Dianne Feinstein Lashes Out While Corrupt Congress Guts NSA Reforms

Apparently having now put her little snit with the CIA behind her, Senate Intelligence Committee boss Dianne Feinstein, the woman who has long served as an impenetrable firewall of cellulite between accountability and the run amok NSA Stasi is back with a vengeance. DiFi, while appearing on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit with CNN's Candy Crowley snapped while discussing the new Glenn Greenwald book "No Place to Hide" that - “It’s not a surveillance program, it’s a data-collection program”. The testy California Senator may have inadvertently let the the cat out of the bag on that one because it IS a data-collection program, specifically a data-mining program conducted on damned near the entire US population and once it has been collected it is being stored for some yet to be defined future use. That future use is to be social control and the best protection that money can buy for a system so vile and corrupt that there really is no adequate terminology to truly describe it.

The data that has been collected will be used to identify political dissidents or troublemakers challenging the imposition of fascism in America. But that is the purpose (outside of the surveillance end which likely includes sexual blackmail of political figures, industrial espionage on a grand scale, money laundering, the manipulation of financial markets and probably even state sanctioned drug trafficking) of what the NSA and the millions of private contractors - to lock down the illicit activities of those in high places when the shit finally does hit the fan and as in all tyrannies the roundup of problem people is a top priority. Criminals like Feinstein fully understand what the programs are for because she is the one charged with oversight which is pretty much like the financial oversight that has been provided by those like Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson - the best and probably oldest scam in the book is to enable corruption by putting a crook or in Feinstein's case, a sociopath with zero morality in charge of minding the store.

Feinstein like the other treasonous swine who have hijacked the country using the September 11, 2001 attacks as an excuse continues to engage in the same fear-mongering to avoid oversight that has been used since Dick Cheney took over the show on that day while Bush was flying around the country like a scared rabbit. DiFi played the "terror" card by saying “I know they will come after us if they can, I see the intelligence” [not bothering to say exactly who "they" are nor that the "intelligence" is cooked to exaggerate such threats and keep the money rolling in] and “Terror is not down in the world, it is up" [failing to mention that the Empire's wars of aggression aren't exactly winning hearts and minds]. Call it what it is but now would be a perfect time for some sort of false flag attack that would forever end scrutiny of the rising menace of the star-spangled totalitarian state before it has finished baking, as the late Hunter S. Thompson put it "paranoia is just another word for ignorance" and nothing should ever be put beyond the capability of the lunatics who are running the system these days.

To the Obama administration and this most detestable of legislatures there has been no bigger thorn in the side than former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Just when the NSA Stasi stories had died down allowing the war machine to turn attention towards backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine and goading Russian leader Vladimir Putin into a response that would trigger a new Cold War - sending arms sales skyrocketing - there is renewed interest. This comes due to the Greenwald book and the surprisingly wide media attention that the author has been getting in The Homeland. There are also, as Greenwald promises more stories to come and soon including that really serious stuff that he has been teasing us with. In his GQ interview "The Man Who Knows Too Much" he made the statement that:

There's a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I'm saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it.

I suspect that Feinstein and her ilk have an inkling about exactly what that "big missing piece" is and while it may not be the smoking gun that nails them all to the wall it may provide a sufficient piece of the puzzle that will provide other journalists, activists and bloggers with the material to begin to tie together a lot of disparate coincidences and strangeness into the damning indictment of criminals in high places that is desperately needed. The scum are likely praying for a terrorist attack - the bigger, the better - right about now.

On the "reform" front things aren't working out so well in terms of transparency and control over the surveillance AND data collection colossus. Predictably the so-called USA FREEDOM Act is being disemboweled by right-wing talk radio bound Michigan Congressmen Mike Rogers and his on the take authoritarian allies.  According to a story in The Hill entitled "Advocates fear NSA bill is being gutted":

Privacy advocates are worried that a bill intended to reform the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) is being watered down before it heads to the House floor.

“Last stage negotiations” between members of the House and the Obama administration could significantly weaken provisions in the NSA bill, people familiar with the discussions say.

“Behind the scenes, there’s some nervousness,” one House aide said.

Earlier this month, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees came together to approve a compromise version of the USA Freedom Act. That bill, authored by Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would scale back many of the sweeping surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden.

To win the support of NSA defenders, lawmakers abandoned some reform provisions in Sensenbrenner’s original bill. One of the major changes was dropping the appointment of a constitutional advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the NSA’s spying requests, and substituting it for a panel of experts.

