People Are Not Illegal

 
 Here's a snippet from Tuesday's regular White House briefing, in which press flack Josh Earnest was confronted about the gut-churning televised spectacle of a planeload of mothers and children being deported from the US and dumped into the most dangerous city on the planet.

MR. EARNEST:  Well, Jeff, the flight that you’re referring to was a flight that was operated by the Department of Homeland Security in their capacity as a law enforcement agency, that they were enforcing the law.  So that is a decision that was made by that law enforcement agency.

I would point out, though, that that is a reflection of the effort that this administration has made to increase the resources that are used to deal with this surge that we’ve seen in recent days.  That flight was composed of -- the people who were on that flight were individuals who had attempted to enter this country without documentation and were traveling with a minor, so these were so-called family units.  And they had been apprehended at the border. 

They had been detained at the Artesia facility in New Mexico that we opened up a just a few weeks ago.  And it is a reflection in part of this administration’s commitment to prioritize the cases of recent border crossers, and that should be a clear signal, again, to individuals who are contemplating making the dangerous journey, or putting their children in the hands of a criminal to make the dangerous journey from Central America to the United States, that if apprehended at the border, they will be -- they're entitled to due process, but they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms.

Q    So you’ve made clear that it was DHS.  But is the White House or the President involved at all in authorizing that flight and/or future flights like it?

MR. EARNEST:  Well, the President is responsible for setting out sort of the topline policy for -- adding additional resources within his capacity as the head of the executive branch to address some of these problems.  And he’s certainly been working closely with the Secretary of Homeland Security to surge those resources to open these facilities.  He directed the FEMA Director to step in and play a role in coordinating among DHS, DOD and HHS, who are the agencies involved in this broader effort.  So there is a role for the President to play in terms of making decisions about where to devote our resources and how those resources should be deployed to address this specific problem.  But when it comes specifically to enforcing the law, that's the responsibility of law enforcement officials, and that flight reflects their commitment to carrying out their duties.

As USA Today reports,

 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said they are among nearly 82,000 migrants from Central America who have been returned this fiscal year.

"As President Obama, the vice president and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Jeh) Johnson have said, our border is not open to illegal migration, and we will send recent illegal migrants back," she said.

Even some Democratic politicians who can usually be counted upon to stay herded in the Obama veal pen are rediscovering their lost moral compasses in the face of this blatant inhumanity. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, to her credit, is finally saying no to The One. Maybe it's out of concern for her own political hide and the Hispanic vote, and maybe it's out of true compassion for the child refugees. But whatever the reason, her public repudiation of Obama's heartlessness is a refreshing breath of fresh air. I'd actually been waiting for her to urge her caucus to "embrace the suck" as she has done so often before, when it came to caving on the president's austerity budget, social security cuts and punting on unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.

That Obama is actually trying to placate the growing throngs of gun-toting xenophobes hurling epithets at distressed refugee families is a new low -- even for him. His equation of children with invading hordes that require a military "counter-surge" ranks right down there with his drone assassination crusade against other brown-skinned "foreigners" in other parts of the world. It also helps explain how his administration can defend Israel on what is increasingly looking like a genocide against Palestinians.

It's more than sociopathy. It's pure evil, institutionalized and sanitized. It's weaponry labeled as humanitarianism:

Hear us then: we know.

You are our enemy. This is why we shall

Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration

of your merits and good qualities

We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you

With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you

With a good shovel in the good earth.-- Slavoj Zizek

My New York Times comment in response to Charles Blow's column (heartfelt and true, except for the fact that he places all of the blame for the current outbreak of bigotry on Republicans and none on Obama):

 It's good to see more Democratic leaders taking a compassionate stand on behalf of the refugee children. Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday publicly rebuked the White House's initial call for mass deportation of the children and willingness to negotiate with the xenophobes. The displaced people who fled for their lives are no different than the Katrina victims.

But witness the nauseating haste with which the mother-child family units are being deported. The moms are being punished for sharing the hazardous journey north with their kids, rather than sending them on alone. It speaks volumes about pols who pontificate about the sanctity of the intact family!

The refugees are just the latest scapegoats in this richest country on earth with the most extreme wealth disparity on earth. The have-littles are demonizing the have-nothings, and the have-everythings are just egging them on. It's the same old divide and conquer technique rulers always use to pit various oppressed groups against one another.

In Murrieta, the population skyrocked by 200% during the burst bubble of a first decade of this century. Among its top 10 employers are such low wage hell-holes as Walmart, Sam's Club, Lowe's, Home Depot and Target. When the mayor complained his town is getting a black eye, he boasted that Murrieta is home to 700 (!) charities and a Bible center. Desperation and old-time religion make for a perfect xenophobic storm.

