Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

My personal two cents

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This position and diary are completely separate from the PWB Peeps and should not reflect in the least on them, nor does it open up those diaries for attack in any way. I have kept pretty much quiet on the NSA issue and haven’t said much of anything; however I am going to say this(as if my opinion means anything). Quite simply, the deification by some on the left of Ed Snowden is really starting to wear thin. If he were that much of a hero, he would be HERE in the US, not in Hong Kong. He is no hero, he, quite simply, aided and abetted the enemies of the United States for personal gain(whether you consider the GOP to be one of those enemies is up to you) whether that be 15 minutes of fame(infamy) or whatever the reason.

Especially considering that there are larger issues, i.e. the economy, jobs, the war on women, the war on LGBT, the war on immigrants, etc, that need to be addressed. Admittedly, this particular Congress isn’t exactly willing to work on them; however if we continue to allow the hatred of this POTUS take our eyes off the ball and not be willing to work on anything simply because ruining this POTUS is more important than the welfare of this nation, then those people who are trying so desperately to ruin this nation have won. Plain and simple. If you are offended by what I said here, I WILL UNDERSTAND; however I will not allow myself to be treated like a doormat and will not allow myself to be called names. I had enough of that when I was growing up.  

Do I believe that POTUS is perfect? NO, but neither are you! However, I tend towards the pragmatic, I guess, and am more willing to work with the HUMAN BEING POTUS that we have, than to take my dollies and dishes and go home. I see no point in screaming and throwing a temper tantrum(hell, I am well past the terrible twos) and making a total ass out of myself over it.

The society that we live in is so far from privacy that it isn’t even funny! We have people who post on facebook what they had for dinner, people who post on Foursquare where they are every minute of the day, people who take Instagrams of anything and everything and all of these are shared. The fact that we, as a society, share that level of intimacy with the world and then want to scream “PRIVACY” at the drop of a hat because suddenly the government can see what anyone else can find online about them speaks volumes to the level of privilege and self-aggrandizement.

Life is not black and white, nor is there anything that states that everything MUST be perfect 24/7/365. We all live in a world that guarantees shades of gray. There is NOTHING in the Bill of Rights that guarantees our happiness with the current administration at all times and NOTHING that guarantees that everyone get their rainbows and ponies and unicorns. Our current POTUS is currently doing everything earthly possible to work to improve the economy, the war on women, the war on LGBT, the war on immigrants, jobs, etc., and there are people in Congress and certain people on our side who would like nothing more than to join the Tea Party in their hatred of him and destroy this country, plain and simple! I know full well that there are people who will see this diary and decide to flame up and tear me to shreds, that is quite alright. I have no problem with that. I am a tough enough bitch that I can handle it.  


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 106 Comments

106 comments

  2. Mets102

    I’ll make two points about this whole to do:

    1. The Constitution generally speaking, does not follow the flag.  Therefore, to the extent that the NSA is operating outside the United States, they are not nearly as bound by the Constitution as say the FBI is while operating inside the United States
    2. People are thinking of this in the context of criminal prosecution (as evidenced by all the talk of the 4th Amendment), however the primary goal is not criminal prosecution, but, rather the thwarting of terrorist attacks, which can be accomplished by various means; criminal prosecution is a secondary objective and only for those terrorists we manage to capture.

    I would also point out that governing is done in shades of gray.  It’s simply the nature of the beast.

  4. Kysen

    mainly because I fall somewhere between the two extremes of

    Snowden is a hero and we are seeing our country go the way of Nazi Germany…prepare for the showers!

    and

    We have always known they ‘could’ do it…so why be surprised…it’s no big deal…if you have nothing to hide, why worry?

    I am more of the mind that, yes, this comes as absolutely no surprise to me. If anything, I am surprised by those expressing surprise. HOWEVER, that does not, IN THE LEAST, mean I support the farming/gathering of every bit of private info that can be gotten by today’s technology.

    I am….back and forth….on the phone calls thing.

    While it SEEMS that, for now, it is just the numbers (which I don’t have much of a problem with *see below for why)….the fact is, if they wanted to, they COULD listen in/record every conversation (and I VERY much have a problem with THAT).

    The problem is that currently there are not measures in place to flatly prevent that from happening.

