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Exclusive: White House Official Fired for Tweeting Under Fake Name
by Josh Rogin Oct 22, 2013 8:27 PM EDT
A White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years.
Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week. Two administration officials confirmed that the mystery tweeter was Joseph, who has also worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Joe Biden. Until recently, he was part of the administration's team working on negotiations with Iran.
During his time tweeting under the @natsecwonk name, Joseph openly criticized the policies of his White House bosses and often insulted their intellect and appearance. At different times, he insulted or criticized several top White House and State Department officials, including former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Secretary of State John Kerry, and many many others.
The Daily Beast saved a long record of @natsecwonk's tweets prior to the shutting down of his Twitter feed.
“I'm a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me,” he once tweeted.
“Was Huma Abedin wearing beer goggles the night she met Anthony Wiener? Almost as bad a pairing as Samantha Powers and Cass Sunstein ....,” he tweeted on another occasion, insulting a top Clinton aide, a then Congressman, and two White House senior officials in one tweet.
by temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
about how awful it is that his Party of Personal Responsibility has lost its fucking mind:
A Republican Senator Doubts His Party Can Govern
By Ramesh Ponnuru Oct 21, 2013 4:28 PM CT
It’s the day after Congress voted to fully reopen the federal government and raise the debt ceiling. The senator I’m meeting, who would fall roughly in the middle of the Senate’s Republicans if they were lined up by ideology, voted with the majority. “I’m being shredded by the Tea Party radio people today,” he says, although he doesn’t seem concerned about it. “That is what it is.”
His bigger concern: He doesn’t think that his party is ready to govern the country.
The Republicans who were in the public eye during the shutdown have generally been either the party’s top congressional leaders or its most vocal hard-liners. Most Republicans in Congress don’t fall into either category. This senator -- who requested anonymity so he could describe the party’s problems candidly -- is part of that less-high-profile contingent. My impression is that his views are widely shared within it.
...
The questions that his colleagues need to ask themselves, the senator says, are “What have we learned?” and “How do we not repeat this?” Most Republican senators, it seems to me, emerged from the shutdown fight with the same views they had going in. Those who thought it was a mistake found confirmation of their views in the party’s sagging poll numbers and lack of accomplishments; those who favored it thought it could have worked if the skeptics hadn’t sabotaged it.
...
It was very naughty for our political thought-leaders not to have warned untutored, dewy-eyed idealists like Senator Anonymous and Ramesh Ponnuru long ago that this sad pass was coming.
More than a decade ago, an almost-forgotten viral Burger King marketing campaign gave us a vivid look at where the leadership of the GOP was headed as a few, billionaire crackpots decided to quick screwing around and just take direct control of the Party of Lincoln.
Enter a command.
Watch the Subservient Chicken dance.
Rinse and repeat.
The original chicken still survives and can still be put through its paces here. And, yes, it's still as creepy and mesmerizing as ever -- but somewhat less purely entertaining these days as we watch Mandarin Orange Chicken John Boehner moonwalking the whole country into disaster over and over again on command
As I heed the advice which has come in from many quarters regarding the impolitic rudeness of continually whining that, "Yeah, but Liberals were saying this shit since before Alf was on teevee." Which is why I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
Apropos of nothing, Salon must once again be saluted for its bold willingness to challenge convention Liberal thinking and posit the theory (for several weeks in a row now!) that the so-called "Tea Party" may not, in fact, be some kind of spontaneous populist movement at all! Instead, Salon advances the startling notion that the "Tea Party" may in fact represent a much more organized project by the traditional forces and financiers of the GOP -- a project which has just been dolled up to look like a grass roots movement.
Tea Party is an anti-populist elite tool. And it has progressives fooled
This is not some spontaneous uprising. It's the newest incarnation of a rich, elite, right-wing tradition
BY MICHAEL LIND
Against progressives and pundits who insist on blaming the white working class for Tea Party radicalism, I have argued that the radical right agenda serves the interest of the economic elites of the South and some areas in the Midwest and other regions — particularly those whose business models are threatened by unions, high minimum wages and environmental regulations.
