Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Pete ‘The Mucker’ King is Outraged!

Pete ‘The Mucker’ King is Outraged!

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From Politico, c2:35pm Thursday:

Rep. Peter King went on an anti-New York Times tirade on Thursday afternoon, deriding the paper of record as a “disgrace” and calling on Americans to “reject” it for its editorial calling for clemency for Edward Snowden.

“Their editorial today and their whole pattern over the last several years, they’ve really made themselves a blame-America-first rag as far as I’m concerned, and why we exalt The New York Times is beyond me,” the New York Republican said on Fox News. “They go out of their way to be apologists for terrorists and go after those in law enforcement and military who are trying to win this war.”

King, who has long been a defender and proponent of the National Security Agency, called the editors “a disgrace” and said he wishes they “cared more about America than they did about the rights of terrorists’ appeasers.” King said NSA programs do not violate the privacy of Americans and that lives are saved because of them…

Not quite an hour later:

Update 3:25p.m.: As several of our Twitter followers have pointed out, King calling the Times “apologists for terrorists” is a little ironic, considering he was once “one of the nation’s most outspoken supporters of the Irish Republican Army and a prolific fundraiser for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NorAid), allegedly the IRA’s American fundraising arm” as noted by this 2011 Mother Jones piece….

The NYTimes has since doubled down on its call for some form of clemency.

Greenwald’s fiercest competitor critic, Paul Carr, agrees “… Snowden might be an unlikeable sort, but justice rarely concerns itself with likable sorts. Phil Spector was offered a plea deal, OJ was offered a plea deal, as were Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Bernie Madoff, Paris Hilton and Bruno Mars. Fortunately we — by which I mean Americans, and Brits like me — are fortunate to live in a country where being an ass, a hypocrite, or even a scoundrel, doesn’t deny one access to justice….For all of his arrogance and his muddled, me-me-millennial politics, there’s no denying that Snowden’s outrage at government spying (in the US at least) is authentic, or that, like Chelsea Manning before him, he at least made some effort to get his superiors to listen to him before he went public. Simply put, Snowden is proof that you can be both a whistle-blower and a blowhard: a whistle-blowhard.”

Personally, I like this guy’s suggestion:

… Bring him home. Sentence him to time served in Putin’s Russia. Make it as quiet and uncomplicated as possible. And let the debate — and real reform — go on without him. He deserves to live in this country in as much peace as Orlando Bosch did, and with as many career opportunities as have been afforded Elliott Abrams and Ollie North, who did not release information for free but, rather, some missiles to terror states for money.

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  1. 1.

    Ben Franklin

    I don’t think James Clapper is a bad person. I think he’s a patriotic person who wants to stop terrorism. So I don’t think he’s a bad person.”

    Clapper is not a bad person, he doesn’t think, not bad as a person, just bad on principle.

    WTF? Impugning Snowden with the same yellow snow as Clapper?
    A bad person has no integrity. Clapper? Stop trying to transcend the Teabag underlings, Rand. FU and the whole conservative misdirection from conservative to libertarian bullshit.

  2. 2.

    Patricia Kayden

    “And let the debate — and real reform — go on without him.”

    Amen. Real reform is the only thing that matters. No one should be interested in the shenanigans of Snowden or Greenwald.

  3. 3.

    Litlebritdiftrnt

    King can kiss my lily-white English arse. He actively fund raised to enable the killing of my colleagues, I lost friends because of his fund raising and supporting of the IRA. The absolute chutzpah of him calling anyone “terrorist supporting” is beyond belief. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

  4. 4.

    Poopyman

    Snowden took laptops and thumb drives full of classified data to China, then to Russia. There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.

    Fuck him. He should be rotting in jail.

  5. 5.

    Ben Franklin

    @Poopyman:

    And fuck your lack of redemptive self-awareness. What have you done for liberty, aside from commenting on a blog anonymously?

  6. 6.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Prison would be bad just to begin with, but being made to to share a cell with Clapper would really bug anyone.

  10. 10.

    Poopyman

    @Aji: OMG! Peter King is posting here as BF! Pretty soon Tom Friedman’s going to out himself here too, I can feel it.

    Or maybe that’s the chili ….

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    Bring on the democrats against an open and transparent government. Unless the president is a republican. Then Snowden would be a hero.

  14. 14.

    Glocksman

    The replies in that TPM thread attacking Wyden for asking Clapper the question in the first place leave out one little thing.

    From the TPM thread:

    But then his frankly dishonest questioning of James Clapper sealed my opinion of him. As a senior member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he knew his question though clever was dishonest. Anyone reading the official transcript would agree. Because the Senator prefaced his question with the the red herring that the government was collecting secret dossiers on tens of millions Americans. But he nonetheless asked Clapper if NSA was collecting information on tens of millions of Americans. However since Wyden knew about metadata collections and more importantly knew the metadata was not associated with indivduals his question was calculated to lead Clapper into a trap of either admitting to a lie that the government was compiling dossiers on tens of millions of Americans or breaking his oath and the law by publicly divulging the existence of a secret program which Wyden already knew all about.

    What Clapper could have said was ‘Senator, I cannot legally answer that question in an open hearing. Ask me in a closed hearing and I’ll answer the question’.

    Instead he chose to lie.

  17. 17.

    Belafon

    Here’s my deal for Snowden: I’ll drop the stealing secrets charge, but he has to face the taking secrets to other countries.

  18. 18.

    Aji

    @Poopyman: I think it must be the chili. I have yet to see anything – in this thread, at least – pompous enough for the ‘Stache or outerboroughrageboy enough for King.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    Snowden might be an unlikeable sort, but justice rarely concerns itself with likable sorts. Phil Spector was offered a plea deal, OJ was offered a plea deal, as were Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Bernie Madoff, Paris Hilton and Bruno Mars.

    Uh, I think they could work out a plea deal. That’s different from clemency or a full pardon.

  20. 20.

    different-church-lady

    I can see the argument for some kind of punishment for Snowden, but that’s Cruel & Unusual.

    You wanna know what would be really cruel? Forcing either one of them listen to Rand Paul for more than 90 seconds.