    * I see the gathering of phone numbers as sorta like the knowledge of our flight travels. YES they know every time I fly, my name is on a list along with everyone else on my flight saying ___ flew from ___ to ___ on flight ___ on __date. However, why I am traveling, who I am visiting, where I am staying…is not looked at until/unless something happens in ___city or on flight_____. Then, they pull up those records and use them to help in their investigation.

    I see the phone records the same way. For now, it is all just a bunch of numbers….numbers that are not looked at until/unless something happens (or there is credible reason to suspect something is gonna happen)…THEN they look more closely at the huge chunk of numbers they have in order to help with their investigation.

    YES…of course I see where that information can be used improperly….which is why I want to see ‘modern day’ protections and limitations placed on it.

    As things stand…Snowden is no hero…and I greatly doubt that any but the fringe will ever see him as such.

    Surveillance of private citizens is too loosely regulated…even though I believe some of it is ‘necessary’ (or, at the very least, unavoidable).

    Technology marches on and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. I EXPECT our national security agencies to use technology to the best of their abilities to keep us/the nation/the world safe….and when they overstep (as I do feel they may have done)…we need to reconfigure the laws to reflect modern day situations while still protecting the MODERN version of our right to privacy and make sure they are held to them.

    Sorry for another ramble…I hope it makes some modicum of sense.

  5. princesspat

    Guardian poll reporter: Its working!

    In light of the public’s negative reaction to the NSA leaks, trust in government could fall further.

    So low information voters hear screaming headlines about the IRS targeting you and NSA spying on you. But as the details roll out to either discredit these headlines or suggest that things are more complex than that, major media gets bored and cable news spins. That’s the reality into which Snowden dropped his leaks – complete with all the hysteria and obfuscation Greenwald could muster. Enten is suggesting that the outcome is a Libertarian/Republican dream come true.

    Are we gonna sit back and let that happen?

    I’ve linked to the main page because the other articles are worth reading as well, especially this one….“Trading credibility for the advancement of an agenda”

  6. Pam from Calif

    Which is why I don’t make too many comments on DK except within the community diaries.  

  7. Avilyn

    The society that we live in is so far from privacy that it isn’t even funny! We have people who post on facebook what they had for dinner, people who post on Foursquare where they are every minute of the day, people who take Instagrams of anything and everything and all of these are shared. The fact that we, as a society, share that level of intimacy with the world and then want to scream “PRIVACY” at the drop of a hat because suddenly the government can see what anyone else can find online about them speaks volumes to the level of privilege and self-aggrandizement.

    Yes, privacy is much different in the modern era.  However, let’s not pretend that everyone is completely open about all the details of their lives.  I’m not on any of the social media sites because I value my privacy.  I know others who are, but who set all of their privacy settings to very high & only allow family & friends they know to view their information; they view it as a convenient way to share photos of the kids, etc.

    I think the default assumption in the United States should be that the government is not accessing information about our personal lives unless they have a warrant based on probable cause to obtain specific information.  It pisses me off that the Fourth Amendment is being disregarded, and it doesn’t matter who the president is, I think it needs to stop.  Are some people jumping on this just because they don’t like Obama?  I don’t doubt it.  Does that mean we should ignore the issue?  No.

    The incidence of terrorism is so low that I don’t see this mass data collection as being worth the cost, frankly.  

  8. Shaun Appleby

    That whether Snowden is a hero, knave or fool is completely beside the point. Though it is hard to see how this revelation endangers specific human intelligence resources as other leaks have done.

    In fact it seems you think he was more or less telling the truth; what else matters? Snowden’s behaviour and legal status seems incidental to the issue of the surveillance he alleges, which is only being disputed in detail.

  9. wordsinthewind

    combusting over this mostly because everything that was done, except for the unauthorized leaks, was done well within our existing law. I don’t see it as intrusive because it is less nefarious than what is being done by unregulated by law private corporations for the purpose of profit. I do see it as another opportunity for anti-Democratic forces to gather steam and that pisses me off. When Bush had the same opportunity and the same law he chose to violate it and people are anti Obama now that he is complying with the law? I doubt the sincerity would be the nicest way I can say what I feel.

  10. bfitzinAR

    but I do know we need whistleblowers.  Any entity that has power will naturally gravitate towards policies that increase the power unless stopped.  I don’t believe he’s a traitor as a traitor could have made a whole lot of money secretly selling the information to our enemies – which truly would have been treason.

