Obama Champions Your Right to Pay

Let President Obama be perfectly clear. In the richest country on earth, you don't have the same right to health and wellness and treatment for disease as they do in other advanced countries.  But you absolutely, positively have the right to shop for your own private health insurance (which if you are lucky, might pay some percentage of your actual care.) As your president, he will defend your purchasing power to the death, with all the weasel words at his disposal, against the machinations of the Republicans. Because it's not about him, altruistic fellow that he is. It's about you, the insurance company consumers of America. From today's weekly radio address:

Your health insurance isn’t something to play politics with.  Our economy isn’t something to play politics with.  This isn’t a game.  This is about the economic security of millions of families.

See, in the states where governors and legislatures and insurers are working together to implement this law properly – states like California, New York, Colorado and Maryland – competition and consumer choice are actually making insurance affordable. 

So I’m going to keep doing everything in my power to make sure this law works as it’s supposed to.  Because in the United States of America, health insurance isn’t a privilege – it is your right.  And we’re going to keep it that way. 

Got that? Instead of saying your actual health is nothing to play politics with, he downgrades it to your health insurance being nothing to play politics with. The ability to pay for your sickness trumps the horrible fact that you're sick to begin with and that in a humane world, would not have to pay a middleman the price of getting better or preventing disease.

We'll know in a couple of months how successful or unsuccessful the big rollout of Obamacare is going to be. My overall opinion of it remains unchanged -- that it's a huge giveaway to the private insurance predators, but that a few lucky duckies (rich people with pre-existing conditions, uninsured twenty-something spawn of insured rich people, near-poor people in a handful of blue states newly qualifying for Medicaid) will benefit. So I am not calling for its repeal, as are the Republican nihilists. Because we would replace it with exactly nothing.

 And, I still hold out some faint hope that Obamacare will turn out to be a sort of gateway drug. Just as the pot-deprived of America are now turning envious, un-bloodshot eyes to Washington State and Colorado and their public hemp fests, the health care-deprived will notice how much better things are in New York and California, and demand their own medical care fixes. The insurance predators and investment class will eventually realize the profits aren't worth the headaches and sink their cash into more lucrative enterprises, like endless war and domestic surveillance. And bit by bit, we will get Medicare for All. At least, that is my pipe dream.

But that doesn't make me any less disgusted with the way Obama persists in framing this issue in free market, rather than in humanistic terms. It doesn't make me any less disgusted that the needs of greedy capitalists always trump the needs of the citizens in this sham of a democracy.

The United States has the most expensive health care system in the world, with some of the worst results in terms of morbidity and mortality. Obamacare, in the first year, is estimated to "cover" only four million people out of an uninsured population of some 50 million. Predatory private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third  of every health care dollar. As Physicians for a National Health Program note, a single payer system would save more than $400 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.

But remember, people. Barack Obama is fighting for your right to enrich the profiteers, all the way to the post-presidency bank.

Those Silly Rogues at the NSA

The only question I have about today's Washington Post revelation on the thousands of instances of illegal domestic spying by the NSA is: why the hell did they sit on this story for so long? Edward Snowden gave them the documents on which it is based months ago.

If the Post were truly in the muckraking business and not the semi-official propaganda organ of the Beltway, I'd surmise that they were simply waiting for President Obama to hang himself. Obama, you may remember, last week seemed to categorically deny that anything untoward was going on in Police State USA. His exact words, however, were very carefully parsed:

 "If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails."

Which could be interpreted to mean if you are not aware of abuses, then your cluelessness is your own problem. I know something you don't know. Nonny nonny boo boo. 

Since the Washington Post is the semi-official organ of the Establishment, they've probably spent the last several months agonizing over what Edward Snowden handed to them on a silver platter. They had legions of lawyers poring over every syllable. They provided advance copies to every government apparatchik for his or her vetting and approval, prior to publication. The article admits that NSA officials spoke to them only with "the permission of the White House." There was no actual official leaking going on, they want you to know. Their continued access to power remains safe and secure. In the end they decided to run with the story, because it did not, in the grand scheme of things, make any politician look too terribly bad. Incompetent, maybe. Evil? No way. 

The article was essentially framed around the theme "Shit Happens." At most, it exposed mind-shattering stupidity and arrogance, which are not crimes. These people are only human. And besides, we already had a huge hint about their rank ineptitude when intelligence hack James Clapper told Congress that his spooks don't ever "knowingly" eavesdrop. Sometimes the data just comes floating into their line of vision. There is so damned much of it, they can't avoid it.

