Happy Independence Day!

I hope you're all enjoying your freedoms on this glorious Fourth. I know that I am absolutely wallowing in mine, especially given the news that the government is now photographing all my mail to keep me safe. The fact that my Time Warner Cable bill arrived in a ripped-open condition this week had, in fact, made me suspect that something was afoot. But it's fine with me if TWC is on some kind of postal No-Seal, No-Fly list. I am terrorized every time I get one of their bills, which always seem to come only a week after I paid the last one, and is always full of new hidden charges, like a monthly rental fee for the same modem I've had for the past five years.

And when a company's motto is Freedom To Enjoy, I know deep down in my soul that my freedom is simply their obscene profit, and that keeping them in my life makes me nothing more than an abject slave to their intrusive technology. I think we should all be getting a discount for having unknowingly contributed to the PRISM program all these years. Instead, we're the ones actually paying for the privilege of being spied upon. Very undemocratic, if you ask me.

Did you read about the new Restore the Fourth movement getting underway on this day? Hundreds or even thousands of people will be protesting All Over This Land against the surveillance state, no doubt getting surveilled as they do so. I hope it catches on.

And speaking of patriotism, Ralph Nader conducted a Fourth of July survey of multinational corporations, asking if they love America more than they love their off-shored wealth. Two companies (Walmart and Chevron) actually responded to him with non-responses. Results here.

Oh, and Egypt had another revolution. Like me, did you feel just a tad jealous as millions of Egyptians were able to oust a democratically-elected president just because he betrayed their trust? Of course, the military did all the heavy lifting. There will never be a military coup here in the Homeland, because that train left the station eons ago. The generals and the pseudo-generals of the military-industrial-surveillance-media complex have been the de facto government for more years than we will never be allowed to fully know -- although, thanks to Edward Snowden and those pesky "activist journalists", we are finally getting an inkling.

I was reading the other day that the Fourth of July is prime time for news dumps by officials of stuff they don't want attracting too much attention. I was thinking maybe Obama would sneak in approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. But so far, the only biggie is the White House announcement that "some" businesses won't have to pay for employee health insurance until 2015. (translation: probably never, and they are finally tacitly admitting that the whole law is a major blunder.) The New York Times made the major blunder of using ACA architect Ezekiel Emmanuel to defend the decision. Readers, predictably, are wrathful. My response (which in retrospect I wish I had made meaner) --

Health insurance should not be related to employment, period. Just think about how many more "great workers" that businesses could afford to hire if they didn't have the millstone of health insurance premiums hanging around their necks. The USA is the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't supply universal health care. And thanks to the predacious insurance companies in the equation, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, with some of the worst outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality.

In addition, granting a reprieve to what is defensively being called by the White House "only" a small proportion of businesses is just a terrible PR move. The Obama administration is seen to be announcing that it cares more for the employer than it does for the worker. And all that people are paying attention to is the delay, not the fact that those affected can still purchase coverage on their own. Dumb idea, only giving more ammo to the "I told ya so" Republicans in the mid-terms.

My dream is that the whole ACA will turn out to be so cumbersome and cost-ineffective, and people will get so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that all the Gopers and the Wall Street Dems will be voted out of office and we'll finally get a progressive government answerable only to the people.

Medicare for All. We are dying out here.

And while we're all dying out here, if you are lucky enough to have the "Freedom to Enjoy", SyFy is running one of its Twilight Zone marathons this long weekend. Rod Serling based many of his stories on the Surveillance State, then hunting for communists under every bed. Today, they're hunting for everybody in and out of bed, and they don't even need human eyes to see us.
 

Propaganda, Inc.

 "My God, what a world we live in."

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner was echoing the near-universal reaction to the forced grounding last night of the jet carrying the president of Bolivia and, as the paranoiac States of America feared, Edward Snowden. (He wasn't on board.) Denials are busting out all over, of course. The White House is being characteristically mum till they get their talking points lined up. Since this story is still very much in a state of flux, I'll just point you to the live blog running on The Guardian.  (unviewable by the United States Armed Forces lest they learn about their targets before ordered, in the words of Barack Obama, to "Scramble.")

