NSA’s message: Spotless minds and children have nothing to fear

The National Security Agency complains that Edward Snowden and his leaks have “sensationalized” its rather tedious accomplishment: a god-like edifice that now perches atop every twitch we make as social animals. And, in doing so, it presses that narcotic button: “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.”

Unlike imaginative humans and run-of-the-mill liberal democrats like us, it just can’t imagine that: ruthless political winners, smart adversaries, and the smart malcontents that keep American politics vital may all eventually be corrupted by NSA’s existing intelligence machinery.

NSA admits to slips that invite us to smirk when instead we should be afraid. Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column yesterday, entitled "Creeping Cloud,” contained this nugget:

“Yet, news broke this past week that the N.S.A. inspector general admitted that there have been a dozen instances of staffers spying on love interests. (The Wall Street Journal said this practice is known as “LOVEINT,” for love intelligence.)”

Sure, this is offensive.

More importantly, however, it dramatizes that, right now, NSA staff can just as easily be asked — and rewarded — for “------,-------,------INT” spying on peaceful, lawful mental activity and associations by individuals who might challenge, inconvenience, and even annoy the leadership of what is still a highly competitive and volatile political system.

Being an individual in any super-charged political environment has always been hard. The NSA has effectively put these individuals out in an open field.

If you wonder whether the Bill of Rights protects you in an open field, ask the Poles what it's like to live in flat prairies surrounded by "recognized" borders.

Maureen Dowd brings it all back

Once in a while, without a hand from outside "fact-checkers" or partisan "attack machines," the best journalists in the mainstream media light up the sky and show us what is at stake.

With one column, and its ghastly aftermath, Maureen Dowd reintroduces us to the people Mitt Romney would bring back to the White House—the warrior intellectuals of the Bush years. Her New York Times column Neocons Slither Back, and the next morning’s Politico summary of their outraged responses, should be read together.

Alone, Dowd’s column is merely a workmanlike reminder that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan rely on the same neocons George Bush used to intellectualize about shaping events around the world with US armed forces. It contained two rather unoriginal insults: suggesting that Paul Ryan relies on the words of his campaign manager, Dan Senor, a right-wing flack with a world view, and repeating Paul Wolfowitz’s concern that Obama should not be allowed to “slither” back into office without a clear position on Libya.

By next morning, five neocons were already on record accusing the outrageous Maureen Dowd of being a creepy, hate-mongering, and lazy peddler of anti-Semitic imagery. Apparently "slither" has Jewish copyright. It can be used by Jewish American hawks when questioning the "moral clarity" of a Kenyan-friendly president, but can’t even be repeated by an insolent Catholic feminist in the New York Times.

The accusation that Dowd was reviving a vile ancient stereotype about doltish gentile politicians being manipulated by “clever and snake-like Jews” is laughably self- aggrandizing, ineffectual, and uncivil. It tells us, however, that the neocons have lost none of their edge, that their menace is as fresh as a fall north wind.

Maureen Dowd is too smart to think and too good a writer to imply that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George Bush were stupid, innocent puppets of the neocons. She was simply reminding us that the staff a president assembles reflects on the character of the president, and doesn’t diminish his power.

This incident, however, does say quite a lot about the caliber of the public intellectuals Romney and Ryan are presently indulging. They misjudged the Middle East over the last decade and misjudge their detractors at home today.

Accusing someone of being anti-Semitic is going nuclear. It’s the polemist’s application of “shock and awe.” It’s designed to cower weaklings. Dowd, however, is still at it.

The US presidential election: a bore in the making

The election of 2012, like the elections of 1960 and 2000, may be desperately important historically, but not necessarily very exciting.

It’s conceivable that grassroots Republicans in Iowa tonight will find that reckless courage political junkies everywhere are counting on—and vote for an eccentric or an incompetent, and cripple middling Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. That, unfortunately, would contradict what those voters have been doing for the last six months: seven times they’re picked a candidate with their feelings—and promptly retreated. Their hearts may be racing, but their heads keep telling them to take it easy.

The Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street Movement made a lot of news in 2011, but will be sidelined in US politics in 2012. The amateurs made 2011 exciting. However, the professionals—and $billion Obama and Romney campaigns—may turn 2012 politics into an exhausting bore. Tens of thousands of Americans will participate, millions worldwide will watch. But endless calculation and the worried mood of America’s political center will likely subdue the drama.

What to do? For one thing, we should try to be equally as hard on the safe survivors as we are on the more spontaneous challengers. Maureen Dowd offered a nice start in her Sunday piece “She Made Me Run!”

“Ann Romney told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she insisted to her reluctant spouse: “You know what, Mitt, you’ve got to do this again.

“Mitt resisted, she said, because “he remembered how difficult it is and what the hurdles were going to be.” Mittens, as her not-so-cuddly mate is called by reporters, knew he was not a natural with voters.