The bill was also stripped of language that would have allowed tech companies to publish more specific information about the number and types of government requests for user data they receive.

During Judiciary consideration, an amendment to allow less specific reporting was added back into the bill, but some worry that provision is in danger now because the administration thinks it’s already reached a deal that allows tech companies to publish more information about the NSA requests.

While pro-reform advocacy groups and members hailed the House bill as a positive first step, many lamented the revisions and said the legislation will be in trouble on the floor if it undergoes further changes.

There is a “growing chorus of concern” that the bill that makes it to the floor for a vote could be a less meaningful version of what passed the Judiciary and Intelligence committees with overwhelming bipartisan support, the aide said.

Reform advocates warn they will withdraw their support for the bill if the final version doesn’t pass muster.

The only "muster" that will be passed is that of the status quo as those who have assumed positions of power do not surrender it willingly. The best hope would be for the forthcoming stories from Greenwald and his associates will be sufficiently shocking so as to make the case for not only reform but a movement to dismantle the NSA entirely as the enemy to a free society and affront to the US Constitution that it has become. Trials, convictions and prison sentences for the enablers of this monstrous pox on the planet would be an added bonus.  

Benghazi Again? Investigate the Damned NSA!

Speaker of the House John Boehner on Friday announced that the Republicans will soon be setting up a special investigative tribunal to once again flog that long dead horse that is the Benghazi scandal. Now that the corporate scam that is the Affordable Health Care Act aka Obamacare is pretty much dead as a campaign issue the GOP is going to count on once again going back to the future in rolling out the blatant election year scam of yet another investigation into what it is that happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. You have to give it to the sleazy Republicans, they are predictable to a fault and whether it be hundreds of symbolic votes wasting taxpayer money to nullify Obamacare or exhuming the rotting corpse of Ronald Reagan to drag around as a prop like a Weekend at Bernie's sequel they never change which is why they keep losing presidential elections. This is by no means to excuse the equally rotten (although smarter and less overtly fascist) Democrats because when it comes to systemic corruption it is a bipartisan con that is run down on the American people.

In the  latest conjuring of Benghazi from the grave it is only more evidence at the party's complete bankruptcy and thorough selling out because there has NEVER to this day been any effort made by that party to mount a serious and concerted attempt to hold hearings - including special investigative committee ones - over the ongoing travesty of the unconstitutional surveillance and data-mining programs of the NSA Stasi. The cover-up continues over what the hell exactly has been going on for years at Ft. Meade, the secret courts and the bowels of both the Obama and the Bush-Cheney White House regimes and the inevitable and the worst is yet to be revealed if you believe journalist Glenn Greenwald and former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. You would think that this gross violation of the civil liberties of Americans at least deserves SOME attention from Boehner and the oily Darrell "Congressman Grand-Theft Auto" Issa but nothing doing there. It is always best to just set up their smoke and mirror machines and whip out shovelfuls of bloody red meat to the Fox News lobotomized party base to get them to the polls in November. Total horseshit but that is standard for the GOP in their desperation to gain more control in the House and retake the Senate before the Hillary Clinton tidal wave washes it all away for good with the massive female voter turnout in 2016. What a pack of fucking idiots.

I do not however completely discredit that there was something seriously wrong going on in Benghazi the day that the embassy was attacked and Ambassador Christopher Stephens and others killed. It just isn't what Boehner, Issa and their fellow liars and swine will be focused on. I would love to see an investigation based on what Seymour Hersh wrote about in his banned from the US media article "The Red Line and the Rat Line" from which I excerpt:

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)

In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.

The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’

Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.

If Hersh is in any way correct what we may really have here is Iran-Contra II and it could bring down the entire Obama administration - which the Republicans really don't want because they have gotten immense political mileage out of demonizing the "Kenyan" in the WHITE House to the knuckle-dragging dregs of society that is their base. If they really want Obama's head on a stick then investigate based on Hersh's story - or even better on the NSA and the ongoing abuse of power that Obama is deeply involved in. Don't hold your breath though because Jesus will return and $100 bills will rain from the sky before anything like that ever happens.

Only in America circa 2014 can you continue to serve up crazy and have people begging for seconds.. or as far as the Republican Benghazi farce goes hundredths.

