“I think the society that we live in today, it’s sad that if we go to the movies, or to the airport, or even to the mall that we have to worry about our safety,” McCord said. “So I would rather someone track my telephone messages and feel safe wherever I go than feel like they’re, um, encroaching on my privacy.” So both, then?…
Via NYMag, which considered Miss Alabama’s chirpy optimism a gaffe, but it’s only a Kinsley gaffe. Like a supermajority of Americans (so we’re told), she doesn’t like the idea of the NSA or the FBI snooping on her, so she puts the whole concept firmly out of her beautiful mind and concentrates on feeling safe at the movies. Thank Jeebus that terrorist in Aurora was apprehended in time to prevent a tragedy during the Batman premiere!
On the other hand, Walter Kirn at TNR is just a grouchy old cynic :
…[A]lready I feel different, like a new person in a new world. I feel mature, realistic, reconciled. I feel less isolated and less anxious. I plan, from now on, to go about things differently and acknowledge the new order.
I will keep my opinions to myself online.
I will keep my opinions to myself when speaking to anyone who goes online or who speaks to anyone who goes online.
I will speak on the phone only to people who keep their opinions to themselves, and hang up on them if they don’t.
I will buy nothing online or with a credit card or in a store that keeps electronic records of its sales or in a store that uses security cameras that I am not absolutely proud to own, and absolutely happy for everyone to know I own.
I will pay my taxes to the last penny, and then I will pay a penny more, just to be safe.
I will donate to good causes, conspicuously.
I will donate to both major political parties, conspicuously.
I will, at least once day a day, be it online or on the phone or in the company of someone who goes online or speaks on the phone, condemn our enemies and support our leaders.
I will obey the laws, all the laws, even the dumb ones, even the ones that seem unenforceable, and I will associate only with those who also obey them.
I will smile even when I feel troubled, and when I notice others acting troubled, I will tell them to smile, to get over it…
I will hide nothing.
But I will conceal everything.
Now that we’ve all got our scripts, citizens, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Baud
So Obama was apparently in Germany today where he announced a “bombs for drones” program.
gogol's wife
I do not understand what has happened that has changed anything. Since the passing of the Patriot Act I have assumed that I might be under surveillance. I do not like being under surveillance, but I do not recall anyone really discussing it or worrying about it when George W. Bush was president. Why is it now a topic of discussion 24/7, on the cover of the New Yorker (and the subject of half the cartoons therein), etc., etc., etc.?
I realize that this question has been asked ad nauseam. I came to the blog this fine June evening in hope that some other topic of discussion might be raised, but no.
taylormattd
apparently on the agenda is a massive heaping of hyperbole and a dash of conspiracy theory. For your next massive blockquote, just do the whole “first they came for ….” thing and call it good.
Yatsuno
@gogol’s wife:
Because the blah guy is not only doing it, he refused to nullify all Republican-passed laws and put the entire last administration in the gulag on the day after Inauguration.
And yeah, this equine has indeed expired. Can we refrain from striking upon its corpse?
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Obama challenges Russia to agree to deeper nuclear weapon cuts
Obama Preparing Big Effort to Curb Climate Change
LAC
@Baud: LOL! I missed that when I heard his speech and then read the transcript.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
Now those are interesting. I had a feeling he was going to say something about climate change very soon. It will probably go the way of gun control, but it has to be brought out, discussed, harped on, so that people are aware.
As for Russia, I love that the Times made it a scandal that Putin gave Obama a frosty reception. I WANT my president to do things that make Putin give him a frosty reception, dammit! It’s not a scandal, it’s great!
Cassidy
Man, we went all firebagger all the time today and a now a dose of catty. WTF?
Baud
One thing I’ve noticed since this whole NSA thing blew up is that people on the Internet have stopped telling us what they really think.
El Cid
I think many people feel differently when they have a feeling that ‘something’ is being done by ‘someone’ versus having what appears to be (and may or may not actually be) evidence of a type of surveilliance and/or data collection in a concrete manner within which they can imagine how it happens to themselves.
gogol's wife
@Baud:
LOL. They’re really shaking in their boots.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Expect the New York Times tomorrow to do a story about all the places within Putin’s soul that Obama has failed to visit.
gogol's wife
@El Cid:
They have very poor imaginations.
eemom
@gogol’s wife:
Well, SOMEBODY’s gotta outdo Cole’s latest dumb shit firebagger-wannabe post…..and who better to do that than Our Lady of Teh Copy And Paste?
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Move over Friedman, your replacement from Bangalore is here.
Its my take on the NYT op-ed piece this Sunday about India.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
I couldn’t even wander into that swamp. I went and looked at the New Yorker cartoons for a while, no relief there, and came back hoping there’d be something new, but . . .
El Cid
@gogol’s wife: So? That’s much of the shock of many news stories.
Baud
@eemom:
I appreciate Anne Laurie. If it weren’t for here prodigious posting, we’d probably all be stuck in a Steelers thread from 2011.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: also, too, paying your taxes is a sign of submission to Big Brother? I always thought of it as kind of a civic duty, the price we pay for a civilized society and all that. Will the tyranny of the Obama next lead to jury duty and registering to vote? And I didn’t know that contributions to political parties were, or should be, a secret.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s interesting too!
Wow, there’s a whole world out there.
LAC
@eemom: Complete with a hammer and nails for that cross that our first world lady continues to climb on so that she can sacrifice herself because we are sooooooooooooo dumb!!
Schlemizel
If only Mr. Kirn were true to his word and keep his opinions to himself.
Baud
@Baud:
By the way, AL, that wasn’t snark (except about the Steelers thread). I don’t always agree with you, but you’re a workhorse and I do appreciate that.
DFH no.6
Well, at least NSA/Snowden/DRONEZZZ! has supplanted Benghazi, the IRS “scandal”, and that thing where Eric Holder went all J. Edgar on the Associated Press.
It has, hasn’t it?
taylormattd
@eemom: LMAO
Cassidy
@Baud: Yup. Seconded. Mine was slightly snark, but not meant to comment on AL’s body of work as a whole.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Thanks!
Violet
Isn’t “Get over it” the surveillance state equivalent of, “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” (said about rape by Republican Texas governor candidate Clayton Williams).
gogol's wife
@DFH no.6:
In today’s NYTimes crossword puzzle, “IRS” was the answer to a clue that went something like “Subject of a 2013 scandal.” I couldn’t believe it.
cincyanon
Donald Trump owns “Miss America” and he knows how to get free publicity. Stop aiding Donald Trump. They use gotcha questions on beauty contestants every year and people still take the bait. Jeesh!