    Sentence him to time served in Putin’s Russia.

    Under that arrangement, wouldn’t we owe him a couple of years?

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud:

    Uh, I think they could work out a plea deal. That’s different from clemency or a full pardon.

    Either way, before you could do that you’d have to convince Fast Eddie he wasn’t going to get drone assassinated the moment he stepped back on US soil — easier said than done.

    Methinks he’s not actually interested in returning under any arrangement.

  32. 32.

    Heliopause

    He deserves to live in this country in as much peace as Orlando Bosch did

    Well, that’s quite an equivalence.

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    As soon as Snowden turns himself in, we can start negotiating deals. As it is, he’s a fugitive from justice. There’s no reason to consider a deal until he’s in a cell and is willing to do something in return for a deal. Perhaps he can sing about anything illegal Glen(n) has done.

  38. 38.

    J R in WV

    I can’t blame him for being interested in a destination better than his current location. Time served seems unlikely to interest him, though. He did seem interested in Brazil at one time, but they seem a little to anarchic to me.

    I don’t have much to say in favor of anyone who supported the IRA, although the British crown did steal Ireland from the Irish, and then give parts of it to Scots being deported from Scotland, where they were unruly and rebellious subjects of Her Majesty.

  40. 40.

    Hill Dweller

    @cathyx: Do you honestly believe someone who stole thousands of classified documents, regardless of motivation, and fled to Russia via China is going to avoid punishment?

    No country on the planet is going to set that precedent.

  41. 41.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    Somewhere, Thoreau and Dr. King Jr. are looking at Snowden and the Firebaggers and wondering where the fuck did we go wrong.

  42. 42.

    MikeJ

    @Baud:

    Uh, I think they could work out a plea deal. That’s different from clemency or a full pardon.

    For one thing, you don’t get clemency or a pardon until after you’ve been convicted. Again, he needs to show up and go to trial.

  44. 44.

    MikeJ

    @The Sheriff’s A Ni-:

    Somewhere, Thoreau and Dr. King Jr. are looking at Snowden and the Firebaggers and wondering where the fuck did we go wrong.

    Remember when Rosa Parks fled to Russia to avoid prosecution for refusing to move?

  47. 47.

    Cassidy

    What have you done for liberty, aside from commenting on a blog anonymously?

    Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha….oh wow, hhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…coming from that fucking idiot, ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…what a fucking ignorant douche, ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…./wipes tears, that was awesome. Please, don’t stop being a narcissistic, self-indulgent, whiny emoprog. If it weren’t for the stalwarts of suburban liberty like you, we would have to find our comedy elsewhere.

    @Litlebritdiftrnt: Prettymuch. That shitstain should be rotting in prison.

  48. 48.

    ruemara

    @Ben Franklin: The way you two go godwin on anyone who fails to acknowledge the pure sainthood of Edward Snowden pretty much makes your Obot shrieks a massive joke. You’re not good sales people for your stances.

  49. 49.

    Ben Franklin

    we would have to find our comedy elsewhere.

    We’ve already established the baseline of your humorbone, on a previous thread.

    It’s not up to Mister Rogers level, but transcends Ronald McDonald.

  52. 52.

    Cassidy

    @Ben Franklin: Oh please, tell me more of your suburban outrage manifesto. You coddled bitches whine more than teabaggers, but then you’re really not that different from them.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Can’t speak for Dr. King, but IIRC, Thoreau’s contemporaries regarded him as a pissy-arsed drama queen making a big show in order to embarrass the friends who’d kept him from starving to death in a snowbank… or rotting in a jail cell for refusing to deal with the real world and pay his ridiculous little poll tax. That whole “Why are you in there, Thoreau? — Why are YOU out there, Emerson?”… the eyerolling was epic, among all the Finest Minds. David Henry, playing the martyr to advertise his so-called ‘pacifism’! What a blowhard, posing for the lithographers and handing out newspaper-friendly sound bites!

  54. 54.

    gene108

    Abrams and North broke the law to give the Ruskie Evil Empire a black eye, by opposing the spread of Global Communism into Central America. They are real heroes. They should be given Presidential Medals of Freedom for hastening the end of the Cold War, because the Commies knew they could not spread anymore into this Hemisphere. Also, breaking a law sponsored by Ted “hic-I need a drink, I killed a woman” Kennedy is the patriotic duty of true patriots whose patriotism means they love America. /wing-nut

  58. 58.

    burnspbesq

    I could almost live with a full pardon for Snowden if it meant that Greenie would serve the maximum sentence for aiding and abetting Snowden’s violations of 18 U.S.C. 893.

  59. 59.

    eemom

    Don’t watch Downton Abbey, working my ass off, need some distraction, and don’t give a shit about Snowden. Yay for this thread!

  60. 60.

    Ben Franklin

    @burnspbesq:

    Here’s a shocker. I don’t know of anyone who cares what you think about Snowden. Mebbe you can cobble some support from conservatives here.

  62. 62.

    Corner Stone

    The absolute certainty that so many people here have, contradicted by the actual USG, that Snowden somehow gave or bargained or sold info to foreign countries…and yet you keep repeating it.
    I guess Mike Rogers, Peter King, and other rwnj elected officials are now your North Star.

  63. 63.

    Cassidy

    @Ben Franklin: As opposed to listening to you? I think any one of us would choose listening to Burnsie drone on about how much he hates music anyone has heard of than your coddled, entitled bitching that someone didn’t buy you a fucking pony.

    Aren’t you supposed to be doing something in the name of liberty right now, anyway, other than commenting anonymously on a blog? Please don’t let us stop you. Take as long as you need. If it takes you, say, forever, and we never hear from you again, we will carry on through that tragedy.

  64. 64.

    Ben Franklin

    @Cassidy:

    You need to limber up on the lexicon. You are a stale apologist of no merit. Why would you want me to go do the good work whilst you engage in mutual masturbation without accountability? I feel responsible for tutoring you into adulthood, and that. I realize is a thankless task. However, for the sake of you and your paramours, i must remain in place.

