Busy Busy Busy
Entertain yourself. DOW is down again.
**** Update ***
I don’t know much about Mr. Greenwald and I didn’t read his full piece, but I do know that the snippet he’s taken out of the transcript of my conversation with Jon Alter last night makes it sound like I was saying defying the left was a good thing.
For the life of me, I will never figure out why media figures always seem to have some sort of variation of this in their response to critics in the blogosphere. Read the whole piece, for chrissakes. It will take about 5 minutes.
But more to the point, it makes no sense. How are you supposed to capably or competently defend yourself if you don’t even know the totality of the allegations alleged against you? There have been multiple times when I have stated in a post that I have “not read the whole thing<’ but usually it is when there is a long bill or .pdf attached, or something I am not going to understand anyway, so I implore readers to read the whole thing for themselvesand acknowledge I have not. “I haven’t read the whole thing,” in this context, just reeks of arrogance and condescension- why not go the whole nine yards and stroke your mustache, remove your pince-nez, and then call Greenwald an insignificant rodent?
At any rate, Glenn responds, and he has read your entire piece, KO.
kate r
Well, heck, my kids don’t really need to go to college—they’re real smart. And I like my work, so retirement isn’t that important. And this house is nice, but kind of big, so the bank can have that. And cat food these days looks way tastier than it used to.
LanceThruster
There goes my investment portfolio. Time to fall back on the equity in my Beanie Babies collection.
Crust
Another day, another record price for oil. Ho hum.
Teak111
Don’t mess with the Glenhan…..
Punchy
/scratches chin with thumb and forefinger
Wha?
redbeardjim
I dunno about that, considering that Glenn starts his piece today with “Despite [Olbermann] having packed his response with substance-free invective”. I read through KO’s piece and didn’t see any invective at all, let alone “substance-free”.
naked lunch
There’s something that happens to the brain afflicted with Clinton Derangement Syndrome….Sullivan, Avarosis, Olbermann….you’d think they’d be embarrassed at their hysterical rants in their archives, or segments. Apparently not.
cbear
This is one argument Olbermann ain’t gonna win.
It’s sort of like fighting a starving Rottweiler for a rib bone—with your bare hands. You might get the bone….but it’s extremely doubtful, and you’re definitely going to end up with something bleeding.
Crust
redbeardjim:
“Packed” is I would say hyperbole, but “childish” strikes me as both invective and substance-free.
Bill White
One FISA angle I have yet to see explored is whether Obama would SUCCEED or FAIL if he manned the barricades with Dodd and Feingold and said “Pass this bill over my dead body!”
What if Obama COUNTED the votes (informally) and is persuaded that a filibuster is not feasible (this would be truly unfortunate but is probably true). Even if Obama were opposed to the FISA bill in the core of his being, to stand firm in a futile filibuster effort that failed would be a huge blow to his stature and future political capital.
I very much oppose the FISA capitulation however I am less persuaded that my preferred candidate (Barack Obama) should adopt either Don Quixote or the Alamo as guidance at this moment in history.
In other words, suppose Obama drew a line in the sand in FISA and then Harry Reid promptly stepped across that line.
Then what?
Svensker
@ Bill White
I agree Obama has much to lose by drawing a line in the sand on FISA, and then losing. But stating that he is opposed to it, as he always has been, because you don’t need to gut the Constitution to keep the terrorists at bay, yadda yadda, seems like a win-win situation. All he really has to do is vote against it without making a big deal about it.
By coming out and saying that he is FOR the fucking thing, he has shown himself as weak. The Repubs are already playing that meme. And he’s pissed off his nutroots. Who has he pleased? Lieberman? Ole Holy Joe is already backstabbing Obama again, even after Big O’s Israel pander.
Knowing when to pick your battles is one thing. Pandering and getting nothing in return is a whole different deal. Unless he’s getting something that we don’t know about? Big bucks from the telecoms? Promises not to use some unsavory info against him? Does he really want that kind of speculation?
It was a lose-lose decision by him. It has certainly damped my enthusiasm level—just circular filed the latest fund raising pitch. Yes, he’s better than McCain. Big Whoop.
