What Froomkin said.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Indeed. What Froomkin says.
California pol Jesse Unruh observed in 1966 that “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” That was then. Today, lying is the mother’s milk of politics. If Brennan doesn’t have the good sense to resign then Obama should fire him. Lying to Congress, itself composed of liars, might be countenanced. Violating the separation of powers can not.
That would be a good start. Finally, the authorizing legislation from the Truman administration that creates a system of secrets and lies will have to be undone and some serious thinking about how to deal with national security, including the acquisition of intelligence.
We live in a culture that has too much absorbed its values from detective fiction and espionage fiction that have blurred the boundaries of prudent law enforcement and national intelligence. No doubt the sense that one knows and can do “legally” what other citizens of the US cannot becomes heady and tempting for folks like Brennan. Or maybe he just admires the way that the Saudis run their shop.
Well put. The security-at-any-cost mentality that grew up during the Cold War has to be reevaluated. That would be a Herculean task and I doubt that it will ever happen because because there are too many people and too much money invested in it. Interesting that the idea of cost/benefit analysis goes out the window because “OMG, terrorists!” Meanwhile we’re burning cash, burning bridges, and creating generational hatred for ourselves around the world.
The too many people and too much money invested issue argues that the system must collapse as all empires collapse when the elites withdraw their support for paying for the military and adopt a system of privatized tax farming of the 99%. Power then devolves in a slow scramble for security and mutual personal commitments. In other words, feudalism.
Obama’s biggest mistake, in my view, was failing to after the liars on Wall Street. Second biggest mistake was failing to reform the intelligence agencies and failing to hold ANYONE accountable. Should have started with the little guys and worked their way all the way up to the top. Some would have yelled and screamed. Perhaps the 2010 election would have been equally brutal. But history would have vindicated these choices.
I’ve heard the excuse that no one broke the law in the crash of ’08. I always found that impossible to believe. At the end of day, all of the pieces are still in place for another crash. That was a signal failure of the administration and the Democratic Congress.
Here’s a huge problem for the President. His rhetorical style of passivity and removal from authority. A tweet in response captures the problem.
At least it is a step up from Reagan’s “Mistakes were made.” Or from Bush’s “Heckuva job, Brownie.”
Sucks that we can’t embed tweets in comments, but that tweet can be found here:
http://twitter.com/onekade/status/495312541682507776
Pointing out the general response. Here’s another one:
I know. My linking was for those who aren’t on Twitter and wanted to see for themselves.
I took that “we” to mean his administration or the executive branch, not the nation as a whole. Maybe I was expecting too much truth out of him. I’ll admit I was startled that he was finally addressing this six years too late.
The next to the last sentence of this linked article states:
Oh.
But wait another minute!!!
Two sentences above that reads:
So I guess he should fire himself too. Right? Right! Not first of course, because just like a murder/suicide pact, someone has to stick around until the firing is over. But once he’s fired everyone who lied to the American public that is connected with the executive branch (Hoo boy!!! That’s gonna skew the unemployment figures way up, eh?), then he’ll have to resign.
But wait another ‘nother minute!!!
Remember when those bad Ratpublicans refused to fund the government and everything shut down? Everything except the congressional paymasters and the various War Departments, of course. Obama said that was wrong, wrong, wrong!!!
So if he resigns after firing the whole upper echelon of his government he’ll be doing the same thing.
Right?
But…wait yet another minute!!!
I just thought…what if he was lying about how bad that shutdown was.
Oh.
Then I guess he can resign.
Phew!!!
I wuz afraid we’d be stuck with him for another couple of years.
How far down the federal totem pole will they have to go to find a successor who hasn’t been previously fired for lying, I wonder.
Lemme see now…
Here’s the current Line of Sucession chart:
UH oh!!!
Proven liars 1-7 except maybe Leahy, and after 40 years in the Senate he’s sure to have lied some. #7’s foreign-born, so she’s out.
Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services? You just know that they have had to lie. A lot!!! I mean…alla them figures and such.They just make them up on a weekly basis, right?.
Castro’s a possibility…he so new that he hasn’t had much of a chance to lie yet. But…he’s a risk ‘cuz his name is Castro.I mean…medde he’s a Cuban spy? Cain’t have that shit up in the White House, right? The last 10? Not a chance. More fact and figure liars if nothing else.
My bet?
You’d have to go all the way down to the service staff in congress or maybe the staff at the Library of Congress before you found someone who is not an egregious, habitual liar.
Lies?
They’re what’s for dinner in DC. Except maybe in a few restaurants in Adams Morgan. The less expensive ones.
Oh well.
Nevermind.
Yore freind…
Emily Litella
Obama expresses confidence in CIA Director
“Nice little handgun you have there Mr. Brennan, sir.”
The Constitution is officially dead.
Well, I was going to give Brennan the benefit of the doubt, assuming he denied CIA involvement without actually checking or believing a false subordinate, but given the other incidents, yeah, I agree, he has to go.
Who should replace him? Will anyone who tries to reform it suffer a tragic accident or a mysterious fatal disease?
Has the CIA become a Praetorian Guard?
Given the way that Obama has handled the national security establishment (including intelligence) from the beginning, apparently so. And even the Senate is scared of them apparently from DiFi’s lukewarm reaction to the fact that CIA heavily redacted a report that exposes CIA war crimes.
Remember they made and broke emperors until Constantine the Great finally destroyed them. Rough times ahead.
that’s a little more my reading of the situation; another way of putting it is he’s now at the Khumba Ice Fall, which must be traversed with care and lots of ice ladders across seracs and crevasses that open up at a moment’s notice. Very good team of sherpas too
http://www.abc-of-mountaineering.com/articles/e_routes.asp
I was mad enough to blow the shit out of anyone or any country behind it, but I was never afraid. It was the Ratpubs pissing in their pants. And, no, I don’t understand why it happened if the explanation is not that a group of oilman one percenters lead by an evil soulless scumbag saw an opportunity to make billions for themselves by stealing Iraq’s oil and therefore enlisted some knuckledragging sadists to produce Soviet-style confessions.
You and I seemed to have zeroed in on the same comment.
I too was angry, but mine didn’t take a violent/retribution form. I was angry that over fifty years and untold billions spent on national defense and the one day it was needed, it wasn’t there.
I too was never afraid. High concept/low tech surprise large acts of violence are extraordinarily difficult to repeat.
A major difference between us as you have noted elsewhere. If I’m not being too personal, you never experienced violence as a child, did you?