Rand Paul Sues the Bastards

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul just manned up big time and stepped to the plate, filing a class action lawsuit against President Barack Obama for his lack of control over an NSA gone rogue. It is about damned time that a national political figure showed a set of stones and demanded accountability from a flagrantly out of control administration and the ongoing assault against the Constitution that it is conducting.  The rank cowardice from the political class has been evident since the revelations of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and has been not only an embarrassment to this country but also a violation of their oaths to uphold the Constitution that borders on treason. If we still lived in a land where the rule of law was upheld the entire Congressional leadership and their little gangs of eight and sixteen that operate outside the legal parameters would be removed from office and placed on public trial after which they would be thrown into the prisons in which they belong for the remainder of their miserable lives. They are all jackals and thieves and their war on the American people must be stopped. Thanks to Senator Paul the proverbial shot across the bow has been delivered.

The Washington based establishment went into their usual mode when the sanctity of their incestuous little bubble gets pricked, they unleashed the smear brigade. From the tip of the spear that is the neocon dominated Washington Post the scorn for Paul (but really for the country itself) erupted shortly after the suit was filed in the D.C. federal district court. The veteran house lackey Dana Milbank immediately accused Paul of plagiarism and hijacking the lawsuit from the seasoned conservative activist Bruce Fein. Charles Kraüthammer and Jennifer Rubin are likely well into their standard poison pen propaganda and will inveigh against Paul, the demon of the month libertarians, privacy rights and the Constitution itself come Friday. The winter storm that has hit the pox along the Potomac and resultant bad weather event closures will have many a blood-sucking leach that is dependent on the bloated fascist surveillance industry flying into action to denounce the lawsuit in print and on message boards.

Pity that the good Senator from the Bluegrass State had the audacity to float a turd in the punchbowl of the WAPO Snowden bashing party. The paper launched an asinine story today that will spread throughout the state media like ticks jumping from rabid dog to rabid dog that Snowden gained his access to the purloined data by stealing the password of a co-worker.  That this sordid little character attack has nothing to do with the proverbial price of rice in China that the NSA was the violator of the law is as pearls before swine to the masses of asses. It plays directly into the Mike Rogers-James Clapper war on the First Amendment argument that journalist Glenn Greenwald is a "thief" and so is Snowden so they cannot be held as any thing other than enemies of the state. In the corrupt den of star-spangled iniquity that is the post 9/11 Homeland the best way to defend oneself from their own criminal acts is to play the victim and go on the attack against the very people who exposed their illegality. It is so effective that even that the operatives of that corrupt fat bastard Governor of New Jersey Krispy Kreme  Christie are doing it.

Paul will be smeared six ways from Sunday and then some from the big five TV networks operating in unison during the regular state propaganda Sabbath vomit fests by the usual array of scum trotted out on NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CNN's State of the Union, FOX News Sunday and CBS's Face the Nation and they will be looking to destroy him. That is the way that it works in this country anymore, it is far more sophisticated than just unleashing hordes of brownshirt thugs on those who question and even worse fight the criminal acts of the government that have so effectively served the interests of history's despots.

In an opinion piece written by Paul (along Matt Kibbe and Ken Cuccinelli) that is a CNN Exclusive the challenger to Leviathan states his case and I excerpt the following:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

This is the beginning of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and defines one of the most important rights we have against a potentially tyrannical government.

Throughout history, governments have used the confiscation of private property, as well as bullying and surveillance techniques, to keep populations under control and maintain a continuous threat against those who would dare criticize them.

AND

In recent years, however, this right, like so many others, has come under attack by the overzealous powers that be in Washington, eager to sacrifice liberty in the name of security, and using fear as a weapon to make us forget the importance of being free.

In 2013, the revelation that the National Security Agency was collecting and storing the metadata from the phone calls and e-mails of millions of American citizens -- without any suspicion of criminal activity -- served as a striking wake-up call for the country.

Americans do not like to think of their government as some Orwellian leviathan, engaging in surveillance tactics that we only expect to see in oppressive autocracies. That such surveillance could be going on in what is ostensibly the freest nation in the world is a chilling thought indeed.

Since 2006, the NSA has been spying on us, treating American citizens as no more than common criminals, casting suspicion on honest people with not even a whisper of criminal activity about them. These are not the actions befitting a country that was once held up as a paragon of freedom and a model for the rest of the world.

AND

It's time to hold government officials accountable for their habitual trampling on the Constitution and on our rights as individuals. Our case will be an important step down the road of restoring our Constitution and reining in our own overreaching federal government.