It's not an immigration crisis. And human beings cannot be illegal.

I was paraphrasing another Nobel Peace Prize recipient:

 
  

Medical Mutiny: The Power of One

A Navy nurse refused early this month to force-feed Guantanamo hunger-striking detainees on grounds of conscientious objection, and has since been "reassigned" to other duties. From Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald:

A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”

“There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.” 

The unnamed medic is the first known Gitmo staffer to refuse to partake in what the United Nations describes as torture and a breach of international law, and the brass euphemizes as "medical support operations." Detainees, many of whom have been cleared for release but remain indefinitely imprisoned because of "instability" in their home or potential host countries, began their hunger strike 18 months ago.

 A team of ethicists had urged a "medical mutiny" at the facility. And one brave soul finally heard the message. One person decided to ignore President Obama's plaintive excuse that "I don't want these individuals to die."

As Rupert Coville, spokesman for the UN High Commission on Human Rights, explains, force-feeding was formally deemed cruel and unacceptable punishment by a panel of international medical ethicists in 1975.

"Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied with threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the force feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger strikers to stop fasting," it (the panel) said.

And as one detainee wrote in a memorable New York Times op-ed last year, forced feeding is degrading and extremely painful. He described the ordeal this way:

A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone. 

It took over a year, but at least one would-be torturer was humane enough to crack. I wonder where this guy was "reassigned." Hopefully he's not in a prison cell with Chelsea Manning, that other famous conscientious objector, while awaiting his court martial. But whoever he is, he is a hero.

Meanwhile, it seems the torturers themselves have been stupid and sadistic enough to actually film their grotesqueries. And the Obama administration is, not surprisingly, mightily resisting FOIA demands for the release of the tapes for public viewing. I guess it's just one of those uncomfortable photo-ops that might place the president in a bad light. It would be a grotesquerie too far.

Happy Bastille Day!

Here's a little something to help get those head-upon-pike visions dancing in your heads:

The Obama administration has given yet another sloppy, wet, incestuous kiss to the criminal financial enterprise of which it is an integral part. And taking a cue from Republicans, they're even scapegoating Bengha-a-a-a-zi for their delay in announcing their settlement with Citigroup. You read that right. This is a settlement between partners. There will be no prosecution. The guy whom the administration is actually prosecuting is one of those CIA assets terrorism fellows they flew in from Libya just in time to look tough for the mid-term elections.

The New York Times immediately lets you know that Eric Holder's Justice Department and the banksters of Citigroup are co-conspirators who achieved rapprochement during a fraught series of high-level meet-ups, divvying up the territory and the loot. Citigroup even gets "top billing" in the lede. We know right away who's the Boss, and who's the obsequious factotum in this modern retelling of "The Godfather."

Citigroup and the Justice Department have agreed to a $7 billion deal that will settle a federal investigation into the mortgage securities the bank sold in the run-up to the financial crisis.

 The settlement, announced on Monday morning, includes a $4 billion cash penalty to the Justice Department – the largest payment of its kind – as well as $2.5 billion in so-called soft dollars earmarked for aiding struggling consumers and $500 million to state attorneys general and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

That four billion ostensibly going to DOJ will be direct-deposited to Treasury, which will hasten to open wide its window to Wall Street. The "penalty" money will be recycled into overnight zero-interest loans between sharks. The money earmarked for struggling consumers will go through middle-men creditors and bureacrats. Because they struggle too, in their endless greedy quest for more, more and more. And some will go into the FDIC to insure TBTF banks against in-house theft loss. Who knows -- there might be a few bucks left over for a Gotti-style neighborhood block party. That would probably take the shape of Obama eating pizza with his latest human photo-op prop that is not you -- so don't get your hopes up.

The deal, after months of contentious negotiations, averts a lawsuit that would have proved costly for both sides and resolves a civil investigation into Citigroup’s packaging and selling of mortgage securities that soured during the financial crisis, causing large losses to investors.

If you can't make the time to endure those boring negotiations with your weak government partner, then don't do the crime. Also, get your P.R. people ready to feed the New York Times your version of the story. That would be a piece of pulp fiction that transforms some of the worst consumer fraud in the history of the world into little snack-packs that just mysteriously "went sour" all by themselves, causing investors to feel nauseous. There will be no mention of all of the millions of regular people who became jobless and homeless as a result of the crime spree.

“The bank’s misconduct was egregious,’’ Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement. “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, Citigroup was able to expand its market share and increase profits.”

As a result of their wink-and-nod assurances, Barack Obama was also able to expand his administration with Citigroup wise guys, many of whom collected fat bonuses from the bank on their way to their new gig -- ready, willing and able to double-stiff the stiffs they've left rotting in foreclosed America.

