Government transparency wanted

 

Impeach them all

The State Department abruptly canceled two classified congressional briefings Wednesday that were supposed to focus on embassy security and the U.S. relationship with Iran, Capitol Hill aides said, infuriating lawmakers and staffers seeking answers on the fallout from President Donald Trump's decision to kill a senior Iranian general.

[...]

Congressional staffers had planned to ask questions about the shifting explanations and wanted to receive a global threat assessment for U.S. personnel.

[...]

“Staff are furious,” a House aide said about the scuttled embassy security session. “This briefing is required by law every month, and today's was the most important we've had scheduled in a long time. The State Department has given us no explanation whatsoever.”

[...]

"We know they will vaguely claim it was a logistical issue, even though this briefing had been already locked into the schedule for days," the Senate aide said.

  Politico

The Trump administration is staging a coup against Congress. I bet they figured Pompeo would have to answer questions about the Parnas revelation about Marie Yovanovitch being stalked by Trump's mafia.

Mitch McConnell working with Trump

He already announced he was going to work with the Trump administration during the impeachment trial, which should be grounds for him to be replaced as Senate majority leader.  Now he's helping to keep the American public in the dark.

Reports of a planned crackdown on media access to the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of President Trump is drawing fierce criticism from members of the press.

The Standing Committee of Correspondents, a group of reporters who represent and advocate for credentialed media in the Senate daily press gallery, sent a forceful letter Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), decrying the possible restrictions.

  The Hill

Which will only serve to make him proud of his ability to piss them off.

The restrictions, which the committee said potentially include confining reporters to a single press pen on the second floor of the Senate, threaten to curtail reporters' access to senators during a historic impeachment trial.

[...]

The gallery committee said they had tried to work with the Rules Committee and the Senate's sergeant-at-arms, but every suggestion they made was rejected “without an explanation of how the restrictions contribute to safety rather than simply limit coverage of the trial.”

Because there isn't one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The most transparent administration ever

The Labor Department has allowed reporters to work on stories ahead of a report’s scheduled release in a secure room on computers disconnected from the internet until the information becomes public.

The department is now discussing removing computers from the lockup room and could announce the change as early as this week, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

This could impact reporters’ ability to notify the public as soon as these reports are released.

  The Hill

Already we have to depend upon foreign governments for readouts of what Trump has discussed with their leaders. The administration no longer has any press conferences from which the public can get information. If we have to suffer through four more years of Trump, we will likely have no fucking idea what or how our government is doing. We'll just have Trump tweet lies.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It Was Inevitable

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer will step back from giving reporters the daily press briefing and is searching for his replacement at the podium.

"We have sought input from many people as we look to expand our communications operation. As he did in the beginning, Sean Spicer is managing both the communications and press office," White House officials said in a statement Monday.

Spicer will continue to fill the duties of the communications director – a post that has been empty since the end of May after the resignation of Mike Dubke.

The White House has reportedly not yet settled on a title for Spicer's new role.

  US News

He just wasn't cut out for the job. Maybe he can go back to being the Easter Bunny.

The article says Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she doesn't want the job.

The White House has not held an on-camera briefing since June 12.

Hundreds of unfilled government posts, many of them at State, and no press secretary or briefings. Deoncstruction of the American democratic government and processes continues apace.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

America Has Lost Its Way

Airwars and FP reached out to all 12 non-U.S. members of the coalition to ask which were responsible for the 80 deaths. The responses ranged from outright denials of involvement (Australia, Canada, Denmark, and Britain); to no response (Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates); to several ambiguously worded statements.

Despite these statements, Airwars and FP confirmed that every coalition member identified as responsible for any of the 80 deaths were informed by U.S. officials of their assessed involvement. The allies have known for months if not longer of these findings, according to U.S. officials — but those nations responsible chose not to admit it when questioned by Airwars and FP.

[...]