Bravo to Senator Paul. I must admit that I have never been much of a supporter although I greatly admired his father Ron Paul for his courageous stand against the criminal Bush administration during the darkest years of the civil liberties destroying "War on Terror" when it wasn't easy to denounce the establishment and get away unscathed. Today in 2014 however, the same advances in communications and social networking technology that allow the NSA to conduct their unconstitutional mass surveillance and data-mining against us also has a flip side in that millions who lacked that capability in the early years of the New American Century can now organize and fight back. I support the efforts of Senator Paul to bring these criminal bastards to heel and so should any decent American.

Rand Paul is not the first person to sue Obama over the excesses of the permanent and fraudulent “War on Terror”. Journalist and author Chris Hedges, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and others filed suit against the latest imperial president over the NDAA Act. The Obama administration and his savage, unprincipled attack dog of an Attorney General Eric Holder brought all the state power to bear against Hedges and the same corrupt courts packed with politically appointed judges that fought him will only increase their efforts versus Senator Paul and the rest of us whose civil liberties have been shit upon by an entrenched fifth column.

As patriotic Americans it is of the utmost in importance and urgency to do what you can to get behind Senator Paul's lawsuit. To my liberal and progressive friends I ask that you please put aside any ideological differences to stand in unity against the greatest menace to freedom in the history of the planet - the NSA oppression machine and the corrupt elite that it serves and protects against the rabble. I have long been a proponent of a libertarian-progressive alliance based on these most important of matters and there is now way to fight this threat unless petty differences are set aside before we ALL end up in those internment camps that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just waxed nostalgic over where we will be pitted against each other for the amusement of our captors.

There is nothing else that is going to matter in the long run if we can't stop fascism.

Blowhard Mike Rogers Can’t Back Up Russian Spy Charges

With the Sunday morning appearance of the two members of Congress that are the most derelict of their official duties to uphold and protect the Constitution Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein both accusing Edward Snowden of essentially being a Russian spy the system continues to fail. Despite these serious allegations, more likely than anything the part of a rapidly growing narrative to paint the former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower as an enemy of the state there has been absolutely no effort from the state-corporate media to confront either of the two NSA toadies for actual proof of the charges. Sunday morning TV is among the worst forums for state propaganda ever invented and each week continues to plumb the depths to protect the corrupt system and provide high visibility for those who are responsible for destroying America to spew their lies.

The most reliable weapon in the NSA Stasi’s arsenal has always been Über fascist Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers, the mac daddy of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers, a former FBI thug who managed to slither his way into office has set his sights on supplanting Senators McCain and Graham as the most strident voice on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit. The lunatic Rpgers blasted Snowden as he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory as a “thief” who had foreign assistance while DiFi tut-tutted to the delight of the always oily beltway ass-kisser David Gregory. Rogers then popped up on CBS’s Face the Nation to spout that “This wasn’t a random smash and grab, run down the road, end up in China, the bastion of internet freedom, and then Russia, of course the bastion of internet freedom”. He conveniently omits the same sarcastic reference to our very own land of desecrated privacy rights which he of course has been instrumental in stealing away.

While Rogers was spewing his crap, Texas Republican Michael McCaul Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee appeared on ABC's This Week where he accused Snowden of being “cultivated by a foreign power” and “helped by others”. This is all just more of the same distractions meant to wave the blessed flag which is now serves primarily as a symbol designed to be desecrated by the scum like Rogers and McCaul who wrap themselves in it while then destroying the very principles that this country is supposed to stand for. By attempting to smear Snowden as a Russian spy they deftly turn the conversation from the true outrage which is the very existence of these unrestrained and unconstitutional surveillance programs.

Obviously seeing the writing on the wall that a manipulation of public opinion would green light his state sanctioned murder which many are braying for Snowden himself surfaced to defend himself. In an interview with Jane Mayer published by The New Yorker online the prey of the fascists who run The Homeland not only rebutted the accusations but pointed out the obvious which I excerpt from Mayer’s piece:

“It’s not the smears that mystify me,” Snowden told me. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.” Snowden went on to poke fun at the range of allegations that have been made against him in the media without intelligence officials providing some kind of factual basis: “ ‘We don’t know if he had help from aliens.’ ‘You know, I have serious questions about whether he really exists.’ ”

Snowden went on, “It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this. I mean these are pretty serious allegations, you know?” He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.”

