Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We still have time to mess this up!

When we show up, we win.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

by | 36 Comments

This post is in: ,

Programming note:

In United States of Secrets, a two-part series airing May 13 and 20, FRONTLINE goes behind the headlines to reveal the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government’s massive and controversial secret surveillance program—and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public.

Part one, from Michael Kirk (League of Denial, Bush’s War), goes inside Washington to piece together the secret political history of “The Program,” which began in the wake of September 11 and continues today—even after the revelations of its existence by Edward Snowden.

Then, in part two, Martin Smith (The Untouchables, To Catch a Trader) explores the secret relationship between Silicon Valley and the National Security Agency: How have the government and tech companies worked together to gather and warehouse your data?…

***********
In other news, per the Washington Post:

The Senate deadlocked Monday on a bipartisan energy bill, with Republicans mounting a filibuster that also is likely to end any near-term consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal that has become a key issue in several critical elections.

The vote Monday — 55 to 36, mostly along party lines — on a modest energy efficiency bill sponsored by Sens. Jean Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) ended a long but sporadic attempt to approve legislation that has been ensnared by several controversial side issues amid Republican attempts to attach amendments to the measure…

***********
Apart from holding actions, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    PsiFighter37

    I don’t understand why folks keep electing Republicans to public office. If any ordinary person worked 1/3 of the year and basically failed at doing their job, they would be fired pretty damn quick.

  3. 3.

    bemused

    Karl Rove suggests that Hilary Clinton suffered from a brain injury after her fall. He sounds a bit desperate. It hasn’t been the same for Rover since he freaked out about Mitt’s election night numbers on Fox.

  6. 6.

    Poopyman

    @bemused: Well, I would suggest ol’ Karl suffered a brain injury when he was kicked in the head while trying to fuck a goat.

    See? Anybody can play brain doctor!

  7. 7.

    Schlemizel

    Actually I think uncle Karl may be a real genius. He is such a despicable little shit fountain but the shit he sprays gets resprayed and amplified to the point where people are just sick of all the shit & give up and stay home, Its another advantage that keeps the goopers in power, they just need people be sick of the shit and stay home.

  8. 8.

    Poopyman

    Just browsing the Newsmax headlines just drives home the fact that they got nothing but hate going for them.

    ETA: OK, hate AND grifting (re: “weird trick”)

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Poopyman: Start wars, bring about economic catastrophe, write epitomes of classical sophistry, and nobody notices. But fuck a goat just once….

  12. 12.

    debbie

    @bemused:

    Karl Rove suggests that Hilary Clinton suffered from a brain injury

    If that isn’t the ultimate in Republican projection, I don’t know what is.

  14. 14.

    Poopyman

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, luckily the goat saw him coming, and has better choice in partners than some humans.

    (No puns were intended in the above statement.)

  17. 17.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @bemused: Surely Rove has crossed over from “someone to worry about” to “someone to be annoyed at” to “someone to laugh at.”

    Today, as usual, I will write more crap.

  20. 20.

    Poopyman

    @debbie: On the other hand, going this nutty this early in the campaign tells me they’ve really got nothing. And when you’re talking about the Clintons that’s really saying something.

  22. 22.

    bemused

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    Poor Karl. Being utterly vile but in a more sneaky, behind the scenes way worked so well for him for decades.Now that most Republicans are out and proud despicable assholes, his old system isn’t getting him much air time. Who knows what will come out of his mouth next and if anyone will notice him much among all the other bilge spouters.

  25. 25.

    mai naem

    Part of me is worried about Hillary and if she’ll be as friendly to the banks as Bill was. And, if she’s as big a warmonger to reassure stupid people that she’s as manly as any man. The other part of me wants a woman, especially a Dem. woman as the first female POTUS and Hilary has the best chance of that. Listening to the Lewinsky crap, Bbbenghazeee!!! and now this brain damage crap makes me think they want Dems to have ‘Clinton Fatigue’ and have somebody more beatable become the Dem candidate. That makes me want to defend the Clintons more vociferously.

  26. 26.

    Chris

    @Poopyman:

    Allen West says Boko Haram is meant to distract Americans from Benghazi

    Funny accusation, considering that this latest spate of Benghazi hearings comes right when his party stopped wanting to talk about the ACA.

    (When the Boko Haram stuff first started coming out, I heard Facebook wingnuts bitching that it hadn’t gotten attention because Obama and the MSM were politically correct extremists who didn’t want us to pay attention to Muslims’ crimes. Now it’s acknowledging Boko Haram that’s become the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. Hard to keep up, isn’t it?)

