The Sarcasm Dragnet

 

 

The folks of the Surveillance State are shocked, shocked that snark and symbolism and smoldering emotions are going on in the chat-o-sphere. They just can't keep up with the jokes, the irony, the pissed-offiness, the double-entendres, the parodies, the satire that are running rampant in cyberspace. It's jamming up their poor brains as they constantly troll, in real time, the communications of every man, woman, child, boojum, bandersnatch and jubjub with an internet connection.

Is that a terrorist sicko they're monitoring, or just a sicko with a terrific sense of humor? It's hard out there for the spooks. Their reading comprehension scores are falling far, far behind their reading speed scores. And thus, the Department of Homeland Security has just put out a work order for special software to help our minders detect sarcastic blog posts, hidden meanings, deleted or altered Tweets, and snarky online comments. They are procuring what they call a "Computer Based Annual Social Media Analytics Subscription."

For the Snark's a peculiar creature, that won't

   Be caught in a commonplace way.

Do all that you know, and try all that you don't:

   Not a chance must be wasted to-day!

Here, if you choose to accept it, is your Mission Implausible from Uncle Sam:

HSSS01-14-Q-0182

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format prescribed in Subpart 12.6 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. A subsequent solicitation document will not be issued. Solicitation HSSS01-14-Q-0182 is issued as a Request for Proposal (RFP) though FAC 2005-72.  The NAICS is 511210. The United States Secret Service  intends to award a ( FFP) Firm Fixed Price competitive contract on the basis of Best Value to the Government

STATEMENT OF WORK

UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS TOOL

1.0       INTRODUCTION

This requirement is for procurement of a social media analytics software  tool to be used by the United States Secret Service (USSS) Office of Government and Public Affairs (GPA).

2.0       MISSION

The Secret Service is a federal law enforcement agency with headquarters in Washington, D.C. and over 140 offices domestically and internationally.  Although, the USSS was established in 1865, solely to suppress the counterfeiting of United States currency, its mission has grown to include: safeguarding the nation's financial infrastructure and payment systems; preserving the integrity of the economy; and to protecting national leaders, visiting heads of state and government, designated sites, and National Special Security Events (NSSE).

3. 0      OBJECTIVES

Procure a social media software analytics tool with the ability to:

• Automate the social media monitoring process;
• Synthesize large sets of social media data;
• Identify statistical pattern analysis;
• Visually present complex data in a clear, concise manner; and
• Provide user friendly functionality to multiple staff members.

4.0       TASK ORDER/PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

One (1)BPA (Blanket Purchasing Agreement) with a period of 5 years. 

5.0       SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS

The software tool must possess the following capabilities/functionality:

• Real-time stream analysis;
• Customizable, keyword search features;
• Sentiment analysis;
• Trend analysis;
• Audience segmentation;
• Geographic segmentation;
• Qualitative, data visualization representations (heat maps, charts, graphs, etc.);
• Multiple user access;
• Functionality to have read-only users;
• Access to historical twitter data;
• Influencer identification;
• Standard web browser access with login credentials;
• User level permissions;
• Compatibility with Internet Explorer 8;
• Section 508 compliant;
• Ability to detect sarcasm and false positives;
• Functionality to send notifications to users;
• Functionality to analyze data over a given period of time;
• Ability to quantify the agency's social media outreach/footprint;
• Vendor-provided training and technical/customer support;
• Ability to create custom reports without involving IT specialists; and
• Ability to search online content in multiple languages.

All proposals must be submitted via email to Contract Specialist via Email at ivy.meadows@associates. usss.dhs.gov and charles.keeney@usss.dhs.gov   NO LATER THAN 9 June  2014, at 5:00 PM EST

 Don't you feel safer already? Robbie the Robot (aka Big Brother) will be constantly scanning, never sleeping, with a preternatural ability to detect nuance and hidden meanings in every digitized word.  He/it will be able to create custom reports without the need for human eyes or human brains. Softy Ware be able to measure his own spooky footprints wherever he dares to tread! If he feels like it, he can even send notifications to the perpetrators of suspected irony! Like, "Duh, could you explain the punchline again? Does not compute...ute...ute. The Blue Screen of Death will come knocking if you don't knock off the snark!" 