LAC
@gogol’s wife: Oh no, c’mon!! Already? I expect we will see this as a Jeopardy answer soon. :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cincyanon: Did you catch the other day that Christie and Bill Clinton first met at Donald Trump’s “most recent” wedding? Bubba would suck up to just about anybody willing to return the favor.
Villago Delenda Est
What’s on the agenda? Dinner with friends. Indian tonight!
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: I love how Obama can do nothing right, he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.
pokeyblow
The Second Amendment is older than the Patriot Act, I think.
Yet new events, like mass shootings, can restart debate on its questionable merits.
And now, the clarifying revelations regarding mass surveillance (which, yes, didn’t surprise everyone) are restarting debate on the Patriot Act.
And so many of you bitch about that and call people who disagree with you racists.
WTF is wrong with you?
dance around in your bones
I will obey the laws, all the laws, even the dumb ones
I have to obey all of the laws? Damn.
pokeyblow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bill Clinton going to a Trump wedding is just gross.
Now, do you agree that Obama writing an encomium for Tom Coburn is also sickening?
NickT
It’s beyond hilarious to see the front-pagers suddenly deciding that they need to be more like the love-child of Greenwald and Hamsher on acid. Anyone who’s just realized the reality of the security state has either been sleeping for the past decade or was never very bright to begin with.
FlipYrWhig
It seems to me that Miss Whoever giving that answer is actually turning inside out the usual definition of “invading privacy.” She means that Bad Guys invade her desire to be left alone and safe, which is why she believes in the virtues of surveillance. She doesn’t think that surveillance invades her privacy. It’s badly worded, but it’s not incoherent.
gogol's wife
@pokeyblow:
Except it’s not really a debate about the Patriot Act. It’s a club to beat Obama with. Why do you think the mainstream media is so fond of the topic?
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: “Debate on the Patriot Act” is not the same thing as “We’re all being spied on by Big Brother Obama AAAIIIIEEEEEEE!”
Chris
@gogol’s wife:
Neither do I.
This is what’s fucking baffled me for the past week or so – the fact that all of polite society just suddenly sat up and gasped as it occurred to them, apparently for the first time in their life, that wow, the NSA might have too much unsupervised power – or its bosses in the executive branch might have too much power to use it that way.
I know we as a nation have swept the entire eight years of Bush under the carpet, but this is spectacular even by that standard. Yes, I know that the NSA has too much arbitrary power. I was there when it was granted that arbitrary power in the first place (along with various other parts of the security state) in the aftermath of 9/11; I remember a bunch of us complaining about the constitutional and ethical implications of it, I remember polite society telling us we were a bunch of faggy hippies who needed to put our bitching aside in the spirit of God and country, and I remember the few debates we had on the subject ending inconclusively, with nothing being done to restrain the NSA’s new powers. Polite society, apparently, doesn’t remember any of this, preferring to be struck with collective amnesia until, oh, about a week ago, when it was shocked, shocked to discover that there was gambling at Rick’s.
You can say that when Obama came into office he should’ve pushed for an end to these programs, and you wouldn’t exactly be wrong; but when he came into office, he pushed for an end to Guantanamo, a similarly abusive post-9/11 program (and, IMHO, a worse one), and found himself alone with both parties and a majority of the public clamoring, as they did after 9/11, that fuck the Constitution, they wanted security, and moving to block any attempt he made to end the program. If he concluded that the post-9/11 security state had too much institutional and public support to be attacked and that he was better off concentrating on battles that could be won, I can’t exactly blame him. We get the government we ask for.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
And even if it were a debate about the Patriot Act, one of the features of debates is that people disagree about what the right answer is.
LAC
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, now we know what is on pokeypoo’s agenda:
Dinner…alone…the bitter table, usual seat. Appetizer:bile soup, dinner: one-note chicken paranoia, and for dessert – nutcake with a self-pity cream. Washed down with lashs of hot screwdriver (sorry – shout out to Basil Fawlty) :)
pokeyblow
@gogol’s wife: Your interpretation.
I’ll tell you this: repeal the Patriot Act (and abide by the laws thereby revised) and I’ll stop bitching about this.
NickT
@Chris:
And let’s not forget the spectacular freakout about an unused former Burlington Coat Factory which might have been turned into a Muslim community center. Obama was pretty much alone on that one when he called for sanity and tolerance too. Or the idea that we could try KSM in a regular court – Obama was alone there too.
Still, why should any of this matter to the front-pagers? Someone has to generate page views by being edgy and daring and playing the principled lover of liberty about 10 years too late.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: That’s quite a quote. Can you give a citation to the person who said that?
gogol's wife
@pokeyblow:
Have you been calling your representatives in Congress to urge them to do this? Have you been writing letters to the editor? Or have you just been here slagging Obama?
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: For better or worse, MSM is the tail that wags the Balloon Juice dog. MSM seems to want to derail the second Obama term, so there is this constant drum beat of faux scandals, Benghazi, IRS, and now this NSA stuff.
NickT
@pokeyblow:
So why don’t you repeal it, rather than bitching and whining? You seem to think this would be easy enough to do.
Haydnseek
@NickT: Exactly, and anybody who thinks this started with the Patriot Act has no knowledge of U.S. history, recent or otherwise. The only thing that changes is the technology.
pokeyblow
@gogol’s wife: I do agree, I should say, that the mainstream media hates Obama, hates democratic presidents (and democratic candidates; viz: Albert Gore).
But left-leaning people have a serious disability: they typically attempt to be at least somewhat consistent, fair-minded, and honest. You seem to want Obama inoculated from any criticism from the left. I’m sure there would be political benefits to you getting that wish.
At the same time, Obama clearly could have done a shitload more to maintain enthusiasm and support from what should be his base. No, wait, orthodoxy here is that he couldn’t, because Max Baucus would shoot him or something.
NickT
@gogol’s wife:
What, Comrade Pokey actually stir himself to do something constructive? The probability of that is somewhere south of 0.000000000001%.
gogol's wife
@pokeyblow:
Green balloons.
pokeyblow
@gogol’s wife: [raven]No, all I do is sit here all day on this blog while the waning days of my wasted life drearily drip away. [/raven]
Roger Moore
@gogol’s wife:
Plenty of people objected at the time, but they were the usual DFH suspects, so they were largely ignored in the popular press. Now that it can be pinned on Obama, everyone who hates him is jumping on the bandwagon, so it gets a lot more attention.
gogol's wife
@pokeyblow:
LOLWUT?
Baud
@pokeyblow:
To be fair, I think the orthodoxy here (right or wrong) is that there is nothing within the realm of reality that Obama could have done to win over the people who you refer to as his supposed based.
gogol's wife
@Roger Moore:
Right. That’s why I find the whole “debate” illegitimate.
