"I Voted for the Black Guy and Got the White Guy"

Today a military judge sentenced Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for whistleblowing.  Manley turned over thousands of documents to the journalism website Wikileaks.  One of the revelations was of a U.S. helicopter attack slaughtering over a dozen innocent people, including an attack upon first responders and children.  At the end of the video, one of the pilots says to the other after seeing children were shot "that's what you get for bringing children to a firefight."  These were the children of a man taking his kids to school and stopped his van to help the injured get a ride to the emergency room.

We live in a fucked up world when the Nobel Peace Prize winning president is a war criminal who has killed almost one thousand people in drone strikes.  A man who oversees a vast spying apparatus that records the communications of all Americans, a man who uses the resources of the government to crush whisteblowers and bully foreign governments into grounding the planes of foreign presidents in violation of international law.

Manning should be the one with the Nobel Peace Prize.  Obama should be impeached and sentenced for war crimes.  Most people are too brain dead to even care.  They are too busy pressing buttons on their smartphones and twittering about Kanye and Kim Kardashian's baby.

Manning's lawyers now report that he plans on asking Obama for a pardon.  The chances of this being successful is about 0%.  At the end of the day, the government monolith has crushed a man of incredible conscience and destroyed his life to make an example out of him.  The message is "We are the U.S. government.  We do whatever we want.  If you question us, we will crush you, so don't even think about it."

But people of good conscience like Edward Snowden flip their fingers at such fascism.  They refuse to bow down before the self-appointed masters of the universe.  The smug arrogance of the Obama administration and his pack of minions is disgusting.  In his earlier days, Obama was a community organizer who attempted to help the poor and downtrodden.  Now he uses his power to kiss rich white ass and outdo those who formerly looked down upon him.  He grovels before Mitch McConnell and John Boehner while cowardly playing videogame wars, ordering strikes to those whom he can't see and won't confront.  He's no man.  He's a coward.  If he had one hundredth the character of Bradley Manning, he would pardon him.  But he never will.  

These days, any intrusion by the government against our civil liberties is justified in the name of "security."  All our rights can be taken away so long as they try to scare us into becoming a police state.  These are not the values that America was founded upon.  These are not the values embodied in the Bill of Rights. 

As a liberal, in my ideal world Bernie Sanders would be president or Elizabeth Warren.  But in the next election it will likely be Hillary Clinton vs Chris Christie or Rand Paul.  Hillary has already shown that she approves of spying, foreign wars, drone strikes, and coddling Wall Street.  Christie is the same.  As much as I disagree with Rand Paul about social welfare programs (I fully support them) and healthcare reform, I will probably vote for Rand Paul anyway.  Why?  Because he believes in maintaining civil liberties.  He is opposed to drone strikes despite the huge force of the military-industrial complex being behind it.  He is against the unhealthy marriage of large corporations with the government.  And he is opposed to foreign wars which only cost huge amounts of money and American blood.  Most of all, Rand Paul is less full of shit than others.  Unlike the liar Obama, you at least know what you are getting. 

This is a sad day in America.  Look at the actions of a country to decide whether it is righteous or not.  We can talk all we want about liberty, freedom, and free speech.  But when this government crushes whistleblowers, harasses journalists and members of their families, and bullies other governments to chase down whistleblowers, we are no better than Stalinist Russia or Syria.  We must expect and demand more from our leaders and our government.  

The entire Bradley Manning trial was a farce.  It was a show trial reminiscent of Stalin's purges, right up to the part where Manning gave his "confession" for hurting the United States.  Total bullshit.

Edward Snowden was smart to leave the U.S.  He would never get a fair trial here.  Never.  Snowden would be well advised to never return to the U.S. or one of its colonies, aka Britain.

Today the Constitution was used as toilet paper and it fucking stinks.