Last Call For Spies Like Us

This Jack Devine piece in Politico sums up every problem I have with Team Dudebro Defector:

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald tells how Edward Snowden once confided to him, “with a hint of embarrassment,” how much he had learned from playing video games. In the black-and-white world of video games, “the protagonist is often an ordinary person, who finds himself faced with grave injustices from powerful forces and has the choice to flee in fear or to fight for his beliefs,” Greenwald writes.

But Edward Snowden’s video-game world is not the real world. I see Snowden in a very different light. My colleagues and I spent our careers in the CIA looking for people like him—on the other side, that is. We worked hard to locate the kind of person who could be persuaded to give up his country’s secrets: narcissistic, often delusional under-achievers whom we could hope to turn into loose-lipped sources in our enemies’ camps and other hostile locations. We understood just how valuable it was to every aspect of our foreign policy to know the plans and intentions of our enemies; the best way to do this was to look for a source and exploit people like Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, ­ to target for this purpose.

The Russians weren’t slouches either in searching for sources of classified information. They were looking for their Snowdens too. You don’t have to go back too far to see their success in recruiting American spies with unique access – John Anthony Walker, Aldreich Ames, and Robert Hanssen – who did immense damage to our national security. Moreover, Ames and Hanssen’s compromises led to the death of many of our top Russian sources. Walker’s compromise, by contrast, allowed the Soviets to know the locations of U.S. submarines around the world. One shudders to think what more could have been done against us if they had had Snowden’s access to sensitive communications and his technical know-how on how to extract it from the system. Some people think of Snowden as a latter-day Daniel Ellsberg, a noble whistle-blower. Clearly I do not.

Once again, if your goal was to do as much damage as possible to the intelligence capability of the US, Edward Snowden could not have done a more crushingly thorough job.  The debate over the NSA's role and oversight is something that needs to happen and continues to be ongoing.  But the debate over whether or not the actions taken by Snowden, Greenwald and others caused lasting harm to the country is over, and we lost.

Terrorist group al Qaeda and its offshoots have created new encryption software in the wake of the June 2013 leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to a new report from Big Data firm Recorded Future.

While U.S. government officials have contended that its adversaries would respond to revelations on NSA surveillance techniques with counter-measures of their own, there has been little public evidence that’s been the case. This is some of the first tangible evidence that al Qaeda and others may have responded by creating new encryption software.

Since 2007, the main encryption software for al Qaeda was called Asrar al-Mujahideen which means Mujahideen Secrets. Four to six months after the Snowden leaks, three Middle Eastern groups released three significant new tool sets for encryption, against a baseline of basically no new products for seven years, said Christopher Ahlberg, CEO of Recorded Future, which uses large quantities of publicly available online data to predict the timing and targets of future cyberattacks.

“Of course, this could be random, but it seems unlikely,” said Mr. Ahlberg, in an email. “Snowden provided the motivation and his leaks highlighted the means.”

So the debate now shifts to cost analysis:  how much damage is the NSA doing with its techniques, versus how much damage has been done by exposing them.  That's the debate we should be having at this point.  Yes, the NSA has violated the public trust, but so did Edward Snowden.  It remains to be seen which will have more long-lasting detrimental effects to our country.

You Say You Want A Revolution

This weekend is apparently FREEDOMPALOOZA Get The Black Guy Operation American Spring, where millions of "patriots" will magically appear in Washington DC in order to drive President Obama (and the GOP leadership!) out of office at gunpoint with their patriotic guns that shoot patriotism, or something.

“We are calling for the removal of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Eric Holder as a start toward constitutional restoration,” said retired Army Col. Harry Riley, leader of the Operation American Spring protest group. “They have all abandoned the US Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”

Operation American Spring aims to pressure those lawmakers who remain – or are replaced by officials of their own choosing – “to sponsor and pass very Constitutionally crafted State legislation to dissolve the size, powers, scope and spending of the U.S. Government by 2/3rds.”

The activists say they expect 10 million to 30 million like-minded Americans to join them Friday in the nation’s capital for a rally patterned after Occupy Wall Street and “Arab Spring” protests.

They also plan a sister event the same day in Bunkerville, Nevada, where militia groups have gathered to support scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy in his dispute with the federal government.

Organizers also anticipate “incremental nullification” by state legislatures of “all withholding taxes, employment taxes, employer taxes, and income taxes.”

