has shown more courage -- showed more courage in 2009 that Ralph shows today? I mean, it's embarrassing. It's humiliating. It's so bad it almost makes me want to apologize for voting for Ralph.
Jim: Trina, last week, the news was pretty bad. But you managed to find some humor.
Trina: Well, I came across some. It was Reductress' "Is The NSA Into Me? How To Seem More Interesting On Your Tapped Calls" -- a parody of the NSA spying scandal that was probably closer to the truth than many realize. In the parody, it's written in the style of those bad women's magazine articles about how to make a guy like you. But it's parody and it isn't because that's really what The Nation and others have spent the past five years doing. It's very funny. In these times when you want to scream or cry, a good laugh is important and I'd recommend that to anyone feeling like pulling their hair out right about now over the destruction of the US Constitution. This really does -- the spoof -- capture what the last five years have been like, an abusive male and a desperate, battered woman eager to forgive him anything just to get a kind word.
Jim: Isaiah, you have a great comic that's going up later this morning. It's on the spying scandal.
Isaiah: I actually prepared this week so that I could do a Sunday comic even if this went on forever. The way the writing editions here have the last few weeks. The spying scandal so far consists of data on our phone calls and also our e-mails and our internet traffic. So I've got Barack outside a couple's window, peering in and explaining that's just the starting point. And I really do believe we need to personalize it that way. We're acting like it's okay for the government to do various things but it's not okay -- in fact, it's especially not okay for the government to do these things. And we have to call it out and we have to personalize it because our members of Congress are not doing their jobs.
Stan: I would agree with that. Its why the Democratic Party looks so embarrassing. They've forgotten how to stand up for core beliefs. Barbara Lee, for example, has spent the last five years acting as if she was voted into the position of defensive tackle and as though her goal was a Barack Obama 2012 ring instead of supporting and defending the Constitution. I am ashamed of the Democratic Party and have been for five years. Everything we were supposed to believe in has proven to be a fraud.
Jim: How so?
Stan: We were told it was wrong, for example, that the 2000 election was stolen but we were told to shut up about the 2008 primary being stolen -- Hillary got more votes and should have been the nominee We were told that money corrupts elections but when Barack trashed public financing in 2008, we were told to shut up. We were told that unnecessary and illegal wars were wrong but Barack launched the war on Libya and even mocked the War Powers Act and we were told not to complain. Over and over. He's the worst president in history.
Trina: I would absolutely agree with that and I was in high school when Richard Nixon was in the White House. He's absolutely even worse than Nixon.
Ty: And yet, as Ann pointed out a little while ago, it's really been us and just a few others who've been calling him out from the left. Why is it that we hit harder than Ralph Nader? Even now, we're hitting harder than Nader. And Wally and Cedric used "Bitch Barry" the other day. And that wasn't the first time but I know the first time they used it, they had a long discussion about it.
Wally: Right. And then we thought, "Hey, we used it on Bush? What's the problem here?"
Cedric: And when we're doing that and hitting hard it's just disgusting to watch the timid. We've cleared the space, we've paved the road. It's relatively easy for you to criticize the War Hawk Barack now but even now you're afraid and even now you refuse to use your voices.
Ty: And this isn't about pat ourselves on the back. Clearly, no one's done more than Ava and C.I. who've criticized online and have criticized around the country. And done so when it was unheard of.
Ava: Yeah, it was something in January 2009 to be booed. We'd been speaking out against the wars under Bully Boy Bush and even when there were conservatives or whatever in the group we were speaking to, they didn't boo. Along comes 2009 and it is public booing. It just kind of shocks you.
Jim: So what do you do?
Kat: We didn't do anything the first five or six times. C.I. did. She was able to defuse the situation with a joke. After that, we realized that was the way to go and followed her lead on the seventh or eighth time but that was shocking. You're saying something like, "The Iraq War needs to end now, not in six months, not in two years --" and you're booed. If you'd said the same thing just a few months prior, it would have been applauded. The only thing that changed was now Barack was the one keeping troops in Iraq.
Jim: C.I.?
C.I.: Yeah?
Jim: Did it bother you?
C.I.: Not really. I'd been in that scene before. I started speaking out against the Iraq War in February 2003, a month before it started. People don't remember this now in some cases but Bully Boy Bush was hugely popular. Speaking out then? You had the same college kids, for example, booing and insisting Bully was a hero and all the other crap. If you can't handle being heckled, you shouldn't speak.
Betty: And note that they defused it with a joke unlike priss pot Michelle Obama who threatens to leave if a heckler's not thrown out.
Jim: Alright. Final thoughts, Ava?
Ava: What goes up, must come down. That was the whole point of the piece "Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.)." We wrote that the day after the 2012 election and noted this was the last glorification phase for Barack. Enjoy it because reality was about to march in and that's when the rest of us could enjoy it.
Jim: Alright. This has been a rush transcript.
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