Studly Pantload
Oh, great—it’s the progressive equivalent of Godzilla vs. King Kong. I don’t know that I really wanted to see this, or that any of us need it. And on the day Hillary and the MUP make their grand UNITY appearance. Someone please tell me the whole frakken summer isn’t gonna be a circular groin-kicking squad…
Brachiator
Sad. This reminds me of Bill O’Reilly’s attempts to treat Olbermann as a non-person.
There’s something that happens to the brain afflicted with Clinton Derangement Syndrome….Sullivan, Avarosis, Olbermann….you’d think they’d be embarrassed at their hysterical rants in their archives, or segments. Apparently not.
Who is this … Clinton person you are referring to? Is he or she a significant political figure? The last time I checked, the general election choices are Obama and McCain.
Greenwald makes a swing and a miss here:
The clear and present danger is a Bush Administration and Republican Party which is willfully destroying the Constitution and a Democratic Party which apparently has lost any ability to oppose the GOP’s efforts.
Obama, despite his FISA stance, still is on the side of the angels. But I will happily work to eliminate both of the currently dominant political parties, every member of Congress, and any president who would continue this despicable course of authoritarianism and fear-mongering.
Pasota
And don’t forget the part about it being a transparent lie. It’s about him. It’s important enough to him to respond to it. It is not a long “piece”; it’s a post. And the best defense—since he’s attempting one—would be to address what it actually says. Plus, there’s the human nature thing. Of course he read it.
Greenwald busted him. It happens. The good news is it got his attention. What he does with it is up to him. He’s off to a bad start though.
Punchy
Shorter Svensker: Just announce to your old, fat wife that she’s hot, and she’ll forever love you for it. You don’t actually have to touch her or have sex with her to make her happy.
myiq2xu
Read it again and see how it sounds now.
ThymeZone
Yeah, you can’t be too big (Olbermann, both physically, intellectually, and celebritiness) or too small (Greenwald, the blogosphere, etc) to miss an obvious point these days.
The point they all missed, including you, John: Keith’s FISA rant in January was overblown. That’s the real story here.
Nobody wants to get it. FISA and the churn around it (a) is the tip of a gigantic iceberg, and not a very significant tip when you know what the iceberg really is, and (b) has been ginned up as a faux outrage issue by Republicans to fuck with Democrats, as admitted by actual Republicans.
FISA is not the end of the American Experiment, or even the end of The Wire. It’s a bedazzler, a bunch of hocus pocus aimed at keeping the rubes stirred up while the theives make off with the loot behind the curtains.
Jesus, can anybody around here ACTUALLY figure out a priority? GG and KO are just two sides of the same coin. What is a blogosphere for, if not to figure these things out and get them right?
TCG
Texas is under THREAT of invasion.
Sloegin
Glennzilla and KO going at it reminds me a bit of a John Woo movie, ten thousand bullets, and the both of them managing to miss each other the whole time. KO gets annoyed that B.S. is called on his reversal. And Glenn being Glenn. (Which can be great, and well… can also be like reading Sommersby, something to take only in small doses).
Maybe the new-fangled FISA and the NSA tools are the equivalent of the japanese code breaking shizz, or it’s the death of the fourth amendment, or neither, or both.
Pity that the “informed voter” hah is being played for a chump during this whole business.
Svensker
Shorter Svensker: Just announce to your old, fat wife that she’s hot, and she’ll forever love you for it. You don’t actually have to touch her or have sex with her to make her happy.
You got that right.
I’m willing to recognize political realities. What Obama did was tell the fat wife that she isn’t sexy and that he’s gonna have an affair with the boss’s wife in the hope that the boss’s wife can help his career. FAIL.
myiq2xu
The Bush administration started a program of domestic spying before 9-11. Whatever they were doing was so bad that even John Ashcroft wouldn’t sign off on it(when they came to his hospital room in the “Enzo the Baker” incident after acting AG James Comey refused to sign off too.) Alberto Gonzales’ testimony hints that whatever they were doing was completely outside FISA.