    Even though it’s more productive to pick out the red M&M’s than to offer missives contrary, I feel duty-bound.

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    “I think members of Congress should be treated the same as everyone else,” King said. “If a member of Congress is talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan, why should that member of Congress be any different from any person on the street?”

    Hmmm…BJ commenter or Rep Peter King?
    It’s getting harder to tell.

  66. 66.

    Cassidy

    @Ben Franklin: I have no idea what you just said. At this point in the game, all your comments talk about your preference for Thai drag queens. You have nothing to say that is remotely worth considering. If I wanted to listen to some whiny, entitled babbling, I could turn on any random teabagger. Predictably, you don’t sound all that different.

  69. 69.

    Belafon

    @Corner Stone: Rep Pete “IRA” King?

    Also, I can’t seem to find the correct google search where the government says no secrets were released by Snowden. All I find is that Snowden says he released no secrets.

  70. 70.

    mainmata

    @Litlebritdiftrnt: My paternal grandfather was involved in the Easter Rebellion and subsequently fled eventually to the US whence I now exist. I agree with you that Peter King’s support of the IRA did not help the search for peace in Northern Ireland. But I lived in Britain during part of this period (Thatcher era) and there’s not much doubt that Britain was not searching for a compromise but was continuing its longstanding colonial policy of supporting the Protestants against the Catholics (but using the terrorism schtick as the excuse, as usual). The IRA’s tactics didn’t help diplomatically but they had little choice. So GB’s policy was ultimately totally self-defeating since they were never a neutral party. as we have seen in the Middle East, in a different context that doesn’t work.

  74. 74.

    Culture of Truth

    I used to dislike Ed Snowden, but now I really hate him for making me take his side against Peter King. Ha ha

  75. 75.

    Hal

    I may have missed this answer in the comments, but foes Snowden have to be convicted or cop a plea in order to be granted clemency?

    Also, I would support clemency for Snowden if we can guarantee Peter King’s head would explode.

  76. 76.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @mainmata:

    The IRA’s tactics didn’t help diplomatically but they had little choice.

    Yeah, the British really backed them into a corner requiring that they blow up a bunch of band members.

  77. 77.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The information Snowden carried with him could certainly have been accessed by the Chinese or the Russians. Is it a certainty? No, we can’t say that. However, we can not dismiss the possibility that it may have been…the circumstances lend us to err on the side of caution (that is, do the CONSERVATIVE thing in the traditional sense, not the contemporary political sense) in assessing how we deal with Snowden.

    A huge part of the problem being faced by the authorities is the NSA can’t figure out what information he may have walked off with, aside from that already disclosed. That alone may make it prudent to forgive his sins…just to know what has been off the reservation and in China and Russia.

    This is all quite apart from the necessity of a public conversation about the NSA’s capabilities, means, and the checks that need to be placed on it.

  78. 78.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    @cathyx: And what would he say about fleeing to Hong Kong and Moscow with state secrets in tow?

    Thoreau and King knew about doing the crime, doing the time. Here, we get ‘If a Firebagger man-crush does it, its not a crime’. Cry about Clapper and Obots while having an Ollie North-sized mote in your own eye.

  80. 80.

    Carolinus

    @Corner Stone:

    The absolute certainty that so many people here have, contradicted by the actual USG, that Snowden somehow gave or bargained or sold info to foreign countries…and yet you keep repeating it.

    Let’s just gloss over the vast majority of Greenwald-land’s disclosures which have dealt with purely foreign intelligence operations of the U.S. and their allies, where publishing their details effectively shares them with their adversaries. When Snowden was first lobbying for asylum in China, before he got spooked, spent three days in the Russian HK consulate, and then fled on to Russia, he disclosed to the South China Morning Post the details of US cyber espionage operations targetting China, in order to improve his chances, or in Greenwald’s own words, “to ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China.” He’s also offered to both Brazil and Germany, to share his insider’s knowledge, to help those countries investigate US Intelligence — both countries declined to offer him asylum in exchange for what essentially would have been defecting.

    I just can’t wrap my ahead around folks who like some of what he’s disclosed, and the “debate” it’s caused, but then see that as a reason to excuse all the rest of his mass criminal acts. Why not advocate for him not being charged with any leaks that could, even in the loosest sense, be considered whistle-blowing, allowing him to charged and prosecuted for all the rest?

    Why Snowden Won’t (and Shouldn’t) Get Clemency
    He went too far to be considered just a whistleblower

    It is true that Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of American citizens—far vaster than any outsider had suspected, in some cases vaster than the agency’s overseers on the secret FISA court had permitted—have triggered a valuable debate, leading possibly to much-needed reforms.

    If that were all that Snowden had done, if his stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the NSA’s domestic surveillance, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing.

    But Snowden did much more than that. The documents that he gave the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman and the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA’s interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what’s going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide,” an effort that (in the Post’s words) “allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.” In his first interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in China and Hong Kong.

    These operations have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or even spying on allies. They are not illegal, improper, or (in the context of 21st-century international politics) immoral. Exposing such operations has nothing to do with “whistle-blowing.”

    …

    Is a clear picture emerging of why Snowden’s prospects for clemency resemble the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell? He gets himself placed at the NSA’s signals intelligence center in Hawaii for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents. (How many is unclear: I’ve heard estimates ranging from “tens of thousands” to 1.1 million.) He gains access to many of them by lying to his fellow workers (and turning them into unwitting accomplices). Then he flees to Hong Kong (a protectorate of China, especially when it comes to foreign policy) and, from there, to Russia.

    This isn’t quite what it would have seemed in Cold War times. Russia and China are no longer our sworn ideological enemies. But in the realm of cyberconflict and cybersecurity, they are our chief adversaries; they hack, or try to hack, into American computer networks more than any other countries (and we hack, or try to hack, into theirs as well).

    If what he did isn’t espionage, then nothing anymore is. Getting his Booz Allen job with the intent to steal hundreds of thousands of classified documents, social engineering his coworkers to access those files, fleeing with them to China, and then proceeding bulk leak them (let’s be honest, he had neither the time to vet even the 58,000 British state secret documents he dumped, nor the expertise to even know what was actually sensitive).

