The Commentariat -- Jan, 17, 2014
Mark Landler & Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Obama will require intelligence agencies to obtain permission from a secret court before tapping into a vast database of telephone data, but he will leave the data in the hands of the government for now, an administration official said. Mr. Obama, in a much-anticipated speech on Friday morning, plans to pull back the government's wide net of surveillance at home and abroad, staking out a middle ground between the far-reaching proposals of his own advisers and the concerns of the nation's intelligence agencies." ...
... New Lede: "President Obama, declaring that advances in technology had made it harder 'to both defend our nation and uphold our civil liberties,' announced carefully calculated changes to surveillance policies on Friday, saying he would restrict the ability of intelligence agencies to gain access to telephone data, and would ultimately move that data out of the hands of the government."
... The Washington Post story, by David Nakamura & Ellen Nakashima, is here. ...
... David Lauter & Ken Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times: "The president's objective today is not to fundamentally change what the NSA does, but rather to make Americans and U.S. allies more comfortable with it." ...
... Here is the full text of the President's speech. ...
... James Ball of the Guardian: "The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents. The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages -- including their contacts -- is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK's Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of 'untargeted and unwarranted' communications belonging to people in the UK." ...
... Shorter Peter Baker (linked in yesterday's Commentariat). Digby: "Basically [President Obama] was shocked and upset that the people didn't trust him to keep the NSA from being out of control --- and then learned that the NSA was out of control." Read Digby's whole post, as she goes on to worry about Keith Alexander's extraordinary (or as James Banford put it, Strangelovian) power. ...
... Charles Pierce: "It is clear now that the all-too-human, but curiously error-prone heroes of our intelligence community believe quite profoundly that there is no piece of information that does not essentially belong to them, anywhere in the world, ever." ...
... Benny Johnson of BuzzFeed: "As the American intelligence community struggles to contain the public damage done by the former National Security Agency contractor's revelations of mass domestic spying, intelligence operators have continued to seethe in very personal terms against [Edward Snowden]...." Some fantasize about killing him.
Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "Democratic and Republican lawmakers are introducing a bill to restore parts of the Voting Rights Act, six months after the supreme court controversially knocked down a pillar of civil rights-era legislation that prevented discrimination at the ballot box." ...
... Ari Berman of the Nation elaborates. ...
< ... Rick Hasan: "I am very pessimistic about the legislation passing out of the House."
Pete Kasperowicz of the Hill: "The Senate approved the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill Thursday, sending it to the White House for President Obama's signature and sparing the government from another government shutdown. Senators voted 72-26 in favor of the bill, and all 'no' votes came from Senate Republicans, including GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn (Texas). That followed a 72-26 vote to end debate, which needed 60 votes."
New York Times Editors: "The latest report on the 2012 debacle in Benghazi, Libya..., reflects a bipartisan consensus about the tragedy that is broadly consistent with the findings of previous inquiries. Even so, it contributes to a better understanding of what happened and why and what must be done to mitigate the chances of its happening again." ...
... Steve M.: Winger upset that left-wing media don't name Obama for causing Benghaaazi! when covering Senate report that doesn't name Obama.
Dylan Byers of Politico: "Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain harshly criticized The New York Times on Thursday over a recent report which concluded that Al Qaeda was not involved in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. In remarks on the Senate floor, Graham said 'journalism has died at this paper,' while McCain called the paper 'an ever-reliable surrogate for the Obama administration.'" ...
... Hadas Gold of Politico: "New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson is hitting back at harshly critical comments made by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on the Senate floor Thursday about a Times's report on the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. In a statement to Politico, Abramson called David Kirkpatrick's reporting on Benghazi 'unassailable.'"
Juliet Eilperin & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "A group of the nation's leading environmental organizations is breaking with the administration over its energy policy, arguing that the White House needs to apply a strict climate test to all of its energy decisions or risk undermining one of the president's top second-term priorities. The rift -- reflected in a letter sent to President Obama by 18 groups including the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and Earthjustice -- signals that the administration is under pressure to confront the fossil fuel industry or risk losing support from a critical part of its political base during an already difficult election year."
Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "Conservatives used to say Obamacare is socialized medicine. Now they say it is a 'government bailout' of insurers. The new claim is just as misleading and cynical as the old one." Cohn explains why.
I'm Rubber, You're Glue...
Tom Kludt of TPM: "In his memoir 'Duty,' [Robert] Gates recalled his disgust after [Harry] Reid said in 2007 that the Iraq war had been 'lost.' 'I was furious and shared privately with some of my staff a quote from Abraham Lincoln I had written down long before. 'Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged,' " Gates wrote. (Lincoln didn't actually say that.)" ...
... AP: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is out to make a buck with a book denigrating other senior officials. Reid was one target of Gates in his book, while President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also came in for criticism." ...
... Philip Ewing of Politico: "Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired back at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday night, quipping that 'it's common practice on the Hill to vote on bills you haven't read, and it's perfectly clear Sen. Reid has not read the book.'"
Paul Krugman: "... Europe's ongoing economic woes can't be attributed solely to the bad ideas of the right. Yes, callous, wrongheaded conservatives have been driving policy, but they have been abetted and enabled by spineless, muddleheaded politicians on the moderate left."
** "I am Cyrus." John Judis of the New Republic has a fascinating look back at President Truman's vascillating policies toward the formation & support of Israel.
Local News
Steve Kastenbaum & Chris Frates of CNN: "Give him a position at the top of the agency; he's a good friend of the governor. That's how David Wildstein was introduced to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2010, according to a former employee with extensive knowledge of the agency's hiring practices. Soon after, Wildstein was named the director of Interstate Capital Projects, a title that previously had not existed at the bi-state agency...." ...
... Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "As the New Jersey Assembly voted Thursday to authorize what Democrats and Republicans alike called a historic investigation into abuses of power by Gov. Chris Christie's administration, Mr. Christie seemed to be maneuvering against the inquiry, hiring a high-powered defense lawyer and resisting questions about whether he would cooperate with the Legislature's efforts.... Mr. Christie's administration announced that it had hired Randy M. Mastro, a longtime associate of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City, to conduct an internal review...." ...
... Shawn Boburg of the Bergen Record: "Twenty subpoenas rained down on Governor Christie's office and the Port Authority on Thursday, demanding documents related to the George Washington Bridge controversy be turned over to a legislative panel investigating the origins of a traffic jam apparently manufactured out of spite. Among those who were sent subpoenas, according to a source: Christie's former deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly and his former campaign manager Bill Stepien, as well as spokesman Michael Drewniak, Director of Communications Maria Comella, chief counsel Charles McKenna, chief of staff Kevin O'Dowd, and director of the authorities unit Regina Egea." ...
... Christopher Baxter of the Star-Ledger: "A separate state Senate committee formed today to investigate the scandal plans to subpoenas records from David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, agency Commissioner William 'Pat' Schuber, and Regina Egea, Christie's incoming chief of staff, said Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), the panel's chairwoman." ...
... Herb Jackson of the Record: "A Port Authority response to a [U.S.] Senate committee's inquiry about lane closures on the George Washington Bridge contains 'zero evidence' of a legitimate traffic study, the committee's chairman said today. 'The Port Authority's response provides zero evidence that the purpose of these closures was to conduct a legitimate traffic study,' said Sen. John 'Jay' Rockefeller, D-W.Va." ...
... Tim Egan: "There's a reason 'Nixonian' is moving up the Google search-pairing chart with Christie; he's vindictive, and never forgets a slight. His world is divided between enemies and loyalists. And you look at the way he talks to people in public with far less power than he -- teachers, students, lowly constituents at town hall meetings. They're idiots, morons. Ha ha ha. I've got the microphone, fool."
New Senate Race
Dana Ford of CNN: "U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of the current congressional session, ending his six-year term two years early. The Oklahoma Republican, 65, has been battling cancer."
