Instapundit » Blog Archive » SIGN IN TAHRIR SQUARE: Wake Up, America: Obama Backs Up A Fascist Regime In Egypt….: "SIGN IN TAHRIR SQUARE: Wake Up, America: Obama Backs Up A Fascist Regime In Egypt.
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:06 pm"
European officials lash out at new NSA spying report - CBS News: "BERLINA top German official accused the United States on Sunday of using "Cold War" methods against its allies, after a German magazine cited secret intelligence documents to claim that U.S. spies bugged European Union offices."
Bookworm Room » In which I pretend to be Thomas Sowell and offer short takes on today’s headlines: "“It seems that Barack Obama, not content with losing the war on terror, is also trying to lose the Cold War.”"Unfortunately, we actually did lose the cold war but were too brainwashed to know it. That was in fact the whole Gramscian strategy:
Memories of Stasi color Germans’ view of U.S. surveillance programs | McClatchy: "BERLIN — Wolfgang Schmidt was seated in Berlin’s 1,200-foot-high TV tower, one of the few remaining landmarks left from the former East Germany. Peering out over the city that lived in fear when the communist party ruled it, he pondered the magnitude of domestic spying in the United States under the Obama administration. A smile spread across his face.And it will be used:
“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” he said, recalling the days when he was a lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country’s secret police, the Stasi."
Even Schmidt, 73, who headed one of the more infamous departments in the infamous Stasi, called himself appalled. The dark side to gathering such a broad, seemingly untargeted, amount of information is obvious, he said.... for blackmail against the government's political opponents. Just not for -- you know:
“It is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information won’t be used,” he said. “This is the nature of secret government organizations. The only way to protect the people’s privacy is not to allow the government to collect their information in the first place."
“When the wall fell, I wanted to see what the Stasi had on me, on the world I knew,” he said. “A large part of what I found was nothing more than office gossip, the sort of thing people used to say around the water cooler about affairs and gripes, the sort of things that people today put in emails or texts to each other. “The lesson,” he added, “is that when a wide net is cast, almost all of what is caught is worthless. This was the case with the Stasi. This will certainly be the case with the NSA.”... actually doing anything that would -- oh, I don't know -- stop terrorism? Read More......
Read More......How Crazy Are Democrats? This Crazy | Power Line: "[A]mong those who approve of the president’s job performance, just 29% see radical Muslims as the bigger threat. Twenty-six percent (26%) say it’s the Tea Party that concerns them most. Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims.No wonder IRS employees, nearly all if whom are likely Obama supporters, thought it was only natural to try to block any organization with Tea Party in its name! And no wonder that Democratic fundraising appeals usually contain references to “Tea Party Republicans.” They are talking in code: the equivalent, coming from the Republican side, would be “al Qaeda Democrats.” Only Republicans aren’t crazy."
The Simulacrum of Self-Government | National Review Online: Timothy Lane Gary_CR • 3 hours agoAnd needless to say, you're an absolute fool if you don't follow on and read Steyn's ditty that stimulated this comment. Read More......
I gather you don't know the difference between telling people what not to do and telling people what to do. Orwell noted 3 stages in authority: from the traditional ("thou shalt not") to the modern autocracy ("thou shalt") to IngSoc and its competitors/accomplices ("thou art").
Never Take Advice From a Donkey | Power Line: "The immigration debate has often been infuriating, and its outcome could turn out to be tragic for the nation. Still, the episode has not been without its moment of low comedy, among them the advice, frequently offered by Democrats, that Republicans had better get on board with amnesty and open borders for political reasons. Why vastly expanding a demographic that has never gone for the GOP in a national election could somehow become essential to the party’s well-being has never been coherently explained, but it isn’t hard to figure out the Donkey’s motivation. Michael Ramirez draws the picture:"
'Lookout List' Not Much Broader Than Originally Thought, Contrary to Reports | National Review Online: "A November 2010 version of the list obtained by National Review Online, however, suggests that while the list did contain the word “progressive,” screeners were in fact instructed to treat “progressive” groups differently from “tea party” groups. Whereas screeners were merely alerted that a designation of 501(c)(3) status “may not be appropriate” for applications containing the word ”progressive” – 501(c)(3) groups are prohibited from conducting any political activities – they were told to send those of tea-party groups off ”to Group 7822″ for further scrutiny.Danny is valiantly trying to help the O. Read More......
That means the applications of progressive groups could be approved on the spot by line agents, while those of tea-party groups could not. Furthermore, the November 2010 list noted that tea-party cases were “currently being coordinated with EOT,” which stands for Exempt Organizations Technical, a group of tax lawyers in Washington, D.C. Those of progressive groups were not. "
Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter - WSJ.com: "Barack Obama owes his presidency in no small part to the power of rhetoric. It's too bad he doesn't appreciate the damage that loose talk can do to America's tax system, even as exploding federal deficits make revenues more important than ever.... not quite so shrill anymore is it? And of course there's this:
At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU's point by remarking, "I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets. . . . President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."
Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it's hard to see the humor. Surely he's aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system."
As the Obama administration descends into a whirlpool of scandals, a race has begun among Congressional committees and news organizations to find the proverbial smoking gun -- the document that will link President Obama directly to the IRS's targeting of conservative groups, or to the Justice Department's unprecedented legal actions against the Associated Press and Fox News reporter James Rosen, or to the Pentagon's ghastly failure to launch a rescue mission when our consulate in Benghazi came under attack last September.But I'll suggest that's why he lives and breathes for gun control...
Study history, and you will understand why no such document is ever likely to be found: That just isn't how these things work. Very few people are aware of this, but there is no document -- not one -- linking Adolf Hitler to the Holocaust. Why not? Because Hitler didn't need to sign a document ordering the slaughter of six million Jews. All he needed to do was to demonize his enemy in speeches at the Reichstag, on the radio, and from one end of Germany to the other -- then hire thugs like Herman Goering, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Goebbels. They knew what der Fuhrer wanted, and der Fuhrer knew he could trust his henchman to get the job done -- no matter how, no matter what may be the law -- and to not bother him with the gory details.
Reader, take a deep breath. Nowhere in this essay will I suggest, or even imply, that President Obama plans the mass murder of his opponents the way Hitler murdered his. That's absurd. I am merely pointing out that President Obama has been going about the business of demonizing his political enemies, and then hiring thugs to destroy them without regard to the law, in precisely the same way that Hitler and his fascists did it in Germany. This isn't an accusation; it's an observation.
Instapundit » Blog Archive » FROM KEN AT POPEHAT: A LOOK AT THE CHARGES AGAINST EDWARD SNOWDEN. “Note that the second and third…: "FROM KEN AT POPEHAT: A LOOK AT THE CHARGES AGAINST EDWARD SNOWDEN. “Note that the second and third charges both require the feds to prove that Snowden’s release of information to the press was harmful to the United States. This puts our government in the position of attempting to prove that it is harmful to release accurate information about how it is spying on us, and how it is misleading us about spying on us. Espionage charges usually describe someone with classified information leaking that information to powers hostile to the United States government. We, the people, are those hostile powers.”Good God. Read More......
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 5:19 pm"
Fear of Thinking War Machines May Push U.S. To Exascale - Slashdot: "How ironic, our fear of skynet will lead to us building it pre-emptively."Read More......
Ace of Spades HQ: "A recent Matt Lewis column mentioned a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman, which was published in 1985. Yes, It's Old (TM). Its central thesis struck a chord with me: That freedom and reason will be lost in America not in an Orwellian way, but in a Huxleyan one. Orwell's vision was of a government ruthlessly suppressing books and changing written accounts of the past in order to change the thinking of the present.RTWT, it's short. I highly recommend Postman's book also even if I disagree with his recommendations and agree that it's often shallower than it should be. Did I forget to mention that Postman was definitely liberal and the original edition's cover had a picture of Reagan with a bozo the clown nose? So there's that.
Rick Tempest spoke about this at the end of the most recent AoSHQ podcast. Rick doesn't read much, so when he does finish a book, it's like The Only Thing He Can Talk About.
Anyway, Huxley's vision was that no totalitarian state was needed for such a descent into infantilization and restriction of thought: That all that was necessary was that the means of distraction and infantilization be provided to the population, and the people would voluntarily choose that path, no Mintruth needed, no black-armored thought police required. Orwell's vision was therefore of a forcible lobotomy, conducted by the state; Huxley's was one of a voluntary one, people checking in to an outpatient clinic every day to have bothersome parts of their brains excised."
But what then of American democracy?And it was written before Snowden happened. It's relatively long but also far, far beyond a RTWT. Even if you don't like the ending.
