From the Department of Double Standards………

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

The big news in diplomacy recently is the leaking of a conversation between Victoria Nuland,the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and Geoff Pyatt, the Ambassador to the Ukraine, regarding the recent political upheavals in that former Soviet republic.

Diplomatic heads have been exploding over Neuland telling Pyatt, "F%$# the EU.

America's new top diplomat for Europe seems to have been caught being decidedly undiplomatic about her EU allies in a phone call apparently intercepted and leaked by Russia.

"F%$# the EU," Victoria Nuland apparently says in a recent phone call with the US ambassador to Kiev, Geoff Pyatt, as they discuss the next moves to try to resolve the crisis in Ukraine amid weeks of pro-democracy protests which have rocked the country. The call appears to have been intercepted and released on YouTube, accompanied by Russian captions of the private and candid conversation.

Although the US state department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, White House spokesman Jay Carney alleged that because it had been "tweeted out by the Russian government, it says something about Russia's role".

………

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Nuland "has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologized for these reported comments".

She said that if the Russians were responsible for listening to, recording and posting a private diplomatic telephone conversation, it would be "a new low in Russian tradecraft."

Well, first, I would argue that if a diplomat decides conduct a conversation over unsecured cell phones, they pretty much had it coming, and second, given the very recent history of the NSA targeting the sex lives of domestic political opponents of the Bush administration.

If intercepting an unencrypted call between two people discussing how to intervene in political instability on a nation state bordering your own is "a new low in Russian tradecraft," then there are simply no words to describe what the NSA has been doing against domestic critics of our government.

Neither the EU's outrage over the comments about the EU, which is a participant in the conflict, and therefore cannot be a good faith interlocutor on this issue, nor the US's crocodile tears over being spied upon are justified.

They are simply exercises in self serving hypocrisy.

Saw Some Shakespeare Tonight

A Midsummer Nights Dream put on by Open Space Arts.

Natalie was Moth, Charlie was Starveling.

At the end of the play, Mark, one of the techs, proposed Elora, who played Titania & Hyppolyta.

She said yes.

I gave then my standard advice, which is to elope

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Greenwald to Return to US ……… Stay Out of Private Aircraft

I think that Glenn Greenwald overestimates the moral and political constrains on the behavior of the US state security apparatus and the executive branch.

If he returns to the United States they will attempt to destroy him:

When big-name public figures and Edward Snowden critics first started suggesting Glenn Greenwald and other writers who’d published his surveillance disclosures might be in legal jeopardy, Greenwald assumed that both the clamor and the actual risk to journalists would quickly subside, and eventually disappear.

That was about six months ago. Today, Greenwald believes he miscalculated. In an exclusive interview Wednesday he said that the ominous rhetoric directed at him has actually escalated. It’s discouraged him from visiting the United States, where he still has strong family and professional ties. And though he intends to reenter the country sooner rather than later, he’ll do so despite the fact that he believes he faces a much greater risk of detention than most of the other journalists who have access to some or all of Snowden’s files.

“As the story kind of went on I thought the prospect of something happening to the journalists would dissipate to zero. I actually think that the risk is higher than it’s ever been,” Greenwald told me. “My parents are getting older, my nieces [live there] — none of that is something I’m going to go home for now … I had a foundation that wanted to sponsor and pay for and market aggressively a six-city speaking tour to talk about the NSA story and the revelations. I would have completely loved to have done it … on the assurance that nothing would happen. And because we couldn’t get it from the U.S. government, I had to cancel.”

When we last spoke in August, Greenwald was cognizant of the risks he’d face if he visited the United States, but he was also pointedly defiant. “I take more seriously the Constitution’s guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment,” he said at the time. “So I have every intention of entering the U.S. as soon as my schedule permits and there’s a reason to do so.”

Journalist Gary Webb was driven to suicide for revealing that the Contras were smuggling crack into the United States.

With Padilla, they kept him in solitary for years, and when he needed dental work, they kept him blindfolded through the entire trip.

There are people who want to destroy you, and they have the means, and your only protection would be the good will of one Barack Hussein Obama, which, along with $7.50 will get you a Starbucks latte.

They want to make him dead.

Power Out at Chez Saroff

The result of an ice storm that gave the kids a snow day.

So I, and my blogging, must depend on the kindness of BGE.

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Priorities

The kids have rehearsal right now.  We've dropped them off, and Sharon and I are having a date night.

We are going to have sushi, but we won't be getting our Repo Man on. 

We will pay for said sushi.

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Hizonner Does Good

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio jas just announced that will not march in the St. Patrick's day parade because of the organizers anti-gay policies:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) on Tuesday said that he will not march in the city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade because organizers of the event will not allow participants to carry gay pride signs.

"No, I am not planning on marching in the parade," de Blasio said at a press conference. "I will be participating in a number of other events to honor the Irish heritage of this city, but I simply disagree with the organizers of that parade."

Fabulous!

Here's hoping that the blow-back changes the calculus used the bigots who run the parade to make their decisions.

The Navy Just Tried to Pull Out of the JSF Program

It's not particularly surprising. The F-35C is the most expensive variant, and it has no potential exports (the only operator of catapult equipped carriers are the US, the French, and the Brazilians), so it is not surprising that the navy requested a "break" from the JSF program:

OSD TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source,  in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.

It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny —  would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

The Navy did not get their "time out" because Office of the Secretary of Defense understood that a 3 year break constituted a cancellation of that variant, because in 3 years it will cost even more, and the DoD budgets will be under more stress.

This is, to quote Joe Biden, "A big f%$#ing deal."