Taking a tip from the snark-hunters of yore, they will use all the means at their disposal in their search for meaning:

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

   They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway-share;

   They charmed it with smiles and soap.

So, what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly be the potential for abuse? 

As NextGov observes, those honchos of the Homeland have gotten into hot water for this kind of stuff before:

A couple of years ago, the Homeland Security Department, the agency's parent, got in trouble with lawmakers and civil liberties groups for a social media program that would work, in  part, by having employees create fake usernames and profiles to spy on other users.  

A House Homeland Security Committee panel called DHS officials into a hearing after reports the department tasked analysts with collecting data that reflected negatively on the government, such as content about the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to a Michigan jail. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued DHS for more information on the program.

The likely defense this time will be that the software made them do it. No actual communications will be intentionally collected on purpose willingly. Besides, the software isn't merely collecting your words. It's collecting your meaning, your emotions, even your subliminal thoughts. It's a whole new job description for the Secret Service.

Oh, and before I forget: we just marked the first anniversary of the Edward Snowden revelations. 

So, stick a fork in it, Spooks! You're done. (I mean that literally, Bro.)

  

Ukraine-o-Mania: Eye Candy Crush Edition

The only thing more absurd than Barack Obama cheaply bribing a multi-billionaire Ukrainian candy magnate with bushels of bulletproof vests and night goggles is the notion that a grainy "leaked" video of Obama exercising in a public Polish gym constitutes a security breach.

If Obama and his Secret Service detail didn't want amateur cell phone footage of himself pumping iron and grinding on an elliptical trainer in order to spread his everyman manliness throughout the world, we never would have been able to feast our starving eyes upon it. The president, so beleaguered at home from the latest pseudo-scandal (the release of a POW who turns out not to be a plastic GI Joe Patriot) and the quickly fading real scandal of VA hospital malfeasance, found himself in dire need of some distracting publicity. Something that shows him to be both adorably vulnerable and ripped. You see, when he is not candy-crushing the world with his sweet weaponized aid, Obama is eye candy. He is also a human being. (Just like you, only smarter and more physically fit).

Shadowy Action Figure I

(The above photo is not a playable video. If you're that desperate to watch Barack playing you, then you can find the real deal here at TMZ, the go-to celebrity gossip rag where celebrities go to plant candid side-boob shots of themselves.)

For more staid and sober coverage with an undertone of hot steamy sex appeal, I personally prefer the New York Daily News. Their story is unsparing in providing us with the sights and sounds that TMZ so snarkily avoided. You can almost smell the locker room testosterone:

Footage shows POTUS, in a black tracksuit with headphones in his ears, doing a series of weight lifting exercises — including lunges, side raises, step-ups and shoulder presses.

The 52-year-old didn’t let jet lag get in the way of his fitness, finishing up his workout on an elliptical machine.

The short clip of the presidential fitness session was first leaked to Fakt, a Polish tabloid, and then quickly made the rounds online.

Onlookers told the tabloid Obama didn't hold back during his 45 minute workout, as he "heavily sighed and groaned" doing the exercises that were listed on a piece of paper he carried around during his routine.

On the gym wall, behind the President, was a Nike ad, emblazoned with an American flag and the phrase “Give it all you’ve got” written in Polish.

That just about sums up Obama's whole foreign policy: lunges, sidesteps, and pressers, dependent upon talking points from a crib sheet, his earplugs well jammed in to avoid distractions and heavy sighs abounding. It is all unfailingly performed as an advertising brand draped in the American flag. Kind of like fascism.

And what's neoliberal diplomacy and touting hard human sacrifice without also plugging a fun violent fantasy role-playing video game? Gushed Obama to the prime minister of Poland:

I’ve said a lot today already about why we think Poland is so important, why the alliance between the United States and Poland is so important, but perhaps during my remarks here I can say a little bit about why the economic progress that we’ve seen in Poland is so important.  Economic growth wasn’t inevitable just because Poland achieved its political freedom.  It wasn’t easy.  Reforms here in Poland have been hard and have not been without sacrifice.  But as you drive through Warsaw, you see that Poland is a country on the move, one with one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in Europe, a manufacturing powerhouse, and a hub of high-tech innovation. 

