This and That (short-ish version)

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It was pretty flippin’ delicious watching the Twitter meltdown after this:

Jeffrey Toobin: Edward Snowden Is No Hero

Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

…. he describes himself as appalled by the government he served … what, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? ….

…. he wasn’t blowing the whistle on anything illegal; he was exposing something that failed to meet his own standards of propriety. The question, of course, is whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they don’t like. That’s what Snowden has done.

More here

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Text of remarks here

@PeteSouza: Photo of Pres Obama w Alan Krueger, chair of CEA, trailed by just-nominated chair Jason Furman and his family

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@VP: VP ceremonially swears in @ErnestMoniz as Sec. of @ENERGY in the Roosevelt Room of the @whitehouse

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Newsie stuff in the morning – chat away.

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PS Happy birthday Sasha …..

Snowden does Guardian’s Greenwald Survey

You can do it too! Just click here

Keep Chattin’

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AHMAHGAHD VERIZON HAZ MAH INFOS OH NOOOES!!

AHMAHGAHD VERIZON HAZ MAH INFOS OH NOOOES!!

yes. it’s called your phone bill.

Here’s how it works:

The US makes a backup copy of the telecom records. They can’t access that info without a FISA warrant, unlike what Bush did – warrantless everyfrakingthing…. and actual wiretapping. That’s not what’s happening now. No one in the US GOV cares that you are addicted to Facebook. However, HBO (a private corporation) cares that you’re downloading Game of Thrones illegally. There’s a difference.

Most people aren’t really processing what Snowdon said; that he could wiretap/listen/access whatever… not that he did, or that anyone else has ever or that it’s going on OMG constantly to OMG everyone in the US 24/7, yet that’s how the OMG-HAIR-ON-FIRE media is making it out. I’m curious how Snowdon’s private sector employer feels about their, uhm, employee.

It’s funny, but how the frak did this Snowdon guy, get a $200k a year gig in Hawaii with no high school diploma, and never finishing a single computer class, in the first place? Seriously, I’m more qualified than he is. And how does he know exactly what he can and cannot do, when I’m not sure how much of a grasp he really has on how the technology works….. and why it might be necessary…. having been at that job for only a short time? I’ve just got a whole problem with this dude’s story. I’m not saying what he leaked was completely inaccurate, but since the media has very little interest these days in anything more than pouring gasoline on the fire of their own hysteria, and actually researching a story for accuracy, that I have my doubts.

Here’s the deal….

Chat Away

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Confessions of an Obama-supportin’ Original Baby Boomer

by Jacquelineoboomer (@JOBoomr)

I’m confident some of my “political” involvement matches that of others, at least of my generation. (Okay, I don’t presume to say that it exactly matches, but, at the very least, it is representative.)

I started noticing national politics as a (part-Irish, Catholic) teenager in high school, when JFK came on the scene (even the nuns were happy) and I’d race home from school to watch his wonderful afternoon press conferences.

Being from the Northeast (where we and so many people in this vast country lived in a white, middle-class bubble), I also had the awful awakening in the ’60s to what for decades (outside of our bubble) had led up to the Civil Rights movement – and what was still going on, most specifically in the South, suddenly publicized on TV news programs – and suffered along with the nation when the best of the best leaders of “our time” were assassinated.

All of it cut me to the core, and left an impression on my heart that remains today.

After that, many baby boomers set out to “change the world,” which, we are just finding out, we didn’t.

I never felt connected to politics after the ’60s … so many of us were crushed by all of the events that had occurred, at least one of which (the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby) we watched live on our black and white TVs.  I remember thinking our nation was lost. At the very least, my generation was experiencing what later might have been called varying levels of human rights post-traumatic stress disorder.

President Obama Speaks on the Equal Pay Act

11:30 AM EDT: President Obama Speaks on the Equal Pay Act

White House Live

C-Span * CBS

Rise and Shine

President Obama waves to his family, standing on the Truman balcony of the White House, as he walks from Marine One on the South Lawn after returning to Washington from California, June 9

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Today:

11:30: The President delivers remarks on the Equal Pay Act

1:0: Press Briefing by Jay Carney

2:10 The President makes a personnel announcement (see below)

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News that actually, you know, impacts people’s lives:

USA Today: The auto industry is about to go on a hiring spree as car makers and parts suppliers race to find engineers, technicians and factory workers to build the next generation of vehicles.

The new employees will be part of a larger, busier workforce. From coast to coast, the industry is in top gear. Factories are operating at about 95% of capacity, and many are already running three shifts. As a result, some auto and parts companies are doing something they’ve been reluctant to consider since the recession: Adding floor space and spending millions of dollars on new equipment.

…. The auto industry’s stepped-up hiring will help sustain the nation’s job growth and help fuel consumer spending. On Friday, the government said U.S. employers added 175,000 jobs in May, roughly the monthly average for the past year and a sign of the economy’s resilience.

More here

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Steve Benen: Proponents of comprehensive immigration reform were in need of some good news. Whereas it looked like the “Gang of Eight” bill was on track for 70 votes in the Senate two weeks ago, the prospects deteriorated quickly last week — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) threatened to oppose his own legislation; bipartisan House talks crumbled; senators questioned whether the bill could overcome a GOP filibuster; and a House Republican vote on Dreamers offered a reminder of just how right-wing the caucus is on the issue.

So, are reform hopes slipping away? Not just yet. In fact, the effort got a bit of a boost over the weekend….

Full post here

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TPM: President Barack Obama will announce Monday that he intends to nominate Jason Furman as the new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, a White House official said.

Obama will make the personnel announcement at 2:10 p.m. ET at the White House. Furman will succeed Alan Krueger, who is stepping down from the post to return to Princeton University in the fall.

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ThinkProgress: Rep. Elijah Cummings pledged to release transcripts of interviews with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials that Republicans insist demonstrate that the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status was directed by the Obama administration.

Cummings made the remarks on CNN’s State of the Union, a week after Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on the program and insinuated that the White House directed IRS agents to single out tea party and patriot groups for additional scrutiny. Issa has refused to provide evidence that substantiate that claim.

“I wrote Chairman Issa on Thursday and I wrote to him this morning. I want those transcripts to be released,” Cummings said. “I’m willing to come on your show next week with the chairman with the transcripts if he agrees to do that. If he doesn’t, I’ll release them by the end of the week.”

Cummings insisted that the interviews will prove that “the White House was not involved in this,” pointing out that the Cincinnati IRS manager of the screening group, a career veteran at the agency who identified himself as Republican, told investigators that Washington did not direct the targeting….

More here

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Kinda reckon this is all we need to know about Edward Snowden….

…. but soooo many questions, like the ones Goldie Taylor was asking this morning: