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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI'm so pissed off at Glen Greenwald that I don't give a shit about the NSA anymore.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)TransitJohn
(6,932 posts)Awesome.
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)pscot
(21,024 posts)Bad for your blood pressure.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)So it balances out.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)you can read it.
rug
(82,333 posts)More ways every day.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)East Coast Pirate
(775 posts)Response to backscatter712 (Reply #2)
backscatter712 This message was self-deleted by its author.
BlueCheese
(2,522 posts)QC
(26,371 posts)I was against blanket surveillance until then, but that was too much.
rug
(82,333 posts)QC
(26,371 posts)is enough to make me welcome the NSA.
rug
(82,333 posts)QC
(26,371 posts)Catherina
(35,568 posts)Everyone knows you rent storage centers for that.
You can't trust someone who didn't even rent a storage center.
QC
(26,371 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)What kind of a so-called human being does a thing like that?
reformist2
(9,841 posts)Either this one, or "has boxes in his garage."
sigmasix
(794 posts)Greenwald fans need new material. Maybe hire someone different to write the comic bits?
Thanks for the lol.
rug
(82,333 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Libertarians are more of a threat to the United States than the NSA anyway.
I mean, that's the gist I get from this place anyway.
rug
(82,333 posts)NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)What a threat that would be to not be spied on!
Also the Department of Education and I forgot the 3rd.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Skittles
(153,169 posts)count on it
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)and don't give a shit about the real ones. In which case, mission accomplished whether you're aiming for irony or not, if you follow.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)rug
(82,333 posts)Quick, I need a link!
progressoid
(49,991 posts)ucrdem
(15,512 posts)CATO, Carlyle, Exxon-Mobile, BP, GOP, you get the idea.
progressoid
(49,991 posts)If anything this NSA shit has highlighted groups like Carlyle's even more.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)for example the intel that Snowball apparently shared with the Chinese and Russian governments, which tends to get lost in the 4th-amendment hoo-haw. China and Russia are our two largest "cyberwarfare" foes, if not to say enemies, so any advantage Snowball and/or his handlers gave them takes the Obama administration down a few notches, which is what NSA-gate is all about as far as I can tell. Benghazi with an all-American face and fewer casualties, you might say.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)You're saying that the purpose of this was to stop the American people being pissed off at Russia and China? That Snowden was controlled by one or both of those countries right from the start?
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)In 2008, the Carlyle Group made a large $910 million investment to buy a majority stake in Booz Allens government consulting business. The deal saw Booz Allens big government advisory unit, which produced most of the firms revenue, split off from its corporate consulting group, on the eve of the financial crisis.
But Washington-based Carlyle, which has a long and successful history doing deals involving government contractors, has really made the Booz Allen deal work. It has been an amazing transaction for Carlyle. The private equity firm has made $2 billion in realized and unrealized profits on the Booz Allen Hamilton deal so far. Its $910 million investment is now worth $3 billion.
Carlyles acquisition of Booz Allen looked risky back in 2008, but Carlyle believed it could unlock value by separating the cash generating government advisory side of the business from the corporate consulting part of the company. Shares of Booz Allen fell by 3.6% in Monday morning trading after one of its employees, Edward Snowden, leaked information about a secret National Security Agency surveillance program.
Carlyle owns about two-thirds of Booz Allen, which earned $219 million in the year ending March 31, on revenues of $5.76 billion. In 2008, the year Carlyle bought the business, it made $18 million in profits on $3.6 billion in revenues.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/06/10/the-carlyle-group-has-made-2-billion-off-of-booz-allen/
Yeah, I can see that articles in Forbes about how Carlyle is making money hand over fist from contracts to spy on the American people is a successful diversion of attention from them.
Frankly, I think that if we must be pissed about GG, we can be pissed about two things at once.
Response to rug (Original post)
Le Taz Hot This message was self-deleted by its author.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)encourage you to march over the edges of the cliffs
rug
(82,333 posts)struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)a big revolving-door of folk who wander back and forth between government posts and cushy private gigs
It sure looks like some of my least favorite folk are involved
Yeah, I think it's a frickin mess, but I've thought everything a frickin mess for decades and decades now
Glenn's libertarian agenda is to push the idea "Obama has a worse civil liberties record than Bush," in the hopes pure-hearted progressives will throw up their hands and vote for third-parties or just not vote
His constantly-outraged statements aren't factual enough to lead to an accurate analysis, and his preferred strategy IMO is to say "y'all should keep your eye on that pretty star there" while he points everybody in the direction of a cliff
rug
(82,333 posts)This need to strangle the messenger is perturbing.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)but some of us do so regularly
In my experience DU can sometimes be a good source of information for such conversations, though it can also be a source of various mythologies that I consider harmful
And based on some conversations I've had, this doesn't seem to be a purely theoretical matter for me: the mythologies are floating around out there, and I suspect they've had some electoral consequences in my state in 2010 and 2012
Personally, I would like to have a Congress where I could sometimes go lobby as a citizen and find at least a few people who would listen to me, as has sometimes been the case in the past
Glenn is a propagandist, who pretends to discuss one topic while actually pushing unrelated memes, such as "One of the worst myths Democratic partisans love to tell themselves - and everyone else - is that the GOP refuses to support President Obama no matter what he does"
That sort of misleading crap doesn't help anybody think clearly about the actual dynamics of DC or what we need to do at the grassroots level to change it
rug
(82,333 posts)I do talk politics off DU and the one common denominator is that no one likes bullshit. I have not heard one single person defend the NSA surveillance program. I have not heard one single person mention Greenwald either.