And funny? How about that time when the NSA mistook the Beltway area code for Egypt's, temporarily confusing the moneyed Swamp People with impoverished denizens of the desert?  Boy, did they ever get egg on their faces. I imagine they're still rolling in the aisles over that wacky caper. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

And Deputy Attorney General James Cole acknowledged in his own recent Congressional testimony that "every now and then there may be a mistake." I guess when the government vacuums up so many trillions of our communications that they had to construct a whole new building in Utah in which to store them, a few thousand privacy violations every year constitutes a mere Now and Then.

Of course, the thousands of violations that they self-reported were confined only to the Fort Meade, MD headquarters -- and thus are likely tp represent only the tiniest tip of the iceberg of what is more likely to be truly evil stuff.

But for now, this story will make our abusers look like harmless idiots. A couple of wacky hacky heads will roll to appease the masses. And Booz Allen will continue laughing all the way to the bank. And Obama will continue laughing up his sleeve.

Guest Post: Liberals & The Second Amendment

By Zee

Liberal Professors and Historians of Constitutional Law Who Hold

Surprising Views on the Second Amendment

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has long generalized that the Bill of Rights—or, at least, the first Eight Amendments—protect individual rights, an assertion with which I agree.
 

Yet the ACLU—along with perhaps most American liberals—has decided to assign a special, “collective rights” interpretation to the Second Amendment (hereafter, SA), directly contradicting its/their own general assertions. This needless torture of plain language is done, IMHO, strictly for political purposes, and is damaging to the entire Bill of Rights.

Alan Dershowitz, liberal professor of law at Harvard Univ. and an expert on constitutional law and civil rights, has recognized the serious danger lurking behind this interpretation of the SA. From Wikipedia (and note that all bold emphases that follow are mine):

“Dershowitz is strongly opposed to firearms ownership and the [SA], and supports repealing the amendment, but he vigorously opposes using the judicial system to read it out of the Constitution because it would open the way for further revisions to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution by the courts. 'Foolish liberals who are trying to read the [SA] out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.'”

But Dershowitz is by no means the most respected professor or historian of constitutional law who has decided that the SA protects an individual right to own firearms.

Let's start with the person who is probably the biggest “intellectual constitutional gun” on the field, and who has undergone pretty much a complete reversal from his earlier position in support of the “collective model,” liberal Harvard law professor and constitutional law expert, Laurence Tribe:

“Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the [SA] is a populist/republican/federalism one. Its central object is to arm 'We the People' so that ordinary citizens can participate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of the states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather, the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes—not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons—a right that directly limits action by Congress or the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by sec. 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action.” --Laurence H. Tribe, “American Constitutional Law (3rd edition),” 901-02 n.221, Foundation Press, 2000.

What a complete reversal from his position on the SA in the two earlier editions of his highly-respected textbook!

Note that Tribe's year-2000 textbook predates the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) cases Heller v. DC and McDonald v. Chicago, of which the latter's decision “incorporated” the SA under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Tribe acknowedged his epiphany in a 2007 NYT article regarding an appeals court case, Parker v. DC, which was later consolidated into Heller v. DC when it arrived at SCOTUS:

“Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the [SA] protected an individual right. 'My conclusion came as something as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,' Professor Tribe said. 'I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.'”

Earlier, in a 1999 USA Today article that followed closely on the heels of the release of his 3^rd edition, Tribe said:

“I've gotten an avalanche of angry mail from apparent liberals who said, 'How could you?...But as someone who takes the Constitution seriously, I thought I had a responsibility to see what the [SA] says, and how it fits.”

 (So, after two editions of his textbook, he finally gets around to seeing what the SA really says? Well, better late than never.)

And now that SCOTUS has incorporated the SA just as Prof. Tribe thought might happen, that protection—“admittedly of uncertain scope”— extends right down to the individual.

Another respected consitutional law professor, Akhil Reed Amar (Yale Univ.) has reached the same conclusion, both in his book, The Bill of Rights, and in several related newpaper, magazine and webzine articles. He has been described as a “liberal” in a NYT review of his most recent book.
 