Meanwhile, state-sponsored propaganda is ratcheting up to Mach speed. The Washington Post, among the first media outlets to publish Edward Snowden's leaks, is now condemning them because they're hurting Obama.  Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, penned an op-ed actually calling for a federal law to "define journalism" (and presumably to silence Glenn Greenwald and the horde of "activist reporters" thinking outside the Homeland-approved veal pen) Today's New York Times is running an editorial accusing Europeans of getting all bent out of shape over being targeted by American spooks, and Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande and the gang are just feigning outrage anyway. My response:

Today's lesson from Propaganda, Inc.: Calm down, little ones. The Grown-ups spy on each other all the time and nobody cares, so why should you? Listening in on conversations is just a little game that Superpower and Lesser Powers play with each other. No harm, no foul. They're just honing their negotiating skills. Nothing to see here, now go out and play with your favorite electronic gizmos and thus continue patriotically contributing to the Great Information Warehouse -- so that we can keep the World safe from the World.

Speaking as a mere citizen now -- and I know this is none of my business -- but what exactly is in this Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA rhymes with NAFTA)? I totally get that the Lesser Powers might be "feigning outrage" just to placate their own subjects and hold on to their tenuous grasp on power -- but who exactly will TAFTA benefit? Because these "free trade" negotiations are being carried on behind closed doors, with no Congressional oversight.

According to Public Citizen, TAFTA, like NAFTA, will include something called "Investor-State" tribunals that allow multinational corporations to bypass the courts and have disputes heard in secretive extra-judicial tribunals. Great for the corporations -- really bad for the ordinary people who might have a claim against them. You can read more details here.

Read the other comments. They are absolutely scathing. The Times is falling into line with the White House, and readers from all over the world are calling them out on it.

Edward Snowden is shaking the global power structure to its very core. The real terrorists and traitors, the economic ones, are still getting away with murder. They're flying the friendly skies in their un-Sequestered Lear Jets, while Edward Snowden is stuck in the airport.

He's Got the Whole World In His Ears

Rrrrring, rrrrrring.

Barack Obama: Yeah.

Angela Merkel: World War II ended 70 years ago, Herr President. J. Edgar Hoover is dead. And we find out from Der Spiegel you're still bugging us! At this very moment in time, you are bugging me telling you that you're bugging me. Was zeum Teufel?

Barack Obama: Angela, Angela, Angela. Did I ever tell you you're the best looking German chancellor in the room? Remember when we chatted at the G-8 and I assured you we are not spying on you and that we only collect your emails and phone calls to keep the World safe from the World? Meanwhile if you let Edward Snowden anywhere near your air space, I'll yank my wasteful billion dollar bases right out of Germany. Meanwhile, I do welcome a transparent conversation behind closed doors.

Angela Merkel: Du Hurensohn! Nixon had to resign for a lot less than you are doing with your NSA plumbers. I'll pull out of the EU free trade agreements, Du Bastard!

Barack Obama: Did I ever tell you you're the best looking German chancellor in the room? We need a balanced approach when it comes to free trade just like we need a balanced approach when it comes to your privacy and our power. We need to balance the important interests of the multinationals against the petty interests of the poor slobs. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. My attorney General Eric Holder will be in touch with your prosecutors to offer them a deal they can't refuse. Money will win in the end. It always does.

Click, buzzzzzz.

I wonder. Yves Smith has an excellent post up asking the question you're not hearing being asked in the mainstream media. Will the blockbuster revelations that America is spying on foreign governments scuttle next week's European Union Trade Deal talks? Even better, will they ruin the super-secret corporation-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership deal?

No wonder the PTB hate Edward Snowden so much. He's
 not only embarrassed them personally, he's cutting into their obscene profits, big-time. Literally trillions of dollars in plutocratic pockets may be in danger because he exposed their criminal snooping enterprise. That is why they're desperately (and increasingly futilely) trying to make him and Glenn Greenwald into the bad guys. The mass murderers are complaining that the star witness for the prosecution is a rudenick and a Peeping Tom.