  81. 81.

    gian

    @Ben Franklin:

    If he had the guts like Mandela, or King, to go to jail, instead of running to hostile foreign countries is one point.

    If he had the guts to just go to some place like Switzerland (which is happy to hide out filmmakers who drug and sodomize teenage girls in the US) and let some sort of legal process happen is another.

    If you weren’t paying attention under Bush, what with the stories of what essentially sounded like a mirroring room in the AT&T office in San Francisco for the Feds, you might’ve been shocked at Edward’s released information…
    I don’t feel much different towards him than I would to some guy who ran to the USSR and told them cold war era secrets about the actions the US was taking in Cambodia in about 1975.

    the story that is swallowed by the snowden cult of personality is that some new hire contractor was able to do this, and as far as has been mainstream news, the contractor still has the contracts.

  82. 82.

    Ash Can

    “…he at least made some effort to get his superiors to listen to him before he went public.”

    If people are going to believe that the USG itself claims that Snowden didn’t make any of his stolen information available to the governments of China and Russia, why not also take the gov at its word when it claims that this is bullshit and that Snowden never said a word to his superiors about his concerns?

    “there’s no denying that Snowden’s outrage at government spying (in the US at least) is authentic”

    I’m sorry, but when someone takes a job for the stated purpose of stealing classified information, collaborates with a gadfly activist before he even takes the job, then after stealing said information heads straight to the two nations on the earth that are the fucking gold standard for precisely the kind of domestic spying he claims to be against, then yeah, there sure as hell is some denying his “outrage” is authentic.

  84. 84.

    Omnes Omnibus

    AL, unrelated to the theme of the thread, but for those of us who are Hiberian-impaired, could you define a mucker?

  86. 86.

    Michael

    This is the douche-iest bout of cognitive dissonance I’ve ever seen:

    And fuck your lack of redemptive self-awareness. What have you done for liberty, aside from commenting on a blog anonymously?

    Why would you want me to go do the good work whilst you engage in mutual masturbation without accountability? I feel responsible for tutoring you into adulthood, and that. I realize is a thankless task. However, for the sake of you and your paramours, i must remain in place. Even though it’s more productive to pick out the red M&M’s than to offer missives contrary, I feel duty-bound.

    The funny thing is imagining the sort of mind that thinks this schtick sounds intelligent, rather than simply terribly put on.

  88. 88.

    Keith G

    @Poopyman:

    Snowden took laptops and thumb drives full of classified data to China, then to Russia. There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.

    Fuck him. He should be rotting in jail.

    You sir are sounding like a lazy, clueless idiot. I do hope you are not.

    If you would bother to follow the reporting of Barton Gellman you would know that the info did not travel with Snowden. You are not alone as this is a major mis-apprehension here at the Juice of the Balloon.

    Snowden took expansive measures to be sure “bad guys” did not get the unedited info. , and they have not: Not China, not Russia, not anyone except those now well known few journalists.

    With the clear exception of President Obama, I don’t think that there is another American who has done more for his fellow citizens in the last few years that has Snowden. We are lucky he chose to take on these breath taking risks.

  90. 90.

    Mandalay

    @Poopyman:

    Snowden took laptops and thumb drives full of classified data to China, then to Russia. There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.

    Snowden has stated that by the time he went public he had already handed over everything to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and that no classified NSA data was accessible by him after that. The journalists took everything, and nothing remained with Snowden.

    Yet you still can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese haven’t read the data! When a plausible alternative scenario exists you just ignore it so you can maintain you belief system.

    ETA: I see Keith G has already made the same point in post #88.

  92. 92.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Keith G: Well sure, but I doubt that is meaning AL intended. My understanding of Irish idiom comes from The Pogues, An Irish RM, some Behan plays, the shit that comes through Jack Higgins novels, I did, however, meet Gerry Adams during his mid-90s US speaking tour. I think I was the only non-Catholic in the house.

  93. 93.

    Keith G

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    In Ireland a “Mucker” is a best friend. from the Irish “mo chara” meaning “my friend”. On a farm, a “mucker” is a person who shovels feces

    Feces? And all this time I thought I was shoveling shit.

    Quote from Wikipedia

  94. 94.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mandalay:

    Yet you still can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese haven’t read the data!

    He said he can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese have not read the data. What is your confusion?

    @Keith G: I guess I still don’t see how the term applies to King. I assume AL used it for a particular reason.

  95. 95.

    Mandalay

    @Glocksman:

    What Clapper could have said was ‘Senator, I cannot legally answer that question in an open hearing. Ask me in a closed hearing and I’ll answer the question’. Instead he chose to lie.

    And now the lie is being compounded. Despite being given the question the previous day, Clapper’s lawyer is now claiming that Clapper never saw it….

    In his letter to the newspaper, referring to one of the key Senate advocates of NSA reform, Litt continued: “Senator Ron Wyden asked about collection of information on Americans during a lengthy and wide-ranging hearing on an entirely different subject. While his staff provided the question the day before, Mr Clapper had not seen it. As a result, as Mr Clapper has explained, he was surprised by the question and focused his mind on the collection of the content of Americans’ communications. In that context, his answer was and is accurate.

    “When we pointed out Mr Clapper’s mistake to him, he was surprised and distressed. I spoke with a staffer for Senator Wyden several days later and told him that although Mr Clapper recognized that his testimony was inaccurate, it could not be corrected publicly because the program involved was classified.”

    Snowden gets lambasted as a traitor, but shitfilth like Clapper and his lawyer are the real traitors.

  96. 96.

    Carolinus

    @Mandalay:

    Snowden has stated that by the time he went public he had already handed over everything to journalists he met in Hong Kong, and that no classified NSA data was accessible by him after that. The journalists took everything, and nothing remained with Snowden.

    Yes, that’s what Snowden now claims. That the classified files only went as far as China. At various times Greenwald has claimed otherwise, for example:

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/13/reuters-article-dead-man-s-switch

    The US government has acted with wild irrationality. The current criticism of Snowden is that he’s in Russia.