In fact, the last time I was here, Donald (Prime Minister Tusk) gave me a gift -- the video game developed here in Poland that’s won fans the world over, “The Witcher.”  I confess, I’m not very good at video games, but I’ve been told that it is a great example of Poland’s place in the new global economy and it’s a tribute to the talents and the work ethic of the Polish people, as well as the wise stewardship of Polish leaders, like Prime Minister Tusk.

Shadowy Action Figure II

In fairness, Obama did not admit to actually playing the game. He's got enough virtual reality to keep himself (and other countries) occupied.

Also, there is no word whether Obama gifted Petro Poroshenko, the candy oligarch-turned-president, with an actual copy of the popular Candy Crush game to accompany the expensive high tech toys being used to crush the Eastern Ukraine "separatists" and further enrich the American military-industrial complex.

And thus, for our distracted pleasure, comes the prurient grainy Obama exercise video, deflecting the American corporate media and gossip-mongers from the atrocities being exercised upon Eastern Ukrainian civilians. It's cheaper to cover a cheap contrived workout session than it is to cover the latest episode of state-sponsored terror wrapped in the American humanitarian flag.  It helps Obama get away with calling the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of people by a right wing coup "bringing peace and order to the east."

And his proclamation that he is "deeply impressed with Poroshenko's vision as a businessman" is all too eerily reminiscent of his praise of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as a "savvy businessman."

But, whatever. The un-American beard of Bowe Bergdahl's father is what is morally repellant to the media mavens who are keeping you pseudo-informed and pseudo-enraged. After all, most Americans can't even locate Ukraine on a map.

From the Front Lines of the Class War (conclusion)

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

Guest Post by William Neil

Part Three: Why The Caged Birds Don’t Sing in Annapolis

And now let me take these musings, and my readings in the history of democracy and the political economy of the United States, and come back and visit the doings in that sleepy, isolated, old colonial town with the remarkably preserved architecture, but no rail connection, Annapolis.  What is the nature of the “cage” that prevents those vast Democratic majorities in the Assembly and the Senate, comparable to those that Democrats and FDR enjoyed after 1936 from doing more?   Well, we have already seen that the two Maryland Senators led the attack on the Wagner Act, foreshadowing the Southern Democrat-Republican alliance that would become a powerful national force after 1938…and especially after 1964.  But I don’t just want to hurl charges against the timid nature of the Democratic Party in Maryland, I want to try to understand the forces operating to construct that cage of ideas, of political economy limits that restrains them.  

So my first question is:  is Annapolis a unique world, reflective of the not so progressive traditions of Maryland’s’ half slave, half-free character before and during the Civil War?  Or is it also, like most of the United States, and the rest of the world, living under the “apparatuses” of “repression” and “justification” that Thomas Piketty hints have lain behind capitalism’s three century’s ability to maintain a rate of return on capital of 4-5%, enough to insure the great inequalities of wealth and income that have been the norm,  not the exception, both in Europe and the United States – and which now go under the banner of “neoliberalism,” or, if you would prefer, “free-market capitalism” – and the “managed” democracy that Wolin says now goes with it?   And Maryland, it seems to me, is not so unique in the divisions it obviously has between its rural northwest counties, and southeastern ones,  those lying outside the economically dominant metropolitan areas close to Washington and Baltimore.  You can find the same divisions and tensions in New Jersey, New York too, and as those who follow fracking have come to know, in Pennsylvania, the vast semi-rural areas that lie between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and have always lain outside all that was meant by the term “the Main Line.”   