  27. 27.

    mai naem

    Whiter Shade of Pale used to be the song they used on the test signal/color identification deal on the teevee when I was a little kid. I don’t think I realized it was a regular pop song till I was probably in my mid teens.

  28. 28.

    NonyNony

    @Chris:

    Hard to keep up, isn’t it?

    Not really. Here’s the handy checklist:

    1) Is Obama doing something? Then it’s horrible that he’s doing what he’s doing. If what he’s doing is not objectively and obviously horrible, then it’s part of a cover-up. If it’s not obviously a cover-up then it’s a distraction from something he’s done wrong. If there’s no obvious candidate for it to be a distraction for, then it’s a distraction from Benghazi.

    2) Is Obama not doing something? Then it’s horrible that he’s not doing what he’s not doing and it shows that all liberals are hypocrites. If what he’s avoiding doing is actually something terrible – like starting another war – that isn’t hypocritical for liberals at all, then his not doing it is because he hates America and wants us to fail. Also he’s avoiding any connection to Benghazi so it’s probably related to that too. Somehow.

    So it’s not hard to keep up at all, as long as you understand that whatever Obama is or is not doing is nefariously evil and because he’s a weak-will strongman fascist who hates America.

  31. 31.

    GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)

    @mai naem:

    The other part of me wants a woman, especially a Dem. woman as the first female POTUS

    My money is on the first female POTUS definitely being a woman. ;)

  32. 32.

    Xboxershorts

    I was always under the impression that the original order for the fiber taps at the data exchange points went out in February 2001, well before the tragic events of 9/11. This information was mistakenly leaked to the public during the insider trading trial of QWEST CEO Joseph Nacchio.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=QWEST+Insider+Trading+NSA&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=np&source=hp

    This is one of those narratives that could almost but not quite turn one into a 9/11 truther of the LIHOP branch…

  33. 33.

    DaddyJ

    the original order for the fiber taps at the data exchange points went out in February 2001, well before the tragic events of 9/11

    See also Avedon over at Eschaton.

    It’s worth reminding ourselves over and over that at the same time the Bush administration was setting this stuff up, they were ignoring real intelligence.

    George W. Bush: “You’ve covered your ass, now get out.”

    And of course the immortal words of Condi Rice: “Nobody told us it was important.” How is it that the students of Rutgers have better memories than the rest of us when they were in grade school at the time?

  34. 34.

    DavidTC

    I just worry at all the problems these revelations are causing for the writers of Person of Interest. It’s getting slightly too complicated for them to interweave the actual existing global surveillance system into their fictional global surveillance system.

    They’ve already had to invent the idea that ‘PRISM’ is actually just a decoy system to distract people from their ‘Northern Lights’. God knows what happens when the actual secret program to assassinate terrorists is revealed and they have to explain why there’s a competing program to theirs.

    …wait, I shouldn’t have mentioned that last thing. Nevermind.

  35. 35.

    Mnemosyne

    They also covered the upcoming Frontline doc on Fresh Air yesterday — the streaming version is currently available on the website. Terri Gross must be on vacation, because the interviewer is a different guy that I can’t stand.

  36. 36.

    TG Chicago

    @Xboxershorts: Yeah, I just got belatedly informed of that via Avedon yesterday. As Avedon said:

    The spy-on-everyone program under Bush did not start after 9/11. It started in March.
    Meanwhile, through the usual channels, there was lots of chatter all summer about how bin Laden was up to something. The directors of the FBI and CIA both had their hair on fire about it.

    So, as far as we can tell, Bush/Cheney and NSA did not decide to start collecting all of your data because of 9/11, because 9/11 had not happened yet. They decided to do it in spite of the fact that they obviously did not care about terrorism and then persisted in ignoring all of the warnings about it.

    So, how come nearly every article I see about the spying program has a phrase saying that the program was started after or because of 9/11?

    I bet there’s a simple answer to this simple question. Grrr.

    To me, that doesn’t lead to 9/11 trutherism. It just means that in addition to using 9/11 as a convenient excuse to invade Iraq (which they wanted to do anyway), they used it as a convenient excuse to spy on everybody (which they wanted to do anyway).

    And while you can blame Iraq on the Bush admin, I think the spying goes deeper. I think that comes from entrenched career NSA folks who constantly want to expand the scope of their power and reach in secret. The NSA (and CIA, FBI, etc) have always pushed the envelope in getting greater and greater power with little or no responsibility or oversight.

Comments are closed.