As Elizabeth Warren observes,

 Starting with Robert Rubin – a former Citi CEO – three of the last four Treasury secretaries under Democratic presidents have had Citigroup affiliations before or after their Treasury service. (The fourth was offered, but declined, Citigroup’s CEO position.) Directors of the National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget, as well as our current U.S. trade representative, also have had strong ties to Citigroup.

So Eric Holder dutifully slaps their wrists even as he slaps government kisses all over their expanded asses. He absolves them by euphemizing some of the worst fraud in the history of history as mere "misconduct."

The consumer relief will involve financing for the construction and preservation of affordable multifamily rental housing, principal reduction and forbearance for residential mortgages and other direct consumer benefits from various relief programs, the bank said.

Ah yes, rental housing. Citigroup is among the felons who bought up all those foreclosed houses for cash, at bargain prices, and are now renting them back to the same people they once unceremoniously kicked out. Citigroup is a slumlord trillionaire. Even worse, oftentimes they don't even have the right to suck more money from the homes they foreclosed -- because they don't actually own them!

But the endless greed-washing and self-serving continue through their Times mouthpiece:

We believe that this settlement is in the best interests of our shareholders, and allows us to move forward and to focus on the future, not the past,” Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, said in a statement.

They are just like the unprosecuted Bush torturers, whom Obama also failed to prosecute. Of them, he'd also infamously said "We must look forward, not backward." Citigroup will forge ahead, screwing the citizens of the world with impunity as they reap more rewards for themselves.

He (AG Holder) said the settlement on Monday did not absolve “Citigroup or its individual employees” from facing future criminal charges.

Yes, it does. He knows it, we know it and the Wall Street mafia knows it. Eric Holder still works for them. He's just temporarily changed his geographical location in order to provide them with the exact same legal services he'd been giving them for decades.

To be fair, though, the actual task of settling with the Citigroup mob fell to Obama consigliere Tony West, third in command at the DOJ family. It fell to West to hilariously blame the time-consuming Benghazi prosecution for failure to take Citigroup to even a civil trial, let alone a criminal proceeding and finally sending a bunch of plutocrats to prison. (West, incidentally, previously handled Habeas petititions of Guantanamo detainees and once privately represented convicted American Taliban, John Walker Lindh.) 

 How times have changed. Because now West is invested in the civil rights of banks, which unlike the regular humans rotting in prisons, are deemed corporate persons too big and fat to jail. So the Times is on it again, insinuating that Justice is really, really getting tough on them this time:

Time was running out. Prosecutors had set a deadline of June 13 for Citigroup to present its best offer. Although Theodore Wells Jr. and Brad Karp, two of the bank’s lawyers at Paul Weiss, sought an extension, Mr. West and Mr. Graber said no.

With only hours to go, Citigroup was dealt a rude shock. News reports indicated that the Justice Department was planning to sue the bank.

To Citigroup, the message from the Justice Department was clear: Ratchet up the offer or face a long and bruising court battle. That evening, with the threat looming, Mr. Wells phoned Mr. West to raise the prospect of a broader settlement that would include state attorneys general from California and elsewhere, as well as the F.D.I.C. Mr. West — whose sister-in-law happens to be the attorney general of California — suggested an extra $900 million payment for the states and the F.D.I.C.

Oh well. What threatened to become a small-scale mob war, upsetting the  hierarchy of the government-corporate cartel, turned out to be just more Godfather Kabuki theater. Lots of offers were made that ultimately could not be refused. The only one taking the hit is the American public.

Tony West is not only married to California AG Kamala Harris's sister (a vice president of the Ford Foundation). His incestuous bona fides also include work as a Democratic Party bagman finance director in between stints in the previous Citigroup administration (a/k/a the Clinton presidency) and at various white shoe law firms. He worked as Obama's fund-raising co-chair during the 2008 campaign, raising $65 million in California alone. Obama, and Citigroup, eventually showed their gratitude by elevating him to Number Three in the DOJ cartel.

Unlike the good old organized crime days of the Mafia, the money no longer even needs to be hidden in paper bags. The corruption is right out there in the open. They're proud sociopaths, gleefully rubbing our noses in it. On Bastille Day, no less.

They're counting on whimpering puppies. So let's surprise them with some pissed-off pit bulls for a change.

Marchons, citoyens!

The Mapping of the Terror Trains

Look a-yonder what's coming down that railroad track. It's the Oil Bombin' Special, and while it's not bringing your baby back, it is most definitely bringing the Bakken. Crude, that is: millions of gallons of highly flammable fracked Bakken oil and Alberta tar sands product are sloshing at breakneck speed through thousands of North American towns, every single day.

Towns like Lac-Megantic, Quebec where one year ago this month an oil train derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and incinerating the central business district.

