for example the intel that Snowball apparently shared with the Chinese and Russian governments, which tends to get lost in the 4th-amendment hoo-haw. China and Russia are our two largest "cyberwarfare" foes, if not to say enemies, so any advantage Snowball and/or his handlers gave them takes the Obama administration down a few notches, which is what NSA-gate is all about as far as I can tell. Benghazi with an all-American face and fewer casualties, you might say.

muriel_volestrangler

(101,321 posts)

50. The targets whe should be aiming at are China and Russia, then?

Reply to ucrdem (Reply #45)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 06:45 AM

Jul 2013

You're saying that the purpose of this was to stop the American people being pissed off at Russia and China? That Snowden was controlled by one or both of those countries right from the start?

muriel_volestrangler

(101,321 posts)

49. Carlyle? The majority owner of Booz Allen Hamilton?

Reply to ucrdem (Reply #37)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 06:40 AM

Jul 2013

The Carlyle Group Has Made $2 Billion Off Of Booz Allen

In 2008, the Carlyle Group made a large $910 million investment to buy a majority stake in Booz Allen’s government consulting business. The deal saw Booz Allen’s big government advisory unit, which produced most of the firm’s revenue, split off from its corporate consulting group, on the eve of the financial crisis.

But Washington-based Carlyle, which has a long and successful history doing deals involving government contractors, has really made the Booz Allen deal work. It has been an amazing transaction for Carlyle. The private equity firm has made $2 billion in realized and unrealized profits on the Booz Allen Hamilton deal so far. Its $910 million investment is now worth $3 billion.

Carlyle’s acquisition of Booz Allen looked risky back in 2008, but Carlyle believed it could unlock value by separating the cash generating government advisory side of the business from the corporate consulting part of the company. Shares of Booz Allen fell by 3.6% in Monday morning trading after one of its employees, Edward Snowden, leaked information about a secret National Security Agency surveillance program.

Carlyle owns about two-thirds of Booz Allen, which earned $219 million in the year ending March 31, on revenues of $5.76 billion. In 2008, the year Carlyle bought the business, it made $18 million in profits on $3.6 billion in revenues.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/06/10/the-carlyle-group-has-made-2-billion-off-of-booz-allen/

Yeah, I can see that articles in Forbes about how Carlyle is making money hand over fist from contracts to spy on the American people is a successful diversion of attention from them.

NoOneMan

(4,795 posts)

23. HAHA

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:21 AM

Jul 2013

Frankly, I think that if we must be pissed about GG, we can be pissed about two things at once.

Response to rug (Original post)

Le Taz Hot This message was self-deleted by its author.

struggle4progress

(118,291 posts)

27. Well, sorry to hear it: some of us just hope you won't let the Koch front groups

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:24 AM

Jul 2013

encourage you to march over the edges of the cliffs

rug

(82,333 posts)

31. Who's fronting the NSA?

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #27)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:27 AM

Jul 2013

struggle4progress

(118,291 posts)

32. It's some fragment of the military-industrial complex, familiar since the Vietnam war or before:

Reply to rug (Reply #31)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:42 AM

Jul 2013

a big revolving-door of folk who wander back and forth between government posts and cushy private gigs

It sure looks like some of my least favorite folk are involved

Yeah, I think it's a frickin mess, but I've thought everything a frickin mess for decades and decades now

Glenn's libertarian agenda is to push the idea "Obama has a worse civil liberties record than Bush," in the hopes pure-hearted progressives will throw up their hands and vote for third-parties or just not vote

His constantly-outraged statements aren't factual enough to lead to an accurate analysis, and his preferred strategy IMO is to say "y'all should keep your eye on that pretty star there" while he points everybody in the direction of a cliff

rug

(82,333 posts)

33. I think we're smart enough to oppse NSA surveillance without becoming libertarians.

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #32)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:44 AM

Jul 2013

This need to strangle the messenger is perturbing.

struggle4progress

(118,291 posts)