From the Front Lines of the Class War (continued)

Guest Post by William Neil

Part Two: A Brief History of Democracy and Capitalism:  A Troubled Relationship

Before I conduct an examination of the Maryland Democratic claim that “this is the best we could do,” which involves an assessment of the legislature and its leaders in Annapolis, as well as the forces operating upon them, “constraining” them, I want to brief my readers on what I have been reading and listening to (at the Real News network) as deeper background for this writing.  I maintain that these sources form the intellectual basis for the quickening of the national left’s pulse and the talk of a new left “populism.”  Those sources have in turn built their views upon the cruel foundation of facts of today’s American political economy, the great and growing inequalities of wealth and income, and the related power to twist and deform our democratic institutions to produce these terrible outcomes for the bottom 50% of the population, the working class (who admittedly may not see themselves that way), and increasingly, the 40% who make up the “middle class.”  (That split follows the handling of data on wealth and income distribution by Thomas Piketty in “Capital in the 21^st Century, who looks at the top 1% of earners, the top 10%, the 40% in the middle class, and the bottom 50%.) 

I begin with Chris Hedges powerful and moving speech, which I first saw in written form in January of this year, but which launched in Santa Monica, California on October 13, 2013.  It is entitled The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies. I won’t even try to offer you a condensed version, my words would fall short of the electricity and tensions contained within it, but I will say that Hedges has written elsewhere that American is now a “tinderbox” for revolution, or something close to it, which will most likely ignite from two of the most unhappy and disenfranchised sources: the indebted college graduates who can’t find any work, or who now make up a substantial portion of the 28 million I have written about, working in the service/retail sector and displacing those with less education, and the déclassé  intellectuals thrown out of journalism, publishing and teaching by the vast changes in corporate forms, technology and education itself.  Are they now obsolete? We shall see. I must note from my readings that these types were not hard to find rising to prominence in the early days of the French Revolution.  Now for Mr. Hedges, in his own words, taken from the very beginnings of his speech:

The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage.  He is our foremost oracle.  He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia…Yet we, like Ahab and his crew, rationalize our collective madness.  All calls for prudence, for halting the march toward economic, political and environmental catastrophe, for sane limits on carbon emissions, are ignored or ridiculed…The corporate assault on culture, journalism, education, the arts and critical thinking has left those who speak this truth marginalized and ignored, frantic Cassandras who are viewed as slightly unhinged and depressingly apocalyptic.  We are consumed by a mania for hope, which our corporate masters lavishly provide, at the expense of truth.

From the Front Lines of the Class War

 Guest Post by William Neil

"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:

This essay was never going to be the usual  post legislative session follow-up “report”  to Part I, which appeared at the end of February, and which was entitled Making Millard Tydings Proud, Economic ‘Justice’ in Annapolis.  Even when I was an advocate for NJ Audubon’s legislative goals in New Jersey in the 1990’s, I had an inclination to avoid euphoria over what we had managed to achieve. That avoidance wasn’t difficult: it was usually grounded in fact, because most of the time what we really wanted, and what was desperately needed in New Jersey - a state land-use plan with regulatory teeth - was not politically attainable,  due to the power of the real estate industry and the Right’s success in achieving an anti-statist and anti-regulatory  iron curtain. 

However, something happened along the way to Part II: a quickening of the national political pulse – on the left, at least - an outpouring of speeches, essays, studies and one powerful book (among other good ones)  that seems to have swept the serious reading public off its feet.  These I will name shortly, to set the broader context in which I will examine “economic justice” in Annapolis, and thereby temper my praise for its “famous men.” First though, let’s focus in some detail on what happened there between the end of February and the last day of the legislative session, Monday, April 7^th, 2014.

I.            The Annapolis Balancing Act: Gestures Towards the Working Poor; Estate Tax Relief for the Job Creators

On that last day of the session Maryland’s new minimum wage bill passed the House of Delegates by a vote of 87-47, bringing the state’s new minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, but not until July 1, of 2018.  (Maryland thus becoming only the second state to achieve the federal goal of $10.10)  This was the second vote by the House, necessitated by the fact that the Senate had made changes from the original version which the House passed way back on March 7 by an 89-46 margin. (HB 0295; SB 0331).  The Senate did not pass their version until Saturday, April 5^th, by a vote of 34-13.  Of equal significance to me, as a reporter on the political economy, is the fact that on the same day the House first passed its minimum wage bill it also approved The Maryland Estate Tax - Unified Credit Bill – and pay attention to the comparative margin – by a whopping 119-14 tally. (HB 0739; SB 0602).  The Senate voted for this bill on March 20^th, the Vernal Equinox, 36-10. 