    …

    Given the extraordinary amount of documents he has and their sensitivity, I pointed out in the interview that it is incredibly foolish for the US government to force him to remain in Russia. From the perspective of the US government and the purported concerns about him being in Russia, that makes zero sense given the documents he has.

    Snowden has also recently pushed back on Greenwald’s claims that he’d sent encrypted versions of his stolen document trove to a number of other people around the world (awaiting a decryption password that will be distributed if anything happens to Snowden):

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

    Some news accounts have quoted U.S. government officials as saying Snowden has arranged for the automated release of sensitive documents if he is arrested or harmed. There are strong reasons to doubt that, beginning with Snowden’s insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents published in bulk.

    If Snowden were fool enough to rig a “dead man’s switch,” confidants said, he would be inviting anyone who wants the documents to kill him.

    Asked about such a mechanism in the Moscow interview, Snowden made a face and declined to reply. Later, he sent an encrypted message. “That sounds more like a suicide switch,” he wrote.“ It wouldn’t make sense.”

    Which of the two of them is telling the truth? Who knows.

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus: Self quote: “… in the NORAID-enabling Irish-American enclave of my birth, a mucker was defined as someone everyone called “friend” because you certainly didn’t want him as your enemy… and he was known to divide all the world into those two categories….

    If Putin were Irish, he’d have been a mucker, but I’m sure the Russians have their own very evocative word!

  100. 100.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He said he can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese have not read the data. What is your confusion?

    Any confusion lies with you, not me. Anyone is free to claim that in their opinion Snowden is lying, and that he (either accidentally or deliberately) allowed the Russians and Chinese to read the classified NSA data.

    However, Snowden has stated that he destroyed all access to the data on his own equipment after he had handed everything over to journalists in Hong Kong, and before he went public. The simplest and most plausible explanation (for me) is that Snowden was telling the truth. So anyone who asserts that the Russians and Chinese got data from Snowden as a statement of fact, and can’t believe any other possibility, is just full of shit.

    But since you can’t understand my previous post I doubt that you will understand this one either. Maybe Keith’s post #88 will make more sense to you. He is essentially making the same point.

  101. 101.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mandalay: You said:

    Yet you still can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese haven’t read the data!

    Poopyman said:

    Snowden took laptops and thumb drives full of classified data to China, then to Russia. There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.

    Please explain how these statements contradict one another.

  102. 102.

    Larv

    @Mandalay:

    Ah, I see. When Snowden says something self-serving (he didn’t take any documents to China/Russia), we should take him at his word because he’s a hero. But when Clapper does the same, he’s obviously lying. Nope, no double standard there.

  103. 103.

    Mandalay

    @Carolinus:

    Yes, that’s what Snowden now claims. That the classified files only went as far as China. At various times Greenwald has claimed otherwise

    Thanks for that info. You raise an excellent point. Greenwald is usually very precise in his choice of words, and the statements you cite certainly give the impression that Snowden still has some data in his personal possession.

    Which of the two of them is telling the truth? Who knows.

    I would trust Snowden more than Greenwald to be telling the truth.

    Regardless, my larger point was that insisting that Snowden has given data to the Russians and Chinese as a matter of fact, is nonsense.

  104. 104.

    Larv

    @Mandalay:

    The simplest and most plausible explanation (for me) is that Snowden was telling the truth.

    Why? I’m serious, I don’t see why this is remotely simple or plausible. He was embarking on what had to be a fairly terrifying odyssey, and the documents he had were his only bargaining chip. Why is it plausible that he would have given them all to journalists and left himself with essentially nothing of value in a strange land and with an uncertain future? It’s certainly not crazy to be dubious of this.

  105. 105.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mandalay:

    Greenwald is usually very precise in his choice of words

    Greenwald is a polemicist. His precision is designed for effect, not accuracy.

    Edited slightly.

  106. 106.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @mainmata:

    The IRA’s tactics didn’t help diplomatically but they had little choice.

    The IRA was the ideological front for a bunch of gangsters who happened to be able to tap into the hearts and wallets of plastic paddies with rebel fantasies like Peter King. Every dollar that went into the hat for “the Cause” ensured that for decades, the best and brightest in Northern Ireland from both communities got the fuck out as soon as they could.

  107. 107.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Please explain how these statements contradict one another.

    Dude, you are carefully plucking two sentences out of two posts, and demanding that I explain how they contradict each other. That’s mindless. The fact that the first word of my sentence is “yet” is a dead giveaway that what preceded it is highly relevant.

    My two posts essentially repeat what Keith had already said in post 88. Sorry, but if you truly can’t understand his argument or mine then I really can’t help you any further.

  108. 108.

    Carolinus

    @Keith G:

    Yes, I’ve listened to that Bart Gellman interview and others, read all his Snowden articles and followed his statements on Twitter. Gellman has a detailed knowledge of Snowden’s history, and so has no excuse (besides chasing future access) for turning his 14 hour interview into a 2-page hagiography.

    For example, allowing this goofy claim to stand, with no follow-up, was just embarrassing:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/edward-snowden-after-months-of-nsa-revelations-says-his-missions-accomplished/2013/12/23/49fc36de-6c1c-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

    Snowden:

    “There is no evidence at all for the claim that I have loyalties to Russia or China or any country other than the United States,” he said. “I have no relationship with the Russian government. I have not entered into any agreements with them.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/report-snowden-stayed-at-russian-consulate-while-in-hong-kong/2013/08/26/8237cf9a-0e39-11e3-a2b3-5e107edf9897_story.html

    Before American fugitive Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow in June — an arrival that Russian officials have said caught them by surprise — he spent several days living at the Russian Consulate in Hong Kong, a Moscow newspaper reported Monday.

    …

    Until now, Russian officials have said that Snowden’s arrival in Moscow was a surprise, and not entirely welcome.