SatanicPanic
Walter Kirn has a stick up his butt.
bill d
So what are the newfound panicked going to do to remove themselves from this obtrusive information age?
This really is getting rather close to get off my lawn territory
NickT
@SatanicPanic:
That’s what the NSA tells me too.
Keith
Simple rule: if you didn’t write whiny articles about NSA snooping back in 2006-2007 when stories about this first came out, then STFU. On a similar strand, if you voted to immunize cooperating companies for handing over “private” info in 2008, STFU (that goes for you, especially, Jim Sensenbrenner).
FWIW, the Senate approved the immunization law 69-28, so a LOT of Democrats were complicit in this; Obama voted Nay, incidentally. This is what we voted for.
gogol's wife
@bill d:
They’re so terrified of Obama’s Cheka that they blab about how horrible he is 24/7 on the internet.
pokeyblow
@gogol’s wife: I don’t know what green balloons are. I looked at the lexicon and saw green balloon juice, but if that’s your reference, I still don’t get it.
Cassidy
Gods, I love being home and able to use my pie filter.
NickT
@bill d:
They’ll do the square root of diddlysquat and enjoy their heroic martyrdom as the NSA does absolutely nothing to them.
gogol's wife
@pokeyblow:
It’s a code phrase for if I hear one more time about Obama not doing enough to make his base happy, I’m going to throw up. The people you’re talking about are not his base.
Baud
@pokeyblow:
Since we don’t often get a chance to agree, I’ll take this opportunity to agree that Green Balloons has always confused me too.
Suffern ACE
So now we’re going to revive the flight 800 whodunit.
schrodinger's cat
@LAC: That is good!
gogol's wife
@Baud:
It has to do with a scandal involving a scion of the Formula One fortune. It should show up if you google it. The Balloon Juice community has repurposed the phrase. It’s a fancy way of saying stop it.
bill d
@NickT:
It is Netroots Nation week, time to pretend that you’re a punched hippie for a few days. All the cool kids are being repressed these days.
SatanicPanic
@NickT: I guess he wasn’t being careful about his phone use. Tsk tsk.
pokeyblow
@Baud: Well, I’ve seen the claim that Obama would be shot for doing various things, that he couldn’t even attempt a public healthcare option because Max Baucus wouldn’t let him, and that he couldn’t refrain from his “look forward, not backward” approach to the Iraq war crime culprits because Dianne Feinstein would be in trouble and if Dianne Feinstein were to be in trouble wouldn’t that upset pokeyblow a hell of a lot and besides pokeyblow is a troll.
I think that’s the proof. Q.E.D.
pokeyblow
@gogol’s wife: Throw up then, by all means.
Can’t you live with the fact that people don’t agree 100% with you?
gogol's wife
@Baud:
Sorry, it wasn’t the Formula One guy, it was Rod Jetton. Try that.
Baud
@pokeyblow:
Proof of what?
Mino
@LAC: lol Right. Democrats only seem to remember to be Democrats on the environment when Republicans are in office. Though I have to say our current bunch are the worst in my living memory. I’m just wondering how long before midterms Keystone X will be approved? Will our butthurt be splained away or still be raw?
Keith
@Keith: Correction: Obama voted for an amendment to strip immunity from the bill but voted for the overall bill after the amendment became part of the bill.
LesGS
@Baud: It’s the Balloon Juice safe-word, as per the BDSM community. Meaning, for example, “Stop! Please don’t twist the nipple clamp any tighter!”
SatanicPanic
@Baud: oh oh, I know this one- Green Balloons was some conservative dudes S & M “safe word”.
Linnaeus
I’m certainly not for using the recent stories about the IRS, NSA, etc. as a partisan cudgel against the president, given that the problem predated him, but I find the “statute of limitations” principle being articulated in the thread a bit absurd.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
Thanks. It’s a reference to a sexual safeword. I guess it has been repurposed.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
Not really. I just think blaming him for not wanting to roll back the post-9/11 security state is… like blaming Bush (or crediting him as the case may be) for not wanting to roll back the welfare state. In both cases, the president clearly gave it a go (Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security early in his second term, Obama’s attempt to close Guantanamo early in his first term), and in both cases, was shut down by a combination of Congress and public opinion. There would’ve been little to be gained by either one of them persisting.
If we as a nation are ready to finally have this a conversation about the excesses of the post-9/11 security state, wonderful. We wanted to have that conversation back when it was created in the first place, and we were shut down. We, including Obama, wanted to have that conversation early in his first term, and again we were shut down. I don’t think it’s too fucking much to ask that the MSM remember those very simple facts instead of 1) pretending that they’ve just uncovered this for the very first time and 2) passing it off as yet another “OMG OBAMA USING CONSTITUTION AS TOILET PAPER!” “scandal.”
pokeyblow
@Baud: The first paragraph is my attempt at reconstructing the Balloon-Juice-commentariat-orthodox proof of why it was IMPOSSIBLE for Obama to do more to encourage those who would like to see a material leftward shift in American policy.
Suffern ACE
@gogol’s wife: I believe it is our S&M safe word, although I think we’ve invoked ourselves in a role playing session with folks who aren’t really into letting us explore the pleasure of our political thoughts.
pokeyblow
@Chris: Chris, do posters here say “they only complain about Obama’s NSA use because Obama is blah” ??
Yes or no?
And if yes, is that sentence indisputably correct?
Baud
@Mino:
I was watching Chris Hayes a while back, and he had Sen. Sanders and some others opposed to the Keystone Pipeline. It was troubling because Chris noted that the Canadian tar sands was already shipping oil to the U.S. through other routes, and when Chris asked what difference the Keystone pipeline would make, the only answer was “it’s symbolic.” I hope that’s not the case, because if it is, I agree that it wouldn’t make sense for Obama to disapprove it.
pokeyblow
Safe words aren’t necessary for circle-jerking.
And the biscuit is more than soaked-through by now.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: Civil libertarians and people clamoring for war crimes prosecutions for the Bush administration are not “the base.” IIRC polling on whether Obama has been not liberal enough was yielding consistently tiny numbers (though I don’t know if that’s been asked since the election). You’d be better off concentrating on rightness and righteousness than popularity or marketing strategy. For Obama to do the kinds of things you profess to want him to do would kinda-sorta impress a small group of people to his left (who, you have to admit, tend to be difficult to please). It would also make a group of people who think of themselves as “moderates” and non-ideological fans of Gettin’ ‘R Done, many of whom vote for Democrats because they find Republicans hardline and crazy, very, very aggravated. It would not have been smart politics at all. It might have been principled; it might have been right; it might have been bloody heroic. But it wouldn’t have been the political triumph you seem to expect.