U.S. officials’ efforts to release information about casualties caused by their partner nations, however, came at a cost. As the result of a deal struck among the coalition partners, civilian casualty incidents included in monthly reporting will not be tied to specific countries. That means the United States will in the future no longer confirm its own responsibility for specific civilian casualty incidents either — a move toward greater secrecy that could deprive victims’ families of any avenue to seek justice or compensation for these deaths.

[...]

Going forward, a total tally of coalition strikes that resulted in civilian casualties will always be included in reports. However, the United States will no longer identify the strikes that were carried out by its own forces. This is due to a concern that allies responsible for civilian deaths could be identified by a process of elimination.

  Foreign Policy

Really? How? The only one it would eliminate would be the US.

“We will just say ‘Coalition,’ and we won’t say if it was U.S. or not,’ confirmed Centcom Director of Public Affairs Col. John Thomas.

Sounds more like the US is getting a pass. Especially since we are far and away the country with the most civilian deaths to account for.

The coalition has so far admitted to killing 352 civilians since 2014, including the 80 or more non-combatants slain by U.S. allies. However, this may just by the tip of the iceberg: That figure is still roughly 10 times lower than Airwars’s own minimum estimate of 3,500 civilian fatalities in the air campaign. That tally is the result of monitoring carried out by our team of researchers, and does not include incidents that are contested or are currently backed by weak evidence.

Addressing the Problem of Democracy

Z is for Zeitgeist: Brexit is insular but not wholly British. You hardly have to try and see parallels, across the Channel or the Atlantic. Better thinkers than me have addressed this crisis, the arrogance of neoliberal elites in constructing a politics designed to sideline and work around democracy while leaving democracy formally intact. Democracy becomes a potential weapon, a trigger you can vote to pull. But weapons don’t fire themselves, and the genius of Farage and Johnson and Gove (and Trump, potentially) is to get people to focus on the target, not on the one holding the gun.

  Tom Ewing "An A to Z of Brexit"

I don't think this arrogance belongs solely to the neoliberal elites, but to political elites from both ends of the spectrum. And definitely not Trump "potentially" - that potential is more than filled. Otherwise, I'm in agreement with Ewing, and he's put his finger very precisely on the situation.  The goal of those elites is to work around democracy (an inconvenience) and focus the masses on "the other" in their midst, away from the political elites who are actually the source of the masses' financial and political woes.  And they're doing a bang-up job of it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Even Fatter Chance

[A] remarkable reality about U.S. policy circles is that six years after the end of George W. Bush’s disastrous neocon-dominated presidency, the neocons continue to dominate America’s foreign policy thinking, albeit sometimes rebranded as “liberal interventionism.”

[...]

Arriving late at each new crisis, Obama usually signs off on what the neocons want, although he intermittently pushes for his “realist” approach, such as collaborating with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in avoiding a U.S. war on Syria in 2013 and negotiating a peaceful settlement to Iran’s nuclear program, which could be completed in 2014 if Obama doesn’t lose his nerve.

[...]

Will Obama finally realize that he has to revert back to his inspiring messages of 2008 on issues such as his promise of government transparency?

  Robert Parry: Consortium News

I don’t know what good that would do. It was inspiring lies. Who needs more of that?

What I’m hearing from many young progressives is that they are so resentful of government intrusions into their lives that they are veering more toward libertarianism, even though it offers no solutions to most environmental, economic and social problems. If Obama hopes to stanch this flow of progressive youth to the right, he needs to finally recognize that the people need transparency on the government and the government must learn to trust the people.

[...]

I’m also told that Obama has information that contradicts his administration’s early claims blaming the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack on the Syrian government and faulting Russia for the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine.

[...]

Similarly, Obama should commit his administration to expediting release of historical secrets. [...] It’s way past time for the U.S. government to give the American people their history back.

[...]

If Obama has U.S. intelligence information that points the finger of blame in different directions, he should correct the impressions left by Secretary of State John Kerry and other U.S. officials.

[...]

By releasing as much information as possible about important topics, Obama could finally begin to win back the people’s trust, not just in him but in the government.