    …

    Kommersant cited conflicting accounts as to what brought Snowden to the consulate, on the 21st floor of a skyscraper in a fashionable neighborhood. It quoted a Russian close to the Snowden case as saying that the former NSA contractor arrived on his own initiative and asked for help. But a Western official also interviewed by the newspaper alleged that Russia had invited him.

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/putin-snowden-asked-russia-to-fight-with-him-but-we-said-no

    In an interview with Russian state TV and the Associated Press published early Wednesday, Putin confirmed a report — denied by both Snowden’s camp and Fidel Castro — in Kommersant that Snowden had appealed to Russian diplomats in Hong Kong for help after the U.S. sought to extradite him.

    Odd, isn’t it, that Gellman didn’t follow-on with, “So you claim no relationship and no agreements with the Russian government? What exactly were you negotiating then when you spent three days in the Hong Kong Russian consulate, just prior to flying to Russia? Why is one of the overseers of the FSB acting as your Russian lawyer and spokesman? If there’s no arrangement, why do Russian security forces guard you 24-hours a day, prohibiting you from seeing visitors unless they go through lengthy negotiations?”

    Instead Gellman plays along and paints a picture of Snowden as a free actor. Again from the interview article, Gellman editorializing:

    It would be odd if Russian authorities did not keep an eye on him, but no retinue accompanied Snowden and his visitor saw no one else nearby. Snowden neither tried to communicate furtively nor asked that his visitor do so. He has had continuous Internet access and has talked to his attorneys and to journalists daily, from his first day in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo airport.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57610522/snowden-seeks-the-worlds-help-against-u.s-charges

    Stroebele said Edward Snowden appeared healthy and cheerful during their meeting at an undisclosed location in Moscow. The German television network ARD, which accompanied Stroebele, said the Germans were taken to the meeting by unidentified security officials under “strict secrecy.”

    …

    Stroebele was tightlipped about where he met Snowden. The German politician said he had no contact with the German Embassy in Moscow nor with Russian authorities other than a passport control officer – although he did not explain who the security officials mentioned by German television were.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-political-debate-over-offering-snowden-asylum-in-germany-a-931497-2.html

    To ensure that the location of the meeting remains a secret, he has had Ströbele and his entourage picked up in a car with darkened windows. There are bodyguards outside the door for his protection. Snowden is wearing a light-blue shirt with the top two buttons open, along with a black suit. He has a three-day beard. He greets his visitors at the door and invites them to sit down at a table with cheese, fruit and fish, along with white wine, red wine and vodka. No one has any alcohol, and the conversation begins.

    Since Russia offered him temporary asylum, Snowden has been living in a so-called safe house in Moscow. Not even his closest associates know the exact location of the building, where Russian security forces provide him with 24-hour protection He can do as he pleases, and he can leave the building, but never alone and never without bodyguards. “The Russians seem concerned that the Americans wouldn’t even shy away from trying to apprehend him in downtown Moscow,” says someone who has been in touch with the confidants of the whistleblower for months.

    …

    Snowden’s Russian guards prohibit him from receiving visitors in the safe house. Anyone who wants to see him has to enter into lengthy negotiations, as Ströbele did. The procedure is always the same: Guests are driven to a secret rendezvous point, where Snowden meets with them. The same protocol applied to his father, who went to Moscow in early October, that applied to Ströbele’s delegation last week.

  109. 109.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Both fucking statements said that others had read what Snowden had. I have no idea of whether those statements are factually accurate. I just read what you both wrote.

    KeithG said something different than you did. You don’t get to rely on his analysis.

  110. 110.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus: Right, but in those quotes that Carolinus cited Greenwald is putting Snowden in a bad light. I have no idea why Greenwald might do that on purpose, but I find it even harder to believe that he would have done it inadvertently in his writing.

    The only plausible explanation I can come up is that Greenwald was bullshitting. At least that seems more plausible to me than the notion that Snowden was lying, and retained classified data on his computers.

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mandalay: So? Does this support Snowden or Greenwald or what?

    but in those quotes that Carolinus cited Greenwald is putting Snowden in a bad light

    Oh noes!

  112. 112.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    KeithG said something different than you did. You don’t get to rely on his analysis.

    In post 88 Keith made the points that the data didn’t travel to Russia with Snowden, the Chinese didn’t get the data either, and Snowden didn’t retain the data (according to Snowden). I made the same points in post 90 (and again in post 100 just for your benefit). We were both refuting comments in post 4 that insisted that the Chinese and Russians must have read Snowden’s data.

    If you think Keith’s analysis was substantially different from mine let’s hear it.

  113. 113.

    Carolinus

    @Mandalay:

    The only plausible explanation I can come up is that Greenwald was bullshitting. At least that seems more plausible to me than the notion that Snowden was lying, and retained classified data on his computers.

    Why would it be any worse that he retained the classified data while in China vs keeping it on to Russia? I get that the explanation he gave Gellman was that he’s some sort of Chinese counter-espionage expert and so that one didn’t count, but he passed the files on to Greenwald and Poitras, and they certainly aren’t. Why even recklessly set your meet in China in the first place, particularly if you’re some expert that understands the breadth and depth of their cyber and electronic surveillance/hacking?

  114. 114.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Yet you still can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese haven’t read the data!

    You said this. Dig the double negative. Grammar matters.

  116. 116.

    Mandalay

    @Larv:

    Why? I’m serious, I don’t see why this is remotely simple or plausible. He was embarking on what had to be a fairly terrifying odyssey, and the documents he had were his only bargaining chip. Why is it plausible that he would have given them all to journalists and left himself with essentially nothing of value in a strange land and with an uncertain future? It’s certainly not crazy to be dubious of this.

    No, it is certainly not crazy to be dubious of anything that Snowden claims. But it is crazy to blindly assume that everything he says must be false, and that he must have provided NSA data to the Russians and Chinese as a matter of fact, which is what some folks here regularly assert without evidence.

    And it is certainly not true that the documents were his only bargaining chip. Even without the data, the very presence of Snowden in Hong Kong and Moscow seeking help gave Russia and China some massive free PR, and I’m sure that they were both delighted to show the world that they would not bow to US demands for his return.