To help keep these voting numbers in proper political perspective, the Democratic Party in Maryland has a 98-43 majority in the House of Delegates, more than two-to-one, and in the state Senate it is almost three-to-one, 35-12.  Since Maryland Democrats and their presidentially hopeful Governor, Martin O’Malley like to portray themselves as “progressive,” these majorities indicate that they are a fair test of what the party stands for in the sense they have the numbers to pass what they want; they cannot plead “gridlock” as the Democrats can do in Washington, DC (where even there they could do better - by overthrowing the Senate filibuster rules.)  

There is more detail to add from this Annapolis session, however, plenty more.  Before the House passed its first version of the minimum wage bill, Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-20), a gubernatorial hopeful in the June 24^th Democratic primary this year, offered an amendment which would have created a 2% annual adjustment upwards for inflation – a reasonable and important linkage, since the federal lack of one was a major factor, aside from the missing productivity gain adjustments, that allowed the federal minimum to fall so far behind its 1968 gold standard of purchasing power.  Mizeur’s amendment was buried, 8-124.  She did, however, for her courage, gain a $5.00 campaign contribution from me, and I don’t have many to give out, since I am a poor man in a rich man’s county. 

This failed inflation adjustment for wages is not trivia, it has real practical and symbolic importance, since the adjustments made in Maryland’s estate tax bill will bring it into alignment with the federal tax law, which is linked to inflation, and will raise the current wealth exemption to $5.34 million dollars by 2019 - and those inflation adjustments kicking in in 2019 are projected to raise it to $5.9 million (according to a Forbes Magazine article from 3/20/2014).   Readers should, at this point, remind themselves by repeating with me: American is not a class based society, we just reward merit.  Wage earners have not accumulated enough merit to have their miserly earnings under the minimum wage law, even a rising one, linked to inflation; those who have accumulated enough wealth already to worry about estate tax thresholds have, and if we are not nice to them they will flee our state.  Or so goes the conventional wisdom.  And, according to some recent studies, Maryland now has the highest density of millionaires per 1,000 of population of any state in the nation. 

Your Weekly White House Wheeze

(Updated below)

President Obama has used a bunch of sick kids with breathing problems as the backdrop for his latest exercise in executive empathy. After delaying several EPA anti-pollution rules (for purposes of his own re-election) that might have  improved their lung function and prevented their hospitalizations in the first place, he's free at last to be airily concerned about the young asthmatics of America:

 Hi, everybody.  I’m here at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., visiting with some kids being treated here all the time for asthma and other breathing problems.  Often, these illnesses are aggravated by air pollution – pollution from the same sources that release carbon and contribute to climate change.  And for the sake of all our kids, we’ve got to do more to reduce it.

How did his administration reduce sickness-causing pollution during his first term? By not doing much at all to reduce it. For the appeasement of such sociopaths as the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the American Petroleum Institute, the Obama White House delayed, for purely political purposes, more public health regulations than any prior administration. These included rules for coal ash disposal, mercury emissions, industrial boiler emissions, ozone levels, greenhouse gas pollution, silica dust in the workplace...  and carbon emissions.

Moreover, agencies were specifically instructed to present no new anti-pollution rules until Obama was safely re-esconced in the Oval Office.

And now that he has only a couple of years to go in his legacy-burnishing campaign of caring for the lung capacity of Americans, he's belatedly all fired up about those fired-up coal plants spewing their toxins and messing up the climate:

But for the sake of our children, we have to do more. 

This week, we will.  Today, about 40% of America’s carbon pollution comes from power plants.  But right now, there are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breathe. None. We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic that power plants put in our air and water.  But they can dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air.  It’s not smart, it’s not safe, and it doesn’t make sense. 