It should be noted that this corrupt media has allowed the country to be lied into two illegal and immoral wars of choice since September 11, 2001 and continues to agitate for more attacks on countries such as Syria and Iran on hearsay, innuendo, propaganda and trumped up ‘evidence. This media has also completely abrogated its collective responsibility (as put forth in the First Amendement) to hold power accountable. Consequently our economy has been gutted by high rolling, politically connected gamblers playing with house money that is pumped into Wall Street casinos to the tune of $85 billion a month, there is NO recovery only lies and propaganda and the living standard of the average American continues to get worse while the corrupt media is out shilling for wars and engaging in tabloid panty-sniffing. The media has stood by while our civil liberties have been stripped away, torture that would have had one hung at Nuremberg codified and covered up and Habeas Corpus eliminated and most of it done in secret, approved by secret courtes and all on the basis of lies and hide behind the biggest lie of all which is providing equal time to both sides of any given story even if one side’s arguments are nothing but lies. So yeah, basically fuck the media.

I do give some credit for Mayer whose piece specifically cites followup done on those who make and allow such claims that Snowden is a Russian spy with zero evidence. Excerpting again from the New Yorker piece:

Asked about this, George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” defended the coverage. Stephanopoulos pointed out that when the congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, alleged that Snowden was “cultivated by a foreign power” and “helped by others,” Stephanopoulos pressed him for details, twice. “I did two follow-ups,” Stephanopoulos said, “and got as much as the congressman was going to give up.”

AND

Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Congressman Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.

An aide to Senator Feinstein, meanwhile, stressed that she did no more than ask questions. “Senator Feinstein said, ‘We don’t know at this stage.’ In light of the comments from Chairman Rogers, it is reasonable for Senator Feinstein to say that we should find out.”

As the saying goes - we get the government that we deserve - but the vast majority of Americans did not vote for either Feinstein or Rogers to be put into critical oversight positions and then to act as elements of a relentless fifth-column bent on eradicating every principle that is embodied within the Constitution.

It would be nice to see the voters in the State of California and the Eighth Congressional District in Michigan to be good Americans and vote those two enemies of the republic out of office as it is the only way that we can be saved from this madness.

Michigan voters, you are now on the clock. 

A Pox Along the Potomac

With their already sparse work calendar lurching to a close the universally despised do-nothing U.S. Congress seeks to finally accomplish something other than failing to do their jobs.  Many of the members have long been agitating to sink the Iran nuclear deal and there is a bipartisan cauldron of malevolent contempt for American interests threatening to boil over before the slimy weasels close the doors for the holidays. Never has a legislative body been such a grossly corrupt, self-interested, contemptible pack of jackasses as this diseased bunch, were this a sane country (which it isn’t) the electorate would stick the nozzle of a gigantic enema bag into the capitol come next November and give the bulb a good, hard squeeze. Nothing other than a total and complete purge will suffice. Both houses are a pox on the country and beholden to special interests both foreign and domestic rather than the people that they are at least technically supposed to represent according to that soon to be irrelevant document that is the U.S. Constitution.

Overly influential and once discredited Neocons, war mongers and on the defense industry dole have for too long been allowed to hijack our foreign policy to carry out numerous costly Middle Eastern wars. They are still stinging over being thwarted over attacking Syria based on a pack of lies (see Seymour Hersh’s recent piece in the London Review of Books) and the best holiday gift of all for some of these scumbags would be undermining the progress in getting Iran to abandon the aspects of its nuclear program that could be used to build a bomb. The key drivers of the move to impose more economic sanctions on Tehran effectively killing any diplomatic progress are Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, and Republican Senator Mark Kirk.  Sadly these two have like other influential committee members a disproportionate amount of clout when it comes to national affairs and both have serious issues that you won’t see in the state-corporate media. Menendez was not that long ago embroiled in a sex scandal involving his alleged frolicking with prostitutes and Kirk is a notorious lickspittle for right-wing Israeli intrests hellbent on a war with Iran. Such questions of character  and conflicts of interest never come up yet these Senators hold the potential to put us all back on the road to WW III.