“According to Mitt, their pillow talk sounded like a political ad. “She said, ‘Look, no one else can beat President Obama. No one else has the background to actually get the economy going, understand the economy in a very fundamental way.’ ”

Click on: www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/dowd-she-made-me-run.html

Dowd reports that a top Republican strategist actually thinks that American voters can be talked into believing that Mitt Romney was persuaded to run for President by a self-sacrificing wife. Until otherwise advised, let’s stick with the evidence: Romney has turned himself inside out for most of his adult life to be a political success.

Romney will keep calling Obama too “European” and Obama will keep complaining that Republicans don’t like the “middle-class” until it sinks in that we all know that they are both talking nonsense.

Brain Candy from Canada's next Maureen Dowd:

“Were the judge to extend his compassion for women further, we would have to look at Catholic and other religious teachings that have similar outcomes. Statistically, women who are married to one man are likelier to have more children and die in childbirth than women who aren't married at all, so we might as well conclude that marriage itself damages women's health. . . .

“Monogamy isn't threatened by a small sect in British Columbia, and enshrining it won't alter the members' religious beliefs. But this ruling should concern all those perfectly nice Canadians for whom monogamy is no more an institution than is the missionary position.”

Click on: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/tabatha-southey/we-have-as-many-double-standards-on-polygamy-as-solomon-had-wives/article2249821/

—Tabatha Southey in her Tart weekly column for The Globe and Mail, November 26th, 2011.

Southey takes apart the decision of the Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court, Robert Bauman, to uphold the constitutionality of Canada’s anti-polygamy laws. On the face of it, his judgement was welcome news to right-thinking Canadians everywhere. It set aside something nasty we don’t want to think about. Unfortunately, Southey’s column leaves you laughing at the judge—and yourself.

Mainstream journalism in Canada is safe. The Globe and Mail will remain the morning must-read by Canadian decision-makers, critics, cranks, and bloggers. It should continue to prosper alongside the social media. But, it could be more interesting.

Moving Tabatha Southey and her column to the op-ed page and out of weekend recreation would be a significant improvement. More of her gems would make the paper less reliable politically, more demanding intellectually, and more fun for its readers.

Bring out the bully pulpit, Mr. President!

Being told to “man up” by the right and “come out of the closet” by The New York Times expresses a common complaint about the Obama presidency: Why doesn’t he use the office and his eloquence to lead change and get Washington to move?

Columnist Maureen Dowd put it bitterly:

“As a community organizer, Obama developed impressive empathetic gifts. But now he is misusing them. It’s not enough to understand how everybody in the room thinks. You have to decide which ones in the room are right, and stand with them. A leader is not a mediator or an umpire or a convener or a facilitator.” 

Click on: www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26dowd.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd

Campaign strategist Karl Rove, looking for a reason for Republicans to not worry about Obama’s campaigning abilities, put it differently:

“Finally, Mr. Obama has made a strategic blunder. While he needs to raise money and organize, he decided to be a candidate this year rather than president. He has thus unnecessarily abandoned one of incumbency's great strengths, which is the opportunity to govern and distance himself from partisan politics until next spring.”


Click on:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304657804576401653113017130.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

We cannot know for sure whether Obama’s low-key style has contributed to the relative civility of public discourse recently and the startlingly peaceful advance of gay rights this year and whether audacious change would be happening on many other fronts, if only he spoke up more often. Nevertheless, the bully pulpit—the inherent power of the Office of the president to heard—is of limited value and can be counterproductive.

A good president will try to speak for all the people, but will not be heard by all the people the same way.

Unless it’s an emergency and the public is already clamoring in the same direction, a president can’t change things with words unless he can mediate and facilitate as well. If a president claims an issue as his own, he’ll likely be left alone with it.

It’s disingenuous to suggest that if Obama was more Olympian and a touch less partisan he’d be more effective. Congressional Republicans leaders have responded in strident partisan terms to almost everything Obama has said in Washington—from the midst of the financial crisis to now. (Okay, they were gracious about his remarks at the memorial funeral service in Tucson.) Before the ink was dry, healthcare was labelled “Obamacare,” despite a year of compromises and its bi-partisan features.

Republicans will not support any action that serves Obama’s partisan interests unless it serves theirs as well.

A president needn’t be a mute, however. In fact, confrontational rhetoric can make his presidency more effective, as well as improving his chances of being re-elected.

Obama’s direct attack on Paul Ryan’s budget plan “A Road map for America’s Future” is one sure reason why Republicans are trying so diligently to secure a multi-trillion dollar spending reduction agreement this summer. They complained that his speech at George Town University was partisan and “demagogic” in insisting that a health vouch system could not guarantee universal medical care for seniors. They ran television commercials to defend themselves. Now, they’re desperate to make a deal with the White House on entitlements rather than carry Ryan’s plan into next year’s election.