That’s why, a year ago, I directed the Environmental Protection Agency to build on the efforts of many states, cities, and companies, and come up with commonsense guidelines for reducing dangerous carbon pollution from our power plants.  This week, we’re unveiling these proposed guidelines, which will cut down on the carbon pollution, smog, and soot that threaten the health of the most vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly.  In just the first year that these standards go into effect, up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided – and those numbers will go up from there.

Of course, all those asthma attacks and heart attacks could have been avoided long ago if the Obama White House hadn't decided that personal political fortunes trumped human lives and well-being. When an American Lung Association pulmonologist told then-Chief of Staff William Daley in 2011 that the vast majority of Americans favored stronger rules for clean air, the multimillionaire ex- Morgan Stanley banker famously retorted, "Fuck the polls!"

Obama then decided that thousands of premature deaths and thousands of new cases of pediatric asthma were well worth another four years in the White House. From the New York Times story on the controversy:

The standard for ozone was last set in 2008 by the Bush administration at a level of 75 parts per billion, above the range of 60 to 70 recommended by the E.P.A.’s scientific advisory panel at the time, but never enacted. Environmental and public health groups challenged the Bush standard in court, saying it would endanger human health and had been tainted by political interference. Smog levels have declined sharply over the last 40 years, but each incremental improvement comes at a significant cost to business and government.

So Ms. (ex-EPA chief Lisa) Jackson asked health and environmental groups to hold their lawsuit in abeyance while she reconsidered the ozone standard, a job she expected to complete by the summer of 2010. Until then, an outdated ozone standard of 84 parts per billion, set by the E.P.A. of the Bill Clinton administration in 1997, remained the law.

Delay followed delay until the spring of this year, when Ms. Jackson determined that the standard should be set at 65 parts per billion to meet the Clean Air Act’s requirement that it be protective of public health “with an adequate margin of safety.” At 65 parts per billion, the agency calculated, as many as 7,200 deaths, 11,000 emergency room visits and 38,000 acute cases of asthma would be avoided each year.

And then industry leaders and potential donors made Obama an offer he couldn't refuse. He'd lose votes and big money contributions if he made wealthy Job Creators feel insecure. And thus, the battleground states of The Heartland took precedence over heart attacks. Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein (another Obama Harvard crony) decided that smog alleviation wasn't worth the alleged political cost. While he quietly withdrew 11 other anti-pollution rules from enactment, Obama's own very vocal rejection of the ozone standards was done in a manner specifically designed to placate Republicans and the polluter lobby. It was during this time that the White House was still in full-bore, post-Debt Ceiling fake crisis  austerity mode. Children's lungs were just going to have to serve as the scapegoat. The Obama people were pragmatically not going to let perfect pulmonary function be the enemy of their good:

“There was always a notion that they were looking for a regulation to use as an example of the reform initiative, a poster child, and this was potentially it,” said a senior E.P.A. official who asked not to be identified on a matter involving discussions with the White House. “We knew one was coming. We just didn’t know which one.”

And although Obama had blithely assured environmentalists and everybody interested in breathing that the ozone rules would be revisited in 2013, guess what happened once he was safely re-presiding in the Oval Office? The EPA has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back into court by clean air advocates over its failure to act and submit the new standards Obama had promised. From the Huffington Post:

 A federal judge in Northern California has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must produce new draft standards for ground-level ozone pollution, the main component of smog, by December.

Paul Cort, a lawyer with Earthjustice, said the group is excited about the ruling but "disappointed that it took all of this effort to get here." Earthjustice had filed the case on behalf of the Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, American Lung Association and Natural Resources Defense Council.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday directed the EPA to issue its draft proposal by Dec. 1, 2014, and a final rule by Oct. 1, 2015.

Needless to say, Obama did not tell the kids at the Medical Center and the thousands of other kids hooked up to their life-saving home nebulizers who might have been listening that they'll have to breathe filthy air for at least a couple more years. 
To further add to the cringe factor, the Children's Medical Center at which Obama spoke is located smack dab in the middle of the fourth smoggiest city in the nation. But at least he had the decency to close his bedside pediatric chats to the press. There are still some limits to presidential pandering and exploitation, after all.