Personal integrity and basic human decence is not the route to a successful long-term career in what P.J. O’Rourke once pegged as a “parliament of whores” and a complete disregard for representing home state constituents to wallow in the big money that sluices through D.C. like a tsunami of vomit is a prerequisite for a bright future in government. Good ole Mitch McConnell is a perfect example of this with his recent stabbing of the conservative base in the back over the October government shutdown in selling out for a lucrative dam project therefore leading to the coining of the term “Kentucky kickback” and outgoing Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, one of the most corrupt men to ever sit in the Senate will be swimming in lobbying money for eternity. Whoring oneself out while allowing the country to be strip-mined economically and the military sent off as defacto mercenaries to the highest foreign bidder punches a member of congress’s ticked for life. It is better than winning Powerball because it also has mega-perks as well.

Then there is a penchant for deviance that would make one controllable through blackmail, for Louisiana Senator David Vitter’s diaper fetish and spot on the D.C. Madame’s client list is always an enticement to take the graft. The legislative body is chock a block with perverts and sex fiends, hell only yesterday it was announced that Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee was arrested on child pornography charges. It is truly a legitimate question given the extent of the NSA spying capabilities as well as its vast network of foreign and domestic contractors whether the data is being used for monitoring the sexual proclivities and deviance of elected officials for reasons of control. Democrat John Edwards, once a vice presidential candidate was brought low after stumbling into a honeypot that produced a love child while his wife was suffering from cancer, destroying his image forever. Self-proclaimed sheriff of Wall Street Eliot Spitzer the former Governor of New York was brought down shortly after writing an op ed piece in the Washington Post excoriating the Bush administration for enabling the predatory lenders who contributed to the 2008 economic collapse. One has to wonder exactly what sort of information that has been scooped up on the current array of influential politicians, for example Senator Lindsey Graham who pegs the gay-dar meter every time he opens his mouth and is the most visible and recalcitrant shill for war, torture and the disemboweling of the Constitution. It has already been revealed that the NSA is monitoring pornography habits of so called radicals but if they are truly gathering up everything as commandant Keith Alexander brags would that not also include such information that would be of immense value to political opponents and special interest groups. Former FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover was notorious for such practices and it would be naive not to believe that such things are not currently being done by the American Stasi.

This lamentable legislature has repeatedly proven one thing and that it does not serve the interests of the American people, rather it is more often than not their greatest enemy. They will soon slither out of Washington for an extended holiday break, yet one more taxpayer funded vacation for this bunch. They will party heavily until they return in January, not giving a rat's ass about desperate Americans who fight to survive on a daily basis due to the now half a decade economic malaise that shows no sign of abating. They will laugh and eat and drink and fornicate, patting themselves on the backs for their splendid jobs and attending holiday bashes where they will rub elbows with more campaign donors stuffing their holiday stockings with more graft. The best that Americans can hope for is that they do not manage to further destroy their lives or start another war before they leave. Come January the wrecking crew will return, tanned and fat and happy, their war chests filled to the brim with ill-gotten gains to continue their looting spree, continue to enable the surveillance state and send Americans off to die in foreign wars of choice while their own children will never even have to bother serving in the military because mommy and daddy are set for life thanks to their ability to act as leeches upon the backs of U.S. taxpayers.

I mean where does it end? How much is enough?

The Least Surprising Rescue of Humanity EVER

To television addled American simpletons it was the stuff of James Bond and Jason Bourne cliffhangers. To those of us who understand the depth of the systemic rot it was must more of the same political theater. As the Armageddon clock ticked down, the state media shrilly warning of imminent disaster as the crisis du jour that was the raising of the debt ceiling (aka increasing the limit on the national credit card) approached the point of no return there was a breakthrough in negotiations to save the day. This afternoon the compatible scoundrels in the Senate negotiated the deal to end the phony calamity for a couple of more months (and then it all starts over much to the delight of the corporate-state media) and to wrap it all up in the fuzzy red and blue blanket of “bipartisanship” – oh it is so precious to live in a land where we can just all get along isn’t it? The looter class wins again as if there was any doubt and the Barack Obama administration, the criminal congress and the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington have hammered that home repeatedly, like the blow of the captive bolt pistol between the eyes of the first sheep down the steel chute.

There will be champagne corks popping from Wall Street to Martha’s Vineyard to The Hamptons or whatever tony digs are inhabited by our ruling elite. The rest of this is only a formality, the luminescent orange drunkard John Boehner has capitulated and the intransigent tea party factions in the House of Representatives, duped and sold out again by leadership can just go and suck their thumbs and cry softly into their pillows along with the Zamboni Cowboy Ted Cruz, The Club For Growth, Jim DeMint and the rest of the fascistic tax chiselers with their Nazi style loyalty pledges. I found it humorous that the dyspeptic old bastard John McCain even relished giving good old Teddy a swift kick in the balls when he gloated that “This has been one of the most shameful chapters I’ve seen here” – take it from McCain who is the President Pro Tempore of “shameful” political behavior. By the time that it is morning in America on Thursday the 17^th the bipartisan rulers will have once again succeed in yoking the slaves and delivering them to the man.