    I don’t think Snowden anticipated being refused asylum in China, but I believe his claim that his only goal was to expose illegal and illegitimate conduct by the US government, and it also makes sense to me that he removed all the data from his computers. Given the massive strain he must have been under, doing that would give him one less thing to worry about. At least that’s how I see it. YMMV.

  117. 117.

    Keith G

    @Carolinus: I still do not see any indication that Snowden traveled with the vast collection of top secret data (surely more than a thumb drive), nor do I see on the record that Snowden used the promise of access to said data as a chip to negotiate with foreign regimes. That is all I care about.

    If Snowden handed over raw data to other governments that would pit him in an untenable position.

    Other than that, he can meet and treat with whomever he wants. I don’t care how pretty the process is or if some domestic sensibilities are assaulted. I only care about a very specific bottom line.

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Keith G:

    If Snowden handed over raw data to other governments that would pit him in an untenable position.

    Well, that’s a thing, isn’t it? Right now, neither of us know.

  119. 119.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You said this. Dig the double negative. Grammar matters.

    Ha! I was deliberately responding in kind to the claim in post 4: “There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.”. Since double negatives offend your sensibilities so much, please go after the poster who started it all rather than me.

    But thank God you are always here to do your important work.

  120. 120.

    Carolinus

    I don’t think Snowden anticipated being refused asylum in China,

    In total in agreement on that count. No matter what has been claimed about him wanting to ultimately end up Iceland or some other democracy, the fact that he chose Hong Kong as the place he took his initial stand, where he went public, and where he first lobbied for asylum, speaks volumes.

    The concept of living in Asian countries had long appealed to him. Here he is listing his preferences:

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/edward-snowdens-online-past-revealed

    My list, in order (just like in the poll!) would be:

    Japan
    Thailand
    Korea
    China
    Australia

    China, Korea, and australia might be swapped, though. They’re sort of nebulous.

  121. 121.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mandalay: Can you honestly say that your comments follows straight from post 4 with no subsequent post that may intervene?

  122. 122.

    Mandalay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Can you honestly say that your comments follow straight from post 4 with no subsequent post that may intervene?

    Yes I can. My first post here was post 90 responding to post 4. I cited the quote “There’s no way he could realistically assume they’d remain unread, and I can’t believe they haven’t been.”, and I responded “Yet you still can’t believe that the Russians and Chinese haven’t read the data!”.

    I promise I won’t not never use no double negatives never again, even when imitating other posters, OK? Now please Mr Grammar policeman, can you just let me off with a warning this time? Aren’t there other threads here awaiting your inspection?…

  124. 124.

    AxelFoley

    Man, FUCK any kind of clemency for Snowden. This dude gave away secret info to China AND Russia, and some fuckers in this country think we should just give him a slap on the wrist?

    I don’t give a damn what side of the political spectrum you fall under–what this dude did was treason, and he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

  128. 128.

    Thlayli

    @Ben Franklin:

    Typical. The NSA-bashers have convinced themselves that the only reason they’re getting an argument is because this stuff “makes Obama look bad”. It’s so blindingly obvious they’re right that they can’t conceive of anyone disagreeing with them on the substance.

  131. 131.

    Mumbles

    @Larv:

    Why? I’m serious, I don’t see why this is remotely simple or plausible. He was embarking on what had to be a fairly terrifying odyssey, and the documents he had were his only bargaining chip. Why is it plausible that he would have given them all to journalists and left himself with essentially nothing of value in a strange land and with an uncertain future? It’s certainly not crazy to be dubious of this.

    Considering that we know he has already lied to his coworkers, his employer, and the US federal government, all under penalty of law, as well as apparently his own girlfriend, in order to aid his personal political agenda, and doing so in a manner in a way that makes no sense *except* as a series of short-term dodges to protect himself, I’d be especially cautious of believing any self-serving statement from him as well.

  132. 132.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    With all respect to Anne Laurie’s Hibernian background, mucker has long had a definition more down and dirty than simply “someone you don’t want to cross.” A mucker is a rough or coarse person, usually of unsavory aspect.

    Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker (1914):

    His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of a feed-store. Here a gang of older boys and men were wont to congregate at such times as they had naught else to occupy their time, and as the bridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job for more than a day or two, they had considerable time to devote to congregating.

    They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, and all were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick a quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night they plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the feed-store and drank beer from a battered tin pail.

    [. . .]

    Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. When he fought, his methods would have brought a flush of shame to the face of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before. He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women. He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward. He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other methods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would have lived up to them to the death. He never had squealed on a pal, and he never had left a wounded friend to fall into the hands of the enemy—the police.

  133. 133.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Larv:

    Why is it plausible that he would have given them all to journalists and left himself with essentially nothing of value in a strange land and with an uncertain future?

    Why else would the Russians have given him asylum unless Snowden gave them something in return?

  134. 134.

    Ben Franklin

    No matter how many times the Admin Apology squad are told that Snowden is just the messenger, they still focus on “not hero.traitor” misdirection. The LAW bund must reinforce this as their incomes depend upon swallowing that flounder whole. The rest of the cheerleaders value their commenter placecards, and fear being moved to the table near kitchen.

    Address the issues surrounding his disclosures, unless all you want is a diversion for your OP covering all WH derrieres.

  136. 136.

    Gus diZerega

    @The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Whistle blowing and civil disobedience are different issues with different logics behind them. One is drawing attention to a bad law, the other is exposing lawlessness. And given the bipartisan endorsement of ‘anti-terrorism’ measures that shame the best traditions of this country, the arguments behind civil disobedience are irrelevant.

  138. 138.

    NR

    @burnspbesq: Why stop there? Let’s just put anyone who’s ever said anything bad about Obama in prison. After all, that’s what you guys really want.

  139. 139.

    Jose Padilla

    Does anyone have any facts to support the contention that Snowden was a whistleblower. Who? When? What?

  141. 141.

    Corner Stone

    I could take pretty much any anti-Snowden comment here, slap some quotes on it and do an attribution to John Bolton, Mike Rogers, Peter King or half a dozen other rwnj’s.
    And there would be no difference.