If you live within half a mile of railroad tracks, chances are that you are among the 25 million people living within a blast zone. But since railroad and oil companies are afraid they'll lose money if you are actually informed that you are in harm's way, the government has not seen fit to issue color-coded terror threat alerts to vulnerable populations. People might protest, or otherwise interfere with deregulated late capitalism.

But thanks to the efforts of environmental groups, information on routes and deadly cargo is slowly dribbling out anyway. One group, ForestEthics, has even devised a simple tool whereby you can type in your locale to instantly discover how at-risk you and your loved ones really are:

For the first time ForestEthics has brought Google mapping capabilities together with railroad industry data on oil train routes across the US and Canada. The tool uses US Department of Transportation guidance for emergency response, identifying the one mile evacuation zone in the case of an oil train fire or a half mile in the case of a spill. The group used census data to estimate the number of Americans living in the one mile blast zone, but the map also shows schools, sports stadiums, town halls, and landmarks across the country within the danger zone.

Oil train traffic has increased by more than 4,000 percent in the past five years, from 9,500 tank cars in 2008 to more than 400,000 in 2013, mostly Bakken crude from North Dakota and tar sands from Alberta, Canada. Derailments, spills, and fires are also on the rise.

My town is "safe," being more than half a mile from the tracks on which the oil is being transported. Of course, the entire rail route from Albany, NY south to a major storage tank facility is just yards from the recently cleaned-up Hudson River. My son's riverside apartment is right in the middle of the blast zone, as is the elementary school both my children attended.

Albany has become such a main hub of Bakken crude and Alberta tar sands shipments that it is now known as "Houston on the Hudson." Residents of an apartment complex located just yards from storage cars protested and got city and state officials to demand disclosure and protection from the oil and transport companies, who've been loath to provide them. Most government officials, it turns out, have only been learning of the dangers from the citizens and activist groups themselves. Or, so they say.

Riverkeeper notes that the oil is also being transported by barge. The whole scenic Hudson Valley area that I call home has become a virtual oil pipeline. As have the homes of countless others:

Nationwide, shipping crude oil by rail has jumped sixfold since 2011, according to American Association of Railroads data, and rail shipments from the Bakken region have jumped exponentially since 2009. This ad-hoc transportation system has repeatedly failed—and spectacularly. The fires resulting from derailments of Bakken crude oil trains have caused fireballs and have burned so hot that emergency responders often can do nothing but wait—for days—to let the fires burn themselves out. In just over six months, four major Bakken crude oil train derailments resulted in: the death of 47 people and the total destruction of several square blocks in the village of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013; an intractable spill in fragile wetlands in Aliceville, Ala., in November 2013; the evacuation of thousands of people living within a five-mile radius after a fireball spewed caustic smoke in Casselton, N.D., in December 2013; and, an explosive fire in Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, in January 2014. The same type of crude oil, carried by the same type of train cars involved in these derailments, are traveling through New York State today.

 New York has had three near misses: In December 2013, a train carrying empty oil tanker cars collided with a truck at an at-grade crossing in West Nyack, Rockland County. In December 2013, a train carrying crude oil derailed in Cheektowaga, near Buffalo. In February 2014, a train with 97 empty oil cars derailed just north of Kingston, NY, near populated areas, a business district .

As McClatchey Newspapers reports, more crude oil was spilled in train derailments last year than in the previous four decades combined:

Including major derailments in Alabama and North Dakota, more than 1.15 million gallons of crude oil was spilled from rail cars in 2013, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

By comparison, from 1975 to 2012, U.S. railroads spilled a combined 800,000 gallons of crude oil. The spike underscores new concerns about the safety of such shipments as rail has become the preferred mode for oil producers amid a North American energy boom.

The federal data does not include incidents in Canada where oil spilled from trains. Canadian authorities estimate that more than 1.5 million gallons of crude oil spilled in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, on July 6, when a runaway train derailed and exploded, killing 47 people. The cargo originated in North Dakota.

Nearly 750,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a train on Nov. 8 near Aliceville, Ala. The train also originated in North Dakota and caught fire after it derailed in a swampy area. No one was injured or killed.

The federal Department of Transportation recently issued a weak order that simply requires companies to inform local and state governments when the bomb trains will be barreling down the tracks. It doesn't require stronger cars, but merely "suggests" better construction. And companies only have to be transparent when more than a million gallons hurtle through at a time. As in war, limited collateral damage is apparently acceptable.

Only two days after this "emergency" May directive from the federal government, there was another derailment near Denver, resulting in the spill of more than 6,000 gallons of crude oil. Google "oil train" on any given day and chances are good you'll find a derailment story only a day or two old.

