Bob Owens“Ace” at Ace of Spades has built one of the more successful political blogs on a balanced combination of snark, community-building (who else can can boast of a community that proudly/ironically calls themselves “morons?”) and very insightful observations that a lot of folks simply miss.
Last night, I read (twice) a post he wrote called Snowden’s Looking a Little Dodgy, which was written in regards to the stories surrounding NSA leaker Edward Snowden that has been dominating the news cycle for the past few days. I’d suggest that you read it all and think over it’s ramifications.
The government must have a good reason for all of this. We don’t know what that reason is, but you’d have to be some kind of wild-eyed Birther type to think that a cover story that makes no sense at all is worth asking a few questions about.
So what I’m worried about here is that this Snowden doesn’t know what he’s talking about and has overhyped his disclosures, and that, in the coming days, we’ll find out that PRISM is less and less than he originally claimed it was. And then, the Institutional Class, having rubbished NSA-gate as also “akin to Birtherism,” will then take the IRS scandal to also be akin to Birtherism, and the EPA’s shellacking conservative groups with hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for FOIA requests while freely providing them to liberal groups will be taken as akin to Birtherism, and suspicions about the James Rosen matter will be akin to Birtherism, and so on.
I am always fearful about seizing upon weak evidence especially when we have so much strong evidence — because mark my words, if the NSA scandal peters out, this will be the only scandalthe Institutional Class will deign to discuss, and will categorize all other scandals as “like the so-called overblown NSAscandal.”
There is a distinct possibility Snowden’s story is being hyped by the Administration itself to divert us away from the real scandals—the joint ATF/EPA/FBI/IRS/OSHA/etc. harassment of Tea Party activists to cripple them organizations and prevent them from affecting the 2012 elections as they did the 2010 elections, for example—that should see the Obama Administration forced out of office.
The NSA scandal may be much ado about policy without criminality, distracting us from the real scandal an Administration that may have criminally abused their power across multiple Executive Branch agencies in order to effectively “steal” an election.
How do we know that the IRS (and I’m using that term as a loose identifier; it is in no way limited to just the IRS) scandal is where the fire is under all the smoke? By the Administration’s dogged determination to completely bury the issue and not give one inch.
Rep. Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, told a legal policy conference on Wednesday that his investigators still don’t know who inside the Obama administration first told IRS agents to aggressively target right-wing groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
But, he said, he and his Republican colleagues have confirmed the partisan program did not originate in the agency’s Cincinnati, Ohio office – something Democrats have claimed.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has described the IRS’s ‘activity in Cincinnati’ as ‘line IRS employees in Cincinnati improperly scrutinizing 501(c)(4) [tax-exempt] organizations.’
‘We know it [the targeting] didn’t originate in Cincinnati,’ Camp said. ‘We still don’t know who did originate this.’
‘We have a lot of work to do,’ he told The Hill. ‘We’re not anywhere near being able to jump to conclusions. And there are a lot more people we have to talk to,’
But recent indications are that officials in Washington, either inside the IRS or higher up in the administration, had a hand in directing the activity of those Cincinnati agents.
We know, for a fact, that Tea Party groups were targets by multiple executive branchagencies for harassment and intimidation, and so we know on a logical level that orders for this coup d’etat camp from within the West Wing of the White House.
Forcing the media and Congress to focus on this scandal at the exclusion of everything else they would rather focus our attention on, is the only chance we have to get to the bottom of what can only be described as a direct assault on the electoral process by a sitting President.
Let me be very clear: Barack Obama would not be the current President of the United States if he had not directed executive branch agencies to criminally abuse their power in a broad conspiracy to target the Tea Party groups which decimated the Democrats in the House in the 2010 mid-term elections.This conspiracy was a frontal assault on the Constitution. Let’s force them to treat this plot as the crime it so clear is, and not just a political “scandal.”
The way the media is handling this Snowden affair seems to follow the same pattern they use to handle all the false flags. Set someone up to be targeted. Have FOX and CNN go on about it 24/7. Bring in Anderson Cooper to do an exclusive interview – in this case, with Glenn Greenwald. Have Wolf Blitzer do segments on the “suspect’s” girlfriend & show videos of her dancing. Interview the father talking about his son (He’s very nice, shy..”). Expose details of his education, career moves, etc. Ask about how his mother is holding up. Bring up the idea of killing him with drones. It is beginning to reek of another scam. Most likely a diversion – as this article points out.
So, it would have been better to keep most Americans in the dark and not let them know of Snowden’s revelations?
They’ve only published 5 out of 41 pages of the Power Point, so let’s see where this leads with more info comiong out this week.
The Guardian is doing this right, publish some, let corrupt officials lie and deny, then publish some more exposing the lies.
Greg,…I agree with that…lets let it ride out….but also “verify” as we go…not totally trusting either side here….JUST THE FACTS…lets see where the chips fall..
Yesterday the lame stream media breathlessly reported that ousted former acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller and Lois “Fifth Amendment” Lerner have received death threats. Needless to say, the media, including the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post have jumped on this diversion. It reminds me of the false claims Nancy Pelosi and her coherts made about Tea Party name-calling.
Hmmm
I beg to differ. These 2 disclosures are directly linked. The common link is that they both totaly ignore and there violate the Constitution. Specifically the 4th amendment is completely shredded. Also the first amendment is breached because those involved where issued gag orders. Orders which themselves are illegal because they were in fact forcing civilains to break the law by NOT disclosing an ongoing criminal activity.
These both raise massive and I mean massive national security issues above and beyond the civil rights violations. It is now clear that the 2 companies behind much of the hardware and software installed to spy on America are both israeli. Both of these israeli companies have direct links to both the Mossad and israeli military intelligence. If you all don’t think that having a foreign power holding the encription keys (and therefore complete access) to our entire DHS communication and spying apparatus as perhaps the worst breach of security in US History you are nuts.
This of course goes a long way toward explaining the bizzare behavior of the Congress and the White House. No matter what israel does wrong, murder, terrorism, war crimes (some against the US military), toture, etc. etc. etc. our “leaders” keep voting for more and more and more direct support of everything israel does-no matter what. Clearly the israelis have been using this spying network to black mail US officials for at least a decade. However the fact that these 2 israeli companies that have direct ties to the Mossad essentially “run” our spy networks has been public knowledge for almost 10 years. And yet our “leaders” say and do nothing about it……
Naturally only the most naive among us believe that the israelis limit their black mail to politicans and their spying to the government. They are using all this data to move entire world markets in their favor. The people of the United States via totally corrupted and criminal members of our government have spent hundreds of Billions of dollars building the most advanced spy network in history……for israel. it is not Muslims that are America’s terrorist threat today, it is now and always has been israel.
lame stream media…toooooo funny !!!!
I highly doubt that the dictator in chief would use the NSA scandal as a way to cover up some Tea party thing in the IRS. The Tea Party means nothing to him. Who cares. The Tea Party is the Republican party now and are thus controlled.
This is just to make the people hate their government so bad that the government in the U.S. falls and the people go into civil unrest so they can bring in the new Zionist king. It’s all in the Protocols of Zion. The more scandals the better and the more scandals the quicker they can finish what they’ve started.