From The Bill of Rights:

“What's more, the 'militia,' as used in the amendment and in clause 16 [of Article I, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Consititution] had a very different meaning two hundred years ago than in ordinary conversation today. Nowadays, it is quite common to speak loosely of the National Guard as the 'state militia,' but two hundred years ago, any band of paid, semiprofessional, part-time volunteers, like today's guard, would have been called a 'select corps' or 'select militia'—and viewed in many quarters as little better than a standing army. In 1789, when used without any qualifying adjective, 'the militia' referred to all citizens capable of bearing arms. The seeming tension between the dependent and the main clauses of the [SA] thus evaporates on closer inspection—the 'militia' is identical to 'the people' in the core sense described above. Indeed, the version of the amendment that initially passed in the House, only to be stylistically shortened in the Senate, explicitly defined the militia as 'composed of the body of the People.' This is clearly the sense in which 'the militia' is used in clause 16 and throughout 'The Federalist,' in keeping with standard usage confirmed by contemporaneous dictionaries, legal and otherwise. As Tenche Coxe wrote in a 1788 Pennsylvania essay, 'Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves?'”

Amar goes on to spike the notion that either the term “well-regulated” in the SA, or Article I, Sec. 8, clause 16 of the U.S. Constitution somehow trumps an individual right:

“First, it appears that the adjective 'well-regulated' did not imply broad state authority to disarm the general militia; indeed, its use in various state constitutional antecedents of the [SA] suggests just the opposite is true. Second, and connected, the notion that congressional power in clause 16 to 'organiz[e]' and 'disciplin[e]' the general general militia logically implied congressional power to disarm the militia entirely is the very heresy that the [SA] was designed to deny. How, then, can we use the amendment's language to embrace the same heresy vis-a-vis state regulations? What's more, as shall become evident in Part Two [of Amar's book], the right to keep and bear arms was plainly viewed by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment as a 'privilege of national citizenship' that henceforth would apply, and perhaps should always have applied, against states.”

It seems clear that Prof. Amar has come to the same conclusion as Prof. Tribe, again, well before Heller v. DC. And he similarly anticipated the extension of that protection right down to the individual based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which we now know has happened. So again, here's another highly respected, liberal constitutional scholar who has determined that the SA protects an individual right to own firearms.

However, Amar's position on the SA and “reasonable” gun control is also informed by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, as well as by simply examining customary firearms ownership, useage and laws in America since colonial days. From an article co-authored with Tribe,

“The fact is, almost none of the proposed state or Federal weapons regulations appears to come close to offending the [SA's] core right to self-protection. [Excluding, of course, the near-absolute bans of DC and the City of Chicago, both of which SCOTUS found to be unconstitutional!] The right to bear arms is certainly subject to reasonable regulation in the interest of public safety.”

I might argue at length with Profs. Tribe and Amar as to what is “reasonable gun control,” but I don't deny their basic premise: “Laws that ban certain types of weapons, that require safety devices on others, and that otherwise impose strict controls on guns, can pass Constitutional scrutiny.”

 

Another liberal law professor—not of constitutional law—who has been quoted favorably in this forum on other matters, Jonathan  Turley, published in USA Today in 2007 an article entitled A Liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all.

“Principle is a terrible thing, because it demands not what is convenient but what is right. It is hard to read the [SA] and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right. It is true that the amendment begins with a reference to militias...Accordingly, it is argued, this amendment protects the right of the militia to bear arms, not the individual.”

“Yet, if true, the [SA] would be effectively declared a defunct provision. The National Guard is not a true militia in the sense of the [SA] and, since the District [of Columbia] and others believe governments can ban guns entirely, the [SA] would be read out of existence”

“More important, the mere reference to a purpose of the [SA] does not alter the fact than an individual right is created. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is stated in the same way as the right to free speech or free press...” “

Considering the Framers and their own traditions of hunting and self-defense, it is clear that they would have viewed such ownership as an individual right, consistent with the plain meaning of the amendment.

“None of this is easy for someone raised to believe that the [SA] was the dividing line between the enlightment and the dark ages of American culture. Yet, it is time to honestly reconsider this amendment and admit that...here's the really hard part...the NRA may have been right. This does not mean that Charleton Heston is the new Rosa Parks or that no restrictions can be placed on gun ownership. But it does appear that gun ownership was made a protected right by the Framers, and while we might not celebrate it, it is time that we recognize it.”

Leonard W. Levy was not a professor of law, but he was a respected historian regarding the Bill of Rights. He won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for History with his book, “Origins of the Fifth Amendment.” In an obituary, he was described as a “New Deal liberal.”
 