[...]

[However, an] obvious first step would be to override CIA objections and release the report on torture during the Bush years.

And on that day, Bob, Satan will skate to work.

The Most Transparent Administration in US History ™

A few weeks ago we fought a battle for transparency in our flagship NSA spying case, Jewel v. NSA. But, ironically, we weren't able to tell you anything about it until now.

On June 6, the court held a long hearing in Jewel in a crowded, open courtroom, widely covered by the press. We were even on the local TV news on two stations. At the end, the Judge ordered both sides to request a transcript since he ordered us to do additional briefing. But when it was over, the government secretly, and surprisingly sought permission to “remove” classified information from the transcript, and even indicated that it wanted to do so secretly, so the public could never even know that they had done so.

[...]

The Court allowed the government a first look at the transcript and indicated that it was going to hold the government to a very high standard and would not allow the government to manufacture a misleading transcript by hiding the fact of any redactions. Ultimately, the government said that it had *not* revealed classified information at the hearing and removed its request.

[...]

The transcript of a court proceeding is the historical record of that event, what will exist and inform the public long after the persons involved are gone. The government's attempt to change this history was unprecedented. We could find no example of where a court had granted such a remedy or even where such a request had been made. This was another example of the government's attempt to shroud in secrecy both its own actions, as well as the challenges to those actions.

  Electronic Frontier Foundation

Thankfully, the judge in the case was not amenable to the request in the first place, or it would have just gone through, even though the government did not have classified information in the records, just things it didn’t want us to know.

How to Render a Terrorist Watchlist Meaningless

Put everybody on it.

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

[...]

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

[...]

The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.

  The Intercept

Information overload, you think?

A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data.

A government official with whom the reporters for this story were conversing before publishing it  (perhaps that same official who characterized the AP report as a misrepresentation) fed their would-be scoop - with a government twist, of course - to a government-friendly AP reporter, allowing a government-friendly international article to be published first. Probably not a good idea.

According to the source, [Intercept editor] Cook told the [government] official that in the future the agency would have only 30 minutes to respond to questions before publication.

  Huffington Post

That’s gonna hurt.

Snowden & Ellsberg Conversation on Whistleblowing, State Surveillance, Integrity and Personal Courage

Let Daniel Ellsberg set you straight.



Every time I hear Edward Snowden speak, I am further amazed and impressed.

The Most Transparent Presidency in History

President Obama is “absolutely” the most transparent president in history, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Sunday after the White House received a letter from signed by a dozen top journalists’ groups complaining about the administration’s policies toward the media.

[...]

The letter, signed by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Poynter Institute, among others, accuses the White House of "politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies." It asks the president to create an ombudsman charged with enforcing his goal of government transparency, and asks Obama "issue a clear directive telling federal employees they're not only free to answer questions from reporters and the public, but actually encouraged to do so.”

[...]

Earnest noted that previous administrations had “gone to the Supreme Court” to prevent the release of White House visitor information, but that the Obama administration “releases it voluntarily on the Internet on a quarterly basis.” “Reporters for years clamored to get access to fundraisers the president hosted or attended that were hosted in private homes,” Earnest continued. “Reporters now have access to those when this president goes to a private home.”

  The Hill

What more do you people want?

The Next Snowden Leaks "Drip"...

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.

[...]

The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

[...]

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

[...]

In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff.

[...]

The NSA has different reporting requirements for each branch of government and each of its legal authorities. The “202” collection was deemed irrelevant to any of them. “The issue pertained to Metadata ONLY so there were no defects to report,” according to the author of the secret memo from March 2013.

[...]

The NSA uses the term “incidental” when it sweeps up the records of an American while targeting a foreigner or a U.S. person who is believed to be involved in terrorism. Official guidelines for NSA personnel say that kind of incident, pervasive under current practices, “does not constitute a . . . violation” and “does not have to be reported” to the NSA inspector general for inclusion in quarterly reports to Congress.

[...]