Why, in the face of all of this evidence, are so many progressives and pundits convinced that the white working class, rather than affluent and educated conservative elites, are the driving force behind the right? Why do so many American progressives blame the masses for a movement of the classes? ... If it wants to live up to its claim of being “the reality-based community,” the American center-left needs to dispense with the half-century-old anti-working-class mythology of Hofstadter and Adorno and look at real-world electoral and opinion data, for a change. By refusing to recognize that today’s right-wing radicalism serves the interests of elites — in particular, Southern elites — and blaming it erroneously on the non-Southern white working class, progressives only harm themselves, not least by confusing their enemies with their potential allies.
The extremism of our own age—Tea Party extremism—“contaminates the whole Republican brand,” as David Frum has written. And he’s right. But Tea Party extremism is not, as this implies, a betrayal of the party’s belief system. It is, instead, a crystallization, a highly potent concentrate, of the party’s belief system. The free-market dogmatism, the tax-cut catechism, the abhorrence of nuance and science and government and fact—these did not bubble up during town-hall meetings in 2010 but flow from the same deep well from which establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell (Goldwaterites, all) have long been drinking. Frum and other sensible conservatives yearn for a Tea Party exit—maybe even an expulsion—from the G.O.P. But it cannot be expelled, because in this case the parasite is a creation—in some ways a perfection—of the host organism itself.
There. Is. No. Tea. Party.
There never has been a (modern, Conservative) Tea Party.
...by temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg, I am going to continue to look even assiduously for more feel-good tales of hardworking folks who are finding ways to make it in this crazy world!
Like, for example, this inspirational story about how someone is finally paying the effing writing!
Fox News Reportedly Used Fake Commenter Accounts To Rebut Critical Blog Posts
New Book Details An Extensive Campaign By The Networks' PR Staffers
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik writes in his forthcoming book Murdoch's World that Fox News' public relations staffers used an elaborate series of dummy accounts to fill the comments sections of critical blog posts with pro-Fox arguments.
In a chapter focusing on how Fox utilized its notoriously ruthless public relations department in the mid-to-late 00's, Folkenflik reports that Fox's PR staffers would "post pro-Fox rants" in the comments sections of "negative and even neutral" blog posts written about the network. According to Folkenflik, the staffers used various tactics to cover their tracks, including setting up wireless broadband connections that "could not be traced back" to the network.
A former staffer told Folkenflik that they had personally used "one hundred" fake accounts to plant Fox-friendly commentary...
Writing multi-character fiction is not easy!
Glad to see fellow writers finding ways to make a living in this tough economy.
I must confess that I have no idea how to take note the following --
Good news from Syria (really): Chemical weapons being dismantled on schedule
BY MAX FISHER
October 18 at 3:31 pm
The U.S.- and Russia-brokered deal to have Syria surrender its chemical weapons is proceeding on schedule, United Nations inspectors tell the Wall Street Journal, despite widespread predictions that Syria's civil war would make the effort impossible. The U.N. team had set an ambitious goal of disabling all chemical weapons production equipment by Nov. 1 and said it's on track to finish it in time.
The effort to destroy Syria's chemical weapons is still in its early stages and could slow or fail outright, particularly if the violence in Syria harms one of the U.N. team members. But these first few weeks are a promising sign, an indication that this mission may actually be achievable. But it won't save Syria.
The deal came in September, when Secretary of State John Kerry suggested off-the-cuff that the U.S. might roll back its plan to launch punitive airstrikes against Syria for its used of chemical weapons against civilians if the country agreed to surrender its stockpile. Russia seized on the comment, as did Syria, which led to a United Nations Security Council resolution for the destruction of Syria's stockpile. Many in the U.S. concluded that President Obama had been outfoxed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, that the plan was unachievable and would quickly fall apart.
Those critics may turn out to be right, but so far Syria appears to be cooperating with the U.N. inspectors, who in turn seem undeterred by the war around them. A representative for the U.N. disposal team said that several improvised explosive devices and mortar rounds had gone off near the team, conceding, "Naturally this is a matter of concern for us, but the team remains determined and the morale is very high." The U.N. agency charged with removing the weapons has operated in conflict zones before; last week, it won the Nobel Peace Prize for its years of work dismantling chemical weapons around the globe.
