Showing posts with label villain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label villain. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Chris Christie Tries to Deflect and Dissemble on #BridgeGate

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Previous Related Posts
Christie's Well-Named Minion, Bridget Kelly
Christie Bridge-Splains But Holes Remain
Chris Christie and the #BridgeGate #BridgeGhazi #BridgeNado

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Investigations of wrong-doing are rising faster than orange cones on Bridge to Fort Lee, but Governor Chris Christie keeps insisting that there's nothing to see, that he knows nothing, and that he's already fired those responsible. But the emails and text messages released so far paint a very different picture of Christie's closest associates as they dealt with criticism over the closure of the George Washington Bridge.

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The last week has certainly tested this administration. Mistakes were clearly made. And as a result, we let down the people we are entrusted to serve. I know our citizens deserve better. Much better.
I am the governor and I am ultimately responsible for all that happens on my watch - both good and bad.
And without a doubt we will cooperate with all appropriate enquiries to ensure that this breach of trust does not happen again.But I also want to assure the people of New Jersey today that what has occurred does not define us, or our state.
~ Chris Christie quoted by CBS News

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Jimmy Fallon and Bruce Springsteen Sing
"Governor Christie's Traffic Jam"
("I gotta take a leak!")



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We know everybody's fascinated by BridgeGate, and the reality is that we'd all like to go to the last chapter of the book and see what is the conclusion here. That's not responsible. There needs to be a methodical and systematic approach to this.
~ Rep. Louis Greenwald, D-NJ, Majority Leader of New Jersey Assembly

This is part of a pattern, of retribution, of calling people names. But this is carried to the point of ...really a vicious act. He put thousands and thousands of people in jeopardy. There were little kids, Kindergartners and First Graders going to school for the first day, caught in traffic jams. It was the week of the 9-11 observance and apparently and from the press reports we've seen the Governor and two of the main characters in this drama (Weinstein and Baroni) spent some time at the observance. You mean they never whispered 'there's something going on in Fort Lee'?
~ State Senator Loretta Weinberg on Rachel Maddow MSNBC

From the Washington Post:
A photo published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday shows Christie appearing in New York with David Wildstein at a ceremony commemorating the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The traffic jam began Sept. 9 and lasted four days.
The photo's release comes shortly after Christie, at a nearly two-hour news conference last week, downplayed his interactions and relationship with Wildstein, who attended the same high school. Christie said he hadn't encountered Wildstein in "a long time."
"I have had no contact with David Wildstein in a long time, a long time -- well before the election," Christie said, referring to his Nov. 5 reelection win. "You know, I could probably count on one hand the number of conversations I've had with David since he worked at the Port Authority. I did not interact with David."
















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Friday, January 10, 2014

Christie's Well-Named Minion, Bridget Kelly

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Previous Related Posts:
Christie Bridge-Splains but Holes Remain
Chris Christie and the #BridgeGate #BridgeGhazi #BridgeNado

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Edward Snowden and the Chinese Phoenix

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Previous Posts:
Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?
Author Naomi Wolf Becomes Snowden Truther

I think he's a Traitor, and he's committed crimes in effect by violating agreements due to the contracts he had.
. . . I’m deeply suspicious because he went to China. That’s not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.
I'm also concerned that he had help from inside the agency. Was there somebody else at NSA who had access to a lot of this stuff and passed it?
~ Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Fox News

I hope, I pray and I ask that you will not release any secrets that could constitute treason. I sense that you're under much stress [from] what I've read recently, and [ask] that you not succumb to that stress ... and make a bad decision.
. . . I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them. I love my son.
~ Lonnie Snowden, father of Edward Snowden, on Fox News

I feel for the guy, and for what his life is going to become. I pity him.
He's in for a world of hurt, for the rest of his life. I feel sorry for him. He's going to go through life not being able to trust anybody. And I think that in the end, it'll end badly for him -- one way or another, they'll get their hands on him. He's going to pay for it. He's doomed.
. . . I don't know if he has an arrangement with the Chinese government. If he doesn't, I would be worried that the Chinese may deport him to the United States to gain some concession in return. I'd be terrified of that, if I were him. Who would trust the Chinese government? He is utterly vulnerable and knows that there are a lot of people who really want to hurt him now. If I were him, I would at this point probably be having second thoughts. Asking myself "What did I do? What have I brought down upon my head? Did I really do this?"
The fact is, he can never come back home.
~ Christopher Boyce, jailed and convicted Spy known as "Falcon" in the book and movie "Falcon and the Snowman" in an interview with CNN



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Excerpts from Edward Snowden's Question and Answer via Guardian UK, Moderated by Glenn Greenwald, June 18, 2013

. . . I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

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Snowden: . . . the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

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Snowden: . . . the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target

All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

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Snowden: I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

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Snowden: More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

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Question: MonaHol
17 June 2013 4:37pm
Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.
Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:
I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.
Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Snowden : Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?