And nearly 48 hours after the latest NSA scoops, the Spooks are remaining eerily silent.* It's like the scandal that surpasses a thousand Watergates didn't even exist. The silence of stenographic mass media is deafening. I imagine the mad scramble for talking points is in full throttle.

Yves has been scanning the comment boards on NSA/Snowden stories and has unscientifically discovered that the proles are definitely not on the side of the government in this matter. The usual Obamabot sock puppets are hidden away in the drawers, for the most part. And that is a hopeful sign of things to come as regards the trade agreements:

By way of background, the Administration is taking the unusual step of trying to negotiate two major trade deals in the same timeframe. Apparently Obama wants to make sure his corporate masters get as many goodies as possible before he leaves office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-European Union “Free Trade” Agreement are both inaccurately depicted as being helpful to ordinary Americans by virtue of liberalizing trade. Instead, the have perilous little to do with trade. They are both intended to make the world more lucrative for major corporations by weakening regulations and by strengthening intellectual property laws…

Public Citizen has been doing a yeoman's job exposing just a little bit of what the TPP deal means for us. No more accountability for corporate fraud in the courts of sovereign governments. Disease and death because life-saving drugs will be kept from developing countries. Total deregulation of financial predators and the neutering of already toothless Dodd-Frank financial reform. The details are so horrendous that the Obama Administration is even keeping them from Congress while strong-arming them to give him full authority to fast-track the deals. It's nothing less than a global coup d'état.

So Edward Snowden may be a greater hero than I thought. As Glenn Greenwald (h/t Jay - Ottawa) pointed out in a recent speech to a convention of Socialists (yay!), the inspiration he created by willing to literally put his own body on the line can only grow exponentially from here on out.  

* Update: Before meeting up with George Bush in Tanzania to lay a ceremonial wreath for American imperialism terror victims, Barack confirmed that he talks to Angela on the phone all the time. So, she and other allies crying rape should just lie down and enjoy him. Since the whole world snoops on his breakfast menu, then it just naturally follows that we should all just relax and enjoy the reality of our lives and our thoughts being sucked up by the voracious maw of the NSA Blob. Uncle Vlad, meanwhile, hilariously admonished Snowden to stop pissing all over America already, lest it get all wet. Oops. Too late. That chamber pot of horrors is already overflowing. That bladder done emptied itself weeks ago. That Putin sure is one funny autocrat.

Now that Obama weighed in, the New York Times finally joined the fray as well, with this weasel-worded headline: "France and Germany Piqued Over Spying Scandal."

Piqued? That connotes a lot less than the rage that is actually being felt and reported, and even subtly shifts the blame onto those on the receiving end of the abuse. (To be fair, the article does mention outrage in the first paragraph.) But the use of the word piqued in the headline hugely downplays the real import and content of the story, could even be interpreted to mean that those Europeans find the story really, really interesting. Somebody simply scanning the headlines might assume that the scandal was more along the lines of eavesdropping on an extra-marital affair instead a criminal state spying campaign against millions of innocent people.

From the Online Free Dictionary --

Piqued:

1. Stimulate (interest or curiosity)

2. Feel irritated or resentful.

Outraged:

1.Arouse fierce anger, shock, or indignation in (someone): "he was outraged at this attempt to take his victory away from him".

2. Violate or infringe flagrantly.

Words matter. A lot.

Racism Is Busting Out All Over

Paula Deen may finally be getting her just desserts over revelations of racism, but that doesn't mean other uber-wealthy bigots are getting theirs. To the contrary: the eighth wonder of the world richest billionaire in the Homeland, Michael Bloomberg, still reigns supreme one day after uttering these reptilian words on why he wants to continue New York City's infamous Stop and Frisk program aimed against minorities:

 One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders....

In that case, incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little,” the mayor said. “It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.