The White House has stonewalled Congress, and the only current avenue for obtaining information is the civil suits filed against the telcos. Immunity will slam that door shut.
When you consider what is allowed by the original FISA law, and what we know about the politicization of the DOJ, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s use of domestic spying to blackmail politicians, this FISA bill must not pass.
Gregory
Oh, look, a pissing match between Greenwald and Olbermann. Terrific.
Gus
Couldn’t disagree more. It would show he’s willing to stand up for the Constitution. The route he took shows he’s willing to triangulate to get the Presidency. Is that being too naive and ignoring realpolitik? Maybe so, but it shows his rhetoric is just that.
Karmakin
What Thyme said.
I think the bigger story here, to be honest, is that we need a real conversation, and I’m not just talking American here. I’m talking worldwide.
WTF is freedom in the first place.
How does it all even out? What has to be realized, is that the Democrats are betting that the American voting public is more than willing to trade their own potential privacy (one form of freedom) for a more concrete freedom of worrying less about terrorism. Do I agree with this? Not really.
But at the same time, it’s an entirely rational train of thought. What’s wrong with it? Potential privacy..well..we’re small fry. I haven’t done anything to inspire suspicion, people think, they trade that for something that they perceive does affect them.
At the same time, people trade the freedom of their kids in order to feel more in control of them every day. Another example. Or trading in other’s rights to bear arms, for a right to feel more secure..OR VICE VERSA
There’s a whole laundry list of these things.
Freedom is not just freedom from the government. It’s freedom from each other, within reason. It’s the ability to carve out our personal space, and more importantly, to emotionally enjoy it. And all these freedoms, people, me, you, us all, we make judgments every day on which freedoms we want..and want others to have..and which freedoms we are willing to give up.
It is this balance, and not the text of the constitution (which can be read ANY number of ways, or even outright ignored), that determines not just THAT we are free, but how.
ThymeZone
Your perfect record of never getting a point around here is safe. I am quite sure that ten years from now, it will still be unblemished.
The bill almost certainly will pass, because it has wide bipartisan support. That fact should alert you to the possibility that you don’t really understand what this is all about. Not what the bill is about, its arcane provisions. What the politics of it is about.
It’s about providing political cover for an empire and two generations of bamboozle and deceit foisted on the country by people who deliberately set out to fool you into thinking that you had to have a covert government in order to be safe.
FISA is just a thread in the big curtain of lies. It’s not the curtain. Wake up dude.
Mike
Funny how often these media big-shots feel like they need to announce that they don’t care about blogger’s criticism of them. “I don’t know much about…” is another common oassive aggressive defense in these attempts to diminish the opinions of the rabble on the internet.
Glenn seems singularly irritating to these folks.
over_educated
When you consider what is allowed by the original FISA law, and what we know about the politicization of the DOJ, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s use of domestic spying to blackmail politicians, this FISA bill must not pass.
I think this is right on the money. There were too many secrets by too many pols about to come out. That’s why the Dems threw the base overboard. Someone had dirt on a LOT of people.
myiq2xu
Typical “bi-partisan” support – all but one Republican and half the Democrats.
No matter how many of them vote for it, it’s still bad.
And yes, it will still be bad if Hillary votes for it.
Gus
This has been a horrible week in a lot of ways, but at least I can arm myself. I expect to need to in the not too distant future.
Tzal
Let’s not take the focus of Barack Obama. This is a brazen reversal of his earlier position. KO is inconsistent with his criticism and it’s pretty transparent. His argument that Obama MIGHT order criminal investigations of the telecoms does not save either men. I don’t believe President Obama will order criminal investigations though. Why would he? And Glenn makes an important point here: Bush could issue pardons on his way out the door that would prevent Obama from doing so regardless.
We’ve heard a lot of noise lately about Obama flip-flopping on guns, nuclear power, and campaign financing. He really hasn’t changed positions on these issues. Or at least not flip-flopped in a way that completely contradicts earlier positions. If anything, he’s explained and expanded on his positions on these issues. He is not afraid of nuance, which is refreshing in a way. But he has flipped on immunity. There is no other way to say it.