News Ledes
Reuters: "Up to 15 people, mostly foreigners, were killed on Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a popular Lebanese restaurant in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, police said. Islamist Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack in the upscale Wazir Akbar Khan district, which hosts many embassies and restaurants catering for expatriates. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said its representative in Afghanistan was one of the dead, and the United Nations said three of its staff were killed as well."
Reuters: "A former detainee at the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has failed to persuade a federal appeals court to let him sue the U.S. government for damages stemming from his treatment during seven years of detention."
Washington Post: "President Vladimir Putin said Friday that gay people have nothing to fear in Russia as long as they leave children alone."
AP: "West Virginia inspectors visited the site of last week's chemical spill in 2010, when a nearby resident complained about a strong odor of licorice, the same smell that led officials to the spill Jan. 9, according to documents released Thursday.... One of the inspectors said in an email that the odor was not strong enough to merit a citation." CW: The official "Can't Smell a Thing" West Virginia inspection protocol.
Guardian: "Syria's foreign minister said on Friday that his country is prepared to implement a ceasefire in the war-torn city of Aleppo and exchange detainees with the country's opposition forces as confidence-building measures before a peace conference next week in Switzerland." ...
... New York Times: "However, residents and rebel officials in some of the communities described in interviews a disturbing pattern in which the government has used the cease-fires as cover for an operation intended to attain a victory it could not achieve any other way."
New York Times: "Hiroo Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army officer who remained at his jungle post on an island in the Philippines for 29 years, refusing to believe that World War II was over, and returned to a hero's welcome in the all but unrecognizable Japan of 1974, died Thursday at a Tokyo hospital, the Japanese government said. He was 91." CW: Big deal. What about all those American Southerners who refuse to believe the Civil War is over many generations later?
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Reader Comments (4)
Re: From "miss" info to "diss" info. The report from Digby makes me again think about a shadow government. Just like in the movies the bad guys show the good guys a map of where the treasure is and for some dramatic reason the good guys believe that the map is correct. Off the good guys go with a bad map. (think WMD).
With "Capt. Kirk" in command the NSA is boldly going where no data collectors have gone before and is creating some "maps" to send back to justify his going.
"Just before he took office the spooks raised some alarms about a Somali threat to the inauguration that scared the incoming administration. Unsurprisingly, the "threat" turned out to be nonsense,..." Digby
What happens when Kirk cries "Wuf!" too often?
Or worse; creates a "Wuf" that is really a sheep in a "Wuf's" fur coat?
I'll have three quotes of wry and a gallon of gin, please.
So Bob Gates is snarking around that Harry Reid hasn't read his book. First, why would he? Second, it's clear that while Gates may have been in Defense, he certainly wasn't in Intelligence. An intelligent person would check and double check such things as highly flammable quotes attributed to one of the great men of American history.
But then again, with a title like "Duty" it's equally clear that Gates is more of a self-regarder than a self-editor (and by the way, whatever has become of the art of editing? Are there no Max Perkinses or Bob Loomises nowadays? Sheesh.). Just once I'd like to see a memoir, especially of the Gates variety, written largely to burnish his reputation (while he polishes his knob), settle scores, tar his enemies, and spend a few weeks letting various TV types polish his knob for him, published with the much more accurate title of "Things I May Have Said and Done, and Then Again, May Not Have" or even better, "Convenient and Lucrative Memories".
The unfortunate quote misattributed to Lincoln routinely revs up wingers, neo-cons, and haters of more pacific and politic solutions to the problems of the world, the shoot first types who believe anyone who doesn't line up to pin a medal on them should be the next ones shocked and awed. Like Gates, apparently.
But Poor Abe is not the only one, unfortunately, whose reputation has been absconded with to polish the patina of petty passions.
