Police Escalate in Ferguson: Begin Arresting Reporters

Welcome to Obamastan. The aggressive actions of militarized police shock troops  in Ferguson, Missouri are entering the fourth day of operations and things are escalating. In addition to flooding the area with armed to the teeth, jacked up state police goons with their armored vehicles and automatic rifles news reporters are now being harassed and arrested. What is this, a banana republic? Obama's war on journalism long ago passed the level of former White House paranoid Richard M. Nixon and now with dear leader having set such a fine example the police are taking the war on the press to the streets. The arrests came as the police fired wooden and rubber bullets and unleashed tear gas, a chemical weapon on protesters.

According to a Guardian story  entitled "Ferguson police fire teargas and rubber bullets at Michael Brown protesters":

Heavily armed police in Missouri fired teargas and rubber bullets to force hundreds of protesters out of the centre of Ferguson on Wednesday, as the crackdown on demonstrations over the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old intensified on their fourth night.

Dozens of officers, some carrying assault rifles, advanced with a pair of armoured trucks on the young and predominantly African American crowd, after two glass bottles were thrown at their lines from a largely peaceful protest against the shooting of Michael Brown by a city policeman.

 Demonstrators, who for hours had sniper rifles trained on them while they protested with their hands up as an emblem of peaceful protest, complained that they were subjected to military-style tactics as they fled through gas-filled residential side-streets.

Police clearing the main drag of the St Louis suburb also arrested two reporters, including one from the Washington Post, one of America's most distinguished newspapers. Marty Baron, its editor, condemned the arrest as "an assault on the freedom of the press to cover the news". A camera crew from al-Jazeera America said they were shot by rubber bullets.

Police in Ferguson have become increasingly hostile towards the press but the imagery and reports of the militarized crackdown continue to seep out, thanks largely due to the new era of cellphone cameras and social media. One of the reporters arrested was Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post who provides a first hand account of the incident:

An officer with a large weapon came up to me and said, “Stop recording.”

I said, “Officer, do I not have the right to record you?”

He backed off but told me to hurry up. So I gathered my notebook and pens with one hand while recording him with the other hand.

As I exited, I saw Ryan to my left, having a similar argument with two officers. I recorded him, too, and that angered the officer. As I made my way toward the door, the officers gave me conflicting information.

One instructed me to exit to my left. As I turned left, another officer emerged, blocking my path.

Go another way,” he said.

As I turned, my backpack, which was slung over one shoulder, began to slip. I said, “Officers, let me just gather my bag.” As I did, one of them said, “Okay, let’s take him.”

Multiple officers grabbed me. I tried to turn my back to them to assist them in arresting me. I dropped the things from my hands.

“My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.”

That was when I was most afraid — more afraid than of the tear gas and rubber bullets.

 As they took me into custody, the officers slammed me into a soda machine, at one point setting off the Coke dispenser. They put plastic cuffs on me, then they led me out the door.

The reporter's full account is at the Washington Post website: "In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest".

The Obama years have made it pretty damned obvious that the Constitution no longer applies in America. Now we have heavily armed police thugs arresting reporters in a clear violation of the first amendment. It is just the latest skirmish in the war on the freedom of the press, an institution that is being rendered obsolete. Lowery's account states, he was not only arrested but also assaulted by the bullies in uniform. Washington Post editor Martin Baron called the arrests "an assault on the freedom of the press to cover the news". Maybe this will finally provide the wake up call that is needed to generate public outrage before an "emergency" situation turns the entire country into a miltarized police zone.

Obama was sufficiently troubled over events in Ferguson to temporarily consult with his corrupt and vicious hatchet man Attorney General Eric Holder. But it will quickly be back to the links and schmoozing with the deep-pocketed Democratic party donors at Martha's Vineyard as soon as he covers his ass by pretending to actually care.

