National Security Leakers - Friend or Foe?

This Edward Snowden guy if the man of the hour, who had leaked all that government stuff.  Something seems a little bogus about everything this man claims to be.  Supposedly he was a high school drop-out, and dropped out of Junior college, and also washed out of the military, and then gets a job for this exclusive private agency with “one client’ called Bose Hamilton or something as one of the most elete people working on sensitive government computers.  This Black woman who called says she doesn’t believe a word of it, and he has to be some kind of a plant.  It does seem very unusual for a guy to be there only three months and a mere 29 year old to be able to grab the Media and brag that he has access to all the most sensitive phone conversations and could even wire tap the President of the United States, if he so chose to.  Randy Rhodes pointed out that President Obama restored the FISA court as a necessary means of obtaining the required warrent.  The problem is that since 1978 out of some thirty thousand requests for FISA warrents, the court has turned down only about twelve of them - in 35 years, so your odds are pretty good and FISA basically ammounts to little more than a government "rubber stamp".  Edward Snowden is being investigated by the Justice Department and charges are being formulated.  The trouble is rather than "take his medicine' the guy is hiding out in Hong Kong and that in itself is dubious since Hong Kong now is ruled by mainland China.  The White House web site is being inundated with petetions to declare the leaker a national hero.  Nobody has raised the issue yet so let me be the first.  Perhaps President Obama planted him there just so he would spill the beans and “set up that healthy debate”, which the President has been insisting he wants us to have as a nation.  I had Rush Limbaugh on and he is sympathetic to this guy’s cause.  But another possibility occurred to me.  Perhaps Snowden is a plant all right, but of the Right Wing, and he leaked this sensitive material to evoke sympathy for government secrecy and a further curtailment of privacy rights by the government.  It is interesting that we as a Public are not even entitled to know THAT we are being snooped on constantly.  Rush pointed out aptly that the government can pretty much figure out the conversations if you called your gynocologist and then a planned parent hood clinic.  Or perhaps you called up the NRA or perhaps a suicide hotline.  Then there is the danger as Rush points out, "That it matters who the President is as to whether the government can even be Trusted with this vast power it now has.  And we know that Presidents never give back power but only add to what their predecessors grabbed.  Ans as such President Obama extended President Bush' powers in a variety of ways.  

We are really in a post Christian era now in this country.  I consider myself as almost in a "post Christian era' myself.  Religion never enters into the dialog with family members, and hasn't in close to a decade.  The only exception would be a highly out of context Bible OT quote defending the tea party's right to the Gordon Gecko "Greed is good" doctrine.  But the only politicians who even reference Christianity at all are occasionally Newt Gingrich, or Rick Santorum, or Glen Beck.  This little swaree that Calvary Chapel is throwing with Chuck Smith and Franklin Graham is more of a circus freak show than it is any kind of genuine attempt at an Evangelical Crusade.  Rush rambled in sort of an incoherent laundry list of items and “offenses” that the Obama administration is guilty of.  He said something about some stealth E mails that shield government employees from having to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.  Rush said that "we may never find the Smoking Gun on Bengazi because of this".  Last night I read a letter from Judy about how President Obama betrayed the middle class because he “Jacked up” taxes of earners of over $250,000.  News flash: that isn’t the middle class.  And if the writer of the letter was up to date he’d know the figure was four hundred thousand anyhow.  Nobody in their wildest imagination would call that middle class.  The letter accuses Obama as “spending inordinate amounts of money to track down illegal aliens who are criminals and deport them” but “grants amnesty to the rest.”  This letter went on to say that Obama has wasted government money in student loans, which will lower the level of academic quality.  And then it says “Obama has burned students with a mound of debt”.  Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the “Equal Pay Act”.  I never knew anything happened fifty years ago today.  Rush Limbaugh then mocked women for “not liking bacon” and by inference - - mocked the whole idea of women being bread winners.