“This will effectively DOUBLE the size of ALL American Middle Class family weekly paychecks and cause our local city and town economies to boom,” the group promises on its Facebook page.

Oh wow, ten to thirty million "patriots" armed to the teeth and ready to cause a second American Revolution!   I'm sure the President will immediately surrender at the sight of 47 guys with AK-47s and the DC police totally won't round up these idiots and chuck them in the drunk tank for a weekend.

Here's the best part:

Or, as a blogger speculated at Before It’s News, the whole operation could be a false flag planted by the Obama administration to launch a civil war.

Keep on truckin', clowns.

Dear America

"The Selfie Administration?  That seems about right.  Obama's teenage clowns aren't ready to run anything, they certainly weren't able to solve the disasters Bush left for them both foreign and domestically and everybody basically hates the uppity bastard.  He certainly doesn't have the gravitas of George W. Bush and his top political adviser, Karl 'Turd Blossom' Rove."

--Bruce McQuain, Hot Air

Bonus Verbatim Stupidity:

It is a pretty fair and devastating summary of an immature, selfie-taking, hashtag loving administration. Intentions speak louder than action in their world. They don’t take criticism well. And they are about as petty as it comes when talking about their opposition. They demand respect for the man in office, but the man in office shows no respect to those whose views differ from him.

He is also given very little if any respect in the world because he’s really done nothing to earn it (and quite a bit to unearn any he had when he took office).

Right, because the party that insisted President Obama was The Kenyan Usurper and regularly portrayed him as an African savage, regularly attacked him as a Communist dictator and traitor to America for doing things other Presidents were happily allowed to do (recess appointments, executive orders, judicial appointments), that tried to repeal Obamacare 50+ times, and when that didn't work, launched yet another pointless Benghazi investigation certainly cannot be classified as petty, thin-skinned, or disrespectful towards the views of those who disagree with them.

Instead, he's just the Affirmative Action president.  The only thing he did to deserve the office was, you know, win an election and then win re-election, but screw him, right?  That's not how we really select presidents or anything.

If Barack Obama really was as awful a person as they project on to him daily, some people would have been shot by now.  That's all I'm saying.

StupidiNews!

• In a new book, a Louisiana man claims his biological father was really the infamous Zodiac Killer, who killed five people in California in 1968 and 1969.
• An explosion at a coal mine in western Turkey has killed at least 151 workers and trapped more than 700 underground, with the death toll expected to rise.
• Chinese police are claiming that the head of drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's China division ordered his subordinates to commit bribery, bringing in billions of additional revenue for the company.
• Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must provide documents in Standard & Poor's lawsuit against the Justice Department over fraudulent mortgage securities ratings.
• Russia is warning that continued US sanctions over Ukraine may "force" it to abandon support of the International Space Station project.

Last Call For You Can't Handle The Truth

There are some really screwed-up, awful human being on this earth, but few are as perniciously evil as Sandy Hook Truthers, the assholes who somehow believe that the massacre in Newtown Connecticut 18 months ago never actually happened, and that everyone is somehow involved in a huge Obama conspiracy theory to use imaginary dead kids to justify taking people's guns.  And yes, these people are pretty much human pond scum.

A playground in Mystic, Connecticut, dedicated to a girl shot during the Newtown massacre, is allegedly being vandalized by "truthers" who claim the shooting never took place.

A vinyl sign weighing 50 pounds was stolen last Tuesday from the Grace McDonnell Playground.

The sign featured a peace symbol that was based on the 7-year-old girl's drawing. She is one of the 20 children shot by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.

Grace's mother, Lynn McDonnell, found out about the theft when a man claiming to have stolen the sign called her.

During a brief conversation, the sign-stealer allegedly told McDonnell that he took the sign because he believes the school shooting was a hoax, CBS2.com reports.

He also taunted her that her daughter never existed, a comment that suggested he thought McDonnell was part of the alleged conspiracy.

What an awesome thing to say to a grieving mother, right?  "I vandalized the playground named after your dead kid because the NRA hobgoblins living inside my head told me your kid never existed and that you're in on a plan to take my guns!"

There's 26 more playgrounds being built, by the non-profit group that made this possible, the Where Angels Play Foundation.  If you live in the area near any of these playgrounds, or want to help, drop by the website and click on the "Support Us" button.  They could use funds and volunteers.