Thankfully this farce is over at least in terms of the media coverage, there is not much worse than having to endure the teleprompter reading big breasted bimbos with the thousand yard stares weighing in on economic issues. Nor anything more nauseating than the talking heads for either supposed side of this mockery of all that this once great country was supposed to stand for. Let them all go and find some corpse to hump for maximum ratings ala Nancy Grace or the next celebrity scandal, missing teenage blonde girl or intrepid and loyal pet saves owner tale. At least until the next round of the ‘debt crisis’ slated to kick off in early 2014 before the nation’s Christmas trees are taken down. As for the worthless and corrupt Congress, there is already much anticipation over the ever diligent Darrell Issa convening a tribunal over the closing of the World War Two Memorial which should be open before that oily gasbag, the richest man in the House of Representatives can call his first witness. As H.L. Mencken once famously remarked – “Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage”, it may be time to buy futures in bananas.

Patriot Act Creator Seeks to Slay His Monster

It is the most fascistic piece of law since Hitler’s enabling act. It is the stuff of which tyranny is made. The granting of free reign to the state and its agents to spy, arrest and disappear critics and foes and to justify it all under fighting a very vaguely defined “terrorism”. In an Orwellian fashion that completely suits its name the USA PATRIOT Act was sold to fear-stricken Americans, reeling from the September 11, 2001 attacks under the guise of keeping them safe. As the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. The law is the very cornerstone of the modern fascist USA and all of the evils and abuses of the state are dependent upon it. There must be a concerted effort to repeal or otherwise nullify this abomination while the news of the NSA Stasi and its growing list of transgressions against liberty are still able to elicit outrage and protestation.

The enabling act was rammed through congress in the immortal words of General George S. Patton “like shit through a tin horn”, many didn’t even bother to read it. Some who could have opposed it, the at the time Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Judiciary Committee head Patrick Leahy were sent anthrax letters, the envelopes ridiculously and crudely made up to cast aspersions on Muslims, a national scapegoat in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. “DEATH TO AMERICA”, “DEATH TO ISRAEL” and “ALLAH IS GREAT” were among the comments contained in the letters. The message was sent that there would be no opposition to the post-9/11 transformation of The United States of America into The Homeland. The culprits behind the letters have to this day never been sufficiently identified with the exception of the official government patsy, a former Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins who conveniently ended up dead while under investigation. But this is a long and complex story for another time. The point is that the message was received that the USA PATRIOT Act would be the law of the land – forever.

Times do however change and the glimpse into the darkest bowels of the national surveillance state thanks to the revelations of government contractor Booz Allen’s former employee Edward Snowden has allowed for a small window of opportunity. The chink in the juggernaut’s armor may be the last chance to exploit an opening against a hydra what will quickly reconfigure and to fight for changes that will establish accountability and shine light upon secrecy.  While tea party Republicans are currently being vilified by the establishment over the government shutdown and the entrenched opposition to raising the limit on the national credit card it was one Justin Amash, a Michigan Congressman who recently gathered enough support to send the warning shot across the bow of Leviathan with his LIBERT-E act that would have effectively defunded the NSA state voyeurs. This sent the establishment hacks, in a bipartisan manner that united Pelosi and Boehner, Cantor and Hoyer, Reid and McConnell to circle the wagons to defend their financial benefactors within the police state who keep them elected.

While congress has been holding hearings and parading the heads of the NSA surveillance machine, primarily General Keith Alexander a delusional megalomaniac who is infatuated by Star Trek and serial perjurer James Clapper in front of panels it has all been lip service. Just another one of the imperial dog and pony shows scheduled to provide the sheeple with the illusion that they actually live in a functioning democracy – they don’t.

So it is encouraging when someone like Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner who was responsible for the USA PATRIOT Act to come out and try to drive a stake through the heart of the monster that he himself was instrumental in creating. According to a story in The Guardian, Sensenbrenner has had enough of the wanton abuse of what was at least in his mind intended to be a legitimate program to prevent catastrophes like the September 11, 2001 attacks from happening. He was particularly galled by reports that government goons at the NSA were using secretive and highly sophisticated surveillance tools to spy on former spouses and lovers. Sensenbrenner is working on the USA Freedom Act, a nice jab at the duplicitous newspeak of the American fascist Magna Carta. I excerpt from the Guardian piece:

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.