KO is letting him off, and Obama’s supporters who trusted him on immunity (based on his earlier stated position on this issue) are right to feel lied to.
Bill White
As I recall, POTUS Bill Clinton was eager to acquire “total information awareness” capability for the federal government long before 9/11 changed everything. This is a huge issue with FISA being merely one facet.
Perhaps America has become much more authoritarian with Democrats being the “tough mom” and Republicans being the “tough dad”—I am reminded of the Blues Brothers and both kinds of music. Maternal authoritarianism or paternal authoritarianism.
That said, one stance on one bill won’t win our needful struggle against authoritarian government.
What we do going forward is follow the advice Barack Obama gave 28 years ago:
Obama is WRONG about FISA however I see the core premise of Obama’s politics being the empowerment of the grassroots and the legislature and therefore people who care about the application of the 4th amendment in the Internet Age (data mining, privacy and all that related stuff) cannot look to a liberal Decider to protect those interests.
We must take steps to protect those interests ourselves by building broader coalitions.
= = =
Suppose Obama “simply voted no”—since many of the traditional Democratic powers that be stand to lose BIG once Obama is sworn in as POTUS —I have concerns that they would be quite happy to shoot him in the back.
FISA gives Obama’s intra-party opponents an attack opportunity no matter what he does.
I am reminded of the MI & FL primary kerfluffle and how Dean’s intra-party opponents tried to set up a no win situation. Allow MI & FL to advance their primary and Dean will be portrayed as weak. Stand firm and he is dis-enfranchising those states.
Of course, when Hillary’s people voted with the DNC to prohibit MI & FL from advancing their dates while local Hillary supporters (Granholm & Bill Nelson) pushed for the early primary they were merely playing both sides looking to trap Dean in the middle.
The Moar You Know
Texas is under THREAT of invasion.
Mexico can have the whole state, with my emphatic blessing.
Tzal
And I agree with TZ’a assessment of FISA. The political story is very depressing, though. Which should give some comfort to the cynics.
Papa Boule
If you mean you can’t figure out whether they’re trying to convince bloggers they’re no more important than a pimple on a gnat’s ass, or convince themselves bloggers are no more important than a pimple on a gnat’s ass, I get what you mean.
The Moar You Know
Ah, the old “stand in the schoolhouse door” stance. Doesn’t work real well.
ThymeZone’s right: this FISA bill is nothing but bullshit designed to turn Dem against Dem (as usual, it’s working better than the ratfuckers even could have asked for).
President McCain is gonna be awesome, guys. He’ll fix FISA real good.
Just Some Fuckhead
Nowadays, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to hide. And this FISA bill won’t change anything in that regard either way. But I’m outraged, simply outraged I tell ya.
ThymeZone
Actually, the opposite is true. It’s a classic case of mistaking a battle for a war. The theft of the government by the deceivers was complete a long time ago. It was complete by the end of Eisenhower’s first term if not sooner. It was complete with the advent of the Dulles Brothers.
FISA is a muleta, the matador’s red cape, designed to infuriate and confuse the victim. The Republicans have told us that that they are orchestrating a mindfuck with this stuff*. The whole purpose is to conceal the true nature of the government’s compete sellout to “security” at any price, long ago. While they get you to run around and stamp your feet about the coins, they are running off with $1000 dollar bills.
*As reported, I am pretty sure, by Howard Fineman earlier this spring on MSNBC. Of course, the “story” disappeared off the radar as quickly as it appeared. The media doesn’t want this story out there any more than the government officials do. That’s why they don’t go after the story that is right in front of them.
Just a generation ago, ordinary people were looking right into the cameras and saying, well, you know, we have to trust the government to do what is necessary for our security, because they know things that we can’t be told. That’s what your parents voted for, and now you have it.
Do you really think you can unravel 75 years of that by railing against FISA?
Just Some Fuckhead
Did I mention how fucking outraged I am?!
Dork
Dow getting SMOKED again today.