The May 2012 audit, intended for the agency’s top leaders, counts only incidents at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters and other ­facilities in the Washington area. Three government officials, speak­ing on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, said the number would be substantially higher if it included other NSA operating units and regional collection centers.

  WaPo

This report even has Diane Feinstein, who is heavily invested both politically and financially in the government’s intelligence mechanisms, backpedaling.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who did not receive a copy of the 2012 audit until The Post asked her staff about it, said in a statement late Thursday that the committee “can and should do more to independently verify that NSA’s operations are appropriate, and its reports of compliance incidents are accurate.”

[...]

Despite the quadrupling of the NSA’s oversight staff after a series of significant violations in 2009, the rate of infractions increased throughout 2011 and early 2012. An NSA spokesman declined to disclose whether the trend has continued since last year.

I think we can take a “declined to disclose” to be a yes answer there.

[An] operation to obtain what the agency called “multiple communications transactions” collected and commingled U.S. and foreign e-mails, according to an article in SSO News, a top-secret internal newsletter of the NSA’s Special Source Operations unit. NSA lawyers told the court that the agency could not practicably filter out the communications of Americans.

Maybe that’s what they told the court, but that’s not what they told us, now is it?

In October 2011, months after the program got underway, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the collection effort was unconstitutional.

Hmmm. They didn’t get the court’s permission first?

The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans. The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy.

[...]

President Obama and other government leaders have emphasized the court’s oversight role in the wake of revelations this year that the government is vacuuming up “metadata” on Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.

“We also have federal judges that we’ve put in place who are not subject to political pressure,” Obama said at a news conference in June. “They’ve got lifetime tenure as federal judges, and they’re empowered to look over our shoulder at the executive branch to make sure that these programs aren’t being abused.”

[...]

The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans. The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy.

  WaPo

How handy. And so, you’re saying Obama is a liar. We’re shocked.

I also think more troubling is that last year, the NSA retained more than 3,000 files of telephone call records in defiance of an FISC order (!). How many calls involving how many people were on each file is unknown, by the way.

[...]

[M]ainly this is on the NSA, which is to say, on the administration. President Obama pledged last Friday to make these surveillance programs “more transparent.” He argued, “It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.”

Yet the administration did not disclose, say, the lapses Gellman reported. In fact, the NSA retroactively placed an on-the-record interview with its director of compliance off the record, according to Gellman. It did this after Obama’s speech extolling the importance of and promising transparency. In a sense, we got his wished-for transparency. We can see right through him now. .

  New Republic

UPDATE: Two leading Democrats respond.

Oh! HERE It IS!

That transparency in government Obama keeps talking about.  Regarding that vague threat Nancy Pelosi couldn't put her finger on...

The United States intercepted electronic communications this week among senior operatives of Al Qaeda, in which the terrorists discussed attacks against American interests in the Middle East and North Africa, American officials said Friday.

  NYT

The “plot” was uncovered by the NSA data mining program. You know, that program that YOU want cut back.

Clear as bell. 

Apparently even some government cheerleaders are having a difficult time playing the game.

It is unusual for the United States to come across discussions among senior Qaeda operatives about operational planning — through informants, intercepted e-mails or eavesdropping on cellphone calls. So when the high-level intercepts were collected and analyzed this week, senior officials at the C.I.A., State Department and White House immediately seized on their significance.

[...]

Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.’s data-collection programs, and that if it showed the intercepts had uncovered a possible plot, even better.

You know, it occurs to me that al Qaeda really doesn't have to work very hard any more. They could just get on their phones and talk about plots that they have no intention of pulling off and make the US government run in circles and spend itself dry until all the diehard fear-mongerers in the country lose all influence and relevancy, become international laughingstocks, and even the last of their supporters gives up.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So THAT's the Transparency He Was Talking About

Over the course of five years, President Obama has demanded much from him supporters from promising not to prosecute officials for torture to ordering warrantless surveillance to the quashing of dozens of public interest lawsuits seeking judicial review of his policies to the recent attack on the free press. He even claimed, under his “Kill List” policy , the right to kill any U.S. citizen that he believes to be a threat to the United States. Yet, most Democrats stuck with Obama. Now, however, Obama is demanding the final measure of devotion — he is asking supporters to abandon privacy principles in a move that will fundamentally alter our society. Indeed, he and congressional allies are trying to convince Americans that they can free themselves of fear by simply redefining privacy in a new and surveillance friendly image.

