Saturday, June 15, 2013

No Such Amonition

Hey remember back in the olden days (two weeks ago) when the NSA was going right through back doors of big tech companies and pulling up their users' data directly without any warrants? And then remember when that wasn't true?

Good times.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Manufacturing Dissent

So. I'm getting a tad sick and tired of every single thing being a scandal of epic proportions. In fact, of late I've begun to use the heuristic analysis that if there's some big "scandal" in the Obama Administration it'll turn out to not actually be a scandal at all and will be so unimportant that whatever the next made-up scandal will just come and replace it in the news cycle.

Prism. I'm having a lot of trouble caring about Prism.  Supposedly the government is collecting my metadata. So what? Any random hacker gets all my metadata. In fact, any reasonably high level engineer at Google can take a look at everywhere I am and everywhere I've been. Why don't we care about that?

I do get the feeling we're being played by Glenn Greenwald. So far he, and his source, are controlling all the information we're getting about NSA wiretaps. And, like the AP case, there's evidence to support that some right-winger in government is "leaking" classified information solely for the purpose of hurting the Obama Administration and not in the public interest.

False Equivalence Highway
For the longest time people have asked "Why is there no Left in America?" I think the reason is because the American Left sucks. It's petulant, childish, and has the memory of a goldfish. The biggest sin the American Left commits is false equivalence. Remember when Gore was just as bad as Bush? No? I remember being told that over and over again and even members of the soft left were all like "Oh Bush won't be that bad, he's running as a moderate." And we know how that worked out.
So what have we got? Mother Jones:
Obama voted for the 2008 FISA amendments, a position that outraged liberals at the time. He continued the Bush-era surveillance of communications networks. He ramped up the war in Afghanistan. He vastly increased drone use overseas. He's declared a war on leakers. He participated in the assault on Libya. He's approved the assassination of American citizens abroad. His DOJ has aggressively made use of the state secrets privilege. He's fought relentlessly to block lawsuits challenging privacy violations and presidential abuses.
Hmm... what are they missing here? Wasn't there another war? Oh right, Iraq. No mention of Obama's record on Iraq. And the fact is that the Administration has drawn down the war in Afghanistan. Apparently "participated in the assault on Libya" is exactly as bad as the Second Gulf War. And Obama's repeated attempts to close down Guantanamo Bay over Republican obstruction are somehow irrelevant.