Spaghetti Lee
@bill d:
“Get off my lawn” is a longstanding tradition here. Haven’t you ever read any Cole posts?
dance around in your bones
@Baud: The lexicon ref to Green Balloon Juice sets you on the right trail.
Green Balloons was a ‘safe word’ that didn’t get used (supposedly) and bad things happened. Balloon Juice comicaltariat adopted the word to refer to “Enough, already!” in almost any situation.
eta: aaaaaaaaaaand I see I am many comments too late. Tough crowd!
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: Sorry to go Godwin, but were Nuremberg prosecutions popular among Germans?
And did it matter?
DFH no.6
@gogol’s wife:
This, exactly.
But pokeyblow and other such seem to think this is some national debate about the Patriot Act or some damn thing, when it is nothing of the kind (though it would be great if it was).
And seriously, what the hell is Kirn going on about?
Surveillance cameras, NSA spying, and internet browsers accessing stored personal information mean we now live in some combination of 1984 and A Wrinkle In Time?
Hyperbole much?
Plus, he’s not really going to do any of those ridiculous things he wrote. Not a one of them.
raven
@dance around in your bones: Where ya bean frijole?
Chris
@pokeyblow:
I suppose you can “dispute” whatever the hell you want, but personally, if the statement is that the MSM is only milking this because the president is – well, I’d argue “liberal,” not “blah” is the determining factor – then yeah, I’d find it really frakking hard to disagree with that.
As I said, this isn’t a new phenomenon. This is something we’ve known about for years and years and the MSM had precious little to say about it when it was one of their own running the show. If they had a good faith reason to go after these programs, they would’ve done it years ago. And they wouldn’t be phrasing everything in terms of “oooooooh, this is BAD NEWS FOR OBAMA! What are you hiding, OBAMA?”
You said yourself that the media hated Obama and Democratic presidents. This would be a case in point.
Marc
@pokeyblow:
We object to magical thinking and bad-faith readings of what Obama does. For some people there is a seamless and endless list of grievances against the president, and they just jump from one thing to attack him on to another. Another useful tell is when they blame him more than others (e.g. Republicans, Congressional Dems) who are actually responsible for things that happened.
When you use every topic to complain about Obama it becomes pretty clear that the individual items aren’t what matters; the attack of the day is just another useful weapon to attack someone that you hate. And, yea, Democrats are not going to pretend that these tactics are in good faith.
Omnes Omnibus
@pokeyblow: @Baud: There was a post here a long time ago involving BDSM where the the safe word for the couple was “green balloons.” It has been adopted as the all purpose safe word for the blog.
LAC
@pokeyblow: no, your first paragraph is you picking up the single stringed banjo you own to play “Obama has failed me again and I’m being bullied” in b minor. Or the other song “if you think there”s a balanced approach between liberty and security, you’re a fascist sheep and an obot”
pokeyblow
@Marc: Fine, you don’t think it’s in good faith, and Gogol’s wife (the Guido Reni admirer) is going to throw up.
I don’t get why that should make me change my opinions.
Felonius Monk
FUCK YOU, BIG BROTHER! — CAN YOU HEAR ME? — FUCK YOU, BIG BROTHER!
And all the piss-pants scaredy cats that are so naive to think that the gubmint is keeping them safe. What bullshit!
Like the man said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” How right he was.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
Yes, that’s true. Tar sands bitumen is refined in Detroit, for example. But we’ve already seen a spill on the Kalamazoo River that is still not cleaned up, three years later. Not to mention the huge piles of petcoke (a by-product of bitumen refining) building up in Detroit.
pokeyblow
@Chris: Chris, sorry to be sticky about this, but I didn’t ask for your thoughts on that question — although they’re certainly interesting to me.
I asked whether posters here said “they only complain about Obama’s NSA use because Obama is blah” ?
Have you ever seen that?
pokeyblow
@LAC: Trolling some dude named pokeyblow is no way to go through life, friend.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: it seems to matter _to you_, because you’re saying that it would have been good politics to do these things, because they would energize “the base.” If the alleged base is small and difficult to please, and if attempting to please them would alienate not-them, then it would not be good politics to undertake things with a goal of pleasing the base. That’s why I said that it’s a bad argument for you. A much better argument is the one arising from non-negotiable principles. But acting on non-negotiable principles is often rather bad for popularity and bad for politics. This is why politicians, who unlike gadflies in the punditocracy need to worry a lot about what people think of them, usually don’t make a lot of unpopular principled stands, because they won’t stay politicians very long by doing that.
srv
Snowden will remain relevant until Holder apologizes to the AP.
You are really stupid if you ask prima-donnas to tow the line for the security state for decades and then get caught using those tools on them.
Apparently Capt. Obvious does not visit you Obots.
Chyron HR
@pokeyblow:
That’s quite a quote. Can you give a citation to the person who said that?
dance around in your bones
@raven: Busy in the meatspace, burrito :)
Thanks for asking. I’m usually here lurking but not commenting. I get interrupted too often too follow a thread in realtime.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
See, here’s the thing. I agree that a lot of media people have it out for Obama, and that they ignored the same stuff coming from Bush. But the anti-surveillance people on this blog are by and large not taking that tack. I can’t speak for anyone, but I oppose it because I believe in individual privacy. I believe in that no matter who’s president, and whether it’s a corporation or the government. No, I didn’t just start thinking that a month ago. One of the many things that bug me about this debate is that it’s the other side that’s being reductive, assuming that any criticism is a criticism of Obama (which is odd, because they also spend so much time lecturing people that Obama didn’t start these programs, which everyone here already knows) and assuming that the criticism is racist, then high-fiving each other and calling it a day. For people who bitch so much about being called Obots, they’re doing a great job living up to all the stereotypes involved.
something fabulous
@gogol’s wife: @Baud: Interestingly, the Formula One guy scandal was weird sexual hijinks with a Nazi flavor by Max Mosley– the nephew of Jessica Mitford (and her other sisters, including the Nazi-sympathetic Unity, known to the family as… Baud).
Mino
@Baud: Uh, not symbolic.
1) It’s an ecological disaster waiting to happen. Google a few tar-sands spills. Right over the primary aquifer for the entire central US. They have no clue how to clean up spills, nor do they know how to avoid them, given their track record.
2) Trucking is expensive, though safer from a spill standpoint, in that a truck only carries so much gunk. Faced with trucking costs long term, tar sands become less attractive.
3) The corporations pushing this development make BP look like fucking angels. And they have political cover out the wazoo.
