I've updated the ol' Favorite Searches list.
My latest favorites are:
fuck james clapper
and
"james clapper is fucked"
Ask and ye shall receive!
Tag: Lying Fucks
James Clapper and Other Disgraces
So I mentioned last night that asking the question, "Is Snowden a hero or a traitor?" completely misses the fucking point.
Here now to completely miss the fucking point are The New Yorker's John Cassidy ("hero") and Jeffrey Toobin ("traitor").
I guess we should applaud The New Yorker for showing its journalistic integrity by presenting both sides of the not-actually-the-fucking-story.
Look. I don't give a goddamn if Edward Snowden raped a bear in his meth lab while canceling Firefly. First of all, he'd still be less of an asshole than Dick Cheney, and second, if you think it's okay for the government to spy on your phone and Internet habits, you should probably come up with a better reason than "Well, I'm for it because that bear rapist is against it!"
Now, I happen to believe, based on the limited information we have at the moment, that Snowden did the right thing, and also that Snowden has gigantic balls. But I don't believe he's the most important person in this story. I don't think he's even in the top fifty.
Someone who is in the top fifty is James Clapper, perjuring fuck and Director of National Intelligence, who recently testified before Congress that the government is totally not collecting surveillance information on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. Here, go watch John Oliver kill it on his first episode as fill-in host of The Daily Show (and be sure to stick around for the Moment of Zen where 2006 Joe Biden explains how this sort of thing is totally not okay when a Republican does it).
Fred Kaplan at Slate advocates firing Clapper, because, among other reasons, he has proven himself totally incapable of discussing this subject in an intellectually honest fashion or any other kind of honest fashion.
Among other reasons, here's Clapper's inept fucking explanation for why his lie was actually true:
Rambling on in his rationalization to Mitchell, he focused on Wyden’s use of the word “collect,” as in “Did the NSA collect any type of data ... on millions of Americans?” Clapper told Mitchell that he envisioned a vast library of books containing vast amounts of data on every American. “To me,” he said, “collection of U.S. persons’ data would mean taking the book off the shelf and opening it up and reading it.”
Jesus Christ. Between this asshole and Petraeus, I'm beginning to worry that our entire intelligence apparatus is made up of people who can't even come up with a convincing lie if they're given months of warning and an entire team of speechwriters.
Hey Clapper -- this is my comic book collection.
I haven't read most of those books in years. Does that mean they're no longer part of my collection? Or does reading them once count? Does that mean the comics I bought last week and haven't gotten around to reading aren't part of my collection yet? Is this some kind of quantum physics shit where my collection is altered by the act of observing it?
What about garbage collection? Does it only count as collecting my garbage if the sanitation workers break open the bags and root through 'em? Because I've never seen them do that, and yet the city keeps charging me a garbage collection fee anyway.
You get the point. He's claiming his lie is not actually a lie because he was using a definition of a word that he just completely made up. Like how I had sex with Natalie Portman. It's not a lie because when I say "had sex" I actually mean "sat on the couch" and by "with Natalie Portman" I mean "and played Nintendo".
Man, I have had so much sex with Natalie Portman.
I don't know if I'm even as bothered by his lying -- hell, that's his job, I'd expect nothing less -- as the sheer fucking laziness of his lying. It's downright goddamned insulting. It lacks even the sublime, recursive absurdity of "That depends on what your definition of is is." It's just worthless. And so is Clapper.
I don't really think throwing him out on his ass is going to change things. Throwing the Republicans out of the White House sure as hell didn't.
But what the hell, they still deserved to be thrown out, and so does he.
Firing Clapper certainly wouldn't guarantee we'd have an honest national discussion about the nature of our government's various spying programs.
But not firing Clapper will guarantee that we won't.
The Two Lying Bastards Show, Season 14, Episode 2
All right, I missed the season premier and the All-Sidekick Special. But I caught this one.
On the whole I think Obama pulled this one out but they both did pretty well. Romney was at his best when he was criticizing Obama's record, his failures and broken promises -- and I think that speaks to the fundamental weakness of each campaign. Obama has failed to be the President he promised to be four years ago, but on the other hand, Romney is essentially running the same campaign John Kerry was eight years ago -- nobody's voting for him, they're voting against the incumbent.
Today's top story was Secretary Clinton's mea culpa on the attack in Benghazi. This was an opening for Romney; to my mind the Administration has bungled its narrative on the attack over the past few weeks, sticking to the "spontaneous attack over a YouTube video" story well after it became clear it was a coordinated terrorist strike.
Romney fucked that up.
The bit where he claimed Obama didn't refer to it as a "terrorist attack" on day one, and Crowley checked the transcript and confirmed that he had? That was the strongest audience reaction of the night, and we'll be seeing it in the highlight reel. Romney's best line of attack on foreign policy is effectively neutralized.
(The Republican talking point now appears to be that Crowley lied and Obama never used the phrase "terrorist attack". Per the transcript, the actual phrase he used was "acts of terror" -- claiming that the two phrases are not equivalent is absurd hairsplitting.)
Crowley was great, too; she gave the candidates rope when it was appropriate and reined them in when it was appropriate to do that. I only heard a bit of the first debate, but what I heard was consistent with what everyone said about Lehrer afterward: he was a moderator in name only and the debate was completely out of his control. Crowley owned it.
On the whole I'm still not happy with Obama. (And that he's got the balls to go up there and criticize Romney for supporting China in conducting surveillance on its own citizens, even as he's ramped up domestic surveillance beyond even Bush Administration levels...) I'm leaning Stein at this point. But I still prefer Obama to the alternative and hope he wins. If I were in a swing state, I might bite the bullet and vote for him -- but I'm not. There's a single poll showing Obama running within the margin of error in Arizona; the New York Times explains why it's best taken with a grain of salt (tl;dr the sample is too small and if Arizona were to go blue it would be part of a nationwide surge in Obama's favor).
All in all, a decent episode but I'm not sure it was good enough for me to stick around for the finale. Not nearly as good as the new episode of Walking Dead the other night.
Didn't See It.
I have some fans who want to know what I have to say about tonight's episode of The Two Lying Bastards Show.
Well, I missed it. And it's not as funny as it used to be anyway. I think it really jumped the shark after 1992; that episode where they let that third lying bastard in just to shake things up was hilarious.
Caught a little bit of it on the radio, but, well, nothing much to write home about. The usual platitudes. Didn't hear enough to really single anything out for praise or criticism. The show has settled into a pretty comfortable formula at this point and they're not about to shake up audience expectations.
Two more episodes left this season. Maybe I'll catch one of those and have more to say. In the meantime, I'm sure Stewart and Colbert will have the highlights.
Real Alternatives
To: NPR's All Things Considered
On this afternoon's All Things Considered, you referred to the computer-illiterate, failed copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, and spoke with economist Steve Siwek. You noted, "Although both bills seem to be on permanent hold, Siwek says their critics have offered no real alternatives." You did not challenge this assertion.
A Google search for the phrase "alternative to sopa" produces 41,100 results. A Google search for the phrase "real alternative to sopa" produces 4,930.
These proposed alternatives range from simple -- focus on the biggest infringers -- to the more radical -- completely overhaul copyright law to provide shorter copyright terms and broader exceptions for fair use.
Indeed, there is a proposed alternative to SOPA and PIPA working its way through Congress right now; it's called the OPEN Act.
To put it bluntly, it is impossible that Siwek is unaware of these proposals. When he says no one has offered any alternative to SOPA and PIPA, he is lying.