38. I don't know whether you actually spend time talking to strangers about such issues off the internet

Reply to rug (Reply #33)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 01:04 AM

Jul 2013

but some of us do so regularly

In my experience DU can sometimes be a good source of information for such conversations, though it can also be a source of various mythologies that I consider harmful

And based on some conversations I've had, this doesn't seem to be a purely theoretical matter for me: the mythologies are floating around out there, and I suspect they've had some electoral consequences in my state in 2010 and 2012

Personally, I would like to have a Congress where I could sometimes go lobby as a citizen and find at least a few people who would listen to me, as has sometimes been the case in the past

Glenn is a propagandist, who pretends to discuss one topic while actually pushing unrelated memes, such as "One of the worst myths Democratic partisans love to tell themselves - and everyone else - is that the GOP refuses to support President Obama no matter what he does"

That sort of misleading crap doesn't help anybody think clearly about the actual dynamics of DC or what we need to do at the grassroots level to change it

rug

(82,333 posts)

40. There are plenty of propagandists to go around.

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #38)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 01:10 AM

Jul 2013

I do talk politics off DU and the one common denominator is that no one likes bullshit. I have not heard one single person defend the NSA surveillance program. I have not heard one single person mention Greenwald either.

There is some truth in what you say. There is a fair amount of general disgust out there. But that doesn't mean the NSA program needs to be defended. People will support the Democratic Party based on the truth of its positions, not on the spin of its positions.

muriel_volestrangler

(101,321 posts)

53. Why is that 'misleading crap'?

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #38)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 06:50 AM

Jul 2013

The figures are there in the article - the majority of House Republicans (including the Republican leadership) supported Obama on that amendment, while the majority of Democrats opposed him.

struggle4progress

(118,291 posts)

67. That the Republicans have adopted a strategy of trying to ensure that Mr Obama

Reply to muriel_volestrangler (Reply #53)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 02:59 PM

Jul 2013

could accomplish nothing whatsoever, with the aim of then complaining that he had not accomplished anything, has been widely discussed almost since Mr Obama first took office

The strategy aims at low-information voters and fails if becomes widely known to such voters, so the Republicans naturally noisily deny it when press coverage is likely, preferring to acknowledge it only in less visible circumstances. Glenn, in the quote I gave just upthread, unsurprisingly follows the Republican line that Republican obstructionism is a Democratic myth. But the strategy is actually quite well-documented today and has also be quite obvious for years to anyone following American politic: those who haven't at least seen some of the evidence for this just haven't been paying much attention IMO. Unfortunately, I can't provide years and years of evidence in a single post, but I provide a few links at the end of this post

The vote of the Amash amendment was pure theater, rather like the regular votes in Congress to ban flag-burning, which typically fail by a handful of votes. In such cases, the failure of the vote is pre-ordained, but the actual breakdown of who votes for it and who votes against it is determined by some complicated negotiation, as evidenced in this case by the ever-shifting totals during the actual vote. One learns precisely nothing from gross statistics here: for example, the apparently narrow 12-vote failure doesn't show that the amendment would have passed if one had persuaded 6 congressmen to vote differently -- what would have actually happened in that case is that about 6 others would have switched their votes the other way to prevent passage

GG doesn't really give his readers insight into this, of course. I suppose one could also carefully discuss the relative merits of the Amash amendment (which failed) and Pompeo amendment (which passed), but GG won't do that either

Rather, his aims are rhetorical: that's why he begins his rambling article with a sweeping denunciation of the "mythology" that Rs have been systematically obstructing Obama. GG has been at this particular game for a long time: for example, he has also constantly pushed the meme that the US failure to close GITMO should be laid at Obama's feet, ignoring the actual legislative history since Obama originally announced his closure intentions. In fact, GG's main interest in such matters has been to convince progressive readers that there's not much difference between Ds and Rs -- and so to encourage them to vote 3rd party or simply not vote