And blithely ignoring the fact that his vaunted EPA is now reduced to defending itself against gross ineptitude in a court of law, Obama gushed:

That’s why, a year ago, I directed the Environmental Protection Agency to build on the efforts of many states, cities, and companies, and come up with commonsense guidelines for reducing dangerous carbon pollution from our power plants.  This week, we’re unveiling these proposed guidelines, which will cut down on the carbon pollution, smog, and soot that threaten the health of the most vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly.  In just the first year that these standards go into effect, up to 100,000 asthma attacks and 2,100 heart attacks will be avoided – and those numbers will go up from there.

Notice the careful parsing. He directed the EPA, with a wink and a nod, to cooperate with "companies" (i.e., sociopathic plutocrats) to come up with "common-sense" (i.e., weak) guidelines. This week he will roll out, with great self-serving fanfare, some "proposals" (as opposed to direct orders) to reduce morbidity and mortality.... someday.

These standards were created in an open and transparent way, with input from the business community.  States and local governments weighed in, too.  In fact, nearly a dozen states are already implementing their own market-based programs to reduce carbon pollution.  And over 1,000 mayors have signed agreements to cut their cities’ carbon pollution. So the idea of setting higher standards to cut pollution at our power plants is not new.  It’s just time for Washington to catch up with the rest of the country.

The Business Community sure gave him input in an open and transparent way, back in 2011! And hooray for the market-based solutions. If folks can figure out a way to make a ton of dough by pretending to do right by the Breathing faction, then it's all cool. And yes, it is long past time for Washington (Barack Obama) to catch up with himself. The legacy is beckoning. The planet is heating up. The children are gasping.

Now, special interests and their allies in Congress will claim that these guidelines will kill jobs and crush the economy.  Let's face it, that’s what they always say. 

But every time America has set clear rules and better standards for our air, our water, and our children’s health – the warnings of the cynics have been wrong.  They warned that doing something about the smog choking our cities, and acid rain poisoning our lakes, would kill business.  It didn’t.  Our air got cleaner, acid rain was cut dramatically, and our economy kept growing.

Hmm. Back in 2011, the Obama Administration itself had agreed that environmental guidelines would kill jobs and crush the economy. And, let's face it, crush Obama's hopes. Oh well.... at least he is finally obliquely admitting that he was a cynic, and that he was wrong. And even though Washington D.C. is the fourth smoggiest city in America, it is also the richest metropolitan area in America.... thanks in large part to the lucrative permanent media-political complex, the NSA and the Pentagon, and polluters' lobbying industry. The wealth of the richest One Percent does indeed keep growing. And growing. And growing. Like a malignant tumor that dies right along with the host.

As I wrote back in that glittery era of deficit hysteria and belt-tightening -- Tighten Up Your Bronchioles: You're in the O-Zone:

 As expected, President Obama has caved to his CEO buddies, and big business "job creators", and his boss John Boehner, and canned the EPA's new clean air standards.  Demanding respiratory health in an economic recession is just asking too much of the corporation persons, said the president in a Friday news dump.

I guess Malia and Sasha don't have asthma.  They don't live in inner cities, where substandard housing, mold and pollution are major contributors in raising the childhood asthma rate to historic levels.  The EPA estimates that without the tough new pollution standards that are now shelved, thousands more people will die of asthma attacks and exacerbation of respiratory diseases every year.  Emergency room visits will skyrocket. American morbidity and mortality rates will rise even further up the list of most unhealthy third world countries. Global warming is making pollution worse.

The 2014 version of Obama seems to have conveniently developed a memory deficit. His concern-trolling weekly address continues,

In America, we don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children.  The old rules may say we can’t protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time, but in America, we’ve always used new technology to break the old rules.

As President, and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.  The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way.  But a low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come.  America will build that engine.  America will build the future.  A future that’s cleaner, more prosperous, and full of good jobs – a future where we can look our kids in the eye and tell them we did our part to leave them a safer, more stable world.