Report: Obama's NSA Stasi Destroying Free Press in USA

President Barack Obama's Nixonian war on journalism received an ironic seal of approval today in a joint report issued by watchdog groups Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union that points out the obvious in that the very basis of the First Amendment, a free press is well on the way to extinction in The Homeland. The Founding Fathers understood that it was imperative to establish that most important check on the government to restrain the corruption of entrenched power and the ability of journalists to be able to inform the populace of what elected officials were up to at any given time is the cornerstone upon which a free society and a healthy democracy rests. Obama and the rest of the greatest enemies that the American people have faced in US history - a venal and thoroughly rancid gaggle of  crooks, liars, perverts, gangsters and prostitutes in the US Congress along with a judicial system that has been sold to the highest bidder -  loathe the very concept of a free and unfettered press and have arrayed in 2014 to snuff it out lest it ever challenge their mounting crimes against the republic.

The HRW-ACLU report is entitled "With Liberty to Monitor All" (subtitled How Large-Scale US Surveillance is Harming Journalism, Law, and American Democracy) is just the latest example of how decades of political corruption, legal chicanery and an indolent, slothful and willfully ignorant populace have allowed this once great country to be stealthily destroyed from within, the very pillars of the foundation of a once free society eaten away as if by a ravenous army of Formosan termites. The report comes on top of over a year of leaks of documents on the programs and procedures of the unaccountable (and completely enabled by Congress) NSA that were procured by former government contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. The always fraudulent war on terror has from day one been a war on the American people and there are many within the Washington establishment who want to see him murdered or even worse - Obama probably has a hard on for the day that the targeting coordinates of the man will be delivered to him along with his orange juice and the morning kill list.

From an article on the report written by former Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin (he was rudely run out of town in 2009 when his "White House Watch" column no longer was exposing the lies of the Bush regime) over at the new online magazine The Intercept (you know that it won't be altered unlike stories at NBC) on the report I excerpt the following:

Even before the Snowden revelations, reporters trying to cover important defense, intelligence and counter-terrorism issues were reeling from the effects of unprecedented secrecy and attacks on whistleblowers.

 But newfound awareness of the numerous ways the government can follow electronic trails –  previously considered the stuff of paranoid fantasy — has led sources to grow considerably more fearful.

 “It used to be that leak investigations didn’t get far because it was too hard to uncover the source, but with digital tools it’s just much easier, and sources know that,” said Washington Post contributor Barton Gellman, one of the 46 journalists interviewed for the survey.

Sources are “afraid of the entire weight of the federal government coming down on them,” New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer is quoted as saying. “The added layer of fear makes it so much harder. I can’t count the number of people afraid of the legal implications [of speaking to me].”

Jonathan Landay, a McClatchy Newspapers reporter covering national security and intelligence, told Human Rights Watch that some sources have grown reluctant to talk to him about anything, “even something like, ‘Please explain the rationale for this foreign policy.’ That’s not even dealing with classified material; that’s just educating readers.”

Methods reporters use to avoid surveillance are time-consuming, difficult, off-putting  to sources — and ultimately futile, the surveyed journalists reported. “If the government wants to get you, they will,” Washington Post reporter Adam Goldman said.

But when journalists can’t do their jobs, the effect is felt well beyond the profession alone. Insufficiently informed journalism can “undermine effective democratic participation and governance,” the report states.

It is actually one hell of a lot easier to dispense with freedom of the press these days even without the heavy hand of the government applying the garrote and giving it a hard good twist. The top "reporters" and "news" people in America -thanks largely to the massive media consolidation spree that then President Bill Clinton set into motion with the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996 - are largely comprised of a pack of power-suckling careerists, rank sycophants, sleazy on the payroll government shills, self-obsessed celebrity pundits and ghoulish electronic ambulance chasers like the pride of CNN, Nancy Grace.  