Yesterday, I mentioned, in a comment, that George Washington had importuned the young nation not to forget about science. I had read this quote in a number places but needed to determine its accuracy and provenance, a task requiring few keystrokes and fewer minutes. But in the course of that search I ran across a slew of quotes blithely attributed to the F of OC that seemed too far off base not to check out. Here are three of the worst, dredged up by wingnuts whenever they feel the need for telling the rest of us that they're right and Daddy said so, so nyah, nyah.
"A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
Ah yes....guns, guns, and more guns, especially if you want to bag you some guv'mint types.
Here's what he really said:
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies."
BIG difference, especially the change of conjunction from "but" to "and". And that bit about shooting government types is nowhere to be seen. Too bad, wingers, facts are so inconvenient. I don't know who jiggered with that quote but I'm guessing he goes armed into movie theaters and grocery stores.
Here's another for the "kill the guv'mint" crowd:
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
Man, does this sound like a wingnut wet dream. Only problem, Washington never said this either. Nor anything remotely like it. Researchers and historians at the Mount Vernon Library are stumped as to its origin. But this thing appears all over the web. I think it's tattooed on Rush Limbaugh's ass...but not on that spot where he has that suppurating cyst that kept him from Ramboing his way across Southeast Asia, darn it.
Now my fave:
"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."
And likewise impossible to believe that Washington said this. He wasn't an atheist or even an agnostic, as far as we can tell, but he wasn't Rick Santorum either. This "quote" comes from an early biographer, James Paulding, about as factual as Parson Weems, but without the nice imagery of the cherry tree and the axe.
Wingnuts quote this thing ad nauseam, and with good reason. Even better, this "quote" is attributed to Washington's farewell address (something it would seem, that would be pretty easy to check out, but then again, who would question the veracity of anything Glenn Beck has to say?) which gives it that extra oomph, "Now children, I'm leaving, but here's a few words of wisdom from Dad before I do..."
Yeeeah. Okay.
So Gates is in excellent company (depending on your definition of excellent) when he misattributes important quotes to reinforce his vinegary anecdotes. But hey, he's selling a passel of books. Anyone writing kiss and tells, or punch 'em in the nose memoirs like this is always sure to attract an audience of voyeuristic goobers, which reminds me of another quote: "If you have nothing good to say about someone, come sit by me."
Myself, I had long thought that came, not from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, but from Dorothy Parker. At least, in this case, it's something one can imagine Parker actually saying.
Better make that two gallons of gin.
Interesting piece on the Atlantic site on the development of theory and strategy underlying the rise of conservative media.
Conservative, biased, and proud to present opinion as fact
The author, Nicole Hemmer, recounts what she sees as a watershed moment in the right's battle to prove liberal bias. It ain't exactly scientific, but it's seems sciency enough for those looking to have their own biases confirmed. Edith Efron, a writer at TV Guide, with money from a right-wing group chaired by William Buckley, looked at two weeks of campaign coverage, counted the positive words used to describe each candidate (HHH and Nixon), and determined that Nixon got the shit end of the stick on positive mentions, ergo, liberal bias. Seems like a Post Hoc fallacy, but what do I know?
This was seized on by conservatives as proof positive that they were right all along.
What this experiment never considers, however, is that, inherent biases aside (and Nixon had a long, tempestuous relationship with the national press going back to his red baiting, HUAC days, along his many dirty tricks to get himself elected), there may not have been as many good things to say about the Tricky One. After all, had both candidates had the same number of good mentions, it would have been no indication of the presence or absence of bias.
And if history is any judge, the number of positive things said about Nixon may have been more than he deserved.
The piece conveys, convincingly, the vital role of paranoia and sense of victimization in the development of the conservative media machine. A worthwhile read.
News flash: Vladimir Putin (direct descendent of Vlad Tepes, I'm pretty sure), will allow gay fans to attend the Russian Olympic games without automatically gulaging anyone, but warns "the gays" to "leave the children in peace". Yeah, because the Gay Agenda requires the abduction, abuse, and brainwashing of children, doncha know?
Is this guy a piece of work, or what?
I'm so glad we don't have homophobic paranoid putzes like that in leadership roles in America.
.....oh, wait....