There is some truth in what you say. There is a fair amount of general disgust out there. But that doesn't mean the NSA program needs to be defended. People will support the Democratic Party based on the truth of its positions, not on the spin of its positions.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)The figures are there in the article - the majority of House Republicans (including the Republican leadership) supported Obama on that amendment, while the majority of Democrats opposed him.
struggle4progress
(118,295 posts)could accomplish nothing whatsoever, with the aim of then complaining that he had not accomplished anything, has been widely discussed almost since Mr Obama first took office
The strategy aims at low-information voters and fails if becomes widely known to such voters, so the Republicans naturally noisily deny it when press coverage is likely, preferring to acknowledge it only in less visible circumstances. Glenn, in the quote I gave just upthread, unsurprisingly follows the Republican line that Republican obstructionism is a Democratic myth. But the strategy is actually quite well-documented today and has also be quite obvious for years to anyone following American politic: those who haven't at least seen some of the evidence for this just haven't been paying much attention IMO. Unfortunately, I can't provide years and years of evidence in a single post, but I provide a few links at the end of this post
The vote of the Amash amendment was pure theater, rather like the regular votes in Congress to ban flag-burning, which typically fail by a handful of votes. In such cases, the failure of the vote is pre-ordained, but the actual breakdown of who votes for it and who votes against it is determined by some complicated negotiation, as evidenced in this case by the ever-shifting totals during the actual vote. One learns precisely nothing from gross statistics here: for example, the apparently narrow 12-vote failure doesn't show that the amendment would have passed if one had persuaded 6 congressmen to vote differently -- what would have actually happened in that case is that about 6 others would have switched their votes the other way to prevent passage
GG doesn't really give his readers insight into this, of course. I suppose one could also carefully discuss the relative merits of the Amash amendment (which failed) and Pompeo amendment (which passed), but GG won't do that either
Rather, his aims are rhetorical: that's why he begins his rambling article with a sweeping denunciation of the "mythology" that Rs have been systematically obstructing Obama. GG has been at this particular game for a long time: for example, he has also constantly pushed the meme that the US failure to close GITMO should be laid at Obama's feet, ignoring the actual legislative history since Obama originally announced his closure intentions. In fact, GG's main interest in such matters has been to convince progressive readers that there's not much difference between Ds and Rs -- and so to encourage them to vote 3rd party or simply not vote
Democrats have rounded on revelations about a private dinner of House Republicans on inauguration day in 2009 in which they plotted a campaign of obstruction against newly installed president Barack Obama. During a lengthy discussion, the senior GOP members worked out a plan to repeatedly block Obama over the coming four years to try to ensure he would not be re-elected ...
Democrats condemn GOP's plot to obstruct Obama as 'appalling and sad'
Roger Draper book details how in 2009 senior Republican figures planned a campaign to bring Washington to a standstill
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Thursday 26 April 2012 16.21 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/26/democrats-gop-plot-obstruct-obama
... If he was for it, former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, we had to be against it ... Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, Joe, Im not going to be able to help you on anything, he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. The way it was characterized to me was, For the next two years, we cant let you succeed in anything. Thats our ticket to coming back, Biden said ... David Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, met with his GOP counterpart, Jerry Lewis, to explain what Democrats had in mind for the stimulus and ask what Republicans wanted to include. Jerrys response was, Im sorry, but leadership tells us we cant play, Obey told me. Exact quote: We cant play ...
The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama
By Michael Grunwald
Aug. 23, 2012
http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/
... Republicans have made it clear that erecting hurdles for Mr. Obama is, if anything, their overriding legislative goal. There is no historical precedent for the number of cabinet-level nominees that Republicans have blocked or delayed in the Obama administration. Chuck Hagel became the first defense secretary nominee ever filibustered ...
Editorial
Malicious Obstruction in the Senate
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: March 28, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/malicious-obstruction-in-the-senate.html
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Dr. Strange
(25,921 posts)Their chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency!
Among their chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to Glen Greenwald!
Logical
(22,457 posts)burnodo
(2,017 posts)marions ghost
(19,841 posts)....the OP is ridiculing NSA defenders, who trash Greenwald and Snowden instead of facing the obvious truth of massive unregulated surveillance, which is kind of a stupid posture for smart people.
ANYone who supports NSA>>>Booz Allen>>>Carlyle group>>>Booshcheney..........
I mean, isn't it obvious whose side they are on (or even working for)? You can forgive the truly stupid & Fuxed up. No reason to forgive smart people. They do it deliberately.
Apophis
(1,407 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Like you needed anything else.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)pisses me off. Biden, Clinton, Kerry and most prominent Democrats made the mistake of supporting Bush on the Iraq war and most have not even admitted they made mistake. But that is human. But stirring up so many problems for the NSA surveillance program that you got the majority of the Democratic Caucus in the House and a fair number of Republicans too - questioning the NSA and causing them trouble - that is something no progressive or liberal could ever, ever support!
Riftaxe
(2,693 posts)Although I am sure Glen sleeps with farm animals, molests small animals, and is a cad in general. How else would you explain the reactions to his publications?
As we well all know hearing something you would rather not is the surest sign of poor journalism and potty training.
railsback
(1,881 posts)Greenwald f*cked up a pretty good story, making it about himself.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)They should stop helping Greenwald make this story about himself.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)and it took me a minute. LOL
Veddy clever!
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
treestar
(82,383 posts)a public spectacle?
It does go to show how relatively uninteresting the government having phone records is.