How tres stupide of us not to have noticed all those Wall Street suits getting rousted by the cops as they strolled over to Club Cipriani for their flutes of post-predatory champagne.

Bloomberg was just erupting in yet another one of his fits of plutocratic pique last week when the City Council voted to rein in Stop & Frisk.  Hizzoner is vowing to veto the measures despite the fact that they passed by a large enough majority to be veto-proof. He and his enforcer, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, plan to strong-arm the civil rights advocates on the Council to change their minds and vote against the override of his overreach. One of the measures makes it easier for those stopped and groped for no other reason  than their race to sue the police department. The other calls for an Inspector General to oversee the entire department. As Council Member Letitia James put it, "Today, we are striking a blow against a practice which has become a perverse right of passage for all young men of color in the City of New York."

Michael Bloomberg disguises his own racism by going the centrist cult false equivalence route:

In Washington, some elected officials don't have the courage to stand up against special interest groups on the right and pass common-sense gun laws. And in New York City, some don't have the courage to stand up to special interests on the left and support common-sense policing tactics like stop-and-frisk. We don't need extremists on the left or the right running our police department, whether its the NRA or the NYCLU.

 The attacks most often come from people who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall. Some of them scream that they know better than you how to run the department. Some have even sued the NYPD and demanded a federal monitor over NYPD operations. They've also drafted politically driven legislation that is a reaction to two NYPD practices: Stop, Question and Frisk; and counter-terrorism intelligence gathering.

The counter-terrorism intelligence gathering to which the Shrillionaire Mayor refers is the police spy operation against Muslims (with the cooperation of the CIA)  also subject to a lawsuit in federal court. The New York Times has quite an extensive archive on S&F here.  

It's all part and parcel of the demonization of those who dare criticize creeping state totalitarianism at all levels. Complain, demand your civil rights, and you're instantly labeled an anti-American anarchist. Bloomberg's words eerily echo what one of my New York Times comment board stalkers treated me to yesterday when I complained, in response to a Timothy Egan column, about President Obama's abysmal human rights record and the wimpy Democrats. Here's what "Jack - Illinois" told me:

Your kind offers nothing to middle class Americans whose survival depend on the demise of the tea party. Your kind's take down of President Obama does nothing for millions of Americans who look to the reforms of ACA as a start to a better future when they contemplate their medical futures.

If any politician would adopt these extremist views it would be a guaranteed loss for the middle class, as the political reality is that any extremist view dies in America.

 I am happy that President Obama stiff arms the extreme left wing. Because if he kowtowed to the extreme left wing it would only mean more suffering for the middle class. I can't remember any instance that the extreme left wing helped the middle class because I believe that there is no instance.

The extreme left wing has done nothing for healthcare reform. The extreme left wing has done nothing for banking and finance reform. The extreme left wing has done nothing for immigration reform. Don't think that someone like Cesar Chavez was some kind of wild eyed radical. He was a worker, farmer, who knew families that were depending on him to bring change into their lives. Chavez had to compromise to achieve his goals, as does Obama.

Normally I ignore Jack - Illinois (OFA Truth Squad?), whose sole assignment seems to be to search out all the anti-Obama remarks and go on the pre-approved talking point attack.  But I and a few others really got into it with him yesterday. In later remarks, he called me "You People," while ironically claiming ownership of such icons as Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. The smell of centrist cult desperation and the stench of racism hidden under the perfumed miasma of liberalism is getting pretty foul out there.

And of course, no post about racism would be complete without noting an epidemic of concern troll commentary about the star witness in the ongoing George Zimmerman case, a young lady named Rachel Jeantel. I watched her testimony, which I found to be a refreshing marvel of passive-aggressive defiance. But here's a sampling of what the same people who decry the racism of George Zimmerman and the Sanford Police Department are saying about Rachel Jeantel:

She seems to have a cognitive disorder (frequent commenter on a "liberal" news aggregation site that shall not be named.)

Dark-skinned and plus-sized: Headline in Salon.com article that was actually quite supportive of the witness.