From his book, Origins of the Bill of Rights:

“Believing that the [SA]does not authorize an individual's right to keep and bear arms is wrong. The right to bear arms is an individual right. The military connotation of bearing arms does not necessarily determine the meaning of a right to bear arms. If all it meant was the right to be a soldier or serve in the military, whether in the militia or the army, it would hardly be a cherished right and would never have reached constitutional status...”

“The right to bear arms is by no means unlimited. Public regulation may specify the kinds of weapons that are lawful and the conditions under which those weapons may be kept; but no regulation may subvert the right itself. The very language of the amendment is evidence that the right is a personal one, altogether separate from the maintenance of a militia. Militias were possible only because the people were armed and possessed the right to be armed. The right does not depend on whether militias exist.”

So there you have it. Five highly respected, liberal professors—three, of constitutional law, the fourth a professor of law, and the fifth a distinguished historian of the Bill of Rights—have reached the same conclusion as have I and many others, viz., that the SA protects an individual right to own guns for personal protection independent of “enrollment” in any militia; a right that may neither be completely prohibited, nor made impossible to exercise—by, for example, complete bans on firearms ownership, imposition of exorbitant taxes on firearms and ammunition, expensive liability insurance requirements, or burdensome “fees” for background checks, etc.—at any level of government.

This interpretation also brings the entire Bill of Rights into conformance with the ACLU's general assertion that it does indeed protect individual rights. Which is as it should be.

Tommy Freedom's New World Ordure

Thomas Friedman, favorite columnist of President Barack Obama, dutifully took up the White House megaphone today and blared out even more bombastic bloviation than is customary for him.

Here is just one portion of the crime against journalism that the New York Times saw fit to print:

Considering the breadth of reforms that President Obama is now proposing to prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering, in the wake of Snowden’s disclosures, Snowden deserves a chance to make a second impression — that he truly is a whistle-blower, not a traitor. The fact is, he dumped his data and fled to countries that are hostile to us and to the very principles he espoused. To make a second impression, Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers. It would mean risking a lengthy jail term, but also trusting the fair-mindedness of the American people, who, I believe, will not allow an authentic whistle-blower to be unfairly punished.

My reply:

Either I clicked on one of those parody sites by mistake, or Thomas Friedman has taken to tongue-in-cheek satire.

Because only from what Frank Rich calls the "stench of the Potomac" could such drivel flow. The funniest part of this piece is that "the American people" have any say over whether a whistleblower is fairly treated. Just take a look at Bradley Manning if you want to know how whistleblowers are not only punished, but tortured through pre-trial solitary confinement and forced nudity. Never mind that this brave young men who exposed war crimes as well as embarrassing the corporate-controlled government is facing life in prison. Take a look at John Kiriakou, imprisoned for blowing the whistle on CIA torture, while the actual architects of torture still roam the earth, protected under the Obama regime -- which has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined.

Snowden did not "dump" his data and flee. He gave his files to reputable journalists so they could use their own judgment over what to release to the public.

Obama, meanwhile, is not proposing any NSA reforms. He is merely appointing a "task force" headed by the very same bureaucrat (James Clapper) who lied to Congress about the government spying on its own citizens. Clapper's job is to figure out more clever ways to make us capitulate to the iron fist of the surveillance-industrial complex, thus ensuring the continuous flow of taxpayer cash to Booz Allen & Friends.

Mind you, I wrote my comment last night, before I was informed that Clapper is not actually "heading" the task force, but simply orchestrating it. My bad. At least I was among the million or so other people who'd so totally misinterpreted his actual role (see previous post.) 

I imagine that Friedman must have read yesterday's truly excellent Times magazine piece by Peter Maass, and was attempting damage control at the behest of the White House. The corporate press is finally paying attention to the old news that award-winning journalist Laura Poitras, who partnered with Glenn Greenwald in breaking the NSA domestic spying scandal, has herself long been targeted by the USG. And the coordinated government-media effort to denigrate them, as well as Snowden, is losing steam by the day.

Public opinion has escaped, and is running amok.

The Glue That Holds the Crap Together

President Obama yesterday appointed National Intelligence Director James Clapper to head* a secret task force to figure out how James Clapper and the Spy State can lie more effectively to the American people. In spook-speak, it is called being the "least untruthful". In real-speak, it is called polishing off the dog shit being hurled at the public and calling it a kiss from a warm puppy.