My mutual fund called. It’s looking to purchase a noose.
ThymeZone
As long as the Dow is being nice to Muslims, that’s all I care about.
Dork
Bullshit. That’s NOT it’s intended purpose, as you allege. Steny didn’t craft this with his purpose to blow up the party. Gimmie a break.
They were facing an August “expiration date”, and knew the Rs would go Cole-on-Hillary on the Dems from September on over this “AMERICA IZ AT RISK!”. This was meant to blunt that. Why exactly it had to include immunity is the million-dollah Q.
Joshua Norton
Especially since half Glenn’s post is directly from the transcript of Keith’s show. Resorting to the old wheeze of stating someone who doesn’t agree with you is being “simplistic and childish” means you’ve been found out and can’t defend yourself. It’s right up there with “it’s time to move on” as an overused cop-out phrase.
JGabriel
Oh, wonderful. A pissing contest between Olberman and Greenwald. And they both ate asparagus last night.
Sheesh. It just annoys me to no end watching two people who should ostensibly be on the same side, arguing over shit like this.
.
Bill White
FISA is merely the tiny tip of an enormous iceberg. From today’s LA Times:
Environmental scientists are beginning to use an unsavory new tool—raw sewage—to paint an accurate portrait of drug abuse in communities. Like one big, citywide urinalysis, tests at municipal sewage plants in many areas of the United States and Europe, including Los Angeles County, have detected illicit drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.
Law enforcement officials have long sought a way to come up with reliable and verifiable calculations of narcotics use, to identify new trends and formulate policies. Surveys, the backbone of drug-use estimates, are only as reliable as the people who answer them. But sewage does not lie.
Would it violate the 4th Amendment to capture the contents of the sanitary sewer outflow from a particular house and analyze its contents?
Would such analysis be sufficient for a warrant?
Having recently remodeled my house including installing a new sewer line to the public main in the street, I know where the clean out access points are and it would be EASY to do that, all on public property.
Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in what I flush down the toilet?
ThymeZone
According to the Republicans on the Hill who said so to Fineman, it is its intended purpose. Their aim was to keep it in the limelight until November to embarass any Dem who tried to get in its way.
If I find a link to the story (April-Mayish) I will get it for you, but we aren’t imagining it. They said it.
Algernon
Olbermann didn’t feel like bashing Obama on FISA because he wants Obama to win the election. I sympathize with the sentiment—but much like he did during the primary, he’s making very dishonest arguments. Olbermann thought the bill was terrible when Bush supported it and now is twisting himself into knots trying to come up with reasons why it’s not so terrible. He spends half his post talking about how great John Dean is when Dean called the compromise a victory for the terrorists and said it hurt the Constitution.
Kos and Cole have the correct approach. Obama’s wrong on this, he’s still clearly better than McCain. Why is that argument so difficult to make?
Joshua Norton
Of course not. You’ve released it from your control into a public recepticle. Much like your rubbish and anything else you throw away. It’s been ruled time and time again that there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy out in the public domain.
Just Some Fuckhead
This isn’t about FISA or presumptive Democratic nominee Obama. It’s about me goddammit. What matters here is me, not some fucking Presidential election that will happen again in four years and again four years after that. I’m the important thing here, not the collective efforts of about fifty million Democrats and their allies. This is solely about me and I’m sick of everyone trying to pretend there is anything more important than me and my day-to-day outrages. Fuck all of you collectivists for ignoring my concerns. Did I mention how outraged I am? Because this is about me, dammit, not some greater good because there is no greater good than me and my temporary concerns, as should have already been obvious.
Brachiator
Let’s not take the focus of Barack Obama.
Yawn. The focus should be on the Democratic Congressional leadership, which keeps insisting that they hammered out a hard-fought compromise, and on the Democratic morons in the house who voted for this bill.
This is not quite the apocalypse, but it is a sign that the Democrats still don’t have their shit together.
Do you really think you can unravel 75 years of that by railing against FISA?
The problem is that I am not sure that the Democrats have either the brains or the stomach to even begin unraveling this. So, where does this leave us?