We never claimed this was about race.... It’s not about racial profiling. He (Trayvon) was profiled (criminally). George Zimmerman profiled him.” -- Martin family attorney Daryl Park. (reflecting Post-
racial denialism disorder.)

Nor would a post about race be complete without noting once again what a great big ugly piece of "sweeping" legislation the Senate Immigration Bill really is. Despite being almost universally lauded as a sunburst of feel-good bipartisanship because it marks yet another notch in President Obama's legacy belt, it is rife with de facto racism. It's all about the continued exploitation of undocumented workers, and a giant leap forward into neo-feudalism. Presente. Org., the country's largest immigration advocacy group, says that far from being welcoming, this legislation will actually cause people to die. (if the bill itself doesn't die first in the recalcitrant House.)

More than a third of the current population of "illegal" immigrants will not be included in reform. (echoes of ObamaCare!) Border security will cost $40 billion -- money that could be better spent for education, infrastructure and other safety net programs. Deportations (which have already reached record numbers under Obama) will continue, and the private prison system will expand to accommodate those swept up by the draconian "Secure Communities" dragnet. Those granted a path to citizenship will lose their status if they lose their jobs and remain unemployed for more than 60 days. U.S. citizens will no longer be able to petition for their siblings. Mandatory E-verify will eventually sweep everybody up in the security state dragnet.

And last but not least, the outrage over the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act lasted all of 24 hours before being quickly cancelled out by a epidemic of cheers over the victories for gay marriage. New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote an excellent, albeit measured, piece about the disparity, calling for a joining of forces of the gay rights and civil rights activist communities:

One movement for equality had its spirits lifted and another had them crushed.

But the truth is that these movements are not wholly dissimilar. All combatants for justice are cousins. Jim Crow and Jim Queer are of a kind. So, given what happened on the racial civil rights front this week, the LGBT civil rights movement would be wise to take heed. 

I sincerely believe that in my lifetime, gay marriage will be legal in the whole of the country. But it is unlikely that the LGBT community will become more than a minority group. I also know that the changing of laws does not work in tandem with the changing of hearts, which means that minority groups are always vulnerable. When the laws change, some things simply become subterfuge. In striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “things have changed dramatically.” But I submit that so have certain tactics. 

Just ask black civil rights leaders still fighting a huge prison industrial complex, police policies like stop-and-frisk and predatory lending practices. Ask women’s rights leaders still fighting for equal pay, defending a woman’s right to sovereign authority of her own body — including full access to a wide range of reproductive options. Ask pro-immigration groups fighting a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.

As I wrote in response to Charles Blow,

The Court simply delivered the coup de grace to voting rights, which have been under ever-increasing attack wherever growing minority populations are threatening GOP rule. Photo ID requirements, moving polling places without notice, closing them altogether.... the disenfranchisement bag of tricks is bottomless. The Ku Klux Kourt, as Greg Palast calls it, made it a bit easier for the festering right wing to spread its poison until the inevitable day when it succumbs to its own vile infection.

Gay rights, on the other hand, did stand half a chance and barely squeaked by the rabid Catholicism of Antonin Scalia. Marriage equality advocates simply have more political clout than do brown and black people, who have suffered disproportionately during the recession. The people hurt by the trashing of voting rights have no lobbyists, or cable TV political strategists, or fund-raising email lists with which to plead their own cases.

Even the Koch Brothers hopped aboard the marriage rights bandwagon. Gay marriage never would have passed in New York without the blessing of Wall Street, home to many a self-interested plutocrat with gay friends or relatives. When wealthy same-sex couples are allowed to marry, they get to take advantage of a whole slew of tax breaks.

The trashing of voting rights is all about the continued oppression of the poor and working people. The trashing of DOMA, on the other hand, is no skin off the raised elite noses of the people actually running the show.

In the end, it's really all about the money. The getting of it, the keeping of it, the making sure that it remains protected from the grasp of common hands. Money begets power begets more money begets more power. It's a Winner Take All world. And it's getting really ugly out there.