State officials, meanwhile, have been busily signing "confidentiality agreements" with rail executives, promising not to disclose the dangers they pose to citizens. Delaware is only the latest state to buckle to industry pressure. State Homeland Security spokesperson Kimberly Chandler whimpered, "The disclosure of this sensitive information to the general public could impact transportation security and public safety."

From the Del Marva News Journal:

Rail companies balked at states disclosing too much information, citing security concerns and commercial confidentiality for their clients.

CSX and Norfolk Southern officials said they sent all relevant information to Delaware per the Department of Transportation's order, but both asked state officials not to disclose any details on crude oil shipments.

"We feel that the disclosure of specific routes, specific amounts, timetables, schedules undermines our competitiveness in this environment," Norfolk Southern spokesman Dave Pidgeon said.

In other words, protesters might show up near the tracks and at corporate board meetings.  Knowledge might spread throughout the land, destroying both profits and pollution. The flames of greed might be quenched!

As the great DeSmogBlog points out, oil companies and their transportation partners have been quietly lobbying the White House to quash the same safety regulations it pretends to tout. At one recent meeting, industry poobahs complained that strengthening the brake systems on the bomb trains would cut too deeply into their bottom line. They also complained that a proposed regulation requiring that stopped trains be constantly monitored by human beings would be way too costly. 

It was an unattended train with bad brakes that caused the Lac-Megantic disaster. And when bad stuff like that happens, you know the story. Mistakes were made, because who could ever have guessed that the brakes were crap? Whoever could have predicted that a renegade down-sloping curve would dare get in the way of crude progress? 

In this brutal age of neoliberalism, nothing gets in the way of progress. Even in destroyed Lac-Megantic, the oil trains are coming back. 

And meanwhile the culprits have learned that they can always absolve themselves of responsibility by using friendly bankruptcy courts to simply transfer ownership. The politician-bribing plutocrats pocket the change and never go to prison. And the public pays the price.

Until and unless we decide we've finally had enough.

A Rogue By Any Other Name

Barack Obama apparently is one embarrassed, pissed-off dude. So the New York Times is again obligingly acting as the White House farm tool which spreads the manure of blame on anybody and everybody who is not Barack Obama:

When President Obama placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last Thursday, he had a busy agenda: to consult with a close ally and to mobilize wavering Europeans to put more pressure on Russia to end its covert incursions in Ukraine.

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency

Right off the bat, we are informed what a busy, busy important man our president is. Too busy to know all the minutiae of what his rogue agencies are up to. Right off the bat, the Times hastens to unquestioningly repeat the State Department line that Russia is covertly operating in Ukraine, as though the US is not also covertly operating in Ukraine.

The details of this spying case remain murky. Intelligence officials have declined to comment, and it is still not clear what the German operative has told the authorities.

But the episode sheds light on the tensions that arise from the colliding cultures of spycraft and statecraft — one driven by the need to vacuum as much secret material as possible; the other giving primacy to diplomatic objectives.

 While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case — and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

When unquestioningly spreading manure, make sure the newspaper uses such words as "dark" and "murky" to absolve the busy, frustrated CEO from responsibility.

But let's be truthful. When spycraft and statecraft collide, the result is manurecraft damage control. The artisan acrobat-in-chief can't be left flailing without the safety net perk he assumes he's entitled to. 

So the story will be that Barack Obama, the star attraction tightrope walker at the circus, had the lights turned off on him right in the middle of his act by operators he thought he could trust! He was thwarted in his own vaunted balanced approach of schmoozing with heads of state while simultaneously stalking them. Somebody had spilled the beans to the lady he was trying to woo and here he was, pretending to be the attentive lover. She just let him go on and on and on, letting him damn himself with every dulcet word. It made him look like such an asshole that he (or a flack) ran to the National Enquirer Times to plant his own feeble side of the story.

  Meanwhile, as CIA Chief John Brennan finds himself cast in the rare role of pretend-scapegoat, there is some mansplaining to do. Why didn't he warn his acolyte boss that Angela had caught yet another surrogate stalker in the act but still cruelly allowed Obama to act like his usual cloying self? Was Brennan too busy busy busy redacting the CIA report on torture and letting his own lady friend (Dianne Feinstein) get a sneak peak? The sound of testosterone pouring down the Oval Office drain must have been deafening.

But on to the realest, biggest scapegoat of all:

It also reinforces the problem that surfaced a year ago in the wake of revelations about National Security Agency surveillance practices from the rogue contractor Edward J. Snowden: whether the costs of spying on close allies outweigh the gains.

The Times once again parrots the canard that everybody hates the NSA simply because of mean old gossipy Ed Snowden and the Pulitzer-winning journalism he inspired. The canoodling Times even goes out of its way to call Snowden a "rogue contractor" instead of a whistleblower. 