  142. 142.

    Corner Stone

    I find it sad and more than a little pathetic when people keep insisting Snowden should be a latter day Rosa or MLK or he’s a punk/coward.
    I wish, in my wish of wishes, I could go back in time and tape the comments these same people would inevitably have about the *actual* MLK or Rosa.
    Because there is no doubt but that would be a fuckton of fun.

  143. 143.

    Corner Stone

    Same people would enthusiastically cheer on an Iraq invasion if the current admin said there were aluminum tubes and cake somewhere.

  144. 144.

    Mumbles

    @Ben Franklin:

    I’m mostly amused at the idea of WH/Obama Apologists. We spy on other countries, and they spy on us. That’s nothing to be outraged by. It’s how every major country operates, the end.

    Maybe it’s just that I’m black, but I’m fully aware of the police state to abuse individuals. New York City had a stated policy of harassing black or Hispanic kids kist walking down the street. New Mexico basically repeatedly raped a guy, because a traffic cop didn’t like the way the guy’s butt looked. But I’m supposed to be shocked because the NSA knows when I called my mother.

    Nah, son. That’s not my concern.

  145. 145.

    Corner Stone

    @Mumbles: Well, what are your concerns, then?
    Please, tell us. What should we be more concerned about according to “Mumbles”?
    Thanks, son.

  146. 146.

    Corner Stone

    I guess if we can’t solve malaria, everywhere in the entire world, then we can’t be concerned about someone sneezing anywhere in the world.
    GFY, son.

  147. 147.

    Larv

    @Corner Stone:

    I could take pretty much any anti-Snowden comment here, slap some quotes on it and do an attribution to John Bolton, Mike Rogers, Peter King or half a dozen other rwnj’s.
    And there would be no difference.

    And I could take most pro-Snowden quotes and attribute them to any number of glibertarian schmucks with no difference. It’s almost as if not everything maps neatly onto the whole left-right axis. Crazy, I know.

    Same people would enthusiastically cheer on an Iraq invasion if the current admin said there were aluminum tubes and cake somewhere.

    Yes, because prosecuting an admitted criminal for his crimes is the same as consciously manipulating intelligence to bring about a war. Mmm-hmm. Also, it’s both stupid and dishonest to keep characterizing those who disagree with you as Obama apologists. This has fuck-all to do with Obama. Or are you under the impression that surveillance is an innovation of the current administration?

    FTR, I would have a lot of sympathy for the view of Snowden as whistleblower if he had managed to restrain himself to revealing just those NSA programs which potentially impact US citizens. But he didn’t do that; instead he decided to also expose a bunch of highly classified (and indisputably legal/constitutional) programs directed at foreign citizens. Unless you think that intelligence gathering is itself immoral, I don’t see how you can justify that. I know it makes you feel all superior to think that your opponents dislike Snowden because he exposed Obama’s surveillance state, but it’s not a claim that stands up to even basic scrutiny.

  148. 148.

    Corner Stone

    @Larv: Every metric we have indicates the shift in attitudes on this topic from the GWB admin to the Obama admin.
    You’re free to attempt the argument that this is not because it’s “their guy” running the shop and not because they “trust Obama more than X”, but you will look patently silly when doing so.
    Your concluding paragraph is not even worth responding to.

  149. 149.

    Larv

    Feel free to share some of those “metrics”.

    Also, I haven’t said a word about my attitude toward surveillance in general, but only my attitude towards Snowden specifically. You’re attempting to elide the difference between the two, but it’s an important one.

    BTW, the whole “not worth responding to” BS is a particularly obvious dodge. Especially as the only way you can maintain your attitude of outraged disgust is by ignoring just that argument. Either respond or don’t, but trying to pretend that it’s beneath you just makes you look silly. Patently, even.

  150. 150.

    Corner Stone

    @Larv: Stuff like this, amigo. And there’s a lot more that echo this, in case the goog isn’t your friend.
    Partisan Hypocrisy

    And further, bullshit. I don’t have to elide anything to maintain my outraged disgust. Your argument makes no sense, in any application of the term.
    Hence, the “not worth responding to” part. You’re just wanking.

  151. 151.

    Larv

    @Corner Stone:

    Your link is to attitudes about surveillance, not leaking classified information. Again, you’re conflating two separate issues, only one of which I’ve offered an opinion on.

    Secondly, the wording in the Pew poll cited in your link isn’t directly comparable. The 2006 question asks about attitudes towards warrantless surveillance, while the 2013 question specifies that it’s done with court orders. It may not be comparing apples to oranges, but it’s at least oranges to tangerines. No doubt others will differ, but my primary objection to Bush’s shenanigans was the warrantless part. But again, that’s secondary to my opinion of Snowden.

    Your argument makes no sense, in any application of the term.
    Hence, the “not worth responding to” part. You’re just wanking.

    Generally, arguments that make no sense are easy to refute. So put up or shut up. Or, you could keep accusing me of wanking while furiously fapping away at yourself, which seems more your style.

  152. 152.

    Corner Stone

    @Larv:

    Generally, arguments that make no sense are easy to refute.

    I appreciate you doing all the prep work for me.
    You are the one who keeps trying to obfuscate what, exactly, it is you’re feebly wanking an argument about.

  153. 153.

    Larv

    @Corner Stone:

    Your powers of transferance are remarkable. I’ve been pretty clear about what I’m arguing, while you just hand-wave your way around them by claiming it’s “not worth responding to”, or “make no sense”, without bothering to explain exactly why. But despite my repeated requests for an actual response, you have the balls to claim I’m the one obfuscating and wanking? LOLs.

    Don’t forget to clean up when you’re done, this blog is sticky enough as it is.

  154. 154.

    Corner Stone

    @Larv: Hmmm, make a wankerific argument then howl about someone calling you on your wankerdom.
    Please proceed, Larv.

  155. 155.

    Larv

    So either you’ve got nothing or you’re just trolling. In either case, enjoy yourself. If you’re really that desperate for attention, exposing yourself in public is probably more effective and less intellectually taxing.

Comments are closed.