[...]

In other words, total transparency of citizens in a new fishbowl society.

  Jonathan Turley

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Turn Up the Pressure

The United States has reportedly killed 4,700 people in "war on terror" operations outside of declared war zones. On Wednesday, the European Parliament heard a special briefing on the US kill programs from the ACLU's Hina Shamsi and the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Ben Emmerson. Following the briefing, the parliamentarians issued a statement calling into question the legality (and morality) of US strikes. The United States cannot hide its legal justification for these operations from the world any longer .

[...]

The members announced that the European Parliament will hold hearings next month to look further into the US program.

[...]

On Wednesday, Attorney General Holder told the Senate judiciary committee that we would "hear from the president in a relatively short period of time" about how the government's kill programs are done "reluctantly", and "in conformity with international law, with domestic law, and with our values as of the American people".

  Kade Crockford – UK Guardian

That should satisfy everyone.

Senator Patrick Leahy (Democrat, Vermont), who ultimately opposed confirming Brennan, explained his vote: "

I have worked with John Brennan, and I respect his record, his experience, and his dedication to public service. But the administration has stonewalled me and the judiciary committee for too long on a reasonable request to review the legal justification for the use of drones in the targeted killing of American citizens. The administration made the relevant OLC memorandum available to the Senate select committee on intelligence in order to advance this nomination. I expect the judiciary committee, which has oversight of the Office of Legal Counsel, to be afforded the same access. For that reason, I reluctantly opposed Mr Brennan's nomination."

[...]

The chairs of both the House and Senate judiciary committees have said they may subpoena the Department of Justice to get them. Wednesday, Senator Leahy told Holder: "I realize the decision is not entirely in your hands, but [the issue] may be brought to a head with a subpoena from this office, from this committee."

[...]

Congressman Bob Goodlatte (Republican, Virginia), chair of the House judiciary committee, has said there is "bipartisan interest" in subpoenaing the executive branch to force it to divulge not only the "targeted" killing memos, but also those that describe the broader powers to kill in "signature strikes".

In a letter to the president (pdf) dated 8 February 2013, he and five colleagues wrote:

"We are disappointed that three prior requests to review these memoranda by members of the committee have gone unanswered. We hope that you will affirm your commitment to transparency and openness by accommodating our request to review these documents. We respectfully request that you direct the Justice Department to provide the requested documents to the committee by close of business on Tuesday, 12 February 2013."

The administration did not respond.

[...]

The last couple of weeks have been a wake-up call for the United States, and the whole world, on the breathtakingly broad lethal authorities that the Obama administration appears to claim. At the same time, the incredible efforts required to get the Obama administration to disclose, even just to Congress, any of its legal claims should make clear that getting the president to come clean on his legal justifications will require even greater energy and tenacity.

  UK Guardian

I'd like to see the administration's definition of “transparency” since that was an Obama campaign promise.  I don't think it's going to be what we think it means.

That and the Nobel Peace Prize

Now meaningless.

President Barack Obama accepted an award for making the government more open and transparent – presented to him behind closed doors with no media coverage or public access allowed.

The discrepancy between the honor and the circumstances under which it was delivered bothered open-government advocates in attendance, they said Thursday. They were even more perturbed when they discovered later that the meeting hadn't even been listed on Obama's public schedule, so there was no way for anyone to know about it.

"To have such a meeting not be transparent is the height of irony. How absurd can that be?" said one participant.