In America, the ruling class has already made its choice. Money does indeed trump the health of ordinary people. And when the planet heats up and the oceans die and Sasha and Malia develop premature COPD, Daddy can always cynically look them in the eye and say at least he tried to give the appearance of trying.

Update, June 2: The New York Times has the official EPA announcement on carbon emissions reduction here. It's purely aspirational at this point.(no executive order from Obama on coal plants, in other words.) The year 2015 seems to be the go-to year for these reports, seeing how it's an off-election year. And the plan is flexible, so as to show due deference to the energy industry. And, it is guaranteed to unleash a torrent of polluted bribery cash the likes of which the fourth most polluted city in the nation probably has not yet seen. May sane and honest minds prevail.

Obamboozled

From the Department of Fooled You, Fooled You, Made You Look:

One week after the Obama administration said it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to make public portions of a Justice Department memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a United States citizen, the administration is now asking the court for permission to censor additional passages of the document.

In the interim, the Senate voted narrowly last week to confirm David Barron, the former Justice Department official who was the memo’s principal author, to an appeals court judgeship. At least one Democratic senator who had opposed Mr. Barron over the secrecy surrounding his memo voted for him after the administration said it would release it.

Wasn't that the whole plan, right from the get-go?

Obama exterminates an American citizen (who, for some reason is deemed to have enjoyed a more valuable life than thousands of non-American drone victims) based upon a dubious legal rationale dreamed up by the former Justice flack, David Barron. The White House refuses to divulge its dubiousness. Senators pretend to refuse to confirm Barron until they can read the memo. Obama pretends to acquiesce. Barron is confirmed because, other than the sordid fact that he rubber-stamped state-sponsored murder, he's a real liberal guy. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden as much as proclaims that as long as we're told the reasons why the president has the right to kill us, then it must be all right to kill us. Transparent extermination trumps opaque extermination, or some such. 

Then, quick as a wink and a nod, Obama scurries back to court and says he'd crossed his fingers the whole time he was making that silly promise.

I guess it could have been worse. Because it turns out that the Obama administration had even tried to censor its latest censorship motion, lest its opacity be exposed. And the judge put her foot down on wrapping secrecy inside secrecy. Too many layers. So, while we still don't have the right to know the president's reasons for killing us, we are nonetheless graciously allowed to know that he is a conniving promise-breaker. And that the Senators who pretend to be for civil liberties are mere partisan hacks.

From the New York Times article by Charlie Savage:

The 41-page memo, dated July 16, 2010, cleared the way for a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011 that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen accused by intelligence officials of plotting terrorist attacks. The American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times are seeking the memo’s public disclosure in lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Justice Department said it would soon disclose a version of the memo with the additional passages it wants to keep redacted blacked out. It said the additional passages discussed classified facts, not legal reasoning.

Who needs facts? They have such a factual bias. Legal minds can still churn out perfectly efficient opinions in a fact-free vacuum.

Last week, the administration said that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. had decided to release the memo but would file a limited appeal to keep some facts redacted in the final public version of the court’s ruling. Among the information redacted in the ruling is the identity of an agency, in addition to the Defense Department, that had an operational role in the drone strike that killed Mr. Awlaki. Although it is widely known that the C.I.A. operates drones, including from a base in Saudi Arabia, and that it participated in the operation that killed Mr. Awlaki, the Obama administration still officially treats that information as secret.

Since the Obama administration can't even admit that it uses the CIA as an assassination squad, I can hardly wait to see the 6,000-page Senate investigative report on CIA torture. Since Obama inexplicably placed this damning report in the hands of the CIA torturers themselves for redaction purposes, what should be a black mark on the spy agency will instead be transformed into a sea of black Magic Marker ink.

When parts of the report were leaked to McClatchy Newspapers anyway, Dianne Feinstein predictably called for the prosecution of the leaker instead of the actual torturers. I guess Obama must have apologized to her, after all, since her staged hissy fit on the Senate floor about not being kept in the secret loop.

It was all just a little hacking misunderstanding between hacks.