How the Professional Left's Blind Obama Hatred Got them Played by a Far-Right Nutjob

by Spandan C/The People's View

Some outlets reported last week that NSA leaker and fugitive Edward Snowden was caught into a bit of hypocrisy: public chat records indicate that back in the ancient times of 2009, he wanted leakers "shot in the balls." Yeah, he said that. But that's not all he said. Oh, no. The Technology site Ars Technica posted extensive public chat logs from Snowden, then using the monkier TheTrueHOOHA, that confirms what I had suspected since finding his campaign contributions to Glenn Greenwald's straight crush Ron Paul. 

So let's talk about this man that has been granted hero status by the Left's loudest prognosticators and provocateurs. The transcripts released by Ars Technica are about a lot more than Snowden's previous contempt for leakers. He hated social security, loved Ron Paul and his ideas, and peddled the NRA's garbage about fighting the government with guns. He suggested punishing both leakers and publications that publish the leaks. All in all, Edward Snowden is a right wing, anti-government nutjob who has managed to become the hero of so many on the reactionary Left.

Ars Technica reports that Ed Snowden is not much more than your typical, teabagging, cookie-cutter right wing nutjob who hates Obama. He complained about everything from the president's appointment to the CIA to gun control to how Social Security has turned old people into lazy moochers.

 Once Obama took office, Snowden groaned about his policies with increasing frequency. Fears that Obama might revive an assault weapons ban didn't sit well with him as a defender of the Second Amendment. Another sticking point was social security. Snowden was an individualist, even when it was unpopular; he saw little need for a safety net.

Here are just some of the choice quotes from the freakout Left's new hero. I have modified the transcripts only to change "TheTrueHOOHA" to "SNOWDEN" (for ease of following), and to highlight through formatting.

Gun-nut:

 User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.

SNOWDEN: See, that's why I'm goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.

Something tells me Edward Snowden is more fit to be a Tea Party candidate for office in the mold of Sharron Angle (of the infamous "Second Amendment remedies") than a liberal icon - if the screaming "progressives" on the Internet were still capable of having a value system other than "we hate Obama," that is.

Choice words for Social Security and the New Deal:

 SNOWDEN: save money? cut this social security bullshit
User11: hahahayes
User18: Yeah! Fuck old people!
User11: social security is bullshit
User11: let's just toss old people out in the street
User18: Old people could move in with [User11].
User11: NOOO
User11: they smell funny
SNOWDEN: Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine
SNOWDEN: you fucking retards
SNOWDEN: Magically the world changed after the new deal, and old people became made of glass
SNOWDEN: yeah, that makes sense
User11: wow
User11: you are just so fucking stupid
SNOWDEN: yeah, [User11]. and you're quite a gem
User19: and magically, life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years.funny how that works.
SNOWDEN: [User19], you don't think modern medicine has something to do with that? no? it's social security? wow. I guess I missed that.
User11: hurr wait a second, life expectancy has shot up in recent times along with the dissolution of the communal family unit in exchange for the nuclear family
User11: gee i guess we might need to create a safety net for the sudden glut of helpless elderly????
SNOWDEN: they wouldn't be fucking helpless if you weren't sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day
User11: you are so goddamned stupd*pid
User11: PUT OLD PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FIELDS
SNOWDEN: my grandmother is eighty fucking three this year, and you know what? she still supports herself working as a goddamned hairdresser

 His grandmother would be so proud, who he also claims doesn't support Social Security.

And his opinion on the racist, wingbat Ron Paul? "Dreamy."

But but but, I can already hear the screamers, you're distracting from the point! It's about government secrecy! I wonder how Snowden felt about that? In January 2009, less than two weeks before Obama took office, the New York Times reported on a leak that President Bush had rejected Israel's request for bunker-busters to hit Iran's nuclear facility. Pointing to that story, Snowden not only advocated for the leakers to be "shot in the balls," but also for the reporting organization (in this case the NY Times) to go out of business.

 SNOWDEN: HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
SNOWDEN: WTF NYTIMES
SNOWDEN: Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
User19: they're just reporting, dude.
SNOWDEN: They're reporting classified shit
User19: shrugs
SNOWDEN:
User19: meh
SNOWDEN: moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
SNOWDEN: those people should be shot in the balls.

