Sixty-nine years after the bloody D-Day Invasion at Normandy which marked the true beginning of the end of the Second World War, this is today's headline from today's (UK) Guardian newspaper:
NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily: Top Secret Court Order Requiring Verizon to Hand Over All Call Data Shows Scale of Domestic Surveillance Under Obama
Read the article for yourselves, folks...
Heck... read the Court Order while you're at it!
Speaking of the Court Order, Forbes Magazine notes in their headline:
NSA's Verizon Spying Order Specifically Targeted Americans, Not Foreigners
Again... I'll leave it to you folks to read the article for yourselves... but here's a taste:
Though the classified, top secret order comes from the FBI, it clearly states that the data is to be given to the NSA.That means the leaked document may serve as one of the first concrete pieces of evidence that the NSA’s spying goes beyond foreigners to include Americans, despite its charter specifically disallowing surveillance of those within the United States.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Geezus, people... America is dead... long live Amerika!
My father and my uncles - all of whom served in combat in WW-2 - would be so ashamed were they still alive to see what the Amerikan Sheeple have done to the country they fought to protect.
Damn Barrack Hussein Obama...
Damn George W. Bush...
And God Damn the Amerikan Sheeple...!!!
10 comments:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/how-outraged-should-you-be-about-the-nsa-grabbing-your-phone-logs-20130606
* AGAIN... JUST READ THE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELVES.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/06/Mainstream-Media-Did-Not-break-Even-One-of-Four-Obama-Scandals
Well, if it is Thursday there must be a new Obama scandal. But one thing is for damn sure, whatever that scandal is, you can bet the American mainstream media will be playing catch up and not carrying the glory of breaking a story about a major White House scandal.
Fact: Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media is not responsible for breaking even a single one.
Verizon? Nope, not our guys. That was the Brits over at The Guardian.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
IRS? Nope, not our guys. The IRS broke their own scandal with a planted question.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records? Nope, not our guys. Believe it or not, the Associated Press didn’t even break that story. Like the IRS, we only found out because the Justice Department outted itself in a letter notifying the AP of what it had done.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Benghazi? Are you kidding? With a couple of rare exceptions (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Attkisson) the media has spent the last 8 months attacking those seeking the truth (Congress, Fox News) rather than seeking the truth. It was the GOP congress that demanded the email exchanges around the shaping of the talking points, not the media.
(*SIGH*) (*NOD*)
Left up to the media, we wouldn't know anything about Libya. All of the media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered.
* BASICALLY TRUE. HELL... GO BACK TO SEPTEMBER 11, 2012 AND BROWSE THROUGH USUALLY RIGHT FROM THAT DAY ONWARD...
(*SHRUG*)
And do you want to know what makes this realization especially pathetic? In three of the four scandals (the AP being the exception), had our media been less interested in protecting Power and more interested in holding Power accountable, these huge, career-making stories were right there for their taking. For over a year now, conservative Tea Party groups have been complaining about IRS harassment. But because Obama told them to, the media hates the Tea Party. So in the face of these complaints and even a few Congressional inquiries, the media either ignored the harassment reports or openly sided with the IRS. (No joke. Click the link.) -- http://washingtonexaminer.com/new-york-times-applauded-the-irs-last-year-for-targeting-tea-party-groups/article/2529550
Obviously, you can say the same about Libya.
All the dots were there to connect: Security failures, two weeks of lies, the midnight arrest of some hapless filmmaker…
(*NOD*)
But rather than connect the dots, the media played goalie for Obama against Fox News and Darrell Issa. (Besides, there was a re-election to win...)
Our media is not only biased, it is an utter and complete failure and embarrassment. And although there are plenty of remaining table scraps to make meals out of, the media is already losing interest in the IRS, Libya, and AP scandals, but for only one reason - they are absolutely terrified of where they might lead.
During the Bush years, it was the New York Times, Washington Post and Sy Hersh breaking story after story after story about the White House. And yes, some of that reporting was - ahem - overreach, but at least Power knew it was being watched; our democracy was safe because an overzealous media is what you call a luxury problem. Today, it is the complete opposite and the result is an administration run amok.
Get down on your knees and thank your Maker for conservative New Media, Roger Ailes, and for the few true liberals left in the media, like Glenn Greenwald - who works for the Brits.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/welcome-to-the-bush-obama-white-house-they-re-spying-on-us-20130606
* READ THIS, FOLKS...
* UNDERSTAND... IT'S TRUE!
* FOLKS... IT BEGAN WITH BUSH. OBAMA HAS DOUBLED-DOWN. MOST POLITICIANS IN BOTH PARTIES WILL SIMPLY RUBBERSTAMP WHATEVER "THEIR" LEADERS DEMAND.
* FOLKS... AMERIKA IS HERE...
http://www.gallup.com/poll/162923/payroll-population-unemployment-worsen-may.aspx?utm_source=tagrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication
The U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Gallup, worsened in May, dropping to 43.9%, from 44.5% in April.
(P2P is also down from May 2012, when it was 44.4%)
* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP...
(*SIGH*)
Gallup's P2P metric is an estimate of the percentage of the U.S. adult population aged 18 and older who are employed full time by an employer for at least 30 hours per week.
Although P2P is down, the percentage of Americans working full-time for themselves has improved. Full-time self-employment is at 5.5% in May, up from 5.2% in April, and has been consistently greater than 5% every month in 2013, with the highest rates since Gallup began tracking employment in 2010.
* FOLKS... I REPORT MYSELF AS WORKING FOR MYSELF. SO FAR THIS YEAR HAS BEEN PRETTY GOOD... BUT NOTE... THIS POLLING IS ABOUT SELF-DEFINED "SELF-EMPLOYED" WITH NOTHING TO SEPARATE "GAINFULLY" SELF-EMPLOYED FROM ON THE EDGE OF BANKRUPTCY. ALSO... NO DOUBT... MANY FOLKS SIMPLE LIE... CHECK THE "SELF-EMPLOYED" BOX RATHER THAN ADMIT THEY'RE UNEMPLOYED.
* ANWAY, FOLKS, THE POINT IS THIS: THE ECONOMY SUCKS.
The U.S. workforce participation rate in May was 68.4%, unchanged from 68.5% in April...
* ER... UMM... ACTUALLY IT'S DOWN... DOWN .01%
* Gallup's unadjusted unemployment rate for the U.S. workforce was 7.9% for the month of May, a half-point increase over April...
* Gallup's seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate for May was 8.2%, up from 7.8% in April...
* Underemployment, as measured without seasonal adjustment, was 18.0% in May, up from 17.5% in April...
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350293/they-werent-rogue-agents-andrew-stiles
How might you feel if you had performed, with your bosses’ permission and direction, a project that they later blamed on you and publicly denounced as a rogue operation?
That’s the situation in which some employees of the Cincinnati’s IRS office find themselves.
The IRS and the Obama administration have repeatedly said that low-level, “rogue” employees in Cincinnati were to blame for the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups - despite an array of evidence to the contrary.
As a result, those Cincinnati employees are understandably miffed.
Several IRS employees in the Cincinnati field office acknowledge in recent interviews with the House Oversight Committee that they’re not happy with the excuse. “I still hear people saying we were low-level employees, so we were lower than dirt, according to people in D.C.,” one employee told the committee. “So, take it for what it is. They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”
The same employee, when asked about former acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller’s claim that the scandal was the result of two “rogue” agents’ “overly aggressive” handling of conservative nonprofit cases, said that explanation was “impossible.” “As agents, we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen,” the employee said.
Another more senior employee in the Cincinnati office said she was so fed up with “micromanagement” from IRS officials in Washington that she applied for another job in July 2010, several months after the targeting began. “It was the micromanagement,” the employee explained. “The subject area was extremely sensitive and it was something that I didn’t want to be associated with.” The employee said she was aware of the “inappropriateness” of “not processing these applications [from conservative groups] fairly and timely” in 2010, and seemed baffled at the official explanations coming out of Washington.
“I mean, rogue agent?” the employee said. “Even though I was taking all my direction from [the Exempt Organizations Technical Division in Washington, D.C.],” she said. “I didn’t want my name in the paper for being this rogue agent for a project I had no control over.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
An IRS employee in Cincinnati tells National Review Online there “absolutely” is anger in the Ohio office aimed at superiors in Washington — individuals such as Lois Lerner, the embattled director of Exempt Organizations who has been placed on administrative leave, and Holly Paz, the Rulings and Agreements director who donated $2,000 to Obama in 2008.
(Paz sat in on many of the inspector general’s interviews with Cincinnati employees, which could explain why they were reluctant to identify who ordered them to target conservatives.)
Lerner, who recently invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee, preemptively broke the news of the inspector general’s report on May 10, when she responded to a planted question from a D.C. tax lobbyist. Then, Lerner indicated that “our line people in Cincinnati” were responsible for the targeting, despite the fact that her signature appears on at least 15 official requests for information sent to conservative groups.
The IRS source says that employees are “especially” annoyed with Cindy Thomas, a manager in the determinations unit. “She’s a micromanager,” the source says. “She doesn’t defend her employees at all. She and Lois Lerner are — were — good buddies. [This is] part of the reason the [Treasury inspector general] labeled it gross mismanagement.”
Thomas’s name appears in a series of June 2011 e-mails obtained by the House Oversight Committee in which she and Paz discuss the handling of “tea party cases,” as well as Lerner’s interest in the matter. In one e-mail, Thomas asked employees in the Cincinnati office to explain the criteria being used to identify a “tea party case.” “Do the applications specify/state ‘tea party?’ If not, how do we know [the] applicant is involved with the tea party movement?” Thomas wrote, after being informed that Lerner wanted a “a briefing on these cases.”
The employees’ statements are yet another indication that the Obama administration has been - at best - misleading in its response to the IRS scandal.
White House press secretary Jay Carney has on several occasions referred to the scandal as the “activity in Cincinnati” and “the apparent conduct by our IRS officials in Cincinnati.” However, even the audit report from Treasury inspector general J. Russell George explicitly discusses the involvement of the Washington-based EO Technical Unit in “reviewing” the information requests sent to conservative groups applying for nonprofit status.
The inspector general’s report cited “ineffective management” as a factor in the targeting scandal, but did not find direct evidence of political motivation or outside influence.
* BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T LOOK FOR IT...? BECAUSE THEY PURSUED NO LEADS THAT MIGHT HAVE FOUND A SMOKING GUN?
(*SHRUG*)
However, the inspector general has repeatedly emphasized that many questions remain unanswered and that his findings are merely preliminary.
As Congress continues its investigation, the focus has shifted toward officials in Washington, including IRS chief counsel William J. Wilkins and his two deputies. With so many questions surrounding the scandal yet to be answered, the administration had better get its story straight — and so far, their claims of an isolated scandal haven’t squared with the facts.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350297/samantha-power-exemplary-pick-charles-c-w-cooke
Back in 2008, during what would become a disastrous international book tour, Samantha Power claimed that she didn’t have any “conventional political ambition.”
* IF YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF "WHO IS SAMANTHA POWER," THEN... (*SIGH*)
* READ ON...
This, one might have imagined, was rather a blessing, because Power doesn’t have any conventional political skill, either. For a woman who holds a professorship at the prestigious Kennedy School of Government at Harvard — and who has written an extremely well-received book on international diplomacy — she seems to have gleaned surprisingly little about how the world works.
Nevertheless, if the reports are to be believed, she will soon have a conventional political job. President Obama, who just can’t quit her, is poised to nominate Power to replace Susan Rice as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations.
* YOU KNOW SUSAN RICE... SHE'S THE WOMAN WHO INSTEAD OF GOING TO JAIL... OR AT LEAST POLITICAL "EXILE"... IS BEING PROMOTED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA...
For this role, Power is an exemplary pick. Not only has she long lamented “the U.S. historic predisposition to go it alone,” but she has also perfected the body’s famous brand of pompous inertia. For a year or so she headed up the president’s worthless Atrocities Prevention Board and, per the Seattle Times, understood to a T what was required of her: Wanting to ascertain whether the board was actually doing anything to help prevent crimes against humanity, some 60 scholars of genocide studies and human-rights activists from across the globe sent a letter to Samantha Power, then-chair of the board, in December. Power never responded. They sent her a second letter in January, and again received no response.
Forget ambassador! She sounds like secretary-general material!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350246/susan-rice-mediocre-political-loyalist-john-yoo
There will be unsurprising but deserved criticism of President Obama for appointing Susan Rice to be his next national-security adviser.
The administration has chosen damaged goods.
Rice’s exact role in, and level of knowledge about, the Benghazi scandal has still to be determined by congressional investigators, but her main claim to fame was to venture onto national television to sell a story about the death of a U.S. ambassador and other American officials that was false.
(*SHRUG*)
But the more important story is that Rice’s appointment is part of a broader theme to Obama’s second term. Once again, the president has chosen a mediocre political devotee as either a reward for past service or to help defend the castle walls during a combative second term.
Past presidents had more confidence to choose significant thinkers on foreign policy for the job. JFK chose McGeorge Bundy; LBJ had W. W. Rostow, Nixon had Kissinger, Ford had Scowcroft, Carter had Brzezinski, and Reagan started with Allen and Clark, then got into trouble with McFarlane and Poindexter, but then chose Powell and Carlucci. Clinton had Berger and Lake, Bush had Rice and Hadley. These officials had thought about foreign affairs and national security for decades and had contributed to important and valuable schools of thought on the future of American national security.
Place Rice next to those figures. Putting aside her flawed service as U.N. ambassador, Rice has done, said, and written almost nothing to distinguish her as an influential voice in foreign policy, either within the Democratic party or outside of it. The highest profile act of her career in the Clinton State Department was to support standing by during the Rwandan genocide — one of the great tragedies of the Clinton years — because of concern over the effect of an intervention on the 1994 midterm elections.
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
Choosing a committed loyalist despite her role in one of the administration’s biggest scandals shows that the president has little interest in cooperating with the opposition party on the issues where bipartisanship is most important: national security and foreign affairs.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350133/food-stamps-are-not-farm-bill-ron-johnson-michael-needham
While earmarks no longer serve as congressional currency, lawmakers still find ways to engage in legislative logrolling. Nowhere is that more evident than in the misnamed “farm bill,” in which lawmakers wrap disparate issues — agriculture subsidies and the food-stamp program — into one piece of legislation.
It is one of Washington’s dirty little secrets: One reason lawmakers support massive spending on the food-stamp program is that it helps get farm programs passed. It’s all politics.
* THE MAIN PROBLEM I HAVE WITH "THE TERRORISTS" IS THAT THEY TARGET THE INNOCENT RATHER THAN THE GUILTY... (HINT... HINT...)
But even as this unholy alliance between rural lawmakers and their urban and suburban colleagues has held steady — the Senate Agriculture Committee cleared the 1,150-page, $955 billion bill in just three hours — it is undeniable that the shape of the “farm” bill is changing.
* AGAIN, FOLKS, MY POSITION IS THAT NO BILL TOO LONG TO ACTUALLY READ AND ABSORB IS LEGITIMATE. PERIOD. NOT ONE OF THESE FOOLS HAS READ THIS 1,150 BILL - I'M CONFIDENT OF THAT.
This year, 80% of the spending in the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act goes toward the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps. In 2002 and 2008, roughly two-thirds of “farm”-bill spending went toward food stamps.
* DISGUSTING...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING...
Like most programs rooted in the New Deal and Great Society, the food-stamp program has experienced exponential growth. In the 1970s, when food stamps and agriculture subsidies became inextricably linked, only 2% of Americans received food benefits. In 2000, approximately 6%, or 17 million people, were on food stamps. Participation rates vary based on economic conditions, but over the last two decades, they ranged between 6% and 10% of Americans.
Today... 15% of the U.S. population (nearly 48 million people) are dependent on food stamps — and we are three years into the Obama “recovery.”
* I'D SUPPORT AN IMMEDIATE CUT IN THE PROGRAM... SAY FUNDING NO MORE THAN ENOUGH TO "PROVIDE FOR" 8.5% OF THE POPULATION... AND FROM THERE CULL 1% A YEAR FROM THE ROLLS TILL WE'RE BACK TO 2% AND THEN WE CAN REVISIT THE ISSUE.
Washington spends roughly $80 billion a year of taxpayer money on food stamps.
* WASHINGTON "REDISTRIBUTES" OUR HARD EARNED MONEY... STEALS FROM US...
The crisis is deepening, as half of all food-stamp spending goes toward individuals who have been on the program for eight years or more.
* GEEZUS...
Our nation’s food-stamp epidemic really began with the 2002 farm bill, which dramatically expanded benefits and weakened eligibility standards.
* CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS!
* FUCK... YOU... BUSH...! FUCK... YOU... BUSH...! FUCK... YOU... BUSH...!
As a result, the cost of the program doubled between 2001 and 2006.
* DEAR TERRORISTS: IF I MAY... I HAVE A LIST OF POTENTIAL TARGETS...
(*SMIRK*)
Thanks to President Obama’s stimulus, it doubled once again between 2008 and 2012.
* KINDA THE DEFINITION OF "DOUBLING DOWN."
The Senate’s bill would essentially lock in that level of spending for the next decade.
* GEEZUS...
* FOLKS... I DON'T HAVE A REPUBLICAN SENATOR. I HOPE THOSE OF YOU WHO DO WILL BE CALLING YOURS!
When we’re approaching $17 trillion in debt, a 0.5% reduction from stimulus-era spending simply doesn’t cut it. The bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee is almost as bad, shaving off just 2.5%.
* DEAR TERRORISTS...
(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)
Farm-state lawmakers should no longer assent to the crass legislative tactic of combining farm policy and food stamps; we must take note of the changing political dynamics. Instead of greasing the skids, the rapid growth in the use of food stamps is actually a major factor holding up the five-year reauthorization of agriculture programs.
Concerned Americans are working to ensure that legislative logrolling, such as earmarks, harms the reputations of lawmakers, instead of helping them. Responsible lawmakers will also recognize that fully informed discussion, let alone necessary reform, is all but impossible when the food-stamp program is carried under the banner of a farm bill.
Americans’ distrust of Washington is growing rapidly, and such Orwellian naming of legislation creates confusion and makes responsible governing needlessly difficult. When senators return to Washington next week, they will have an opportunity to end this long-standing unholy alliance and prove that business as usual in Washington is ending.
Americans deserve to have a farm-only farm bill, and lawmakers must move other policies separately.
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