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Previous Post:
Snark Amendment: Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets

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We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.
~ Snowden's choice for President, Ex-Candidate Ron Paul, via Washington Post

Edward Snowden is no Hero
. . . Snowden is now at the mercy of the Chinese leaders who run Hong Kong. As a result, all of Snowden’s secrets may wind up in the hands of the Chinese government—which has no commitment at all to free speech or the right to political dissent. And that makes Snowden a hero?
~ Jeffrey Toobin on The New Yorker



(Snowden) has damaged national security, our ability to track down terrorists, or those with nefarious intent, and his disclosure has not made America safer.
~ Congressman Jim Langevin, D-Rhode Island, in New York Times

I don't look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it's an act of treason.
. . . He violated the oath, he violated the law. It's treason.
~ Senator Dianne Feinstein on The Hill

Edward Snowden is a hero
. . . Snowden is a hero because he realized that our very humanity was being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe. Unlike those around him, who were too absorbed in their task to reflect on their actions and pause in their pursuit of digital omniscience, Snowden allowed himself to be "disturbed" by what he was doing.
More in the midst of technology than most of us will ever be, Snowden disengaged for long enough to be human and to consider the impact of what he was helping build. He pressed pause.
~ Douglas Rushkoff on CNN

He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths.
. . . He betrayed his employers. Booz Allen and the C.I.A. took a high-school dropout and offered him positions with lavish salaries. He is violating the honor codes of all those who enabled him to rise.
He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.
He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.
He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.
~ David Brooks on New York Times


















































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Edward Snowden Releases #NSA Secrets

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Related Post:
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?

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From Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian
He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

. . . On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

. . . He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."
. . . Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

. . . He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.
But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."



From Guardian Interview with Snowden
Q: Is it possible to put security in place to protect against state surveillance?

A: "You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying. We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."

. . . Q: When did you decide to leak the documents?

A: "You see things that may be disturbing. When you see everything you realise that some of these things are abusive. The awareness of wrong-doing builds up. There was not one morning when I woke up [and decided this is it]. It was a natural process.
"A lot of people in 2008 voted for Obama. I did not vote for him. I voted for a third party. But I believed in Obama's promises. I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor."

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From The New York Times

Mr. Snowden, who grew up in North Carolina, did not finish high school and sporadically attended classes at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Md. Military records show he enlisted in the Army Reserve as a Special Forces recruit in May 2004 and was discharged less than four months later, reportedly after breaking his legs in a training accident.
Somewhere along the way, he acquired a top-secret clearance, which, with his computer expertise, was a ticket for admission to the national security establishment....
. . . Mr. Snowden bounced between jobs both inside the government and as a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency in Switzerland and for the National Security Agency in Japan, Maryland and Hawaii, according to his account. Eventually working for nearly $200,000 a year in classified facilities as a computer systems administrator, he had access to enormous amounts of secret information.

From Washington Post by Barton Gellman
. . . Verax was the name he chose for himself, “truth teller” in Latin. I asked him early on, without reply, whether he intended to hint at the alternative fates that lay before him.

Two British dissenters had used the pseudonym. Clement Walker, a 17th-century detractor of Parliament, died in the brutal confines of the Tower of London. Two centuries later, social critic Henry Dunckley adopted “Verax” as his byline over weekly columns in the Manchester Examiner. He was showered with testimonials and an honorary degree.

. . . I asked him, at the risk of estrangement, how he could justify exposing intelligence methods that might benefit U.S. adversaries.

“Perhaps I am naive,” he replied, “but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.” The steady expansion of surveillance powers, he wrote, is “such a direct threat to democratic governance that I have risked my life and family for it.”

In an e-mail on May 24, he dropped a bombshell. Whistleblowers before him, he said, had been destroyed by the experience. Snowden wanted “to embolden others to step forward,” he wrote, by showing that “they can win.” He therefore planned to apply for asylum in Iceland or some other country “with strong internet and press freedoms,” although “the strength of the reaction will determine how choosy I can be.”

. . . On Sunday afternoon, as his name was released to the world, Snowden chatted with me live from a Hong Kong hotel room, not far from a CIA base in the U.S. Consulate.

“There’s no precedent in my life for this kind of thing,” he wrote. “I’ve been a spy for almost all of my adult life — I don’t like being in the spotlight.”

I asked him once more which of the two Veraxes he expected to become: the happy ending or life behind bars?
“That’s up to the global public,” he typed back. “If asylum is offered, we’ll have the first example. If not, we’ll have the second. I am prepared for both.”

From Mother Jones
a spokesman for Anne Arundel Community College (AACC), located in southeastern Maryland, tells Mother Jones a student with Snowden's name and birthdate attended the college from 1999 to 2001 and then again from 2004 to 2005. He did not receive a certificate or degree, the spokesman, Daniel Baum, says.