It seeks to limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects; to end "secret laws" by making courts disclose surveillance policies; to create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests; and to allow companies to disclose how many requests for users' information they receive from the USA. The bill also tightens up language governing overseas surveillance to remove a loophole which it has been abused to target internet and email activities of Americans.

Many lawmakers have agreed that some new legislation is required in the wake of the collapse in public trust that followed Snowden's disclosures, which revealed how the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.

In July, a temporary measure to defund the NSA bulk collection programme was narrowly defeated in a 217 to 205 vote in the House, but Sensenbrenner said the appetite for greater privacy protections had only grown since.

"Opinions have hardened with the revelations over the summer, particularly the inspector general's report that there were thousands of violations of regulations, and the disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses or significant others, which was very chilling," he told the Guardian in an interview.

Instead, the main opposition to Sensenbrenner and Leahy's twin-pronged effort is likely to come from the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, who is supportive of the NSA but who has proposed separate legislation focusing on greater transparency and checks rather than an outright ban on bulk collection.

Sensenbrenner and other reformers have been scathing of this rival legislative approach, calling it a "fig leaf" and questioning the independence of the intelligence committee. "I do not want to see Congress pass a fig leaf because that would allow the NSA to say 'Well, we've cleaned up our act' until the next scandal breaks," he said.

Additionally he is calling for the prosecution of Obama’s Stasi commandant James Clapper for lying to congress about the extent of the NSA’s warrantless collection of the telephone records of millions of law abiding Americans. Again, I excerpt from the Guardian story:

"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution," said the congressman.

Clapper has apologised for the incident, but reformers expect a fierce backlash to their proposals to rein in his powers in future. "I anticipate a big fight, and Senator Feinstein has already basically declared war," said Sensenbrenner. "If they use a law like Senator Feinstein is proposing, it will just allow them to do business as usual with a little bit of a change in the optics."

He is absolutely correct, Feinstein is one of the most disgustingly corrupt and two-faced member of a loathsome congress as well as a perfect example of why the legislative branch is only slightly less popular than genital herpes. There will be fierce resistance at any attempt to derail the big money gravy train of surveillance, domestic oppression and militarism and Feinstein, the impenetrable firewall of cellulite will be a reliable bulwark for the fascist state. Any reforms or restraints of these cancerous surveillance programs will be a huge struggle and the state-corporate media along with the usual foreign lobbies will go after their opponents with extreme prejudice. There will be some cosmetic changes out of the need to preserve the smiley face of friendly fascism but any real change will be painful, slow and costly. Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com provided his usual on the mark commentary in his most recent column about the very subject of reigning in the surveillance colossus entitled NSA ‘Reform’: The Limits of Legislation. I excerpt the following from Raimondo:

“Furthermore, I would add, the success of this phony "reform" effort is virtually assured, since the conditions that led to the NSA’s usurpation of the Constitution have yet to be ameliorated, or even widely understood.

The official response to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as reported by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others has been, as Greenwald puts it: "THE TERRORISTS!!!" Twelve years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, an entire generation has grown up in the shadow of endless war, and yet waving the bloody shirt is still effective enough to ward off attempts to rein in the Surveillance State. That’s because hanging over even the most convinced civil libertarian in the Senate is the looming question of what happens if another 9/11-type attack occurs, perhaps on an even greater scale. In that event, if the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act passes – an unlikely outcome, see below – won’t its supporters be blamed for purportedly blinding the NSA to the next incoming threat?”

The establishment always holds the trump card – the control of their media to propagandize and brainwash the lemmings into submission with their never ending supply of alerts, plots, attacks and swarthy Muslim fiends. They hate us for our freedom will be the message repeatedly hammered home by the disinformation organs of the state – and few will ever stop to realize that we truly are no longer as free as it is advertised. We will never live in a free country again as long as the decidedly anti-American USAPATRIOT Act is allowed to stand and the ongoing militarization of the police permitted to continue unopposed.  The deck is stacked against those who believe in the principles upon which this country was established and they are few in number compared to their fellow Americans whose idea of a crisis would be running out of cheese dip in the middle of Dancing With the Stars.