 Rogue (noun):

1. a dishonest or unprincipled man.

   "you are a rogue and an embezzler"

   synonyms:

   scoundrel, villain, miscreant, reprobate, rascal, good-for-nothing, ne'er-do-well, wretch; More informalrat, dog, louse, crook; datedcad; archaicblackguard, picaroon, knave "a rogue without ethics"

   • a person whose behavior one disapproves of but who is nonetheless likable or attractive (often used as a playful term of reproof).

     "Cenzo, you old rogue!"

     synonyms:

     rascal, imp, devil, monkey; More informalscamp, scalawag, monster, horror, terror, hellion "your boy's a little rogue"

2. an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies.

   "a rogue elephant" 

  (The Tightrope Walker-in-Chief doth protest too much, methinks. Also, there's that pesky cliched pot and kettle problem.)

At the White House, senior officials have expressed concern that the latest allegations could set back relations with Germany just as Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel are struggling to move past the distrust generated by the Snowden disclosures, including the revelation that the N.S.A. had tapped Ms. Merkel’s cellphone.

What is particularly baffling to these officials is that the C.I.A. did not inform the White House that its agent — a 31-year-old employee of Germany’s federal intelligence service, the BND — had been compromised, given his arrest the day before the two leaders spoke. According to German news media reports, the agency may have been aware three weeks before the arrest that the German authorities were monitoring the man.

This is pathetic, not to mention grotesque. Just when poor overworked Obama was trying to inveigle his way back into Angela's good graces, another wretched renegade messes up the make-up session by outing even more chicanery. So, dare we ask, why didn't the NSA pick up on the German authorities monitoring the alleged double agent? Or did the intel get mixed up with the gazillions of emails and phone records of innocent Americans? Did all that vacuuming-up create its own ironic vacuum?

For all his concerns, Mr. Obama does not plan any extraordinary outreach to Ms. Merkel, an official said, noting that some in the administration also feel that Germany should not overreact to the case or conflate it with the privacy issues raised by the N.S.A.’s surveillance.

Some experts say the recent tensions betray a lack of attention in Washington to its relationship with Berlin. “Bush and especially Obama have treated it as a ‘solved problem’ requiring no further American involvement,” said John C. Kornblum, a former American ambassador to Germany. “Recent events have demonstrated that just the opposite is the case. Germany is still deeply conflicted about itself and about the world around it.”

He will not stoop to another apology. He'll let Angela, like all NSA victims both at home and abroad, read his passive-aggressive excuses in the Times and then let her stew in her own betrayed juices. Like any abuser worth his salt, he will profess concern while casting doubt on the mental health of his angry victim ("overreacting" and "still deeply conflicted about itself".)

And like any abuser worth his salt, the likable attractive Obama will anonymously brag (via his Times stenographers)  about what a caring, romantic guy he is --  again blaming everyone but of himself and his team of dishonest unprincipled men:

For Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel, the N.S.A. disclosures poisoned what had been one of the president’s closest relationships with a foreign leader. At a Group of 8 meeting in Camp David in 2012, Mr. Obama invited Ms. Merkel to linger after the other leaders left. At a state dinner a year earlier, she was serenaded by James Taylor singing, “You’ve Got a Friend.”

Tender Murkies

Since Carly Simon's The Spy Who Loved Me is no longer such a big hit, maybe Angela can send Taylor's ex over to the next Group of 8, I mean 7, meeting to serenade Obama with You're So Vain.

Neoliberal Death Match, 2016?

There is no blue Wall Street. There is no red Wall Street. There's only the United States of Wall Street. And needless to say, it's not purple. It's a bilious shade of green.

With the media-political complex incessantly announcing  that the Democratic branch of the Money Party will anoint Hillary Clinton from a large field of potential  progressive candidates, the Republicans find themselves facing an inverted predicament. Out of a field of countless right wing extremists, none could possibly match Hillary in loyalty to High Finance, bloodthirsty Neocon credibility, and out-of-touchy-feeliness with the teeming masses. 

There had been the great white hope of Chris Christie, until the corruption did him in. (for now anyway.)

There was the second great white hope of Jeb Bush, until his left-of-Obama immigration stance did him in.

So who's left? Mitt Romney, that's who. It's looking to be 2012 all over again.

The trial balloons are already out there.

And the media-narrated contrast between Mitt and Hillary hasn't even been about their narrow policy differences -- it's been about their narrow wealth differences. Who owns the most? How these two politicians amassed their immense personal fortunes is sure to inspire a country full of struggling, disaffected voters. If the objective is the lowest turnout in a presidential election in history, then a Clinton-Romney contest is tailor-made for Oligarchia.