Comical Plutocrat Blows Smoke At Greenwald

When it comes to the latest conspiracy theories, I usually back away out of pure rational instinct. But the smear campaign currently in full swing against Glenn Greenwald simply reeks of a conspiracy between the government and the corporate press.

The smears against Edward Snowden started predictably and immediately. But the campaign against the messenger of the messenger took awhile, mainly because Snowden is off the radar at the moment and Glenn Greenwald's public profile has been rising by the day. David Gregory got the ball rolling last Sunday, and landed in the gutter. (see this excellent Frank Rich smackdown.) Today, New York Daily News reporter Dareh Gregorian pitched a 90 mph spitball aimed straight at Greenwald's head. But rather than beaning Greenwald, he missed the mark by a mile. He has not yet learned the first lesson of the journalistic smear: always use subtle language and weasel words to make your nasty points. Judging from the outraged reader comments on the News site, Gregorian's ham-handed salvo has boomeranged big-time and come back to hit him in his own smirking face.

I won't bother to repeat what Gregorian wrote, which Greenwald has already discounted in a much calmer manner than I ever could, simply expressing bemusement that the Daily News and the New York Times both seemed to have mysteriously come up with his tax records at exactly the same time.

All you have to do is Google Dareh Gregorian and the dots start connecting all by themselves. He is the son of Vartan Gregorian, one of New York City's leading plutocrats. Daddy is president of the Carnegie Corporation, coming from a long line of previous stints in the academic-industrial complex.  He has served in, or been honored by, every recent presidential administration, beginning with George H.W. Bush. Since President Obama appointed Vartan to the White House Commission on Fellowships, did he also commission Junior to be just the fellow to smear Greenwald? Inquiring conspiracist minds want to know.

How Junior ended up on the staff of a New York City tabloid instead of on the august pages of the New York Times would be anybody's guess, until you actually read his drivel. And judging from a snarky piece in the New York Observer about his 2003 engagement (to the daughter of a New York Times socialite columnist) the younger Gregorian gives a whole new depth to elite shallowness:

 “I’m attracted to talented people, and she’s incredibly talented-crackerjack and on the ball,” Mr. Gregorian said. “Very enthusiastic, very dogged. She had a natural ability that came out very quickly.” And her big brown eyes didn’t hurt, either. “I spent a lot of time watching what he did, because he was really good,” Ms. Haberman said.

She told her father about the strapping coworker, and he praised Gregorian senior, whom he’d met on the Manhattan dinner-party circuit throughout the years (Ms. Haberman had never heard of him). Then, one night, it occurred to her that when it came to her feelings for her comely co-worker-well, as her Dad might’ve put it, she’d buried the lead. “I was just seized with the wind to call him,” she said. “I told him that I adored him.” Fortunately, young Mr. Gregorian reciprocated her feelings. “I knew I wanted to marry her even before we started going out,” he said.

They’re planning the wedding, at an as-yet-to-be-determined downtown location, from their east midtown one-bedroom, where his comic-book collection- Captain America is his favorite-takes up half the closet. When Ms. Haberman left the Post last fall, she brought with her a Wonder Woman desk figurine that Mr. Gregorian had given her. “It’s funny now, because she’ll come home and say: ‘This thing happened today! But I can’t tell you about it till tomorrow,’” he said. “We have a little Hepburn-Tracy thing going on.”

Indeed, they’re both still puffin’ away on cancer sticks as if it were the 1940′s. “The Mayor has given me repeated crap about it,” Ms. Haberman said with a sigh. “I smoke Marlboro Ultra Lights; he smokes Camel Ultra Lights. It’s so cute. We’ll die together.”

You really can't make this stuff up. A middle-aged hack with a comic book collection and a stinky smoking habit is handpicked by the Powers That Be to take a pile of thin dirt on a columnist who broke an embarrassing story about them and hurl it into the wind. You can almost smell the desperation. It reeks like a pack of unfiltered Camels.