Rather lovely sentiments, don't you think? I wonder when Snowden and Wikileaks will explain why he doesn't think he deserves the same punishment he himself prescribed for leakers. That's not all, of course. He lashed out at the New York Times for "blowing" the illegal Bush administration program to warrantlessly wiretap Americans, referring to the Times reporting on the matter in 2006.

 SNOWDEN: these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thing the same people who screwed us on wiretapping over and over and over again [sic] Thank god they're going out of business.
User19: the NYT?
SNOWDEN: Hopefully they'll finally go bankrupt this year.
yeah.

So Snowden was a man all for illegally spying on Americans when Bush was in office, but suddenly when Obama takes office and brings the programs under legal cover and gets a court involved, Saint Snowden can stand it no more. Shocked, shocked I tell you to hear there's gambling in Casa Blanca.

Come to think of it, the Professional Left unites with Edward Snowden on that point exactly - the blind, likely racist, pure demonization of this president. After all, this really isn't about privacy or security, is it? If it were, we would be seeing mobilizations and hearing calls to change the law rather than screams of 'scandals' about a program which even the toughest critic admits is perfectly legal under the law as it stands today. We would be seeing a laser focus not on obtaining the freedom of a criminal but on a vigorous debate about the merits of the law itself. Yet, rarely do we hear those calls on "liberal" sites like Daily Kos or on "liberal" shows coughing up a spleen defending Ed Snowden (I'm talking to you, Chris Hayes). What we hear far more often is the lashing out, the "free Snowden" cheerleading, and the unadulterated contempt for the president as well as rule of law. No, it's not about concerns about privacy. This is about concern-trolling about privacy.

Edward Snowden is a pathetic excuse for a hero or a whistleblower. He is a lunatic libertarian far-right nutjob that compromised national security for his personal fame. He has no values, no ethics, no moral core. He is a right wing blowhard that is playing the Professional Left for everything they are worth (which, thankfully, is not much). He is using their Blind hatred of a black president named Barack Obama to make them do the bidding of his own agenda which has nothing to do with transparency nor democracy. And the Professional Left is running right along, singing the praises of this ring-wing nutjob, licking this traitor's boots.

The Professional Left Is Handing Republicans Precisely What They Want

By: Rmuse/politicususa.

Although human beings hardly give any thought to the process by which they encode, store, and retrieve information,  memory plays an all-important role in everyday life. Intelligent beings tend to use their memory in such a way they do not make the same mistakes over and over again and to avoid making rash decisions that could threaten their very survival. Americans have relatively short memories because they tend to both make knee-jerk reactive decisions and repeat the same mistakes, or fall victim to a recurring condition that caused them distress in the past. Republicans are prone to deliberately forget their policies caused the nation to fall into disrepair and economic distress, but it has nothing to do with their memories and more with their long-term agenda they hardly vary. The political left is really not different than the right in that they forget their past missteps and repeat them despite clear evidence they are on a path to hand Republicans precisely what they want and they are back again heading for a repeat of the 2010 midterm debacle that ushered in the era of right wing extremism and government stagnation.

Obviously, there are few Democrats, Liberals, or Progressives who are pleased that President Obama insinuated his budget due out this week includes changes to the cost of living adjustments (COLA) for Social Security, but their outrage, although understandable, is premature and informs their memories are failing them.  They also reveal ignorance about the power of the head of the Executive branch of government, which is an error they made during the President’s first two years in office that led them to sit out the 2010 midterms and hand power to teabaggers  the nation will have to suffer for at least the next two  years.

First, the President of the United States does not make the nation’s budget; he makes suggestions, attempts to compromise and garner support from an intransigent opposition party, but the nation’s budget is the purview of the United States Congress of which one house is controlled by right-wing extremists. Second, the President made the same exact offer to Republicans during the  fiscal cliff negotiations and they rejected it out of hand and gave the President the first tax increase on the wealthy in over  12  years and no spending cuts or chainedCPI affecting Social Security. Remember too, that there was complete outrage at the end of 2010 because the President failed to convince Republicans to allow the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire, but he kept tax cuts for 99% of Americans, secured a payroll tax deduction for two years, and extended unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.

It is seriously time for the Left to take a step back, regroup, and remember what happened a little over three years ago when they whipped themselves into frenzy over issues which the President had no control. Yes, it is appropriate to express opposition to Social Security cuts, and scream at the prospect of the KeystoneXL pipeline’s construction, but revolt over a symbolic budget proposal that has no chance of passing either house of Congress? Maybe the Left should take a look in their own states and focus their outrage on the growing number of Republican legislatures and governors raping the life out of education, Medicaid, safety nets, and public employees and just imagine how much good they will do by primarying Democrats in 2014. However, that means giving an ounce of thought to the process by which they encode, store, and retrieve information, and recalling what happened the last time their outrage and overreaction over something the President had no control overruled their common sense and any modicum of self-preservation and regard for their fellow Americans. One understands why Republicans conveniently forget the damage their consistent policies produce, but it is beyond reason why the Left is willing to revisit the damage they caused this country when they sat out an important midterm election and worse, are making plans to do it again. Here is a news flash; Congress writes and enacts the nation’s budget, they alone have power to repeal DADT and DOMA, create a public option, fund relocating Guantanamo, and will be the branch that will not pass anything this President proposes. And for the record, they certainly will not be giving emoprogs unicorns, a medal for Bradley Manning, or anything else that helps the American people, so think long and hard about 2014 and if it is humanly possible, remember 2010.

New purist meme: All credit for Obama's marriage equality stand is belong to rich white guys

by Deaniac83/The People's View


As the surprise and history-making of the President's support for same-sex marriage sets in, the president's detractors on the "Left"aren't exactly in a celebratory mood, with some taking credit for themselves, and some even rushing to equate gay marriage with marijuana legalizatoin.

But if there's one column that largely encapsulates the reaction Obama-will-never-be-good-enough crowd on the Left to the President's courageous decision yesterday to come out in favor of marriage equality, it's this one from Scott Tucker on Truthdig. His column, featured yesterday on Truthdig, calls the President's "politically cornered," electorally calculating and "one of the emptiest suits." It berates attributing courage to the president's statement as a "bemused state of mind." But here is what it's really about:

 And the White House was definitely getting the news that major gay donors would not be signing checks until he “evolved” already.

Let's cut the bullcrap for a second, shall we? Tucker's "major gay donors" are really the major gaywhite donors. Because let's face it: it's not mostly the LGBT people of color that are sitting on a pile of cash in a position to write those big checks. In other words, translation: it was us white liberals that forced this black homophobe to speak out in favor of the gays.

Never mind that the entire story that LGBT people and their supporters were majorly holding up donations to the Obama campaign because the president had not yet declared support for marriage equality was made up. Made up, in large part, by people like Tucker and websites like Truthdig. I don't know about those with the luxury to make support for marriage a litmus test - i.e. deep pocketed white gay activists who sit on their high horses in states that already provides a great deal of legal protection for gay and transgender people, but I do know this: the vast majority of the people who care about the rights and protections of our community have a great deal more to worry about.

The vast majority of us know real life issues other than marriage that affect our lives every day: from bullying in schools to hate crimes to employment discrimination to being denied the dignity to visit a sick loved one in the hospital to access to health care to housing discrimination to being able to take a leave of absence to care for a sick loved one or a sick child to having the honor of serving our country openly. For those of us who see the president's support for marriage equality not as a litmus test but as a completion of a journey in which he's always supported our community, we have taken note of policies ranging from the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act to an administrative decision to order hospitals accepting Medicare to honor the rights of same sex partners to lifting the HIV entry ban to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell toso much more.

The discounting of all of this in favor or a litmus test on marriage from anyone who claims to care about the LGBT community, let alone be part of this community, can be described with one simple word: privilege. To go even further and claim that the withholding of donations from those who are privileged was the principal reason for the president's "evolution" is the epitome of elitism. It is a scathing belittling of not just the advancements in gay rights that have been made under President Obama but the critical problems facing the LGBT community that those advancements address. It is the refusal to understand that when a gay kid is being kicked and having his head bashed in with a baseball bat, the ringing sound in their ear as they pass out is not wedding bells. It is the utter disregard of the fact that when you want to get to the bedside of the person you love the most in this world, and when that person is suffering without the comfort of your company, the first thing you look at is not your ring finger.

This brings us to the most insidious undercurrent of much of the "Lefty" opposition to President Obama in general, and the discounting of this history-making moment in particular: the unspoken white economic privilege. Everyone with privilege is not part of the problem, of course, but way too often, and specifically in this case, it is that economic and social privilege that allows a self-described queer activist and many like him to boldly claim that the first president ever to support marriage equality and the first black president is "an empty suit." And it is that galling level of elitism that refuses to recognize that for many, the path to embracing marriage equality is a journey, sometimes as much of one as it is for a gay person to accept oneself.