Liberty is, in the grand sweep of human history, a rare and most extraordinary state. If, as Jefferson claimed, the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the natural manure that is the blood of tyrants and martyrs, the obvious question arises: can it survive in the absence of such fertilizer? The barren dirt of human nature from which it grows does not inspire confidence. Libertarianism has thus always been attached to the doctrine of perpetual revolution. The lemma which undercuts all systems of perpetual revolution is their assumption that revolutionary activity will remain possible in perpetuity.
This, then, is the deepest question facing the future of the open society: Are revolutions still possible in modern states?
My answer? Perhaps—but not for much longer. From what can already be seen on the horizon, two factors seem destined to incapacitate any future revolution: Public Dependency and The Emerging Panopticon.
3 Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic: "USA Today has published an extraordinary interview with three former NSA employees who praise Edward Snowden's leaks, corroborate some of his claims, and warn about unlawful government acts.RTWT. Read More......
Thomas Drake, William Binney, and J. Kirk Wiebe each protested the NSA in their own rights. "For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens," the newspaper reports. "They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media."
In other words, they blew the whistle in the way Snowden's critics suggest he should have done. Their method didn't get through to the members of Congress who are saying, in the wake of the Snowden leak, that they had no idea what was going on. But they are nonetheless owed thanks."
Ace of Spades HQ: "He then amplified this letter (signed by him, but written by someone else) by talking about civil liberties in a speech now regarded as "hilarious... perhaps the greatest comic masterpiece since A Night at the Opera--" Rex Reed, The New Yorker.Read More......
If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document - through library books they've read and phone calls they've made - this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.James Rosen could not be reached for comment, but a secret government surveillance into all of his phone calls and emails says he's pretty pissed."
Instapundit » Blog Archive » JAMES TARANTO: Pathological Altruism: A simple concept that could revolutionize scientific and soc…: "JAMES TARANTO: Pathological Altruism: A simple concept that could revolutionize scientific and social thought. Taranto is commenting on Barbara Oakley’s work, and observes:WTWT:
Pathological altruism is at the root of the liberal left’s crisis of authority, which we discussed in our May 20 column. The left derives its sense of moral authority from the supposition that its intentions are altruistic and its opponents’ are selfish. That sense of moral superiority makes it easy to justify immoral behavior, like slandering critics of President Obama as racist–or using the power of the Internal Revenue Service to suppress them. It seems entirely plausible that the Internal Revenue Service officials who targeted and harassed conservative groups thought they were doing their patriotic duty. If so, what a perfect example of pathological altruism.
Oakley concludes by noting that “during the twentieth century, tens of millions [of] individuals were killed under despotic regimes that rose to power through appeals to altruism.” An understanding that altruism can produce great evil as well as good is crucial to the defense of human freedom and dignity."
Outrageous!… FBI Has Not Contacted a Single Tea Party Group in IRS Investigation | The Gateway Pundit: "The Daily Caller reported tonight that there is no evidence that any of the 500 targeted conservative groups have been interviewed by the FBI.
There is no evidence that the FBI has contacted a single tea party group in its criminal investigation of the Internal Revenue Service, according to the groups the IRS abused.
“We have not been contacted by any federal investigative agency and, to date, none of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI,” Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told The Daily Caller on Thursday. The ACLJ has filed suit against the IRS on behalf of 25 conservative groups, with additional groups being added in the next couple weeks, according to a spokesman."
FLASHBACK: Joe Biden Says Don’t Trust a Spying President (Video) | The Gateway Pundit: "Then Senator Joe Biden in 2006 said you can’t trust a spying president.
“If I know every single phone call you made I’m able to determine every single person you talk to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. The real question here is what do they do with this information they collect that does not have anything to do with Al-Qaeda? And we’re going to trust the president and the vice president of the United States that they’re doing the right thing. Don’t count me in on that.“"
Instapundit » Blog Archive » JEFFREY GOLDBERG: “Here’s a question I asked myself yesterday: Would I rather have my phone recor…: "JUNE 11, 2013 JEFFREY GOLDBERG: “Here’s a question I asked myself yesterday: Would I rather have my phone records collected and readied for possible inspection by the National Security Agency, or have my genitalia scrutinized by the Transportation Security Administration? One answer, of course, is, why choose? In today’s America you can have both.”Read More......
Feeling the Hope And Change yet?