Kerry praised Syria for its cooperation with the U.N. team this month, saying, "We're very pleased with the pace of what has happened with respect to chemical weapons in a record amount of time." That's obviously a political faux pas, given the extent and horror of the Assad regime's abuses since the war began. But on the merits it was true: Syria has been pretty good about cooperating. What was awkward was the tacit admission that this deal leaves the Assad regime intact, and may in some ways help it.
...
-- without risking accidentally deflecting professional aspersions on David Sirota's calm and measured assessment of President Narcissist VonDronekill's real intentions vis-a-vis Syria, as reported in Salon just over one month ago:
Narcissists are ruining America
We're on the verge of bombing another country -- because a few conceited people want to feel good about themselves
BY DAVID SIROTA
From President Obama to British military leaders to the U.S. military planner who sculpted the attack plan, almost everyone acknowledges that sending cruise missiles into Syria will most likely not make anything better, will not stop the civil war and probably will not reduce human suffering. As the UK admits, the best (though certainly not guaranteed) chance of actually accomplishing any of those objectives is to mount a full-scale invasion.
Of course, that course of action could result in, among other things, thousands of U.S. casualties and roughly $300 billion a year in expenses. Understandably, those are costs America does not want to incur. And that’s where the narcissism comes in.
Many Americans supporting a new war in the Middle East want to feel good about themselves. Many want to feel like we did “the right thing” and didn’t stand by while chemical weapons were used (even though we stand by — or use them ourselves — when we’re told that’s good for America). But, then, many war supporters desperately want these heartwarming feelings without the worry that they may be face any inconvenient costs like higher taxes or body bags at Dover Air Force Base.
...
What emerges is a portrait of pathological self-absorption. That’s right – despite the pro-war crowd’s self-congratulatory and sententious rhetoric, this isn’t about helping the Syrian people. Channeling the zeitgeist of that famous quote in “Broadcast News,” this is all about us. To the pro-war crowd, if both feeling morally superior and avoiding any real sacrifice mean having to kill lots of Syrians without a chance of actually stopping their civil war, then it’s worth the carnage, especially because it’s half a world away.
Appreciating this insidious psychology, our government has come up with a brilliantly inhumane solution that plays to the narcissism...
No doubt, the government’s motives for a war with Syria have little to do with moral opposition to chemical weapons. The geopolitics of Syria affect everything from oil to Iran to Israel to the defense budget – and those concerns might be what’s really driving the push to war. But the public sales pitch for war cannot dare admit that because such a truth is taboo.
...
Then again, Mr. Sirota is not just some just some raggedy ass blogger living in a hobbit hole in flyover country. He is a respected professional Liberal columnist who hobnobs with other world-famous professional columnists and who is frequently invited to make appearances on Liberal teevee so as to better share his many, thoughtful opinions. I am sure when he formulated his initial assessment he must had insider access to sources and information about which I can only dream, just as I am sure that even as we speak Mr. Sirota must certainly be moving to retract and amend his originally assessments to reflect these very positive recent developments.
As will any story where the professionals are still working out all the important little details, the best course for amateurs like me would probably be to tread lightly:
The future will tell, perhaps, one day, why Paris has remained so quiet, compared to Rio or Berlin after the revelations about the U.S. electronic spying programs worldwide. Because France was equally focused and now has tangible evidence that its interests are covered daily.
According to documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) obtained by Le Monde , telephone communications are French citizens, in fact, intercepted a massive way. These pieces, unveiled in June by former consultant agency, Edward Snowden, describe the techniques used to capture the secrets illegally or simple privacy of French. Some items were discussed by the German weekly Der Spiegel and the British newspaper The Guardian . Others are new.
Among the thousands of documents removed from the NSA by the former employee is a graph that describes the extent of telephone surveillance carried out in France. It was found that over a period of thirty days, from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013, 70.3 million recordings of telephone French data were performed by the NSA.
...
In all the hubbub about the Republicans Party cutting off food to poor people, closing national monuments, shuttering NASA, monkey-wrenching critical medical research and threatening to blow up the world economy unless the US government stops trying to offer Americans affordable health insurance, we have somehow let the conversation about curtailing domestic surveillance and beefing up the FISA court oversight slip from the headlines.
And I what could better serve to reignite that conversation than using stolen US intelligence documents to tell the French that we spy on them?