Josh E.
Glenn Greenwald is probably the most overrated blogger on the left.
Bill White
Of course not. You’ve released it from your control into a public recepticle. Much like your rubbish and anything else you throw away. It’s been ruled time and time again that there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy out in the public domain.
Well, yes. Exactly.
Between the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror” is there ANY reasonable expectation of privacy remaining?
Obama is WRONG on FISA however to focus on him is a “kill the messenger” approach. Our privacy rights vanished long ago and winning them back shall be a marathon rather than a sprint.
Also, there shall be no ONE leader, no Decider-er who restores our privacy rights. We need to persuade a majority of influential Americans and build a genuine consensus on the importance of these issues.
The Moar You Know
FISA is merely the tiny tip of an enormous iceberg. From today’s LA Times:
Environmental scientists are beginning to use an unsavory new tool—raw sewage—to paint an accurate portrait of drug abuse in communities. Like one big, citywide urinalysis, tests at municipal sewage plants in many areas of the United States and Europe, including Los Angeles County, have detected illicit drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana.
Law enforcement officials have long sought a way to come up with reliable and verifiable calculations of narcotics use, to identify new trends and formulate policies. Surveys, the backbone of drug-use estimates, are only as reliable as the people who answer them. But sewage does not lie.
Would it violate the 4th Amendment to capture the contents of the sanitary sewer outflow from a particular house and analyze its contents?
Would such analysis be sufficient for a warrant?
Having recently remodeled my house including installing a new sewer line to the public main in the street, I know where the clean out access points are and it would be EASY to do that, all on public property.
Is there a reasonable expectation of privacy in what I flush down the toilet?
I hate to tell you this, but this program was launched in early 2005. In Virginia as I recall.
The answers to your questions are:
1. No
2. Yes
3. No
The distressing thing about this, what the LA Times article seems to gloss over, is that it is not aimed at just illicit drugs, it’s aimed at all drugs – antidepressants, Valium, Ambien, tobacco, Viagra, that kind of thing.
Here’s the real question…who is going to be in charge of that data and what is it going to be used for?
crw
Dollah’s is right. Follow da money and you’ll have all you need to know. The telecomms simply don’t want it known just how willfully and even eagerly they complied with illegal orders, because the loss of reputation and trust would be devastating to their bottom line.
ThymeZone
I agree with this. Sort of, I have a problem with the “influential Americans” part but that’s tactical, not strategic.
The fact is that Americans have voted consistently for security at any cost, voted to build and maintain basically a shadow, covert government that lives in a protected bubble of laws and policies that shield it from view and protect the people inside the bubble. It’s not an accident that the last major military engagements we’ve had—such as Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq—have all been undertaken using circumvention of the Constitution.
What is the reason for this? In my view, it is because the government knows that if it reinstates the constitutional process—declaration of war—it would open up cans of worms that have been kept out of view for three quarters of a century or more. It would expose such a vast mountain of lies and deceptions and manipulations that Americans would just be bobbing around like stunned fish.
Americans—the people—have to be ready to have the kind of profound change that restores constitutional process and authority and takes power away from War Party America and gives it back to the people, whose real interests lie in the pursuit of peace, not war.
FISA and handwringing about FISA don’t feed the bulldog, at all, not even close. FISA is a political scam, and my hunch is that right now the War Party is laughing its ass of at Democrats fighting with each other to see who can be the most Anti-FISA provocateur. While you are fighting over FISA, you are distracted from the fact that that the government that made the world “better off without Saddam” is the same one that was selling him weapons just a few years ago. Do you remember the robust debate we had over whether a thieving murderer should be getting weapons from us? Yes, that debate. The one they made sure you never had. The one they wanted you to never think about when they ginned up the war to “liberate” Kuwait from one murderous regime and give it back to its former sociopathic oligarchy.
Let’s try to keep some perspective.
montysano
I posted this on last night’s open thread, but I’m going to recommend it again. From Kos: a lawyer with experience in constitutional law explains why this particular FISA bill is essentially political kabuki.