In a sign that the president not only holds us in utter contempt, but that he is now gleefully rubbing our noses in it, he wasted no time pivoting away from promising an "independent review" at Friday's press conference into cynically subcontracting the whole shebang to Booz Allen & Friends. Appointing James Clapper to investigate his own agency is like appointing Lloyd Blankfein to investigate Goldman Sachs, and then inviting him over to the White House for lunch to discuss how to starve retirees via Chained CPI. Oh wait... that actually did happen. Lying to Congress with impunity has its privileges.

But anyway, Obama made the newest announcement in true Orwellian gobbledygook:

Technological advances have brought with them both great opportunities and significant risks for our Intelligence Community. I believe it is important to take stock of how these technological advances alter the environment in which we conduct our intelligence mission. The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.

Translation: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Obama is leaving it up to Clapper to appoint members of the secret panel, which will secretly report to Clapper who will then secretly report to Obama, just in time for Christmas, at which time the government shut-down and all the other theatrical fiscal disaster Glass Debt Ceiling machinations perpetrated by the Duopoly will be in full swing, making the 315 million terror suspects, otherwise known as the American public, forget all about Edward Snowden and human rights.

As Marcy Wheeler points out, neither Obama nor any Congressional oversight committees will be allowed to question the Secret Panel of Invisible Sworn Whisperers. They will submit their report directly to Clapper, who no doubt will submit the least untruthful version of what they allegedly oversaw.

In one of his classic rants, the late George Carlin noted "there is just enough bullshit to hold things together in this country." But judging from yesterday's joke of a Task Force announcement, the off-brand Obamian adhesive has reached a state of dilution that renders it about as effective as water --  the kind of dirty, exploding-in-your-face water that you can only get from a toxic fracked well.

*Update, 8/14: Stung by criticism that he is appointing the fox to guard the henhouse, the Obama administration has used more weasel words with which to backpedal Clapper's assignment to investigate his own abusive agency. He is now only "coordinating" the task force, not heading it. This probably involves leading with his ass instead of with his shiny bald pate, as well as facilitating, mentoring, nudging in the right direction and hovering in the room at all times as the very embodiment of impending doom to ensure that the assignees don't leave the room with sensitive documents. H/T AnneEnigma. More here.

Two Small Steps for Man Amidst the Giant Leap Backward

In an unsurprising ruling, a federal court judge has just ordered an end to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign of racially profiling black and brown men on the streets of his fair city. From the New York Times:

In a decision issued on Monday, the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, ruled that police officers have for years been systematically stopping innocent people in the street without any objective reason to suspect them of wrongdoing. Officers often frisked these people, usually young minority men, for weapons or searched their pockets for contraband, like drugs, before letting them go, according to the 195-page decision.

These stop-and-frisk episodes, which soared in number over the last decade as crime continued to decline, demonstrated a widespread disregard for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, according to the ruling. It also found violations with the 14th Amendment.

To fix the constitutional violations, Judge Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan said she intended to designate an outside lawyer, Peter L. Zimroth, to monitor the Police Department’s compliance with the Constitution.

You might remember that it was Attorney General Eric Holder who filed a DOJ brief calling for the federal monitor. In a kinda sorta related development, Holder also just announced that the government would be backing off harsh sentences for minor drug convictions, such as those illegally obtained as a result of the NYPD street pat-downs. No word yet about whether the thousands and thousands of young people currently rotting in jail on weed convictions would be set free, however.

 No word either about the hit prison series Orange is the New Black being another catalyst that changed Holder's mind on drugs. This wildly popular Netflix saga, set in a low security federal prison, actually humanizes inmates, most of whom are young, minority and serving years for the crime of using/selling/buying drugs while poor.

 But more likely, Holder was listening to the Most Trusted Doctor in News, Sanjay Gupta, come out in favor of legalizing marijuana. Gupta only recently discovered that nobody has ever died from a cannabis overdose. He has been "terribly misled" all these years, he now insists. Gupta, you may remember, was Barack Obama's first choice to be Surgeon General.

And most likely of all, Eric Holder is desperately trying to deflect attention from yet another newly-revealed Obama Administration lie, perpetrated to cover up the Giant Leap Backward for ordinary people: the DOJ's monstrously inflated count of its prosecutions of the culprits of the financial meltdown and fraudclosure scam. As Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg (yeah, ironically enough, owned by that Bloomberg) notes:

In an updated press release Friday, which corrected its initial release of last October, the Justice Department said a review of the cases found that the inflated figures included defendants who had been sentenced or convicted in fiscal year 2012 -- not just people who had been criminally charged, as originally reported. Its original, lofty tally also included cases in which the victims weren't distressed homeowners.