As you know, I am Chicken Souping my soul by temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
Meanwhile and unrelatedly, blogger, popular Conservative public intellectual and official internet laurel-bestower Andrew Sullivan is getting pretty darn tired of all these Moderate-Come-Latelies:
Of course I agree, but I still find it passing strange that McConnell is now viewed as some kind of moderate realist. I’m a little tired of bestowing the laurels of moderation on all those who only actually worked toward sanity in the very last hours before default. Many appeased insanity until that very point, which, given the economic catastrophe over the horizon, is not moderation at all. The GOP is full of cowards – congressmen scared of primaries, leaders scared of Ted Cruz, everyone scared of Rush Limbaugh. It’s a party riven by fear, exploiting fear, and creating fear.
...
Great job, Andrew, but a gentle reminder that ultimately you'll never get ahead in this business by mean or critical of others.
Another, quick reminder that I am taking to heart the comments of the many good folks who have contacted me to point out how terribly unattractive it is to keep saying, "Yeah, but Liberals were saying this shit back in the Devonian Era." Therefore I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
Meanwhile and unrelatedly, Former RNC chair and MSNBC employee Michael Steele and former Republican congressman and MSNBC employee Joe Scarborough continue to take well-deserved victory laps for having been right about Teddy WreckSpin for several weeks in a row:
Michael Steele on the ‘I Told You So’ Caucus Getting the Shutdown Right
by Lloyd Grove Oct 21, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
Among the loudest GOP voices predicting the blowup of Cruz control in the shutdown fight was Joe Scarborough—and the former RNC chairman. Steele tells Lloyd Grove why we’re due for a repeat in three months.
As Republican activists and office-holders survey the wreckage of the past week—including historic lows in public approval and alarming highs in public revulsion (a perilous 74 percent in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post survey)—they might remember the dire premonitions of the “I Told You So” Caucus.
Former Republican representative Joe Scarborough, whose Morning Joe program on MSNBC is a coffee klatch for opinion leaders on both sides of the TV screen, is the voluble Cassandra of the caucus. For weeks now, on television and in print, he has been warning that Texas Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz’s quixotic attempt to thwart the implementation of Obamacare—by shutting down the federal government, and by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States through a refusal to raise the debt ceiling—would result in political catastrophe.
And so it has.
“In terms of folks outside of politics, I think Joe has an incredible influence because of his very precise way of framing the arguments, and I think that has helped crystallize some of the finer nuance points that often get lost in the discussion, particularly when you’re dealing with the arcane measurement of debt and the fiscal alchemy that goes into putting together the federal budget,” says former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, the ex-chairman of the Republican National Committee and a frequent panelist on Morning Joe.
...
Way to go gentlemen: this nation needs more brave voices like yours!
Just remember, a pundit is not without profit prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.
A reminder that I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
I know I'm sounding very shrill and resentful, but I can't help it when I hear so-called intellectuals like Fareed Zakaria today on his show suddenly waking up to fact that the GOP is a bunch of reactionary fanatics --- and selling it like it's some kind of new thing. Might I just point out that he has been an enabler of this bunch of nuts for years?
...
The reactionary right has been in the drivers seat of the GOP for some time now, impeaching presidents, stealing elections, starting wars against countries that didn't attack us. Demagogueing national security, talking about Social Security and medicare as if they are Stalinist gulags and basically living in an alternate universe in which those who don't agree with them are enemy combatants is who they have been for years. And up until now, Fareed Zakaria and his ilk have been clutching their pearls over some delusional threat from the left.
C'mon Digby, be a sport!
You get what you want -- a grudging acknowledgement that (maybe, provisionally) the wall against which you have been slamming your bloggy head for a decade might actually exist and be worth noticing...long after the damage is done and the cancer has metastasized.
And Fareed gets what he wants -- he keeps his teevee show and his seat at the Elder's Table while at the same time leveling up his edgy, street cred by ripping off the Liberal's critique of the Right (at zero professional risk to himself!) without ever having to acknowledged the existence of Liberals at all!