Omnes Omnibus
@something fabulous: It should be remembered that one of the Mitford sisters was a die-hard Communist as well.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
But that doesn’t tell me if Keystone makes things worse.
LAC
@pokeyblow: neither is repeating your butthurt talking points, amigo.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: By “it does matter to you” I take it that you think it [would-have mattered] matters to me what the Germans thought about Nuremberg trials… that is 100% wrong. I don’t think the German people should have been consulted about whether to try the Nazi killers.
I don’t think we should pay much attention to George Zimmerman’s brother in deciding whether he should be prosecuted.
And I think 100,000 dead Iraqis deserve more justice than you seem to think is politically optimal for Obama.
You also seem to be saying “Obama is a politician, not a moral doer-of-right.” That’s fine, but since we know what politicians are, why in the fuck should I celebrate Obama qua politician?
SatanicPanic
@Felonius Monk: “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” How right he was.
This phrase never made sense to me. I mean, I understand that all-encompassing fear is not productive, but that’s kind of rude to say to someone who is confronted by a bear.
Marc
@pokeyblow:
I’m explaining why some folks get annoyed at a certain, very common approach that we see here. If you want to convince others you need to recognize the dynamic and adjust your tactics.
I’m not trying to change your opinion on the NSA. If you want mine, we don’t know enough about what’s going on to know that there is an actual problem. I can imagine things that would outrage me, and I’m not seeing evidence that they’ve actually happened. And the logical leaps that I’m seeing smell of conspiracy theories that I have little patience for.
It’s a lot more fun to let your imagination run wild. But the things that emerge have more to do with you than they do with Obama.
Baud
@something fabulous:
I’ve been found out….
pokeyblow
@Chyron HR:
balloon-juice.com/2013/06/19/wednesday-evening-open-thread-get-over-it/#comment-4496074
Anne Laurie
@gogol’s wife:
So, those of us who objected to Security Theatre during the Cheney Regency were correct, but now the idiots & tribalists who don’t like President Obama are (temporarily) agreeing with us, so we have to switch sides and start defending the-innoncent-have-nothing-to-fear survelliance in all its myriad forms?
Sorry. I wasn’t defending My Team when I protested in 2003, and I refuse to believe that defending My Team in 2013 requires me to jettison my principles in return for the right to wear the team sweater.
(And while we’re using the sorryarse sports metaphors, Goddess will I be happy when the fair-weather fans lose interest in December 2016 and us lifelong Democrats can go back to deploring Our Guys as second-worst only to Their Guys… )
Marc
@Spaghetti Lee:
And I see people on the other side dismissing any questions about the outrage narrative as the behavior of blind cult followers. It doesn’t help that I recognize many of them as people who’ve spent years here attacking Obama on other things. It is too bad that the folks who don’t fit this mold get swept up with the ones who do, however. I try, but it can be tough to make the important distinctions.
lojasmo
@pokeyblow:
Actually, you just did an analogy fail.
If Newtown sparked debate on the merits of the second, the NSA/PATRIOT act flap should spark debates on the merits of the fourth…which have been litigated to death already, right up to SCOTUS.
Weaselone
@Baud:
From what I have read, the purpose of the pipeline is not to get the tar sands oil to the US for use, it’s about shipping it abroad. Currently, a lot of that oil is stranded and refined in the Midwest.The purpose of the Keystone pipeline is to efficiently ship the tar sands oil to the heavy crude refineries in Texas for further refinement and ultimately export it abroad where it will fetch a higher price.
lojasmo
@pokeyblow:
If he had actually done such a thing, we could have that debate.
But he did not.
raven
@dance around in your bones: Aite, with the idiot trolls that won’t go the fuck away I have a third of the comments pied.
Yea asshole, I’m talking about YOU. You know who you are.
pokeyblow
@Marc: Thanks for that. But I’m not the one telling other people to go fuck themselves all the time… I’m on the receiving end of that.
The dynamic doesn’t really encourage me to find the key to befriending the thin-skinned, self-control-lacking posters here.
Spaghetti Lee
@Chris:
I remember polite society telling us we were a bunch of faggy hippies who needed to put our bitching aside in the spirit of God and country, and I remember the few debates we had on the subject ending inconclusively, with nothing being done to restrain the NSA’s new powers.
Yeah, the difference now is that a bunch of people on the left have discovered they like punching faggy hippies, too. I get the fact that people disagree and what are and aren’t acceptable limits on the security state and how much privacy matters. What has bugged me throughout is that the people who are generally accepting of more surveillance and less privacy are being such complete assholes about it. Automatically assuming anyone who disagrees with them is just being self-aggrandizing and selfish (yeah, who wouldn’t want all that sweet civil libertarian fame and moolah?), assuming that it’s all some big anti-Obama plot, assuming that nobody who disagrees with them knows anything about history, then setting up strawmen revolving around anyone who disagrees with them being some panicky paultard who couldn’t even pronounce ‘surveillance’ until a week ago. Then they knock down that strawman, give each other bro-fives for showing those hippies what’s what, and call it a day. It reads like pretty much anything you’d see on Redstate, and it’s fucking pathetic.
Chyron HR
@pokeyblow:
No, sorry, I don’t see your exact quoted text there. Are you a hypocrite?
NickT
@Anne Laurie:
That approach worked in 2010/
So, you might as well go and try it again…
replicnt6
@Spaghetti Lee: This.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: dude, seriously, I’m not being that hard to grasp, I don’t think. You don’t get to switch back and forth between “Obama should have done more of the things I favor because it would excite the base” to “Obama should have done more of the things I favor because they are right.” Now you’re on the second option. Fine, there are ways to argue about that. You started on the first option. There are ways to argue about that too. IMHO the first option is a terrible argument. The second is at least a defensible, if not a slam-dunk, argument. But you keep sliding around.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
Sure, most of the people here aren’t. By and large and certainly among the power brokers in DC, though, that’s what’s going on. I have no idea which of the two Gogol’s Wife was aiming at in the comment I piggybacked onto originally, but when I piggybacked, I was talking about the latter.
If it’ll make people feel better for me to publicly state that I don’t think most of the NSA’s Balloon Juice critics are Obama-haters, fine. Consider it said. That said, I don’t see how you can have a conversation about what’s going on in Washington and the media without noting that the people pushing this scandal have absolutely no intention of using it to limit NSA powers, any more than the people who pushed the Lewinsky scandal to impeachment were actually interested in stopping marital infidelity (or even lying under oath).
lojasmo
@pokeyblow:
That’s heartening. Unfortunately, you would immediately jump to some other inane bullshit.
You do know, right, that Obama can’t repeal the PATRIOT act?