    That said – and as I said at GOS – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – by piling on the president some people are making friends with the RWNJs.  We wish to stop the abuse, if it is abuse and we’ll need a whole lot more information before we can be sure of that, that’s what we need to focus on.

    There are many more immediate problems that need to be dealt with.  This is a long-term issue that truly needs to be dealt with.  What IS privacy in the digital age?  But there are people going hungry in America right now, people are dying for lack of healthcare (or worse, healthcare denied because they people in question are female), bridges are collapsing, watershed devastation is poisoning our water… right now and all that takes precedence.  

  11. Adept2u

    So I’m sitting up this morning playing with the grandboy in me little office and I look up to hear Alex Wagner say that she wasn’t a student of history went on to say she wasn’t sure of anything before 1969, and I exploded in WTF.

    This entire story to me appears to be the creation of a hype man I can’t believe we’re discussing it in the fashion i’ve seen.

    First, people are losing their minds and calling Barack Obama Stalin’s God child because of the PROSPECT of abuse like calling for the police and when they get there telling them I had a scary dream.  I think of the fact that I once called a cousin that yeah sold a joint or a kilo and having the police call me back in the freaking 80’s what are you talking about surveillance state?

    Edward Snowden is a rat traitor libertarian half wit dumb fuck that people on TV have mentioned in the same breath as Martin Luther King.  My mother has a police record that she got for protesting civil rights that impeded my father from getting a security clearance and they pay that rat 122 grand a year of my money??  NOPE NOPE

    Side note, Ron Paul rehired the man he accused of writing his newsletters and disavowed, the next words anyone who says they donated to Ron Paul regarding civil liberties needs to be sorry i supported an avowed racist.

    He goes to China, China who is drinking our technological milk shake through a cyber straw and tells them our methods and practices and people want to call that hero then say they have any compass to tell me about my liberties..OMG shut up!!!!

    Vladimir Putin threw Pussy Riot in jail the Chinese got our Raptor plane sitting on a runway WE SPENT BILLIONS DEVELOPING and he goes to them.

    eliminate the messengers nope

    Glenn Greenwald uses rape imagery to silence the voice of BLACK WOMEN WHO ARE HIS INTELLECTUAL SUPERIOR I was right the fuck there when he did it.

    http://adept2u.blogspot.com/20…

    Fuck you Glenn Greenwald we don’t have the ability to discuss issues the issue is you can go get fucked you misogynistic Jew Baiting yeah he called Black Water Dog Leni Reifenstahl RACIST DEOLIVER WAS RIGHT WAS MY FUCKING SIG MOTHERFUCKER You can kiss my BLACK ASS you lying story sliding four flushing grifter piece of detritus.

  12. Avilyn

    How nice it is to actually have a DISCUSSION about this, with coherent points made on both sides and no flames?  I love this place.  ðŸ™‚  

  14. Adept2u

    http://newsroom.fb.com/News/63…

    For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

    Is Prism a data mining program?  No it’s a mailbox that makes it easy for the companies to drop files.

    Are they looking at all americans stealing grandmas cookie recipe?  NO

    Is Glenn Greenwald a lying motherfucker YES

  15. louisprandtl

    I haven’t seen that anything under public domain that suggested PRISM has been declassified. In fact any information that had been leaked thus far is considered spillage and a serious violation of oath by the leaker. If indeed it is a Top Secret program as made out to be, it wouldn’t be or couldn’t be declassified in such a short time.

    The discussion about PRISM is moot as we don’t know anything about it other than what was mentioned by The Guardian and WAPO. Whether it entailed server access or is merely an ftp site or a ftpserver is pure conjecture at this point.

  16. michelewln

    With the Patriot Act. We wanted security and didn’t care how we got it. It seems a little ridiculous to scream this loud now when we told them to go ahead and spy on us. The time to say no was when they were talking about first implementing these programs.

    Frankly there are too many holes in Snowden’s story for me to find him all that credible.

    I avoid all the politics at GOS now because I’m tired of the hysteria. It’s Father’s Day and my Dad was a scientist. Hysteria never found out the truth. He was also Army Intelligence and had many friends among the FBI. From Dad I learned to stop and think and sift the wheat from the chaff and wait until we could actually discover what the real truth was before trying to take meaningful action.

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