It is very simple to manufacture consent in America and Nazi propaganda czar Paul Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the 'most trusted talking heads in US media' these days. Take  for example the all-star lineup of the Sunday morning masters of electronic fellatio including the ever scummy David Gregory of NBC's Meet the Press, longtime political insider Bob Schieffer of CBS's Face the Nation, the dynamic duo at CNN being former AIPAC lobbyist Wolf Blitzer and that insipid blathering sow Candy Crowley, former Clinton flack George Stephanopoulos over at ABC's this week with neocon liar and PNAC founder William Kristol now riding shotgun and of course FOX's Chris Wallace. When the carcass of this rapidly collapsing empire is one day hauled upon the autopsy table by future historians to determine where it all went wrong a generous smattering of video from the ongoing beltway circle jerk on the Sabbath will likely be a key part of the study. As for the rest of the liars, snakes and bunco artists in the corrupt state-corporate media there are more to name than there is the time and space. Suffice it to say that in America, nothing sells quite as cheaply as integrity - just tune into MSNBC some night around the time that Rachel Maddow comes on to whore herself out to provide cover for the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Obama administration.

For the rest there is the NSA - the ultimate trump card of the fascist state and the perfect apparatus to suppress and target honest journalists trying to make a living and whistleblowers who attempt to get the truth out about the massive and metastasizing cancer within the government and every other prominent industry in America these days. They are the ultimate enemies of the state, at least the gangster state as it exists today - forget about al Qaeda, ISIS or even the current Emanuel Goldstein/New Hitler that is Russian President Vladimir Putin, the target of the new "two minutes hate" beamed into the living rooms of television addicted Americans 24/7. If we lived in a decent society with a functional poltical system - WE DON'T - The HRW-ACLU report would provide a serious warning to Americans that it is all slipping away and unless they wake up soon they will be as startled as the sheep when they round that final corner in the gleaming maze of steel chutes to confront the captive bolt pistol and their destiny.

But there is always another season of Dancing With the Stars upcoming and the NFL's preseason slate kicks off next week. Bread and circuses baby!

Goebbels shrugged.

LINKS to the report:

Human Rights Watch 

ACLU

Greenwald Touts Imminent Release of Shocking NSA Story

Having successfully forced the hand of the US power structure in returning to America despite threats of his arrest and imprisonment - where he likely would have been tortured - Glenn Greenwald has been hitting the media circuit to speak and promote his book "No Place to Hide". This really must burn the Obama regime although they due to their own arrogance and foolhardy recklessness have other fish to fry with percolating foreign opportunities for regime change in Russia, Syria and now Iraq but having Greenwald hauled in by government thugs and disappeared into the bowels of our massive prison system would have just been too much bad publicity - especially in an election year.

Greenwald has let slip that a new story, with shocking details as to who exactly is being spied on by the NSA Stasi and their bogus "anti-terrorist" mass surveillance and data-mining programs is "imminent". In an interview with FOX News in which the host Sheppard Smith continued to pepper Greenwald with talking points by protectors of the fascist state who still peddle the hogwash that former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower being some sort of sinister Russian operative and the most recently "why doesn't he come home to face the judicial system" or to as the insidious Skull and Bones pedigreed US Secretary of State John Kerry puts it "man up". Greenwald was attacked by the sleazy anti-Muslim bigot Bill Maher on HBO over the weekend along with the media's  go-to veteran "activist" Paul Reickhoff who accused Snowden of helping "terrorists" and posed the same question. Of course any fair trial of Snowden is a joke and only food for the lemmings because he would be disappeared into some military prison and tortured, never to be heard from again except for the obligatory show trial -where under the archaic and anti-American 1917 Espionage Act that Obama and Holder so adore - he would not even be able to defend himself. Greenwald continues to emphasize this but it will not resonate with Americans who are historically ignorant of all but the state sanctioned indoctrination of exceptionalist glory.

Waiting for Greenwald's big revelations, originally promised by the Pulitzer Prize winner in a GQ interview "The Man Who Knows Too Much" as well as in another interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now has been an exercise in frustration. It does appear from Greenwald's reference to "imminent" that something big is finally, after all of this time coming.  For reference I excerpt from the GQ article:

We published the first article [about the NSA collecting Verizon phone records] while I was in Hong Kong last June and won’t stop until we’re done. I think we will end the big stories in about three months or so [June or July 2014]. I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. 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.

As well as from Democracy Now:

AMY GOODMAN: And the document you include from October 3rd, 2012, about the NSA targeting of, quote, "radicals"?