The time for not-good-enough-ism is over. We are looking at a November election between a president who has the courage of his convictions and the intellect to arrive on the right side of history and a challenger who proudly pursues writing discrimination into the US Constitution. We are looking at a president who has done more for LGBT rights than anyone else ever in the federal government. You want to talk about empty suits? Anyone who gives a whiff about the rights and dignity of gay, bisexual and transgender people in this country and refuses to fully back up this president and his re-election will be the real empty suit.

All Blame And No Credit From The Professional Left Towards President Obama!

By Extreme Liberal/Angry Black Chronicles 

Thank You President Obama For Keeping Your Promise!

I remember all those many months ago when President Obama made clear that he was going to pull our military out of Iraq by the end of 2011 and how it was met with skepticism and pretty much dismissed by those in the Professional Left, who see everything through a filter that turns President Obama into another one of the Bush children.

Here are just some of the headlines from those supposedly über progressive blogs that have spent the last 3 years trashing on the most liberal president in a generation.

From Salon.com – Justin Elliott on September 12, 2011

Obama poised to break Iraq pullout promise

This one was from May 11, 2011 from Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel

Iraq Withdrawal Date For U.S. Troops May Be Pushed Back Beyond 2011

There are many more where those came from. It’s been interesting to watch as these same people who were heaping blame and skepticism on President Obama’s promise to get all the troops out of Iraq are now failing to give him any credit for it. Glenn Greenwald and others are doing all sorts of contortions in order to avoid admitting that President Obama has kept another of his promises and has ended the Iraq War, which should send the likes of Greenwald into the streets in celebration. Instead, they are, in a round about way, praising President Bush for setting the initial timetable, which everyone met with skepticism as just a temporary measure that would be changed later on. That is why the Republicans are freaking out so much about it, they never intended on leaving Iraq at the end of 2011. Robert Parry spells it out in this piece called “Why the Left Won’t Accept Success”…(emphasis mine)

The neocons are furious because they saw Bush’s SOFA as only a holding action and expected that the U.S. government would twist the arms of the Iraqis to get them to accept a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq. The neocons are now condemning Obama for not doing so.

After all, Bush would not have made the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad the largest in the world, along with over-sized consulates in other Iraqi cities, if the neocons did not expect to turn Iraq into something of an American colony, a home for U.S. military bases to threaten other countries in the region, such as Iran and Syria.

Now, with the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, the neocon dream of U.S.-controlled bases in Iraq has been dashed and the diplomatic outposts are already being downsized. The gargantuan embassy complex in Baghdad may well be viewed in the future as more a monument to American hubris than a hub of U.S. intervention.

But of course that makes no difference to those on the left who want to turn any success of President Obama’s into a non-success and will go to great lengths to achieve that. Robert Parry spells that out pretty well too.

It appears that some don’t want to accept that the anti-war movement has won a hard-fought victory and that Obama’s election was a factor. It’s almost as if the fact that something has been achieved through the deeply flawed U.S. political system threatens a preferred political analysis, which holds that nothing good can happen.

So, instead of giving credit to the many Americans who protested the war or who found ways to explain its injustice to the public, some activists are stressing the negative, noting that security contractors will remain to protect the U.S. Embassy or that U.S. corporations will still try to sell weapons systems and exploit Iraq’s oil reserves.

Others observe that the Iraqi government negotiated the “status of forces agreement” setting the timetable for a drawdown of U.S. troops with President Bush in late 2008 – and thus President Obama should get no credit. He should just be denounced for not ending the war sooner.

Does anyone else see the inconsistencies between the Professional Left dismissing President Obama’s pledge to withdraw the troops by the end of 2011 and writing countless articles saying how it wasn’t going to happen and then when it does actually happen, no fucking credit whatsoever? Talk about having your cake and eating it too. This case is such an obvious example of the agenda that the haters in the Professional Left have adopted since President Obama was elected. A clear victory for liberal ideals is met with not a bit of cheering, but rather gross twisting of reality and one’s own ideals in order to avoid just saying, good job President Obama. Thanks for getting us the hell out of Bush’s fucked up war. Would that be so hard to do?