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 6:17 pm"
Dr. Murray Salby on Model World -vs- Real World | Watts Up With That?: "Most of the presentation is very mathematical and technical. But the last 10 minutes sums everything up very nicely for the laypersons.
Watch the divergence:"
Belmont Club » All We Are Saying …: "The problem of declaring victory against an enemy who refuses to concede defeat is not new. The World War 2 generation solved the problem by continuing until the foe threw in the towel. Although President Obama may believe that victory consists in convincing one’s countrymen that “we won”, historically it consisted of convincing the enemy that he lost. In World War II for example, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were defeated as a military fact by early 1944. But they were not convinced of the fact. The remainder of the war was spent knocking the idea into their consciousness.(I shouldn't need to tell you this is another RTWT from Wretchard.) But apparently even Obama and his masters aren't so crazy as not to realize they still need to fight in some fashion lest they lose their power to the Islamofascists. Well, more precisely I should say to rival Islamofascist gangs.
But the allies did not declare peace in 1944. They went on and by mid-1945, Curtis LeMay’s bombers were incinerating one Japanese city a night; US battleships were shelling coastal towns, harbors everywhere were being mined and submarines kept ships from leaving or entering ports. Victory as an objective fact was not debatable. But to the Axis accepting defeat subjectively was unthinkable. One of the supreme ironies of World War II was that the Japanese high command needed the A-bomb more than the Americans. They needed it not to change any military fact, they were as defeated before the Bomb as after it, but in order to change a mental perception. The bomb provided the pretext to accept defeat.
But in the bad old, unenlightened days you convinced the enemy they lost. Today we’re smarter. We convince ourselves the whole misunderstanding should never have happened in the first place."
From the President’s point of view, the public belief that we have been engaged in a “war on terror” is part of the many sided problem he inherited from his predecessor. As long as that kind of military mindset dominates public thinking, even Democratic presidents will have to spend lots of money on defense. Tensions between America and Islam will fester, with the risk of more attacks and confrontations making things yet worse. The flexibility of presidents in reaching out to Islamic movements and governments, and perhaps also pressuring Israel to make more concessions in the hope of further reducing regional tensions, will also be limited. When they think the country is in danger, Jacksonians are vigilant and engaged; when they think all is well, they go back to sleep. This President wants them asleep, clinging to their guns and Bibles all they want, but not bothering their pretty little heads about American foreign policy.This contains some great insight. But Mead then concludes by putting his finger on the artery of the deception (a bit not quoted by Wretchard):
President Obama is now caught in a trap of his own making. By downplaying the threat and trying to create an atmosphere of peace and normality in the country, he has delegitimated the measures he believes that our safety requires. Having tried and failed to keep these secrets dark and hidden, he must now try to explain what many Americans will find inexplicable. If the terrorists are really on the run, and we can finally go back to a 9/10 state of mind, why are you assembling and wielding the most powerful and intrusive systems of surveillance ever conceived?But then Wretchard's own dynamite conclusion swings full force:
In a 9/12 world, these measures can be understood, though there are legitimate questions to be asked about oversight and slippery slopes. In a 9/10 world, they are much harder to justify. And so, Mr. President, the ball is in your court. Where exactly do we stand, and what kind of world are we living in today?
The readers of this blog will remember all the posts which warned of the dangers of falsely abolishing war by redefining it as a law enforcement problem. The result, I wrote, would either grant all enemy combatants the rights of citizens or to reduce all citizens to the status of enemy combatants. It was an act of supreme intellectual dishonesty, a self-deception so obvious it was hard to see how anybody but a man of the Left could fall for it. The whole thing was a con pulled off by President Obama on a voter base so eager to see itself as intellectually sophisticated and morally superior they were willing to call a horse chestnut a horse.Go back to sleep now. Those are not clicks you hear on your shiny new iPhone connections. Just a general Hoovering sound is all.
President Obama’s solution to the problems of the world are those of a con man. And he had no difficulty convincing his base it had no enemies, faced no unemployment, that it could look forward to free healthcare. And that it could have free Obamaphones. He forgot to say there was one problem with those phones ….
The IRS scandal week 4 | Power Line: "I haven’t found a similarly elegant way to cite my daughter Eliana, who in her reporting for National Review is out front on the IRS scandal that many of us sense is the most consequential of those in which the Obama administration finds itself mired. Yesterday afternoon Eliana appeared on FNC’s America Live show with Megyn Kelly to provide an update on the scandal. Megyn and Eliana packed a lot of information into a six-minute segment (video below)."