The George Zimmerman trial was supposed to begin today but it was met with more judicial wrangling as the Defense once again unsuccessfully attempted to delay the start of the procedings.  I had David Cruise on and he kept talking about some medical coverage scandal in California but he was so involved and interrupting his own sentences, much as Rush Limbaugh does, that following his train of thought was nearly impossible.  The gun regulation debate has resumed in the California State House due to the events of last Friday in Santa Monica.  Cruise talked about newly disclosed background info on the Santa Monica shooter.  His name is John Zawharree, who had his 24^th birthday last Saturday.  He killed his brother, Chris, and his father.  But his father was said to be abusive to his mother, and it was a messy divorce.  The father first sued for Divorce in 1993 but then in 1998 the mother asked for a divorce, and a restraining order against her husband.  ( ) They said Zuwharres personality changed radically at the age of seventeen.  As a youth he was a “quiet, reserved child”.  By 2006 there were definite signs of trouble.  The way David tells it, it’s almost as if Zuwhare was demon possessed or something because he had absolutely no fear of death as he swaggered about performing his execution routines.  Of course he had thirteen hundred rounds of ammunition on him.  I hope now that everyone who likes to wear Black doesn't automatically fall under suspicion.

They say the best remedy for a bad man with a gun - - is the presence of a Good man with a gun.  This principle played itself out on Days of our Lives today.  Sometimes guns can come in handy, and if you are from a rich family, you can be "packing" all the time and pull the thing out whenever it suits your fancy.  Samantha Brady was the hero of today’s episode and all the relevant stuff took place in the last twenty seconds or so.  That knife guy kept getting interrupted trying to do in Raphael as he lay in his hospital bed unconscious and in a medically induced coma they planned to bring out of tomorrow.  But Samantha saw the danger and fired and wasted the assailant.  This will sure send a message to Stephano’s empire.  You don’t mess with Samantha.  But the problem is now she’ll go back to Raphael and say “Now she realizes she truly loves him” and leave E J in the dust, just like she’s done a dozen times before.  Christine Di Mira is so abusive with Father Eric if she had any shame she’d be ashamed of herself.  But Christine has no respect at all for the office of Priest, and would consider “Confession” an opportunity to verbally abuse him.

Last night I was planning on switching to the NBC network news at five thirty when Wally announced there was ice cream down stairs in the front room.  Seid and Nicky were here and the old crowd was gathering.  There was a lot of interesting conversation.  Seid looked healthier than when I’d last seen him and had put on a little healthy weight.  Even Nicky looked more radiant.  I attempted to engage Mickey Mc Lure in conversation and was unsuccessful.  I received two plates of chocolate ice cream and we all settled back to listen to Seid preach.  He mentioned that Elizabeth had “saved him from death two years ago” due to her uplifting words to him.  Seid lectured us about universal salvation.  But he did not take up the traditional argument about how the blood of Christ saves all and all will be brought to himself.  Rather he suggested that “Jesus’ wasn’t necessary for salvation at all.  You merely go to heaven and meet God and shake his hand and he says “Glad to meet you.  Just tell me if I can be of any service”, which is what Seid himself says to people.  Seid had shook hands and hugged the people.  But then he took after Moses in a rather adversial way.  He said that even murderers can be saved, which is something you will never see in the New Testament, if you’ve read it.  It is quite possible that “The sin that leads unto death” is referring to murder.  He said that Moses slaughtered countless Ethopians as a general of the military.  If he’s seen the movie he realized that Ethiopia sued for peace and sent them all those peace offerings that increased Egypt’s wealth.  He then went on to say that Moses led a pampered life.  I protested that “nobody could spend forty years roaming the desert and be said to have lived a pampered life”.  But Seid said, “Oh no, that isn’t so.  Moses was always pampered”.  Moses not only spent the time leading the Israelites through the desert, but he also spent another forty years before that married to Zephorah living as a Midianite shepherd.  Then Lisha got the mistaken impression that Nicki was Seid’s mother even though he is years older than she is.  I decided this would be a good time to leave.  I had been there an hour and five minutes.