Has anyone seen the movie "Eagle Eye"? It's a pretty good action flick starring Shia Lebouf. Spoiler alert for those that haven't seen it. The premise of the film is that the Pentagon has a computer that monitors every computer network in the country. The computer program decides to eliminate the leadership of the gov't (prez, vp, sec's of state etc) because they have become threatening to the constitution. The gov't has become tyrannical and the program takes it upon itself to replace the leadership. Now obviously I'm not calling for the elimination of our gov't leaders. Yet I couldn't help but think that the computer had the right idea. Our system of gov't has become tyrannical. They blatantly violate our laws and make no apologies about it. As the election of Obama has proved, it's irrelevant who ever is the head of the gov't. It's the whole damn system that is corrupt and a threat to our liberties. It's becoming increasingly clear that we need a full-scale revolution in this country. Paraphrasing our founding Fathers, when a system of gov't becomes tyrannical it is the duty of the citizens to demoish it and create a new one.

Thanks, Heru-ur, except I spelled egregious wrong.

Over on Firedoglake (Emptywheel) they are speculating about what the "Other Inteligence Activities" mentioned in the newly publicized report on wiretapping could be.

I wonder whether there is some relationship between those "other" activities and what Panetta was recently apprised of by his spooks. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be data mining from average US citizens all the way to media targets, political targets and ambassadors and diplomats here in embassies.

Just a guess at this point, but I suspect it has something to do with either: money trails (who funded YKW), blackmail (who knows about YKW and can they be silenced), or because of their obsession with a permanent Republican majority: political spying to thin the Democratic candidate pool. Not sure that worked.

I said it was buried in my paper, The Denver Post. Also I get two papers the other is the Greeley Tribune. Wasn't carried at all in that one. While the NY Times is an influential paper, the majority of the country neither reads or subscribes to it. So it's good it was on the front page, it's also irrelevant. I get so tired of the fucking game of gotcha that goes on constantly here. I can see if someone makes a major error and it needs to be corrected. But some of you people are so nit picky, it's not even funny. Get a life.

I can sense your frustration.

But you must have missed WinSmith's post. The reason we can torture, invade other countries for no valid reason, disrupt other countries politics with the CIA, bomb the hell out of innocent people with our newfangled drones, destroy the global economy because of our greed, and then cover up all these crimes against humanity, is because the USA is "exceptional."

I can't explain it! It must be something intuitive or you can ask WinSmith.

Lots of luck on educating Bernbart. I stopped subscribing today to the only good part of the NY Times. The crosswords. Because they have decided to ignore journalistic standards and just act as stenographers. They will be extinct soon, I hope! At least they provided good crosswords, but I can't allow one penny of mine to support such a dishonest publication.

Well, to speculate on that is a "target rich environment" as they military boys like to say.

It could deal with domestic spying in some way. It could deal with covert operations. It could deal with crimes I'm to dumb to think of. Hell, they might have satalites were they can watch people do the nasty in their own bedrooms! (never catch a Republican that way, they always are out somewhere doing it)

I hope this is not one of those deals where the information is withheld from the public because we are too sensitive to know the truth. And I hope it is not one of those deals were they keep it under wraps for 50 years --- I am too old to wait.

...this- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070804197.html - article in yesterday's Washington Post? It was buried someplace on their website. Did the mexicans use torture or "enhanced interrogation techniques"?

Addie: We're running out of bibles!
Moses: Well, then we got to get new ones!
Addie: Then let's get new ones!
Moses: We can pick some up in Great Bend.
Addie: Great Bend's the other way.
Moses: Well, we got to have bibles, don't we?
Addie: Let's see, now, we can veer down to Lucas, and we'll veer over to Wilson.
Moses: Veer off to Lorraine and Bushton. And we could veer off to Hoisington.
Addie: We'll just have to keep on veering, that's all.

-- "Paper Moon"
____________________________________________

Moses Pray is old-school con-man in the tradition of "The Music Man"'s Professor Harold Hill, or Lyle Lanley, the confidence man and shyster who sold a faulty monorail to Springfield in the episode "Marge vs. the Monorail".

And Obama, of course-- you saw that coming, right?

Not just Obama himself, obviously, but his entire cabinet and cadre of flacks and PR spinners; I may as well round out the pop culture references by citing "The Sting", with a dash of "Mission: Impossible".

The common denominator to all of the above, and an essential component of the confidence trickster's success, is the ability to move from venue to venue and make the appropriate fervent pitch without being hamstrung by fear of what will happen when the fraud finally catches up to the con.

Success depends on arranging things so that a Moment of Truth, or Reckoning, never happens.

It's impossible to judge the extent to which a given con artist is simply able to cynically and mechanically deliver a pitch with apparent fervor and sincerity, or whether the crook actually convinces him/herself that what they're spinning is sober truth. Ultimately, it's irrelevant; to paraphrase The Bard: the play's the thing, wherein I'll free the conscience of the king!

It's simply a professional skill to be able to utter staggering contradictions and hypocrisies as if one's hand were on one of those Bibles Moses is hawking, even when one's cumulative mendacity and prevarication is a matter of public record.

One of the consequences of limiting high office to narcissists is that they have just the requisite nerve and hubris to work the crowd while taking the calculated risk that they won't be exposed and reviled.

When the head of state confidence trickster turns up in foreign countries, especially the first time, it is to be expected that the rubes will greet him enthusiastically.

Sad to say, in general politicians have been quite successful in relying upon corporate media sycophancy and the strength of the collective Amerikan denial mechanism to keep the game going.

OK, I can't forego a last pop culture allusion: our elected misrepresentatives are almost always able to persuade a glazed and dazed citizenry that they're not the droids we're looking for...