GLENN GREENWALD: You know, one of the interesting things is, obviously, people are very aware of the COINTEL abuses. I know you’ve had people on your show who actually participated in the break-in of the FBI and took the documents that unveiled that program. People are aware of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, "threats." That’s the nature of power, is to regard anybody who’s a threat to your power as a broad national security threat. And a lot of times people will say, "We don’t yet have the reporting in this case that shows that kind of abuse." And a lot of that reporting is still reporting that we’re working on and that I promise you is coming.

I suspect that the story will divulge what many have long suspected in that political dissidents, activists and any who represent a threat to the new post-September 11, 2001 order of fascism at home and militarism and murder abroad will be the ones who are targeted. I also suspect that journalists will be among the targets, there was a program that was revealed several years back FIRSTFRUITS that specifically targeted members of the media. Washington's Blog recently ran a series of pieces based on interviews conducted with pre-Snowden NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake and I except at length from the first of the pieces:

But after 9/11, NSA instead adopted the competing “Stellar Wind” system, which didn’t protect Americans’ privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.

THOMAS DRAKE: Part of what I discovered is that part of the surveillance system, part of the Stellar Wind system – and that’s an umbrella term in itself – there were offshoots of that.

It metastasized. It grew like a cancer on the body politic.

One of the things that was done was [along the lines of]: “You know what? We’ve got to make sure” (because they were paranoid) “we’ve got to make sure that this stuff doesn’t get out … oh yeah, the press. Let’s violate the Fourth Amendment and just monitor the press.”

The whole story of that has not come out.

There was a program called “First Fruits”. They’ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]

And that First Fruits program was a cutout which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. “Let’s just pipe off from all” that is involving designated [reporters] … or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists.

So you’re targeting actual newspapers. You’re targeting media outlets.

And you’re monitoring – on a persistent basis – their communications.

The surveillance of reporters and news organizations who can't simply be bought off like the plethora of dishonest and dishonorable scumbags who are eager to serve the state for money, celebrity and inclusion at the right events, dinners and cocktail parties of the Beltway elite is a given and while Obama has escalated it the programs had their roots under Bush-Cheney and even before. Obama and the longtime fixer Eric Holder have waged a war against journalism that is unprecedented in the history of this country or at least since Woodrow Wilson's filthy Espionage Act was passed. Let's hope that Greenwald's "imminent" story finally provides a wake up call that can no longer be ignored despite the thorough corruption of the domestic "mainstream" media.

NSA Reporting Wins Pulitzer Prize to Dismay of Fascists

Fanatical Long Island Congressman Peter King, a supporter of the terrorist wing of the Irish Republican Army erupted on Monday in yet another of his trademark mouth-foaming tirades. Congressman King, the pride of New York's Second Congressional District - whose residents insist on screwing America by returning this lunatic piece of crap to office - threw a temper tantrum directed at that hated concept of freedom of the press in denouncing the Pulitzer Prize being awarded for reporting on the unconstitutional rampage of the NSA Stasi. Launching into a Twitter frenzy, King called the prize bestowed upon The Guardian and the Washington Post (most definitely not the neocon oped page sewer of idiocy) a "disgrace" and practically spat upon the "Snowden enablers" whose work revealed this cancer on democracy.  In referring to the famous and now fully vindicated former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in such a manner of derision obscures the fact that the real "enablers" of the true American hero are King, Mike Rogers, Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the criminals in high places who have constantly and consistently violated their oaths to office in providing cover to the illegal NSA mass surveillance and data-mining programs as well as a myriad of other anti-American activities - such as torture.

It must be one big nasty bug crawling up King's big fat ass especially since former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald -who he and assorted other fascist swine like the right wing talk radio bound Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers. perjurer James Clapper and that fiendish little twerp former NSA/CIA head Michael Hayden have denounced as a traitor, a thief and other such terms that more accurately fit themselves - called their bluff and returned to the USA to accept his George Polk Award on Friday. Not a good day for those who continue to betray Americans but the best thing is that there isn't a thing that they can do about it other than to just eat shit. The scum is losing - at least in the court of world opinion although such a triumph of the freedom of the press is largely lost on an American populace immersed in the local crime story of a man blowing away his girlfriend in fucking South Africa and an underwater airplane. The honor is however progress and hopefully will only offer encouragement to others who will descend into the gutter where the scum like King and his minions wallow in order to fight them.