But here's an interesting wrinkle: Baum says Snowden took no "cyber-related courses" at this college. Nor did he take any classes in the college's NSA-certified "Information Systems Security" program, which focuses on safeguarding computer data and networks, though he went on to work in a related field for the government and in the private sector. It's unclear whether Snowden studied computing elsewhere.
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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Harry Reid ~ Evil Genius and Hero

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From Business Insider
Harry Reid Is The Democratic Party's Evil Genius

~ Romney has backed himself into a corner that will be tough to get out of. If he relents to Reid's demands, then Reid wins. If he doesn't, then Reid and other Democrats will keep making it an issue.
~ Reid has pretty successfully made this issue a loaded question. The only way to completely disprove Reid is to release the tax returns. And if he doesn't, it will add to the perception that there's something veiled behind his "put up or shut up" words. Because...
~ Keep in mind that a majority of voters — and, crucially, Independent voters — want Romney to release his tax returns, according to Gallup. In the clearest sign that Romney has bungled this issue, most people think that a presidential candidate's tax returns are irrelevant, except in Romney's case.
~ Reid doesn't have to worry about re-election — if, at 76 years of age, he will seek re-election — until 2016.

Reid was a boxer in his youth, and what he did to Romney was the equivalent of a head butt.
~ Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post

Four Pinocchios for Harry Reid’s claim about Mitt Romney’s taxes
This whole exchange poses a fact-checking conundrum. Generally, we maintain that the person or the campaign making the charge must back it up. Reid has refused to provide any evidence, except for the (unproven) fact that someone called him up and told him something that may be true — or simply a rumor.
. . . We use a reasonable person standard here. Without seeing Romney’s taxes, we cannot definitively prove Reid incorrect. But tax experts say his claim is highly improbable. Reid also has made no effort to explain why his unnamed source would be credible. So, in the absence of more information, it appears he has no basis to make his incendiary claim.
~ So-called "Fact Checker" for Wa Po, Glenn Kessler admitting that he can't check anything, which illogically proves somehow that Harry Reid is wrong

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
When is the last time any of these a$$hats scolded, say, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner for acting inappropriately for their "position of authority"?
The double standard is ridiculous.
~ comment by happy camper on Daily Kos

Kessler, like other fact-checkers, is really hung up on this idea that tax experts—as opposed to, say, Mitt Romney—can clear up whether Harry Reid is lying, which is irrelevant to anything because the issue is not about Harry Reid. It's about Mitt Romney. But that's something lost on the hacktastic fact-checkers. Kessler even speaks to "a number of tax experts," who agree . . .
The idea that asking tax experts to explain what might be in Mitt's taxes, or how much he might have paid, or which loopholes he might have exploited is a gigantic steaming waste of time. Why speculate? Why not just look at Mitt's tax returns to know for certain what's in there? Oh yeah. Because he refuses to provide any evidence to back up his incendiary claims.
. . . Reid holds a position of great authority—Mitt Romney merely wants to be president of the United State of America. Clearly, Reid carries that additional burden of accuracy that simply does not apply to Mitt.
~ Kaili Joy Gray on Daily Kos

Reid is punching away, having the time of his life. Nancy Pelosi has his back. It's not Democrats who are shirking from the attack, despite the fact checker's bullshit "tsk, tsks," it's the Republicans who are in disarray over how Romney should respond (read this National Review editorial, and then for laughs, read the comments).
We wouldn't have Republicans and the Romney campaign so dramatically off-message, for yet another week, if it wasn't for Reid. The old boxer is showing some fight, and if he had to go down into the gutter to land his blows, all the more props to him.
~ Markos on Daily Kos, after making Reid the "Democrat of the Week"

I have no idea why Reid decided to go all-in on this point. Maybe he's just fed up with the Republicans and what they've done to the Senate that he loves. Maybe it's some sort of intramural Mormon brawl that the rest of us just don't understand. I am open to any suggestion based on the concept of pure old-dude cussedness. I don't have any idea whether Willard Romney paid no taxes, or some taxes, or paid an annual tribute to Anubis, Egyptian God Of The Dead, over the years in question. Neither, I would point out, do Glenn Kessler, or his tax experts, or the PolitiFact elves, or Reince Priebus. This is because Willard Romney, unlike any presidential candidate of my experience, declines to share those details with The Help as he seeks to be appointed CEO of America.
~ Charles P. Pierce on Esquire

The media tolerates no end of birther nonsense and other paranoid fantasies from the right, but let Harry Reid accuse Mitt Romney of not paying his taxes and all hell breaks loose. . . . What really seems to be going on here is that a Democrat is successfully engaged in the sort of hardball tactics that Republicans usually have a monopoly on, and the media don’t quite know what to make of it. When it comes to making wild, unsubstantiated allegations, the GOP benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations—at this point, few people can bring themselves to get that worked up about insane Republican mudslinging. Yet when a Democrat even tiptoes in that direction it’s news, and a chance for pundits to demonstrate the bipartisan bona fides so valued in the Beltway. ~ Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast


A major case of Reid-Rage.
~ Rachel Maddow

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