Before you shrug or vomit, look at the bright side. A choice between Hillary and Mitt would be an embarrassing and long-overdue admission that our democracy is no more. No longer could we be forced to pretend to have the choice of the lesser evil.  We'd be saddled with either Lord Doofus Evil or Lady Calculating Evil.

They say that money is speech in this post-Citizens United world. But let's get real: money is political food, with the end product being speech. And the candidates and the pseudo-candidates and the advertisers and the operatives are already sucking in the dollars as fast as they can, for swift transformation into ripe platitudes for hurling at a stunned electorate.

Just think for a minute of a Hillary-Mitt nag race. It would make the Barack-Mitt trot-a-thon of moral geldings look like the Kentucky Derby. Instead of pitting Makers against Takers, vulture capitalist against phony populist, the 2016 presidential debates would include such hot-button issues as which candidate has the better tax shelters, estate planning teams, the biggest homes, the fattest bank accounts, the most gaffe-free days in a row, and the best-preserved cognitive ability for staying on narrow-minded script. 

So do not give up hope. There is a very good chance that these two creatures of the neoliberal Reagan revolution will ultimately cancel each other out:

 Mitt: "Ann drives only a couple of Cadillacs."

Hillary: "We were dead broke when we left the White House. We had houses to buy and an Ivy League education to pay for. I hadn't even cashed my $14 million book advance yet.

Mitt: "I made my millions the old-fashioned way.... in  private equity."

Hillary: "I made my millions the new-fashioned way.... giving speeches to people like you in private equity."

 Mitt: "I give millions of dollars every year to charity -- my own church.

Hillary: "I give millions of dollars every year to charity -- the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Mitt: "I party with the Kochs at fund-raisers."

Hillary: "I party with the Kochs at fund-raisers." 

Mitt: "John McCain endorsed me in 2012."

Hillary: "So? I was an honored guest at John McCain's annual Neocon forum in Sedona in 2014, and you weren't!"

Mitt: "My favorite campaign neocon war adviser was Robert Kagan."

Hillary: "Isn't that too bad -- I already got dibs on him for 2016."

Mitt: "When I ran Bain, we saved the Job Creators by buying up American factories, milking them of assets, and outsourcing labor to Mexico."

Hillary: "So? Who do you think signed the legislation that allowed you to outsource your precious jobs to Mexico?"

(Tune in, tune out, and then hit the streets.)

Obama's Accomplishments

By Isaiah Earhart

 

There is a common perception that the Obama Administration, and Obama himself, have not achieved the goals set by Democratic Party leadership. It is commonly communicated that the Obama Promises of hope and change are thwarted by a recalcitrant Republican Party, or that Obama’s willingness to negotiate with Republicans is cynically and brilliantly exploited by the mean and nasty conservatives. Other threads of thought among ‘liberal’ reasoning for the failure of deliverable change relies on the assessment of Obama’s personality, dismissing his uselessness in carrying out his campaign promises as having a weak resolve that gave in to the machinations of the corrupt elite in Washington. These narratives should be replaced by a realization of the extraordinary accomplishments, and strength of will, by the Obama Administration.

 

Obama is an incredible success at doing exactly what Democratic Presidents are supposed to do, and I think his success began from the very beginning of his presidency.

 

In the face of economic devastation brought by widespread fraud and abuse perpetrated by the criminal economic elite banking and lending class, 67 million people mobilized and voted for hope and change. The financial crisis that cost Americans about $14 trillion  and precipitated the Great Recession causing the eviction of 10 million people- as of August 2013- left people clamoring for justice. Obama responded to these calls for accountability by nominating Eric Holder as attorney general.

 

The move was as calculated as it was shrewd. Holder just got through cementing a “sweetheart deal” with the Bush Justice Department on behalf of Chiquita who was caught red handed funding and arming the terrorist group AUC with thousands of AK-47s so they could more effectively terrorize and execute laborers in Colombia. Holder’s deal with the Bush Justice Department kept all Chiquita executives out of jail in exchange for a monetary payout.

The takeaway should not be that Holder is a sociopath that helped top executives working for one of the world’s most awful, brutal, and reprehensible corporations get away with soliciting murder and terror on poor people, although it would help explain this, this, and this;  the takeaway should be that Obama nominated a person to head the Justice Department  that has a brilliant and exceptional record of protecting the most egregious elite criminal corporate functionaries and keeping them out of prison. It is no wonder why the rate of federal prosecution for financial crimes is lower under Obama than the rate of similar crimes under Gonzo Ronald Reagan.

 

Some Holder apologists suggest that prosecuting bankers is just too complicated a task for the U.S. Justice Department; this former federal prosecutor and current U.S. District Judge disagrees.