It’s not long. Go. Read.
flavortext
Shorter TZ:
Attempting to uphold the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law is a bad political move. Plus, your government sold out in the fifties so it’s of no use to fight.
montysano
flavortext: the money quote from the article I linked to just above:
Your shorter-ing could use some work.
flavortext
It’s not long. Go. Read.
So, his argument is that since FISA was already terrible, we should stand back and let it get worse? Grant telecoms immunity to prosecution because hey, what the hell, it’s already a terrible situation? Am I reading this right?
Because the Democrats are the majority party. They’re not helpless lawmakers watching the Republicans implement a piece of legislation Bush asked for. They’re in power, and they’re actively pushing this.
And I hate it, because if I’m going to get fucked in the ass it might as well be by the Republicans, since I don’t expect any less of them. But the Democrats? Big disappointment.
Thepanzer
I did learn something today. Reading TZ’s posts kills more brain cells than drinking and isn’t anywhere near as fun. It’s like reading a pompous left wing version of Jonah Goldberg. Not even worth it to use as a fringe baseline. Can I get a refund for every TZ post I’ve read in the past?
(Or in WoW terms, welcome to /ignore.)
Tsulagi
Yep. And if you didn’t read the whole KO diary, it pretty much continued in that arrogance and condescension vein to the end. Until he ended with he was hurt, hurt he tells you that not all of the DFHs on GOS embraced him to the fullest extent possible over the loss of Tim Russert. He was wounded.
KO, I wasted a few minutes to read your entire diary. Pretty pathetic. On this issue, if that’s all you got, I’ll take one GG to 25 KOs easily.
flavortext
Saying that this bill is petty or trivial supports my point that there is little chance his presidential campaign or his senate career will be ruined because he votes no, or that he will be perceived as a failure because he voted on the losing side.
If it’s really not a BFD, then who cares if he votes no? What does he have to lose? Will the republicans attack him as “weak on national security”? They were going to do that anyway! The image that he couldn’t unite his party? I might give you that, but had he tried he might have been able to form a majority. And if he failed, it still shows some principled leadership. If he voted no, could he not paint himself as someone who gives a damn about justice, the opposite of Bush?
I’m not buying it.
montysano
No! The article says that FISA is, has always been, a rubber stamp court. They don’t refuse any requests.
Yes, the bill grants immunity to the telecoms, but they essentially have that already because of the secret nature of FISA warrants, which is nothing new.
From the diary:
I’m convinced that Barack Obama recognizes this. I’m sure he recognizes that this bill is a classic political bait-and-switch, wrapping telecom immunity in the mantle of “safeguarding our constitutional rights,” when in fact those rights are already voided by use of secret, non-reviewable FISA warrants to gather information for criminal cases. I’m sure Barack Obama realizes that this petty knoll is not “the hill to die on.”
“The hill to die on” is the USAPA’s breaking down the wall of separation between intelligence-gathering and criminal investigation. And that is not even at issue yet. We’ll need a Democratic president, and at least 60 Democratic senators, to fight that battle.
slag
Josh E. is probably the most overrated commenter on Balloon Juice.
Conservatively Liberal
Hmmm, I wonder if some semblance of sanity has returned to BJ…
/reads posts
I guess not. I’ll have to check back in a few days. Have fun kids!
flavortext
Yes, the bill grants immunity to the telecoms, but they essentially have that already because of the secret nature of FISA warrants, which is nothing new.
So if it’s nothing new, what’s wrong with voting no? Gotta keep up the rubber-stamp appearance?
Nancy Irving
Well I didn’t listen to Olbermann (:)), but Greenwald is pretty long-winded, you gotta admit…
Fr33d0m
Can we please stop attacking ourselves over this. Olbermann didn’t appear to me to say anything absolving Obama. He did explore one intersection between a couple news stories. Glenn simply wants everyong to rip Obama a new one over his statement of support for the FISA bill. I can’t blame either at this point.
While we all wait for the other shoe to drop can we at least not knife ourselves? This is beyond stupid!