Get off the internet and go to your congresscritter’s nearest office. Please.
pokeyblow
@lojasmo:
I like when you’re civil. I wish I were optimistic that it would last.
Time Magazine published a list of “100 most influential people in the world” .
They included Tom Coburn.
Barack Obama wrote the text for Coburn’s entry.
Omnes Omnibus
@pokeyblow:
Who is demanding that you do so? Look, in my view, the man is a very good politician and the electable individual who I believed would most closely represent my views and be most likely to implement policies with which I agreed of the candidates who ran for president in either 2008 or 2012. He is also an interesting and charismatic person. The first part is what I look for in making a decision on voting; the second is just an observation.
No one who is electable was going to better on civil liberties than Obama and many would have been far worse. No one was going to prosecute Bush et al for what they did. It was never in the cards.
srv
@Anne Laurie: This makes you worse than Donna Brazile.
Seriously, this is so 2005.
These Obots are the moral equivalent of Darrell.
pokeyblow
@Chyron HR:
Sure I’m a hypocrite. I’m human.
I do think the sentiment Yatsuno expressed is quite close to that characterized in the placeholder statement I wrote.
Mino
I have not liked it, but I can’t say I did not expect Obama to never let a Republican get to his right on security. Especially given his votes in the Senate on FISA and retroactive immunity.
But. I was shocked to learn how venal are the ones entrusted with the tools to spy on us. Color me old-fashioned, but I still trust the integrity of a civil servant dogsbody doing his daily grind. Maybe not the admin who have increasingly become partisan, but the plebe worker. Now I discover we are paying out the ass to have our lives overseen by connected contractors and the gun-for-hires they employ. That did surprise me.
Spaghetti Lee
@Marc:
Well, I don’t know what else to say about people who actually were angry when Bush and other presidents did this, but now are straining to argue why it’s no big deal and everyone needs to shut up about it. I think the ‘cult’ aspect comes from the assumption that this is by definition about Obama, for good or for ill. People act like there can be nothing outside the obot/firebagger bubble, and anyone who disagrees with Obama’s actions is only trying to suck up to Greenwald, or is secretly a racist, or a Clinton-dead ender, or whatever stupid blood feud they think explains everything about politics. Sorry, but there were people who hated the surveillance state long before Obama, and there will be people who hate it long afterwards.
something fabulous
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep, the aforementioned Jessica; they apparently shared a bedroom as girls and drew a line down the middle; one made hammer and sickle etchings in their windows while the other made little swastikas. Interesting family, to put it mildly.
SatanicPanic
@pokeyblow: See, this is the kind of thing that’s ridiculous. What does it matter? Coburn isn’t Idi Amin. Coburn is a US Senator who might, at some point, influence legislation he wants passed. If that doesn’t work, then fine, but I don’t see the harm in trying. Or maybe they’re actual friends. Who cares?
FlipYrWhig
@Anne Laurie: yeah, that’ll be great. “OMG, what a disaster, President O’Malley said he won’t consider prosecuting the Obama administration for war crimes! And one of his appointees once worked for a large corporation! I totally knew this would happen and I’m so disillusioned! Again!”
DFH no.6
@Felonius Monk:
Are you serious, or is this snark?
Cuz Poe’s Law comes into play for me on this.
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t claim that Obama could have single-handedly arranged the prosecution of Bush, Cheney, et al.
I do believe he could have decided not to bless their actions via his “look forward, not backward” comment.
I believe he should have said nothing of the sort, and provided whatever reasonable cooperation he could have to international authorities which might have initiated investigations.
And I also think the America which elected him in a landslide in 2008, with people lined up on frigid Washington streets to catch a glimpse of his inauguration, would have been just fine with that.
You disagree, that’s fine. You can throw up like Gogol’s wife, or flame me, or whatever. I can live with the fact that there are [presumably] well-meaning people who don’t agree with me on every issue.
NickT
@SatanicPanic:
Have you ever seen his birth certificate? I mean,look what wonders major plastic surgery did for Sarah Palin!
something fabulous
@Baud: Ha! Surveillance state in action?
(I’ve wanted to ask if that was the reference since I first saw your moniker!)
dance around in your bones
@raven: I’m pretty sure that 80% of my pied people are the same person.
Have you noticed that cleek’s updated pie filter puts in a little double arrow that lets you unpie someone with a click so you can read their comment? And another click returns you to pie.
I’m almost always sorry when I click to unpie. Rarely worth it and there goes my blood pressure.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Keystone will run through, or possibly justnextto, the Oglalla Acquifer. Any of those pesky little can’t-hardly-avoid-them spills dumps gunk into the OA, we’ve just contaminated what we used to brag of as the Breadbasket to the World.
“Symbolic”, it ain’t. “Suicidal” would be a better shorthand.
srv
@lojasmo:
No, but he can autopen it.
SatanicPanic
@NickT: Oh let’s not beat that dead horse again.
replicnt6
@Anne Laurie:
Thank you. Thank you, Anne. I really though progressives were opposed to a surveillance state, but boy have I ever been schooled in the last week or so. Apparently, talking about surveillance is a shanda fur the goyim because our guy is in the White House. Presumably, we can still discuss it in quiet rooms.
Chris
@Spaghetti Lee:
Oh, that ain’t a “difference.” Plenty of Democrats actually voted for that stuff in the first place (remember Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden’s votes on the Iraq War?)
All of that is fair enough. I don’t assume that everyone who’s mad about NSA surveillance powers (I happen to be one of them) is a firebagger with ulterior motives. That said,
1) I do tend to assume that about most of the big shots driving the story from Washington and wherever the big donors and big media live. For reasons I’ve spelled out above, I don’t think that’s unreasonable of me.
2) Goes both ways. People going into a thread to start tossing “Obot Gestapo hypocrite who only cares about civil liberties when the other guy wins!” slurs at anyone who dares to point out that blaming Obama isn’t exactly the whole story, to put it mildly; or that there are legitimate uses for NSA surveillance, or drones, or whatever – aren’t exactly unheard of either.
pokeyblow
@SatanicPanic: I care because the republicans, whose policies I detest and believe are harming America, were in serious disarray in 2008.
I believe Obama, with his repeated efforts at conciliatory behavior, bought them time to regain their footing. (My opinion, in typical undignified republican fashion, their first felt terra firma with the obnoxious birth-certificate crap.)
Obama tried and tried to be liked, to be cooperative, and they didn’t go for it. Most of them hate him, and most (if not all) of those who hate him hate him because he is black.
I don’t hate him, but I think he’s been a fool in this regard.
Thom Hartmann plays clips from Harry Truman on his radio show sometimes. Man, they sound great.