The GOP Energy Drain

The big Senate energy bill is now dead, the hostage having been killed by Republicans who wanted to insert amendments that would have permanently crippled the EPA's regulatory power over clean air and water, ended green energy projects, stopped Department of Energy research, and a host of other GOP anti-environment and anti-science initiatives.

Oh yeah, and the bill would have been a victory for two red state Democrats up for re-election.  Can't have that.

Only three Republicans, including its chief GOP sponsor, Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), voted to end debate and move to a final vote. Supporters needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster from Republicans angered that Democrats wouldn't allow votes on their amendments.

Monday's 55-36 vote followed days of negotiations that failed to yield a deal on amendments.The stalemate denied an important victory to the bill’s other sponsor, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who faces a general-election challenge from former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

Democrats accused Republicans of sinking the bipartisan bill to prevent Shaheen from touting a win on the campaign trail. She worked with Portman for three and a half years on the bill.

The legislation would have strengthened energy efficiency requirements for new homes and commercial buildings and encouraged private sector companies to develop energy efficient technology.

The filibuster also thwarted Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), another vulnerable incumbent who sought a vote on the pipeline. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised a vote on Keystone if Republicans let the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill reach a final vote.

So no energy bill, no Keystone XL vote, no anything because the Republicans were never willing to negotiate, just make more and more demands.

Reid said the final straw came after he promised Republicans a vote on a stand-alone bill authorizing Keystone. They again upped their demand by insisting on several other energy-related amendments, he said.

“They have held this bill hostage, this energy efficiency bill, as demand after demand has been met but even now they are still seeking a ransom,” Reid said Monday before the vote.

Shocking, I know.  And so another bill dies thanks to Mitch the Turtle and the useless GOP sacks of crap who block everything, and then blame President Obama for nothing getting done. 

Meanwhile, In Antarctica, Sheet Just Got Real

Ice sheets, that is.  NASA's latest calculations are that we've gone past the point of no return on stopping polar ice cap collapse.

The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday.

The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.

“This is really happening,” said Thomas P. Wagner, who runs NASA’s programs on polar ice and helped oversee some of the research. “There’s nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.”

No longer a question of "if" on catastrophic sea level rising, but of how quickly it happens.

Richard B. Alley, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the new research but has studied the polar ice sheets for decades, said he found the new papers compelling. Though he has long feared the possibility of ice-sheet collapse, when he learned of the new findings, “it shook me a little bit,” Dr. Alley said.

He added that while a large rise of the sea may now be inevitable from West Antarctica, continued release of greenhouse gases will almost certainly make the situation worse. The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the Greenland ice sheet, causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s coastal cities would eventually have to be abandoned.

Insert your own beachfront property in Nevada joke here.   These predictions have been around since the late 70's, folks, effectively my entire lifetime.  We've done nothing.  Hell, half of us refuse to believe this is even happening, and that it's really a HUGE LIBERAL PLOT and stuff.

Make sure you tell your great-grandkids about New York City.

StupidiNews!

• Divers may have located the 500-year old wreck of Christopher Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, off Haiti's northern coast.
• New research suggests that a number of different common chemicals found in products ranging from food packaging to suncreens may disrupt sperm navigation and function, causing fertility issues.
• Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who is vowing to spend $100 million to attack anti-environment candidates, apparently has plenty of investment in Indonesian coal mines.
• Federal housing chief Mel Watt says it's time to reverse the effort to shrink mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and get them back in the game of providing affordable housing.
• Microsoft will no longer require a paid Xbox Live "gold" subscription to access Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services on its gaming consoles.

Last Call To Mind That Gap Again

The good news for Democrats:  the enthusiasm gap among Republicans is the worst recorded.  The bad news:  Democrats are even less enthusiastic about voting in 2014.

Among registered voters, 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents currently say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, while 50% are less enthusiastic, resulting in an eight-point enthusiasm deficit. But Democrats are even less enthusiastic, with a 23-point deficit (32% more enthusiastic vs. 55% less enthusiastic).

Typically, the party whose supporters have an advantage in enthusiasm has done better in midterm elections. Republicans had decided advantages in enthusiasm in 1994, 2002, and especially 2010 -- years in which they won control of the House of Representatives or expanded on their existing majority. Democrats had the advantage in 2006, the year they won control of the House. Neither party had a decided advantage in 1998, a year Democrats posted minimal gains in House seats.