Honored along with Greenwald in his triumphant return to The Homeland were fellow journalists on the rogue state hit list Laura Poitras as well as Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. Now if he can just get to writing about the really good stuff like industrial espionage, blackmail, money laundering and other dark functions of "The Octopus" which the NSA is an integral part of as well as the private contractors that provide both a dodge from governmental accountability as well as plausible denial.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on the liberal news program Democracy Now,  broadcast today Greenwald and Poitras discussed both their ordeal as well as future plans. I excerpt from the transcript:

GLENN GREENWALD: We weren’t so worried that we weren’t willing to get on the plane. I mean, if we were really worried, we wouldn’t have come. There was no need for us to come. But we knew, certainly, that it was a risk.

I mean, I think the important thing to realize about this is that American national security officials and other officials in the government have deliberately created an environment where they wanted us to think there was a risk. They have very deliberately and publicly suggested that the journalism we were doing was a crime. They have advocated that we be arrested. They have had their favorite media figures openly speculate about the possibility that we would be. They detained my partner for nine hours. They announced that there was a terrorism investigation pending in the U.K., and they refused to give my lawyers any information at all about whether there was a grand jury investigation, whether there was an indictment under seal—very unusual behavior when dealing with these lawyers, in particular, who say that they can always get at least something.

So they wanted us to have this kind of uncertainty about whether or not they would take action upon our return to the U.S. That’s very clear. And it’s easy, I guess, to say it doesn’t seem likely that it will happen, but when those threats are being directed at you, you take them seriously. And so we did, but then, obviously, assessed that the risk was low enough, mostly because we didn’t think that they would be so counterproductive or self-destructive to do it, and were willing, therefore, to get on a plane and come back.

REPORTER: And those conversations about the indictment, how long—or if there was an indictment or grand jury out, how long did those conversations go on?

GLENN GREENWALD: We’ve been trying to get information from the government about whether or not we could safely return to the U.S. for at least four to five months. And originally, the government said that they were willing to have conversations about what that might entail, and then, ultimately, I guess, decided that they weren’t willing to have those conversations, because they just stopped returning calls and stopped giving any information. And so, they just expressly refused to say whether or not there were—whether there was a pending indictment under seal or whether or not we were the targets of a grand jury investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: Your trip isn’t over. It doesn’t just have to happen at the airport. What are you concerned about, for both Glenn and Laura? And, Laura, if you could describe how your experience coming through the airport today compared with your previous experiences?

LAURA POITRAS: Sure. I mean, you know, the other risk that I think that we face as journalists right now are the risk of subpoena, where the government subpoenas our material to try to get information about our source. And we know that the government has been using the border as a sort of legal no man’s land to get access to journalists’ materials. I mean, I’ve experienced that for six years, where I’ve been detained, interrogated and had equipment seized at the border, and never told, you know, for what reason that’s happening. So—

AMY GOODMAN: How many times have you been stopped?

LAURA POITRAS: You know, I’ve asked the government to answer that question, and they won’t tell me. I think close to 40 or more. I’ve got FOIAs out, and soon as I can get a precise count, I’ll certainly publish it. So, I mean, the risks of subpoena are very real. And as—you know, as you indicate, I mean, the fact that we’re here is not an indication that there isn’t a threat. We know there’s a threat. We know there’s a threat from what the government is saying in terms how they’re talking about this journalism, the journalism that we’re doing. And, I mean, the reason we’re here is because we’re not going to, you know, succumb to those threats.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your plans for the United States? Will you be staying here long? Glenn, will you be moving back? Laura, will you be moving back?

 GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, I think—you know, I think that this first step—I mean, since we didn’t know what today held, we haven’t been doing a lot of long-term thinking, because we had no idea what the outcome would be of our deplaning. But I think that once we got on the airplane this morning, it was a commitment not just to come back for this one time, but to come back whenever we want, which is our prerogative as American citizens. And it ought to be our right, not just to come back, but to come back without fear of that kind of harassment, to even have that enter our thought process.

So I don’t know what Laura’s long-term plans are, I mean, but for me, you know, I have a book coming out next month, and I want to be able to come to the U.S. to talk about the issues that it raises. I have a lot of journalistic colleagues here with whom I’m working. I want to be able to freely travel to work with them and work on stories in the United States and to talk about the things I think we need to be talking about. So I do think this sort of presages more visits to the U.S. for me.

Greenwald will continue to challenge the illicit authoritarian power structure, he has a book coming out soon that is entitled "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State" and if I were him I would use the opportunity to promote the book as heavily as possible and further dare the Obama-Holder regime to arrest him as the screeching from big government loving, warmongering Republican neocons grow louder as the 2014 midterm elections near. 

Maybe Americans can get lucky and that terrorist supporting sack of shit Peter King will have an aneurysm between now and November 4th.  

Obama's Move Now as Glenn Greenwald Returns to US

As he had previously stated he would, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald was going to force the issue and has now returned to the hallowed shores of The Homeland to accept his George Polk Award for his reporting on former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Mr. Greenwald, formerly of The Guardian whose new venture for First Look Media "The Intercept" arrived in New York on Friday along with fellow Polk Award winner Laura Poitras who has also been instrumental in exposing the anti-American, anti-Constitutional rampage of Obama's NSA Stasi which is yet another indignity heaped upon Barry the Narcissistic. Obama must be furious, his Ukrainian coup d'etat fiasco is imploding as the Europeans are starting to get antsy that their gas supplies are going to be cut off as a result of occupying deadbeat regime in Kiev not paying it's bills and the hated Putin is once again about to humiliate our idiotic commander in chief on the world stage. The US government should start buying KY Jelly in bulk thanks to the exploits of the Obama-Kerry team of unrivaled morons. 

Obama may not have been able to best Putin in Ukraine but he sure as hell can take it out on the now former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the indignity of the botched Obamacare rollout - so much for all of that demagogic horseshit from the Democrats about the "war on women". The buck never stops here in Obama's White House and while Sebelius will spend the next few days nursing the black and blue marks on her ass from being drop-kicked by her boss the appearance of Greenwald provides El Presidente with a dilemma.

Does Obama follow through on the demands of the authoritarian freaks, criminals in high places and outright fascists like House Intelligence Committee boss Mike Rogers, the strangely effeminate psychopathic former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden and the lunatic terrorist supporting Peter King, the pride of New York's 2nd Congressional District and have Greenwald arrested? It would be a way to show everyone who is really boss - being the Deep State/COG unelected rulers who are above Obama's pay grade that the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is serious but it would also reveal exactly what type of country that we really live in. Obama has likely been chafing at the bit to call for that JSOC assassination team or dialed up drone attack to extra-judicially murder Snowden and I personally suspect that a damned good part of his current reckless game of my dick is bigger than yours with Putin even at the risk of a nuclear war or even worse Russia and others dumping the dollar comes from the festering animosity over Putin's saving Snowden from being apprehended for torture, humiliation, a Stalinist style show trial and then execution and having to endure the Chinese water torture of the ongoing stories by Greenwald and Poitras exposing what Snowden took - and the best is yet to come.

So does Obama have Greenwald and maybe Poitras detained, harassed or arrested to avenge his damaged sense of self-esteem and whip out a shovel of bloody chunks of red meat to the fiends like Rogers and his ilk or does he for once practice some restraint. It is a damned good question because no matter how it is handled or justified anything that the US state does to Greenwald and/or Poitras (or David Miranda which would be a typical gangster move befitting a vengeful swine like Obama) would present Putin with the precious gift of being able to call out the rogue American state as exactly what is and what it spends all of it's time pretending not to be.

 Now is the time for the authoritarian scum in this country to put up or shut up.