"As a result, the announcement overstated the number of defendants that should have been included as part of the Distressed Homeowner Initiative, as well as the corresponding estimated loss amount and number of victims," the Justice Department said.

When Holder first trotted out these figures last October, he bragged during a press conference about the results of the government's "Distressed Homeowner Initiative," which he called “a groundbreaking, yearlong mortgage-fraud enforcement effort” and “the first ever to focus exclusively on crimes targeting homeowners.” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan joined him at the press conference. 

What a charade. No wonder the government found it so difficult to bring a meaningful number of accounting-fraud cases against bank executives after the financial crisis. Its own books were cooked.

Weil suggested that Holder owes the American people an apology. And since black and brown people were disproportionately victimized both in the subprime mortgage and foreclosure frauds perpetrated by the unpunished bankster class, perhaps the attorney general still retains a vestigial -- albeit ass-covering -- moral compass within his corporate brain. Perhaps his ballyhooed announcement of less draconian sentences for drug offenders is to atone for his own negligence in protecting poor people from financial predators. Perhaps even he is realizing that when they turn to drugs for relief, punishing them a second or third time is being unduly harsh.

Shut Up, He Explained



"Lucy, I don't like that tone. You're thinking again." (graphic by Kat Garcia)


President Obama attempted one last desperate time yesterday to pull another fast one on the American people. But his combination of wheedling, bullying, cynical mendacity, fear-mongering, and 50s sitcom-style drollery all failed. They failed dismally, completely and irrevocably.
  
He used all the propaganda tools in his oratorical toolbox, trying to sell people on the rationale for the massive surveillance apparatus targeting every man, woman and child not only in the United States, but throughout the entire world. That grating, down-home folksiness combined with stentorous jingoism was reminiscent of George Bush and all the ghosts of fascist regimes past. He chose the safety of an opulently appointed room at the White House and the protective filter of a reverential Washington press corps to deliver his message. It was the usual craven Friday afternoon news dump excreted through the mouth of the big man himself. And what was dumped was this:

We spy on you, but please don't call it spying. See, we just collect all your stuff. And anyway, the problem is not with our gross violations of your basic human rights. The problem is that you people haven't gotten with the program and learned to trust us. Father Knows Best. The beatings will continue until morale improves. We will not change our ways. But we will change your minds. Our continued hold on power depends upon the continued success of our public relations scam. Your comfort and your continued ignorance are our primary concerns. So just snuggle down under your soft totalitarian covers and let us get on with it. And when I say we need to "tighten the bolts" on surveillance oversight, what I really mean is that we'll continue tightening the screws against all of you insignificant little ants. 

To its credit, the New York Times has published a strong editorial effectively condemning the president for his empty promises to merely "tweak" the N.S.A. spying program while unconscionably defending its continued existence:

Fundamentally, Mr. Obama does not seem to understand that the nation needs to hear more than soothing words about the government’s spying enterprise. He suggested that if ordinary people trusted the government not to abuse their privacy, they wouldn’t mind the vast collection of phone and e-mail data.

Bizarrely, he compared the need for transparency to showing his wife that he had done the dishes, rather than just telling her he had done so. Out-of-control surveillance is a bit more serious than kitchen chores. It is the existence of these programs that is the problem, not whether they are modestly transparent. As long as the N.S.A. believes it has the right to collect records of every phone call — and the administration released a white paper Friday that explained, unconvincingly, why it is perfectly legal — then none of the promises to stay within the law will mean a thing.

Good. The Gray Lady finally realizes that Barack Obama holds the citizens of this country in utter contempt by trivializing their concerns. His ability to fool some of the people all of the time is rapidly eroding. The reader comments expressed near-universal outrage. Here's mine:

That kitchen analogy not only fell flat, it reeked of the desperation of a demagogue who feels his control slipping away. The president essentially compared the Surveillance State to a henpecked husband (himself.) And we, the victims of government overreach, are the hysterical overbearing Lucy Ricardos with our silly concerns and demands for proof of his divine benevolence.

We won't be invited to the show or get a seat at the table, but he'll put up a webpage, maybe have another Google+ Hangout, invite a bunch of Villagers to meet behind closed doors, order a few more drone strikes, croon out a few more love songs, and proclaim that all is well in Happy Land, all the while reminding God to bless America.

This must be what Hannah Arendt meant by the banality of evil.