When I last checked, there was still no New York Times story on how the dastardly Mr. Greenwald once reneged on a student loan and still owes the IRS money. Gregorian, of course, never needed to take out a student loan in his life. And scion of the American Aristocracy that he is, he enjoys tax breaks the rest of us can only dream about.

This is just the latest indication that L'Affaire Snowden is, to the top .001%, simply an icky manifestation of the Class War of the proles against them, rather than the epic outing of the neo-fascist corporate spy state that is keeping them all in power.

Some Climates Never Change

The graphics couldn't have been better -- or worse, depending on your point of view. There was the normally unflappable, cool president sweating like a pig. When I first saw the photo below, I actually thought he was weeping in remorse over his fateful choice to preside over a spy state, with the resulting loss of all his international friends. No such luck. In the midst of the current climate of authoritarianism and racism and xenophobia, he was simply and belatedly waxing rhapsodic about the actual climate. Suffice it to say that he added volumes to the hot air surrounding him. For what he said and didn't say (in other words, an analysis of his gifted doubletalk), here's a good piece from Common Dreams.

Add caption

So much is going on this week that even the national media can't fall into their usual stenographic lockstep; they were running all over the place playing Musical Leads. CNN's Neocon maven Erin Burnett was still stuck on desperado fugitive (as opposed to heroic whistleblower) Edward Snowden -- adding nothing about why his own government is hunting him down like an animal. MSNBC pivoted to the Supreme Court's trashing of the Voting Rights Act, with only snippets of Trayvon Martin trial coverage. My local CBS affiliate highlighted the impending funeral of James Gandolfini, combined with a rogue tsunami that hit the Jersey shore.

Meanwhile, the impending security state tsunami known as Immigration Reform was pretty much buried beneath the detritus. Whenever you hear the word Reform, just remember that it is a synonym for creative destruction. So in case you were thinking that immigration reform was going to be some sort of humanitarian outpouring of good will to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, you'd better think again. The actual title of the impending Senate bill should be "How Do We Hate Hispanics? Let Us Count the Ways."

We will likely be spending billions of our taxpayer dollars to construct a full-fledged militarized zone at the southern border, complete with a 700-mile long double fence, a fleet of drones, and one border patrol agent stationed every thousand yards. The drones and the cops will probably outnumber the population. And to further attract the rabid Tea Party xenophobes of the House, the  vast majority of senators also agreed that workers awaiting membership in the Exceptional American Citizens Club will have their FICA and Medicare contributions confiscated for at least a decade, and that everybody will now be subject to random search and seizure as far as 100 miles north of the border. Immigrants not fluent in English will be excluded from the long slog to citizenship. (An excellent piece by Chris Hayes provides the little-noticed grim details.) 

Erick Garcia (no relation) an undocumented immigrant active in the Presente.Org movement, sent me an email this week to voice his disgust at the punitive nature of the proposed immigration legislation:

Every time a cop car passes by me in Arizona, my heart races. I've seen too many of my friends and family living in fear, not knowing for certain if they'll come home to the people they love each day or face deportation. Nobody knows we need to fix our immigration system more than me. 

But as a DREAMer, I'm terrified about what's happening in Congress....  This is what would need to happen before immigrants are given any hope of legalization: we'd need far more agents at the border than troops in Afghanistan, we'd spend billions of dollars on radar surveillance similar to what's used in Iraq, and we'd double the cost of unnecessary border enforcement to $30 billion. This, even though border crossings are at or below zero and experts say our border is more secure than ever.

 So with bipartisan friends like the Senate, who needs racist enemies like the Ku Klux Kourt? (credit, Greg Palast) Remember, the Senate immigration vote is only an opening salvo. The rabid House no doubt will make it even more sadistically sweet. Private prisons that charge rent to the undocumented is probably on their agenda, if they do go so far as to allow a vote. The only question remaining is why anybody in their right mind would even want to sneak over into the Land of the Drones and the Home of the Craven. You can work, but you'll get no benefit from the taxes you pay. And thanks to the Supreme Beings in their depressing black robes, you may not be allowed to vote even when you do finally get certified as a genu-wine side of prime American beef.

