Chat Away Into The Night

Night Owls: White House Performances: The Blues Is King

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Chat Away

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‘After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet’

A booster seat, once used regularly by 7-year-old Daniel Barden, remains in the family van. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

This is journalism:

Eli Saslow (Washington Post): They had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel. The families of Sandy Hook Elementary were collaborating on a Mother’s Day card, which would be produced by a marketing firm and mailed to hundreds of politicians across the country. “A difference-maker,” the organizers had called it. Maybe if Mark could find the most arresting photo of his 7-year-old son, people would be compelled to act.

It hardly mattered that what Mark and his wife, Jackie, really wanted was to ignore Mother’s Day altogether, to stay in their pajamas with their two surviving children, turn off their phones and reward themselves for making it through another day with a glass of Irish whiskey neat.

“Our purpose now is to force people to remember,” Mark said, so down he went into his office to sift through 1,700 photos of the family they had been.

….  Mark turned on his computer and began looking for the right picture. “Something lighthearted,” he said. “Something sweet.” He had been sitting in the same chair Dec. 14, when he received an automated call about a Code Red Alert, and much of the basement had been preserved in that moment. Nobody had touched the foosball table, because Daniel had been the last to play. His books and toy trains sat in their familiar piles, gathering dust. The basement had always been Daniel’s space, and some days Mark believed he could still smell him here, just in from playing outside, all grassy and muddy.

Now it was Daniel’s face staring back at him on the computer screen, alit in an orange glow as he blew out seven candles on a birthday cake in September…..

Read the complete article here

After their children leave for school, Mark and Jackie walk back up the driveway to their house, back to the emptiness. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

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What Do We Want?….Laughter

The reason I ask for so much money is I have a child to support.

—
God (@TheTweetOfGod) June 08, 2013

Americans consume 80% of the world's painkillers. Amazing, since they suffer only .0008% of the world's pain.

—
God (@TheTweetOfGod) June 08, 2013

The Week in Review

President Obama delivers opening remarks to the White House Mental Health Conference, June 3

….. embraced by Janelle Montano, of Active Minds:

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Bradley Cooper introduces VP Biden to close the White House summit on Mental Health

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President Obama announces his nomination of three candidates for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. June 4

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Rise and Shine

Two years ago today, one of Pete Souza’s very great photos: “The President had attended the fourth grade closing ceremony for his daughter Sasha at her school in Bethesda, Md. As he was departing, he noticed some pre-school children peering out of a window at a child care facility adjacent to Sasha’s school so he walked over to say hello to them.”

If the Greenwald Groupies were putting a caption on the pic, it would most probably read:

‘OMG™! Illegal surveillance!’.

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President Obama talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, June 8

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Today:

PDT

10:25 AM: President Obama departs Palm Springs, CA

EDT

5:55: Arrives The White House

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Just posted an epic summary of how the NSA story is falling apart by the hour. thedailybanter.com/2013/06/nsa-st…

— Bob Cesca (@bobcesca_go) June 9, 2013

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ZDNet: The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism

Summary: A bombshell story published in the Washington Post this week alleged that the NSA had enlisted nine tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, in a massive program of online spying. Now the story is unraveling, and the Post has quietly changed key details. What went wrong?

More here

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I sense a great disturbance in The Twitter. Its as if millions of media voices discovered they just got played, then suddenly fell silent.

— eclecticbrotha (@eclecticbrotha) June 8, 2013

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I missed most of the news and developments yesterday, so flicked through the Twitter machine this morning to read what people were saying. And I see the Greenwald Groupies, urged on by their Dear Leader (and his personal fundraising campaign), now fear that Koch Boy will be taken out by evil Obama.

No, really.

Their fears were heightened when The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons tweeted this (and, needless to say, it was breathlessly retweeted by Greenwald):

In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be disappearedrecorded a bit

— Steve Clemons (@SCClemons) June 8, 2013

“OMG™!!!!!!!!” was the gist of the Groupies’ reponse.

But Clemons then admitted he couldn’t actually identify the four people, and only had poor quality pics and audio (yes, he secretly recorded them, possibly illegally so, depending on that state’s laws – oh, the irony) so, not unreasonably, @BoloBoffin asked: “If you can’t identify them, how do you know they are US intel officials?”

Or, at the very least, wait until he could confirm they were intel officials before tweeting what he did? You know, journalism.

Soon after, Clemons began watering down his original tweet:

@billbindc other possibilities are that they could be top intel guys at private firms (see INSA dinner list) who were former intel staff

— Steve Clemons (@SCClemons) June 9, 2013

In other words, he had no clue who these people were – but his original tweet did the trick, it was RTed almost 1,000 times, got him lots of attention and earned him the love of Koch Boy and his sheeple.

If they were intel officials, did Clemons not consider the possibility that they might also be dufuses loudly talking macho crap in an airport lounge because they’re pissed off by Koch Boy’s attempts to damage intelligence gathering efforts on terrorist suspects? Or does he think they were loudly discussing in an airport lounge an actual plan to, um, ‘disappear’ Koch Boy?

Yep, this is where the Groupies are at.

Which takes us to….