 

It is not possible to blame Obama for having a weak personality; succumbing to the popular clamor of populism of hope and change would be a sign of a weak Democratic President. If I was president and I ran my winning campaign on hope and change, and I nominated someone who helped engineer the Great Recession with the creation and passage of the  Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, and that person went on to make $5 million a year managing a hedge fund exploiting OTC derivative market in 2006, and made almost $3 million in speaking fees for the nation’s largest banks- to be Director of the National Economic Council on the first days of my presidency, no-one would possibly believe I had a personality weak enough to be moved by any sort of populism whatsoever. Right?

 

But that is exactly what Obama did in his nomination of Larry Summers.

 

What kind of economic outcomes for the working poor would you expect from an administration that placed the CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, as the active Chairperson of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness? After all, GE and Immelt had just finished the incredible accomplishment of laying off 20% of his American workforce while managing to become one of the largest tax cheats in U.S. history.  

 

I do not have an excellent grasp on how unicorn single payer got sold out. I think it died the death of silence and omission by the executive branch; it just was never mentioned or brought to the public as a policy option. Death by omission, especially considering the disaster that is U.S. healthcare, is an excellent accomplishment. Obama successfully employed the death by omission strategy with poverty as well. With about 25% of every child in the U.S. living in poverty, Obama managed to run for reelection in 2012 trying his best to not even mention the word ‘poverty.’

But a real test of a Democratic President’s success is not how the President can stifle moral social movements largely on the periphery of acceptable media discourse; Democratic Presidential success is measured by the willingness and effectiveness in killing off moral social movements that are very popular. Very popular democratic initiatives include breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks, prosecuting crime in the financial services industry, using the powers of the executive to reduce the largest prison population on the planet, closing Guantanamo, ending mass surveillance, getting J Edgar Hoover John Brennan out of the intelligence community, ending NAFTA, rescheduling marijuana as NOT a Schedule 1 narcotic, and having the very popular public option to the sociopath health insurance industry.

 

I know it is very controversial to say that the executive can kill off the public option, since the ACA is ostensibly a creation of congress. I think the public option died far sooner than what most believe- in the summer of 2009.

With all of Obama’s success in killing off democracy and thwarting progress, I don’t think his achievements are as outstanding as Bill Clinton during his time as Democratic President. Clinton really accomplished some major cruelty with NAFTA, the Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, DOMA, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act- which included gems like “three strikes” and money for many more prisons, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act – absolutely brutal for single mothers, the now infamous Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and the Iraq Liberation Act- which was used to help justify the AUMF four years later.

 

Although it would be difficult to be as horrible successful as Clinton, Obama does have some tangible achievements besides killing off moral and democratic social movements. Obama achieved a very hard fought victory on getting a “free trade” deal with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Obama had to fight very hard for the deal because there was significant backlash from working people and people who cared about human rights. Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, wrote an impassioned letter to President Obama using candidate Obama’s own words opposing the “trade” deal with Colombia “because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” The letter from Trumka goes on to list, by name, the 22 union activists and the 6 Catholic priests murdered in 2011 alone because of “their courageous commitment… with the prophetic denunciation of injustice and the cause of the poorest in the country.”  [original emphasis]

 

On the insidious bright side of Obama’s “free trade” deal, the agreement with Panama provided legal protection and codification for the 400,000 corporations and the extremely wealthy that use the Panamanian banking system to dodge taxes.

 

Obama’s “free trade” deal with South Korea was opposed by the Korean Union Movement, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the International Association of Machinists, the Communication Workers of America, United Steelworkers, the IBEW, the Carpenters, Professional & Technical Engineers, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, National Farmers Union, National Family Farm Coalition, Public Citizen, United Students Against Sweatshops, U.S. Chamber Watch, and 550 diverse organizations have joined together in opposition of the Korea FTA. But Obama was relentless in the pursuit of achieving policy in the face of such opposition. (Is relentless policy pursuit a personality trait?)

 

I think we should all take a moment to realize what an incredible accomplishment this trade deal actually was. In the face of democratic movements at home and abroad, with the NAFTA disaster still freshly despised and reaping havoc and punishment for the poor and working poor, Obama used the “fast track authority” fought for by the Bush Administration to force congress into an up or down vote on trade agreements designed under the Republican Administration. And it worked!

 

Although Obama has a significant achievement gap to reach the incredible conquests of hurting worker democracy and dignity destroying policies produced during the Clinton Presidency, one should not give up on the prospects of amazing Obama achievement. Obama is currently seeking fast track authority so his administration can ram the Trans Pacific Partnership “trade” agreement down the throats of union members, small farmers everywhere, poor people who need affordable medication, environmentalists, people who love internet freedom, and anyone that likes democracy.

 

If Obama can accomplish the Keystone XL Pipeline that will transverse the nation’s largest aquifer and if he can somehow get the greatly sought after TPP, he just might win one of these.