Give ’em hell, Harry! is gone, now it’s give ’em head, Barry!
That’s what I see.
Baud
@something fabulous:
My nym has a long and complicated history….
@Anne Laurie:
I thought they were thinking of rerouting around the aquifer.
Anyway, I’m concerned now, because it seems like the arguments against the pipeline keep shifting. That’s not a good situation.
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
No one who is electable was going to better on civil liberties than Obama and many would have been far worse. No one was going to prosecute Bush et al for what they did. It was never in the cards.
I think most people here agree with that, or at least think it’s a good argument. What bugs me is that some people here apparently can’t stand anyone else wishing things could have been different. If you can’t wishful-think on a left-wing blog, where can you? Obama’s not a god from Discworld, he’s not going to disappear if people lose faith. People should be able to say “I don’t like this” without instantly being piled on by the self-appointed dissent-cops who think all disagreement is self-serving and are personally offended by people who have stronger principles than they do.
I agree with a lot of stuff you said; Obama’s electable, he’s closer to my views than a lot of people, he’s a good person, etc. But he’s got flaws, too, and I think pointing out those flaws is fair game and necessary for any discussion that’s more than just a circlejerk. It’s not betrayal or some sinister morale-sapping long con. Fewer and fewer people here seem to think that. Going by the standards of a lot of people here, I vote straight D, and the vote is all that matters, right? I don’t see why they feel such a need to shut everyone up and mock dissent in something as low-stakes as a blog thread.
NickT
@replicnt6:
Discussing the ongoing reality of the security state is fine and even good – but some of the people on your side are behaving as if it had emerged fully formed yesterday from the head of Barack Obama – not to mention betraying a gullibility about the claims made by Greenwald and Snowden that is ridiculous.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: I don’t see that a party that couldn’t even agree to close Guantanamo or try terrorists in normal courts (again) was somehow going to back up Obama when he approved of an unprecedented international prosecution of high-ranking American officials, but, you know, that’s me.
Baud
@something fabulous:
No, that’s not where it comes from.
SatanicPanic
@pokeyblow: I really don’t think he had a choice there. Besides, I recall them being personal friends. I have conservative friends. If they were ever influential I would write something for them.
Weaselone
@Spaghetti Lee:
Well, it’s difficult to have respect for members of the other when they keep posting things not borne out by actual facts and then proceeds to double down when they get called on the BS. There is also the whole what Obama is doing is the same as what Bush did meme that keeps cropping up. Bush actually engaged in warrantless wiretapping and justified it as a power of the executive, Under Obama metadata is being collected with oversight of Congress and approval of the FISA court. Actual wiretapping requires more specific evidence. These things are not actually the same.
Baud
@something fabulous:
Sorry. I answered your comment twice.
pokeyblow
@SatanicPanic:
I know folks here believe there are severe limits on what Obama can do.
But I didn’t think Obama was compelled to write that article.
Poor guy… is he president, or Kagemusha?
Anne Laurie
@FlipYrWhig: Nah, I figure there will be a brief drop in readership as the True Defenders turn their starling skillz to… whatevers, I’ll just be happy the squawking & shitting have moved on to follow the next combine.
Since I can’t parse BJ’s readership count now, it will hardly bother me then.
Spaghetti Lee
@NickT:
OK, who here is actually saying that?
pokeyblow
@FlipYrWhig: Are you pleased that he made the “look forward, not backward” statement?
Did that help?
KmCO
@SatanicPanic: I don’t think the adage applies to a clear-cut, fight-or-flight situation such as being confronted by a bear. Rather I think the “fear itself” portion refers to living in a continual state of anxiety and hyperawareness of threat, real or perceived. It’s a fucking exhausting way to live, and it’s one that’s decidedly popular in our current society.
NickT
@Spaghetti Lee:
Have you read any of the recent threads on this topic? If not, start about five days ago and consider how silly some of the discussion has been with its suggestions that Obama can do whatever he likes, that he is somehow betraying progressives by not acting unilaterally, that he is essentially a Republican etc etc etc. Believe me, you’ll find plenty of that sort of poisonous nonsense -and maybe more than you care to contemplate. You’ll also find a heaping amount of extreme ignorance of the relevant technologies and how they function.
Have fun.
Spaghetti Lee
@pokeyblow:
See, this is one of those things that I think doesn’t really matter. Do you really think the way to get rid of Tom Coburn would be to talk shit about him in Time magazine? In an environment when any Republican jackhole can get wads of cash just for saying Obama’s out to silence him? I’m not saying “Woo, bipartisanship, comity, brotherhood!” I’m saying it’s an empty gesture in a somewhat pointless forum and it’s not worth anyone’s time fighting about.
NickT
@KmCO:
“Fear is the mindkiller”.
Although a bear would probably be pretty effective in that department too.
Anne Laurie
@Mino:
The Reagan Administration’s refinement on pure Nixonian anti-democracy was the idea that “government”, any government, can only be defined as grift and self-interest. One reason the GOP has suddenly discovered its inner Orwell is that the current fusterclucks can be used as further evidence that all gubmint is just theft & grift.
Spaghetti Lee
@NickT:
Given how hyperbolic and fallacious your own arguments have been in this thread, I’m gonna take your criticism with a grain of salt.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
It’s more than symbolic. Right now, we’re getting a moderate amount of tar sands oil through the existing Keystone (non-XL) pipeline. Keystone XL would greatly expand the amount of tar sands oil being shipped- mostly transshipped- through the US. It’s true that Canada would find some other way of getting tar sands oil to China if we don’t approve the new pipeline, but that doesn’t make it symbolic. Rejecting the pipeline would reduce the environmental destruction from pipeline construction and eliminate the risk of leaks, spills, and explosions from the new pipeline.
pokeyblow
@Spaghetti Lee:
Not writing the article wouldn’t have gotten rid of Tom Coburn.
Writing the article did make some people (like pokeyblow, who is apparently a moron piece of shit) say “what the fuck was that about?”
NickT
@Spaghetti Lee:
I note that you can’t actually produce an intelligent counter-argument, which suggests that your original question was as hypocritical and foolish as the behavior of your fellow-ideologues. You’ve just developed a taste for pie, by the way.
Linnaeus
@Baud:
It depends on what you see as “worse”. I mentioned the Kalamazoo River spill because we now have recent first-hand experience of what a tar sands spill can do and how long and difficult it is to clean up. That’s a factor to take into account when we consider that Keystone XL will run right by the major groundwater source for the central United States.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Thanks for the explanation. Here’s the issue I’m having. When I first heard about the pipeline, it was in the context of climate change. Now the arguments seem centered on the hazards of pipeline construction (which may or may not be unique to Keystone). The fault may be entirely mine for not being adequately informed, but the specter of dramatically shifting arguments disconcerts me.