Democrats have rounded on revelations about a private dinner of House Republicans on inauguration day in 2009 in which they plotted a campaign of obstruction against newly installed president Barack Obama. During a lengthy discussion, the senior GOP members worked out a plan to repeatedly block Obama over the coming four years to try to ensure he would not be re-elected ...
Democrats condemn GOP's plot to obstruct Obama as 'appalling and sad'
Roger Draper book details how in 2009 senior Republican figures planned a campaign to bring Washington to a standstill
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Thursday 26 April 2012 16.21 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/26/democrats-gop-plot-obstruct-obama

... “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it” ... Vice President Biden told me that during the transition, he was warned not to expect any bipartisan cooperation on major votes. “I spoke to seven different Republican Senators who said, ‘Joe, I’m not going to be able to help you on anything,’ ” he recalled. His informants said McConnell had demanded unified resistance. “The way it was characterized to me was, ‘For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,’ ” Biden said ... David Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, met with his GOP counterpart, Jerry Lewis, to explain what Democrats had in mind for the stimulus and ask what Republicans wanted to include. “Jerry’s response was, ‘I’m sorry, but leadership tells us we can’t play,’ ” Obey told me. “Exact quote: ‘We can’t play’ ...
The Party of No: New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama
By Michael Grunwald
Aug. 23, 2012
http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/

... Republicans have made it clear that erecting hurdles for Mr. Obama is, if anything, their overriding legislative goal. There is no historical precedent for the number of cabinet-level nominees that Republicans have blocked or delayed in the Obama administration. Chuck Hagel became the first defense secretary nominee ever filibustered ...
Editorial
Malicious Obstruction in the Senate
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: March 28, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/malicious-obstruction-in-the-senate.html

NuclearDem

(16,184 posts)

34. Oh no! Not the Koch front groups!

Reply to struggle4progress (Reply #27)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:45 AM

Jul 2013

Dr. Strange

(25,921 posts)

66. No one expects the Koch front groups!

Reply to NuclearDem (Reply #34)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 11:03 AM

Jul 2013

Their chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency!
Among their chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to Glen Greenwald!

Logical

(22,457 posts)

35. Wow, brilliant logic! n-t

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 12:46 AM

Jul 2013

burnodo

(2,017 posts)

56. Brilliant satire

Reply to Logical (Reply #35)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 07:09 AM

Jul 2013

marions ghost

(19,841 posts)

59. That's how I'm taking it

Reply to burnodo (Reply #56)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 08:03 AM

Jul 2013

....the OP is ridiculing NSA defenders, who trash Greenwald and Snowden instead of facing the obvious truth of massive unregulated surveillance, which is kind of a stupid posture for smart people.

ANYone who supports NSA>>>Booz Allen>>>Carlyle group>>>Booshcheney..........

I mean, isn't it obvious whose side they are on (or even working for)? You can forgive the truly stupid & Fuxed up. No reason to forgive smart people. They do it deliberately.

Apophis

(1,407 posts)

41. Post of the night!

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 01:12 AM

Jul 2013

Rex

(65,616 posts)

42. Right, you were not pissed off at him to begin with.

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 01:13 AM

Jul 2013

Like you needed anything else.

Douglas Carpenter

(20,226 posts)

43. Lots of people did! But there is still NO EXCUSE for making problems for the NSA and that's what

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 01:15 AM

Jul 2013

pisses me off. Biden, Clinton, Kerry and most prominent Democrats made the mistake of supporting Bush on the Iraq war and most have not even admitted they made mistake. But that is human. But stirring up so many problems for the NSA surveillance program that you got the majority of the Democratic Caucus in the House and a fair number of Republicans too - questioning the NSA and causing them trouble - that is something no progressive or liberal could ever, ever support!

Riftaxe

(2,693 posts)

46. This changes the NSA revelations how?

Reply to rug (Original post)

Mon Jul 29, 2013, 02:25 AM

Jul 2013

Although I am sure Glen sleeps with farm animals, molests small animals, and is a cad in general. How else would you explain the reactions to his publications?

As we well all know hearing something you would rather not is the surest sign of poor journalism and potty training.