“There is no longer such a thing as presidential ethics.” [Darleen Click] | protein wisdom: "This is where Jeff’s oft posted examinations of the rape of language is most important. What we see in Obama is real hypocrisy … professing a rule or principle that other people should abide by while he is exempt from it. It is not, as the Left uses it, when a person falls short of their own adopted set of standards.Read More......
It’s the difference between someone stumbling and falling down during a foot race, but getting up and trying to continue, with a person who extolls the virtues and character-building of a foot race, but then has a limousine ferry them to the finish line where they are declared the winner.
2013... | Zero Hedge: "THE GUARDIAN--The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking [2013].” --George Orwell, 1984"
Flat-Out Incredible: Former Army Ranger’s Unbelievable Off-Hand Shot With .50-Cal Rifle | Video | TheBlaze.com: "“I’m just not going to hit 1,000 yards,” Cleckner says in the video prior to attempting the shot.
Boy, was he wrong.
As the video also states: Don’t try this one at home. Watch the amazing footage below:"
Al-Qaeda Terrorist Makes Explosive Benghazi Claim: Amb. Chris Stevens Given Lethal Injection After Kidnapping Went Bad | TheBlaze.com: "The “plan was based on abduction and exchange of high-level prisoners,” the terrorist wrote on the prominent jihadist Web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen Network. “However, the operation took another turn, for a reason God only knows, when one of the members of the jihadist cell improvised and followed Plan B.”I don't think I had given enough credence to this possibility before. That may also explain the "we were sent by Dr. Morsi" video... RTWT. Read More......
Adding a layer of intertextual irony to the site | protein wisdom: "The classical liberal defense rests, your Honor."
The Great Deformation | David Stockman - YouTube: "David Stockman talks about his important new book, 'The Great Deformation', which has outraged the establishment. Recorded at the beautiful and historic Metropolitan Club in New York, NY, on 21 May 2013. Includes a Question and Answer period. "
IRS Employee: D.C. Told Us To Target Tea Party: "Q: You have stated you had concerns with the fairness and the timeliness of the application process. Did you have concerns with just the fact that these cases were grouped together and you were the only one handling them?Well, it is true that there may have been only a few pre-planned scapegoats out of the 88 involved so far. Du'O. Read More......
A: I was the only one handling the Tea Party's, that is correct.
Q: Did that specifically cause you concern?
A: Yes, it did. And I was the only person handling them.
Q: Were you concerned that you didn't have the capacity to process all of the applications in a timely manner?
A: That is correct. And it is just -- I mean, like you brought up, the micromanagement, the fact that the topic was just weirdly handled was a huge concern to me. "
The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Rediscovered : The New Yorker: "However, George Canty, the Berlin-based trade commissioner for the U.S. Department of Commerce, got wind of protests against the film by the German Ambassador in Washington, and concluded that “the film serves no good purpose.” Across the country, censors took Canty’s view, and the film was denied a license, banned, and cut by New York City and State censor boards. In Chicago, the film passed the censors but was stopped when the city’s Nazi consul insisted that the footage was fake. Vanderbilt went back to Europe to try to update the film but, however good his intentions, he’d produced a flop. Never picked up by a major studio, the orphan “Reign” all but vanished—until now."
IRS officials aren’t cooperating in probes at top or bottom | McClatchy: "Then, a Treasury Department inspector general told the committee that IRS employees in the Cincinnati office that handled applications for tax-exempt designations were not being fully cooperative in the investigation. He said the IRS employees have stymied efforts to learn who developed the controversial questions asked of conservative groups."The shock never ends. Read More......
Court upholds rifle sales reporting requirement - New York News | NYC Breaking News: Raymond Ross · Eastern Michigan UniversityAnd then, a few comments down we have this: "The ATF doesn't want any competition when arming the cartels."
Just in case anyone here is thinking of impeachment, remember, Obama gone means Biden is next.
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President." (Author Unknown)
Reply · 43 · · 22 hours ago
IRS may have targeted conservatives more broadly | McClatchy: "JstAnotherAnimalHoly crap. Why didn't I think of that? Over 150 visits? O course!
I'll go you one better. Where do you think all that demographic data for Obama's get out the vote machinery came from? They didn't just data mine for information against conservatives. They built a re-election machine out of the IRS."
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