  Huffington Post

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just Don't Go There

Muhammad Danish Qasim is a Pakistani student at Iqra University’s Media Science and is also a filmmaker. This year, Qasim released a short film entitled The Other Side, a 20-minute narrative that “revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan.”

[...]

In particular, “the film identifies the problems faced by families who have become victims of drone missiles, and it unearths the line of action which terrorist groups adopt to use victimised families for their vested interests.” In other words, it depicts the tragedy of civilian deaths, and documents how those deaths are then successfully exploited by actual Terrorists for recruitment purposes.

[...]

[T]his case is similar to that of Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who had sued the CIA on behalf of civilian drone victims and was also denied a visa to travel to the U.S. to attend last month’s Drone Summit in Washington; the Obama administration relented and permitted him to travel to the U.S. only once a serious outcry arose. The Bush administration also routinely excluded Muslim critics of U.S. foreign policy from entering the U.S.

[...]

Just to underscore how extreme is the Obama administration’s reflexive secrecy in such matters: yesterday, ABC News‘s Jake Tapper asked National Security Advisor Tom Donilon whether the U.S. Government compensates the innocent victims it kills outside of Afghanistan, and Donilon simply refused to answer (“I’m just not going to go there”).

[...]

Isn’t it time for another Hillary Clinton lecture to the world on the need for openness and transparency?

  Glenn Greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Election Season as Entertainment/Distraction

Perhaps that's why it's been extended to a ridiculous 18 month-long dog and pony show. That, and it's essentially meaningless in terms of what kind of leadership we end up with, so what else is the point?

Election season as defined by Glenn Greenwald:  "a series of trivial weekly scandals that numb the brain, distract attention, and produce acrimony as virulent and divisive as it is petty."

While the important business of democracy is either ignored or silently consented to by media and citizens of all political stripes:

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror. Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for the intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feet – the equivalent of 22 U.S. Capitols or three Pentagons. The largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people.

The rise of this national security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government's powers that now touch every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. Some 30,000 people, for example, are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States.

[...]

So we continue to stand in absurd airport lines. We continue to turn down the visa applications of hundreds of thousands of tourists, businessmen, artists and performers who simply want to visit America and spend money here, and become ambassadors of good will for this country. We continue to treat even those visitors who arrive with visas as hostile aliens - checking, searching and deporting people at will. We continue to place new procedures and rules to monitor everything that comes in and out of the country, making doing business in America less attractive and more burdensome than in most Western countries.

We don't look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful, losers.

  CNN World

He forgot to add to that list that we continue to treat our own citizens traveling abroad and returning home with suspicion, checking, searching and confiscating their electronic gear.

[The Security State's] never-ending growth results in a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the private sector corporations which operate it; it empowers unaccountable public and private sector factions which surveil and store massive amounts of private information about the citizenry; it is conducted entirely in the dark and thus further eliminates notions of transparency and accountability; and it destroys any remnant of personal privacy, the indispensable attribute which fosters and enables creativity, dissent and challenges to orthodoxy and has thus long been viewed as the most central right, the one that anchors all the others.

[...]

[This] is the behavior of a nation of ”scared, fearful, losers,” but those feelings will be rectified by six more months of ritualistic, chest-beating dances over the body of Osama bin Laden and the constant hailing by Democrats of the stalwart, pulsating courage of our Commander-in-Chief for having safely sat in the White House, surrounded by layers of security greater than that enjoyed by any of history’s emperors, and ordering that bullets be pummeled into the skull of an unarmed man and his corpse thereafter dumped into the ocean. That — along with throbbing celebrations over the pile of other corpses he has produced — will make the sensations of weakness and helplessness [...] blissfully disappear.

[...]

There is a direct correlation between the fear and impotence [...] and the fact that America’s greatest and proudest achievement over the past four years is its “success” in blowing people up from the sky or summarily executing them.

[...]

[The] country that is so petrified of its own shadow that it begs the government to monitor and surveil every last one of its communications will seize on these [...] deaths to feel purposeful, strong and proud.

  Glenn greenwald

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.