Spaghetti Lee
@NickT:
I spend time on crafting arguments when the person I’m talking to actually deserves it. Back at ya, dumbfuck.
Baud
@Linnaeus:
Thanks.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
No. Those who objected to the surveillance state have been correct all along. By all means, continue to engage in rational discussion about it and point out abuses as they become clear. But that’s not what’s been happening recently. What’s been happening for the past week and a half is a massive freakout, in which people have taken poorly supported allegations, given them the worst possible interpretation, treated that as the gospel truth, and blamed everything on Obama. What we want is less freakout and more rational discussion.
Anne Laurie
@NickT:
Why do the people using Cleek’s filter always feel the need to advertise their targets?
I mean, it’s a worthy invention, and has no doubt saved many readers a great deal of needless aggravation, but I always feel it’s like broadcasting one’s resort to immodium or bladder leakage products. Some things are just not my business.
pokeyblow
@Anne Laurie:
It doesn’t strike me as the fearful punishment those who brag about it imply it is.
Spaghetti Lee
@Anne Laurie:
This is actually my first pieing. Is that all it takes? I wasn’t even personally attacking the guy, just critiquing the strength of his arguments. Given what an asshole NickT has been during this whole debate, I guess he’s one of those classic “dishes it out but can’t take it” meatheads.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Thanks. Too tired to read now, but I’ve bookmarked it.
magurakurin
@pokeyblow:
Watch the film, Death and The Maiden, then report back.
eemom
@Roger Moore:
Well said.
LAC
@NickT: and this is why I think that a discussion that takes place in the fringes is a non starter. The hair on fire shit is not going to change things. If what the pokeys and the cornerstones who populate this board are serious about is a rational discussion , I have yet to see it. People spend paragraphs citing articles, passages from regulations, etc to no avail. There is a narrative, and damn it, that stays.
Suffern ACE
@KmCO: yes. Which is why I’m not certain how the folks who believe we’re in Stasi controlled East Germany or at the least Weimar Germany in 1932 can live that way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: I had a grandfather who used to say “Wish in one hand, shit in the other, which gets full the fastest?” I am sure he was fun at parties.
Seriously though, I am one of the people who has on the pro-privacy side in this. Obama has not been as good as I would have wished on civil liberties. Or education. Or a number of other things. There are, I do believe, people who try to use those facts to gin up overall anti-Obama sentiment – for what ever reason. As a result, there also are those who have developed a hair trigger for defending Obama. And on civil liberties, there are some who really don’t care all that much.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think the greenhouse stuff has always been a bit of a red herring. Yes, tar sands oil is terrible from a greenhouse gas standpoint, but the oil is there and people are going to try to get it out to market one way or another. The more substantial objections to the pipeline have always centered around the danger of the pipeline itself. The original plan for the pipeline was rejected because of objections to the route. That’s why it’s coming up again; they’re proposing a different route to try to get around those objections.
LAC
@Spaghetti Lee: no you are a sanctimonious windbag who is of the impression that groupon is offering your rosé scented farts as part of a spa package.
pokeyblow
@magurakurin: When I get a chance, I will.
In the meantime, I’m curious about FlipYrWhig’s answer.
Mino
@Baud: I didn’t think it necessary to even mention climate change. Of course it will. In fact, it is belived by many that tar sand utilization will be the tipping point.
Spaghetti Lee
@LAC:
My farts smell of chamomile, actually. Typical Obot, ignoring the facts.
Roger Moore
@Anne Laurie:
This has been going on for a long time. Back in USENET days, “plonk” was the sound of somebody being dropped into a kill file. I think there are two reasons for announcing that somebody is going into the pie filter:
1) To let them know that they aren’t going to be effective against you anymore
2) To encourage others to stop feeding the troll
Patricia Kayden
@gogol’s wife: I guess many are “shocked” at the extent of the government surveillance that was revealed by Super Hero Snowden and Ace Reporter Greenwald.
Not sure why people weren’t more outraged when the Patriot Act was passed in the first place or when Bush was illegally wiretapping people.
nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html?_r=0
Baud
@Roger Moore: @Mino:
Again, I don’t know if the fault lies with me or the media messaging. But if the main problem with Keystone involves concerns over pipeline construction and operation, and Keystone itself doesn’t appreciably affect climate change because tar sands are being exploited anyway, then I believe it more likely that the pipeline interests will be able to do enough in response to get Keystone approved.
Anyway, I need to read up more on this issue. I appreciate the informative and helpful discussion.
I am not a kook
I am a registered Obot and I support any investigation and fact finding and reporting about the state of the security state this (“)scandal(“) can kick up. Citizens should be informed, and I don’t really care that it happens “late” or at an inconvenient time for the Obama Administration.
LAC
@Spaghetti Lee: typical libertard, always trying to be hip.
Jasmine Bleach
@Anne Laurie:
I love you, Anne! Wisdom.
sparky
@gogol’s wife: Well, no, not exactly. Green Balloons was a “safe word” in an S&M relationship that went bad. You’re supposed to be aware of all internet traditions here.
Edit: I see you googled it a few comments later.
A Humble Lurker
@Anne Laurie:
If you’ve been worried about this since then, you know it’s not a new outrage now. Which I wouldn’t know, since you haven’t said anything about it until these recent stories came out.
Sure, rail against the security state. But don’t think for a minute all this outrage is the public finally seeing the light and not everyone even slightly right of center using it (and folks like you) to take Obama and anything he might do with a more liberal congress down.
sparky
@sparky: Weepers! This seems to have been resolved up-thread. I feel embarrassed and hope no one is watching.
FlipYrWhig
@pokeyblow: Did it help what? Regardless of what he said, nothing like what you envision would ever have happened. Ford didn’t try to nail Johnson and Kennedy staffers for Vietnam bullshit. Clinton didn’t try to settle the score for Iran/contra. W. Bush didn’t push the issue of the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. It doesn’t happen. I get that it might be frustrating that it doesn’t happen, but it’s not surprising, and I don’t see the use of never getting over something that wasn’t especially surprising.
LAC
@Anne Laurie: That is a lovely speech – I suppose that is why you didn’t vote for Clinton again because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or DOMA? Right? After all…principles…
taylormattd
@Anne Laurie:
Actual lifelong Democrats do no such thing. That’s what green party-curious whiners and Naderite imbeciles do.
taylormattd
@Anne Laurie: And hopefully for you, you can keep Corner Stone while getting rid of ABL and her ilk, right?