At this point, neither party could give a damn, but the GOP still has a 15 point edge.  They had a 34 point edge in 2010 and the GOP picked up 60 plus seats in the House, where Democrats had a 13 point edge in 2006 and won the House there.

With all the gerrymandering and the power of incumbency, it's looking like there's not going to be too much of a shift in either the House or Senate.  That's at least something in the "Dems will keep the Senate out of inertia" column.

The thought and enthusiasm measures together suggest a mixed picture for Republicans. On one hand, it seems clear that 2014 will not be a repeat of 2010, when record Republican enthusiasm presaged major gains for the party in Congress. This year, Republicans' reported enthusiasm not only pales in comparison to 2010, but also to every other midterm election year.

However, Republicans still maintain advantages in thought given to the election and in voter enthusiasm compared with Democrats, and these advantages normally point to a better year for Republicans than Democrats. There is some uncertainty about how that will play out this year given that both Republicans and Democrats say they are less enthusiastic than usual about voting -- something that has occasionally occurred in past midterm election years but never over the course of an entire midterm campaign.

The danger of course remains that Democrats don't care what happens in 2014 and won't vote.  It just means there will be closer races that we could have won and didn't rather than 2010 style blowouts, but to see the Democratic numbers this bad (even in 2010 it was 44% a piece for enthusiastic versus non) it means that we're still going to lose.

Unless we vote.

What The Democrats Are Up Against in 2014

They are up against people who have been convinced to destroy their own self-interest in the name of greed and power, people like 33-year-old New Hampshire auto mechanic Derek Gagnon.

He has no health insurance, but he also says he has no intention of signing up for the private insurance offered through the government-run website, HealthCare.gov.

"I shouldn't be forced to do something like that in a free country," said Gagnon, referring to the law's requirement, known as the "individual mandate," that almost all legal U.S. residents buy health insurance or pay a fine.

"I'll pay the fine this year and next year," Gagnon said at a frozen yogurt store outside New Hampshire's state capital, Concord. "Maybe I won't have to pay it the third year, because by then Obama will be out of office."

Gagnon's distaste for the individual mandate dovetails with a principal line of conservative attacks nationally on the law.

Obamacare is meant to extend subsidized health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans through new online private insurance markets and an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor. But conservative critics portray it as a government intrusion in a major sector of the economy that will hurt job growth and erode freedoms.

Darek Gagnon is exactly the type of person the Affordable Care Act is supposed to be helping: uninsured, working class Americans who if they ever got truly sick or hurt would be in a world of financial pain.

But the Right Wing Noise Machine has made sure of two things:  that Derek Gagnon is acting against his own self-interest and will continue to do so, and that he will vote in order to perpetuate this situation.  The first is Derek's problem.  The second problem affects all of us, because he will vote to put someone like Scott Brown in the Senate rather than Democrat Jeanne Shaheen to make laws for all 315 million of us.

Derek Gagnon will vote.  For whatever reasons he has for voting, his vote counts the same as yours.

Will you vote?  People like Derek will.  And if you don't vote, he'll get to choose who runs this country.

Think about it.

Climate Of Distrust

Hey folks it's Marco Rubio, "Moderate Republican" and "Savior" of the GOP!

"I don't agree with the notion that some are putting out there, including scientists, that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what's happening in our climate," he said on ABC's "This Week." "Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that's directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity, I do not agree with that."

ABC's Jonathan Karl pressed Rubio on his belief that humans don't have anything to do with global warming.

"But let me get this straight, you do not think that human activity, its production of CO2, has caused warming to our planet?" Karl asked.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it. That's what I do not -- and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it. Except it will destroy our economy," Rubio responded.

And remember, this will make it more likely that Marco Rubio will be the GOP nominee in 2016, not less.   We have a major political party in America in 2014 that has tens of millions of adherents and that party believes modern science is nothing more than a massive liberal con game designed to destroy our freedom.  They actively fear science and replace it with propaganda and faith.  Trust must be destroyed in science so they can take it over, just like they've done with the very idea of a federal government in this country.

There's no doubt in my mind that the person running in 2016 for the GOP will not believe in climate change and will be virulently anti-science, anti-knowleges, anti-education, and anti-learning.  Republicans, this is what you represent to America.  Do something about your party before you kill us all.

Or better yet...vote Democrat.

StupidiNews!