I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
The Dish recently noted the right-wing distaste for JFK during his presidency, but Ira Stoll insists that “Kennedy was a conservative by the standards of both his time and today”:
Liberals claim that Kennedy’s tax cuts were somehow different from Reagan’s and Bush’s, and it is true that Kennedy was cutting the rates from higher levels (though loopholes and deductions meant that few actually paid the statutory high rates). But the arguments Kennedy rejected in pursuing his tax cuts sound awfully familiar to the arguments used by liberals today. The Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, from his perch as ambassador to India, opposed tax cuts and advised increasing government spending instead. Kennedy told him to shut up. Senator Albert Gore Sr. called the Kennedy tax cut a bonanza for “fat cats.” Kennedy, frustrated, privately denounced Gore as a “son of a bitch.”
I am temporarily suspending the conceit that I am right about some things and other people are wrong or are so late to the party that they should at least wipe their feet before heading for the keg.
Rumor has it the president will pivot to immigration reform next. That’s a bad idea, writes David Frum—it’s a path littered with the same obstacles that nearly brought down Obamacare.
Overreach: nobody’s immune to it. Republicans overreached in the debt ceiling fight. Now, by some reports, President Obama is tempted to do the same.
Those reports state that Obama intends to proceed from the debt battle to the immigration issue, taking up again his plan to regularize the status of millions of people illegally present in the United States. Let’s leave aside for the moment the policy merits of the president’s immigration proposals. (I think they’re dreadful, but your mileage may vary.) Consider instead the politics of advancing this measure in a polarized Congress and a recession-battered country.
...
Why is the debate over the Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—so bitter? Yes, it’s a big and expensive new entitlement. But so was Medicare Part D back in 2004, and that program provoked nothing like the controversy of the ACA.
...
The [ACA] deed is now done, and—as House Republicans just painfully rediscovered—done beyond undoing. The political task ahead is to minimize the deed’s negative consequences: economic, fiscal, political, and social. Instead, the Obama administration seems intent on maximizing such negative consequences. “You know that demographic change that’s making you so hostile to new social welfare programs? Let’s have a lot more of it! And faster!”
That’s folly—the kind of folly that rends nations and weakens governments. Back in 2008, Barack Obama promised “change.” He delivered. If he wants to protect and preserve his accomplishment, he’ll understand that even change has its limits, and that change becomes most secure when administered in tolerable doses. Obama's immigration reform atop health-care reform is one change too many. Leave the next chapter to the next president.
Interesting stuff, David!
So far, +1,400 people have commented on this important issue, so if you want to add your voice, check out the whole article here!
Fmr. Rep. Tom DeLay Hails Cruz as ‘Hero,’ Slams ‘Arrogant-in-Chief’ Obama on CNN
Now that his money-laundering conviction has been overturned, former former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) joined CNN’s Brooke Baldwin Thursday afternoon to weigh in on the big news of the day, offering praise for fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz and denouncing President Obama as “arrogant-in-chief.”
DeLay began by admitting Republicans “did lose” the fight over the budget and the debt ceiling. Echoing the words of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), he said, “They put up a good fight. O appreciate everyone that voted against the deal yesterday and stood up and fought. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough votes to carry out the fight and win.”
...
But the truly funny bit was how quickly the reporter turned frightened-rabbit and scampered back to the CNN Prime Directive the minute the Beast from Sugarland pointed a bony finger at her and accused her of being in league with...the filth [Liberal] media!
When Baldwin brought up Republicans’ crumbling approval ratings, Delay accused her of pushing a “media narrative” with those numbers. “I have no narrative, sir,” she responded. “I’m just right in the middle, just asking the question.”
And so, having thrown enough of a scare into this child to her in her place, the Beast from Sugarland gave her a lollipop and rolled out his talking points unimpeded:
“I’m not attacking you, Brooke,” DeLay assured her, “but we saw how the media completely trashed Ted Cruz and others, trying to fight for what their people believe in.” He said despite the GOP’s effective loss, “out here in the real world, outside of New York and Washington, D.C., these people think Ted Cruz is a hero. They think that those Republicans in the House are heroes. And they think that Obama is destroying this country.”
Asked to elaborate on his criticism of Obama, DeLay referred to him as “arrogant-in-chief.” He added that the statement Obama delivered this morning was the “height of arrogance and incompetent. The president is incompetent with Obamacare. He can’t even roll out Obamacare. “He’s incompetent by enforcing on this country something that they don’t want. He’s incompetent in his foreign policy. He’s just an incompetent president.”
