Can You See Me Now?

Happy Monday to you all. Where is the time travel guy? I'd like to figure out how I can scratch that "Smoke Opium with Chairman Mao" item off my bucket list.


I'm nauseous, but not from Opium, from this.




Let's forget the fact that Glenn Greenwald has broken more news this week than lapdog journalist and sometimes Karl Rove dance partner David Gregory has, EVER. Let's forget the fact that we have a 1st Amendment for the reason so that we can be warned when politicians are doing bad things, like violating the 4th Amendment. Let's also forget the fact that there is enough space between Gregory's nose and lips to land a hovercraft. I'm a student of nonviolence. Gandhi and John Lennon are my heroes. But something about this Meet the Press shill activates a part of my lizard brain that looks for the weak areas to strike.

Gregory is just one big weak spot.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about Snowden. Is he a traitor? Maybe. I have no idea what info he gave to the Chinese or the Russians. But I do know about the information he gave to us. Where are the usual suspects who will howl like mad dogs at the slightest hint of a 2nd Amendment violation and why are they willing to lay down at the complete circumvention of the 4th Amendment?

"Collect everything on everyone all the time and sort it out latter" seem to be the NSA's position here. I'm not a lawyer. I just play one on the internet (and an occasional telenovela), but how does that square even remotely with our 4th Amendment protections? There is a neat little feature in Mac OS called "Time Machine" which enables you to go back in time and find that file you accidentally tossed. It's a nice feature for a personal computer, but it seems to me the NSA wants to create one for the whole world. No communication goes unrecorded. No harsh statement erased by time.

You can call that safety. But to me the NSA is claiming radical new powers and perverting technology in a despicable way. Even worse, I now find myself on the same side of this issue as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

It's not even 3:00 on Monday and I already need a shower.

Hung Turks

Greetings all. No “big whoops” from SCOTUS today unless of course you’re Donald Rumsfeld and no longer have to worry about that pesky civil accountability problem from the people that you may or may not have ordered tortured. It was “just a little water” Poseidon said to the Titanic.

On other matters, has the NSA spied on you today? I used to think the answer to that question was no, but now it’s probably yes. I’ll be frank, I didn’t like excessive domestic surveillance under Bush and I don’t like it under Obama. But America has it’s cults of personalities and as someone who voted for the president twice, nothing has been so nausea inducing as watching Bush era dregs like Ari Fleischer and Bill Kristol circling the NSA wagons with partisan Obama supporters.

Most of the media reporting on this has been particularly terrible, with a few bright spots. Most notably Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks and the breaker of the story Glenn Greenwald. Whatever your opinion of this story you really have to admire the courage (and/or stupidity) of those who are taking on the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world out of their basic sense of right and wrong.



But enough of the politics. What Twitter really wants to know is if NSA Whistler Edward Snowden is really hot. The answer is, of course, yes! He can search my data anytime!

Glenn Squared -- The Apocalypse is Officially Here.

What does it mean when the ideologically separated-at-birth brothers Glenn -- Garvin and Greenwald -- both agree that our government's inhuman drone war is, well, inhumane and spinning out of control?

Maybe that third-way consensus business Thomas Friedman is always prattling on about has some merit?

"I'm sorry Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that."

In other news, Rumpy and Random Pixels report that somebody tweeted something.

What am I missing -- if it wasn't about the trial, where's the harm?

BTW, I just had the pleasure of seeing Square Grouper, Rakantur's riotous look at Miami's drug culture in the late 70s-early 80s.

Brings back those burned-out-Porsche memories....

PS -- lots of good stuff in there (some of it negative) about Judge King's lengthy sentencing of Robert Platshorn of the Black Tuna Gang.

C'mon kids -- what else is happening?

Your Tuesday Morning Bullcrap Club.

Let's see, so if the President's Afghanistan plan works perfectly (always the case there) and the President does not cave in or compromise (he never does!), then we can expect to target the "hand over" of Afghanistan to Afghan forces sometime in 2014, with US troops expected to remain there well in 2015 or beyond.

This turns out to be a great campaign re-election slogan:

FOUR MORE YEARS!  FOUR MORE YEARS!

Basically I blame the President to forcing me to agree with Glenn Garvin.

Even worse, Glenn Garvin now appears to agree with Glenn Greenwald.

Worser yet, Obama loyalists now find themselves agreeing with this esteemed crew:

“The United States must see this effort in Libya through to its conclusion,” reads the letter, signed by conservatives including Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and R. James Woolsey Jr. 

Obama partisans, Liz Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz(!) -- bet you didn't see that coming way back in 2008.

In other news, Justice Scalia is a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

(But this we already knew.)