• Pro-Russian separatist militants in Ukraine are claiming snap elections in eastern Ukraine show a decisive victory for declared independence from the Kiev government.
• The Washington Monument will reopen to the public today after being under repairs for nearly three years following a rare DC-area earthquake in August 2011.
• Norway's energy boom is ending and with it could go many of the country's government-based programs.
• Diplomats in the US, Europe and Asia will begin the final preparations for drafting a peace accord with Iran over ending its nuclear weapons ambitions.
• A Massachusetts woman faces wiretapping charges after allegedly secretly recording audio of her own disorderly conduct arrest.

Last Call For The Cantor Buried Tales

Remember when Eric Cantor was the obvious Tea Party successor to Orange Julius's post as Speaker of the House?  Not so much anymore.

Just a few miles from his family home, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) felt the wrath of the tea party Saturday, when activists in his congressional district booed and heckled the second-most powerful House Republican.

They also elected one of their own to lead Virginia’s 7th Congressional District Republican Committee, turning their back on Cantor’s choice for a post viewed as crucial by both tea party and establishment wings in determining control of the fractured state GOP.

Former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, pushed out of last year’s governor’s race by a similar party schism, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the results of the vote, in which longtime Cantor loyalist and incumbent Linwood Cobb was unseated by tea party favorite Fred Gruber.

“Clearly, there is a battle taking place for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Bolling said in a statement. “While the voice of every Republican should be heard, our challenge is to figure out how to be a conservative party, without allowing the most extreme voices of the day to control our party and determine its future direction.”

The tea party faction trumpeted the election results as a victory for core conservative principles of limited government, low taxes and a free-market economy.

“There’s been an ongoing battle for years between conservatives and establishment, and it’s a sweet victory when you win but you also win on the front porch of Eric Cantor,” said Jamie Radtke, a leader in the state tea party movement and former U.S. Senate candidate.

Cantor has become a "Washington insider" now, someone who is standing as an impediment to the unleashing the full crazy of the Tea Party.  Someone who has failed to repeal Obamacare, who has failed to impeach the President, who has failed to take the country back to 1860.  Eric Cantor is now the enemy.

Of course, Cantor will win his primary and re-election easily.  And he'll still be part of the GOP "leadership" because the notion that the Tea Party is somehow separate from the Republican mainstream is idiotic.  They're all the same.  In the end, Republicans will come around, united by their desire to lynch President Obama.

The rest is merely semantics.

Dear America

"Only the unenlightened fascist thugs of the left would have the science editor at the New York Times fired for publishing a book on the genetic inferiority of those people when it's the settled, scientific truth.  Besides, none of them could possibly be smart as I am, anyway."

--Vox Day, Vox Popoli

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

The Left is more than uncomfortable with both science and the conclusions that logically follow from it. It is now openly and avowedly anti-science. What is fascinating is that most clueless Leftists still feverishly insist that they, and not the Right, are pro-science even as they reject it in favor of various nonexistent ideals. As I have repeatedly pointed out since last August, the time for tolerating the Left has passed. Your only choice now is to submit to them or to shatter them.

Remember kids, climate change, massive hoax perpetrated by thousands of scientists.  Black people are genetically inferior to white people, settled scientific because you guys Vox Day is really, really smart and he listens to this guy who says so.

But the left is "openly and avowedly anti-science".

Bring Back Our Daughters

National Review columnist Mark Steyn really distinguishes himself on Mother's Day with this column slagging the First Lady and the missing Nigerian girls:

It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture at right is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt getting the First Lady to pose with this week's Hashtag of Western Impotence would reflect well upon the Administration. The horrible thing is they may be right: Michelle showed she cared - on social media! - and that's all that matters, isn't it? 

Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.

To recap, the First Lady showing that she does care, that she too is a mother and is worried, that Nigeria's government has turned down US assistance and President Goodluck Jonathan continues to shuffle his feet on the issue, all that is only worthy of "total contempt" because she is Michelle Obama.

Because she used a hashtag, hashtags are now contemptible and not only is hashtag activism now utterly worthless dirty hippie twaddle, the entirely of Twitter is dead and gone and was always useless in the first place.

It's odd then that when African girls are missing, and an African-American first lady gets involved, and a large number of black folk worldwide get involved, that suddenly, Twitter becomes useless, impotent, "wretched pleading passivity", even contemptible "moral preening".

So very, very odd.