The White House pronounces itself perfectly okay with the latest draconian immigration amendments. And why wouldn't it? Militarization creep has been creeping everywhere you look. New York City stops and frisks minority people so many times that the number of stops has actually outnumbered the entire minority male population of the Big Apple. Muslims, too, are currently suing the city in federal court over the NYPD surveillance program.

Most of us, for the time being, are "merely" having our phone records and internet searches swept up and stored. But how much longer before it gets physical and we, too, become too cowed to even walk on the streets? Of course, if you frequent airports, you already know all about the TSA grope and the body rape-scan. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street), of the Seven or Eight Immigration Gangstas, did once suggest similar pat-downs at all subway stations, but his proposal went nowhere. Maybe next year.

 The only people not creeped out by the chipping away of our civil rights are the politicians and the pundits and the secrecy industrial complex which stands to get very, very rich in order to keep us "safe." And quiet. And afraid.

The planet is warming up, yet the hearts and minds of the political leadership couldn't possibly get any colder.

Obama's Enemies List

Richard Nixon was a paranoiac with a scowl and a stash of expletive-laden revenge porn audio tapes.

Barack Obama is a paranoiac with a charm-offensive grin and more whistleblower prosecutions under his belt than in all other previous administrations combined. Even a self-defensive meeting with civil libertarians on Friday afternoon about the recent uproar over the government spying upon its own citizens was held under an unnecessary veil of secrecy.

And, as McClatchy Newspapers reveals, there is now even an Obamian version of Nixon's Enemies List, called the Insider Threat Program:

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

This goes for all federal employees, not just those in the spy agencies. In the Social Security Administration. In the Department of Agriculture. In the Education Department. Each agency of the government is turning into its own little Stasi. I am trying to imagine what kind of spying might be going on in my local Social Security office, for example. Is one worker falling under suspicion for being too sympathetic to applicants, or maybe once forgot to demand that last unit of identification as proof of existence? Or, is Obama's Insider Threat manifesto just institutionalizing the usual petty backstabbing office politics?

Actually, it's a lot worse. Because if one of your co-workers with an ax to grind snitches on you, you can theoretically be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. It looks as though J. Edgar Obama wants to raise his record of whistleblowing prosecutions far, far above the current measly seven (counting Edward Snowden.):

Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.   

“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

And that's the gist of it, folks. Our government considers all of us enemies of the state for even daring to ask what they're doing in all our names.

I can only imagine what it must be like to work for the federal government in the Age of Obama. If you snitch on a friend, do you get a bounty in the way of a raise and promotion, or will the cheapskates just toss you some comp time off and an extra half hour for lunch? If you fail to snitch on a friend and the boss later finds you knew all about something without reporting it, is that grounds for your dismissal or even prosecution? 

Working under conditions like this not only adversely affects the workers, it affects the whole working of government. Who can possibly function under such a system? Somebody will always be looking over your shoulder. Clerical mistakes, lost paperwork,  nervous breakdowns will no doubt skyrocket. Morale will plummet to zero. But maybe that's the whole plan.

And it's not only blatant stuff like talking to the media that the employees are being asked to report. Workers must also alert their bosses to the personal problems -- such as marital woes -- of their colleagues -- because such issues might lead to a troubled person spilling secrets for foreign governments, or worse! They're even supposed to keep tabs on one another's reading material. One red flag, according to the government, is if someone reads the Onion and Salon. I think the latter entry in the List of Forbidden Websites must be outdated, though. It was on the Government List because Glenn Greenwald used to work there.

So  I imagine that sneaking a peek at The Guardian during lunch hour at the Patent Office might land you in the slammer before quitting time.

The Obama Administration must be having conniption fits now that Hong Kong failed to cave to threats from the World's Policeman and allowed Edward Snowden to leave the country. I wonder if White House hacks are reporting on each other's mental health as they all collapse to the floor and start chewing on the rugs.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves