After Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett was alerted last week by some of his viewers that they had received unsolicited emails from the WH, Garrett asked WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about it on Thursday, raising privacy issues. (As it happens, Garrett was later joined by the ACLU, of all groups. Who would have thought the very liberal ACLU and rather conservative Fox News would be on the same side of an issue? Go figure).

Gibbs gave one of his somewhat snarky and arrogant NON-answers and then basically stonewalled Garrett for the next few days as Garrett pursued trying to find out how the WH obtained people's private email addresses and why it was sending them unsolicited emails, mainly about ObamaCare.

Now, finally, the White House has provided its version of what happened. Politico.com's Mike Allen reports that WH spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday night: “We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual's behalf.” (Italics added for emphasis.)

So, the issue was raised on Thursday and surely could have been answered by someone by sometime Friday but the answer wasn't provided until late Sunday night. Talk about being able to claim credit for finally responding while at the same time trying to bury your answer out of the normal news cycle!

And did you notice that, once again, it's not the White House's fault? Heaven forbid that this White House should ever admit it made a mistake, much less actually and intentionally did something wrong. No, no, no, this time people's private email addresses were obviously but inadvertently obtained by the WH because, while these people didn't specifically opt in to receiving WH emails, they had apparently signed some kind of petition, letter, etc., etc., at some time or other, which some third party organizations (vague and kind of hard to trace, eh?) sent to the WH. So, it was these appropriately amorphous third party organizations' fault, you see -- NOT US! (What kind of ether do these people breathe -- and do they think if they pump enough of it into the news cycle that we will inhale it, too?)

Awww, now see, here I thought I was so "special" because I got three -- yes, THREE -- unsolicited emails from the WH, one from Obama and two from Axelrod. I was just SURE that I had earned a place on SOME kind of WH "enemies" list. Oh darn! Well, guess I'll just have to keep trying.

Just as I can't get over Axelrod's appearance somehow reminding me of a door-to-door salesman of some kind (Fuller brushes? Electrolux vacuums?), Gibbs reminds me of the overly large, overly self-important, overly privileged and overly boorish frat boy I sometimes ran across during my college days. You know the guy -- his daddy made sure he got into the right school and the right fraternity, had the right kind of clothes, the right kind of car and plenty of money, etc., but his daddy couldn't disguise the fact that his little boy wasn't quite as smart as he was arrogant and wasn't quite as polished as he was just plain used to being privileged and pampered.

You may also remember that the WH recently asked Americans to notify it of any "fishy" info, mainly pertaining to health care/insurance reform, that their family, friends or neighbors might casually mention or repeat. Well, the only thing "fishy" to me about the WH explanation of this latest apparent disregard for citizen privacy is that most of the organizations for and with which I've signed petitions, letters, etc., have specifically (in accordance with privacy and anti-spamming laws) stated that your email address may be requested for purposes of notifying you that your petition has been sent or for sending a copy of your letter back to you, etc., but that it will not be published or released to anyone else.

So, how do you explain that, Mr. White House Spokesperson? Anyone?

AFTERTHOUGHT: A poster named roxsteady claimed on Politico.com that Major Garrett and Fox News (I guess, along with the ACLU) were idiots for raising the question of the WH sending unsolicited emails to citizens and sought to excuse the WH by saying it is simply known as SPAM.

But isn't SPAM wrong, even illegal? Why, I think there are even LAWS.....and stuff.....against it. So, roxsteady, are you saying that Garrett, Fox News, etc., are idiots for even asking the questions, but the WH is okay for spamming its citizens, if in fact that's ALL it's doing?

Get a grip and stop excusing the Obama White House for everything. After all, normally AFTER they're CAUGHT, they do enough of that for themselves, usually by blaming someone -- and sometimes it seems, anyone -- else!

 

(Subtitle: Anybody else getting unsolicited emails from the White House lately?)

Well, I am evidently one of the "chosen ones." Within the last month or so, I have received an unsolicited email from Barack Obama and two unsolicited emails from his senior advisor David Axelrod. (I'm secretly waiting and hoping for a personal billet-doux from Rahm Emanuel next. That would give me a trifecta.)

The emails are individually and singly (not one in a multiple listing) addressed to my email address, greet me with the salutation of "Good Morning" or "Dear Friend" and have the WH logo at the top and the standard 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address info across the bottom.

Now, I can assure you that they didn't get my email address from any of their campaign supporter lists or from any nice letter I've sent the White House lately, but I'm not going to be paranoid about where they did get it -- just curious. It is a little Big Brother-ish, though. 

So, it is just me being "targeted" because I'm already on Obama's "enemies list" and they're trying to persuade me to "come over," or have many -- any -- of you also received these emails? Are they sending them to some of us, or are they sending them to all of us? And if it's only some of us, how are those some being "chosen"?

I now know that at least some other people are receiving these, because Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett was recently alerted to it by some of his viewers and is now pursuing an answer from Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about how people are selected to receive them (and good luck to you with that, Major).

Finally, it all makes me wonder just how desperate the White House is to "get its message out." And why.        

WH Email #1
Subj: My Supreme Court Nominee  
Date: 7/14/2009 10:38:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time 
From: info@messages.whitehouse.gov 
 
Salutation: Good Morning,
Subject: Nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor
From: Barack Obama

WH Email #2
Subj: It's time for a reality check  
Date: 8/10/2009 8:29:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time 
From: info@messages.whitehouse.gov 
 
Salutation: Dear Friend,
Subject: The need for health care/insurance reform and sources to use for the "truth"
Encourages visiting the new www.WhiteHouse.gov/realitycheck web site and helping to "spread the truth" to family, friends, etc.
From: David Axelrod

WH Email #3
Subj: Something worth forwarding  
Date: 8/13/2009 7:56:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time 
From: info@messages.whitehouse.gov 
 
Salutation: Dear Friend,
Subject: 8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage, 8 common myths about health insurance reform, and 8 reasons we need health insurance reform now  
Encourages visiting www.WhiteHouse.gov/realitycheck and forwarding email to friends, etc.
From: David Axelrod

David Axelrod, one of President Obama's chief White House advisors (who strangely looks like a door-to-door salesman of some kind to me), recently told CBS's "Face the Nation" that waterboarding and sleep deprivation were "one of the key tools al-Qaeda has used for recruitment."

Really? First, where's the proof of that? Did an al-Qaeda rep call and tell you that? Or is it just another unproven allegation, like "Bush lied, babies died"? Or, worse, is it simple speculation, like Democrat Senator Harry Reid's "The war is lost!, the war is lost!"?

Second, I wonder how al-Qaeda (and Democrats and other liberals) made us the bad guys for waterboarding (something we have done for years in training some of our own troops), while maintaining that they, al-Qaeda, were the good guys for beheading people. Oh yeah, because their cause is right and holy and we are the Great Satan. Well, whether we had waterboarded or not, wouldn't their cause, to them at least, still be right and holy and wouldn't we still be the Great Satan?

If these methods were already serving as a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, as Axelrod claimed, why did Obama release the Top Secret details of the Bush waterboarding memos, thereby confirming whatever al-Qaeda was already saying to recruit more followers? It would seem that assists al-Qaeda in now saying, "See, we told you so. The American Satan has now admitted what it was doing. But, better than that, we now know in detail about their methods and can therefore train to resist them." Way to go, Team Obama! I feel so much safer now that our enemies, by our own admission, know our interrogation techniques in detail.

Obama banned "enhanced interrogation techniques" his first week in office, but that's obviously not enough for some Democrats and other liberals. They want a so-called Truth Commission and/or federal investigation (read: show trials), as Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) stated, "so it never happens again." Well, Senator, you don't need a show trial to keep it from ever happening again, just better Congressional oversight. Don't forget, please, that Congressional leadership was briefed about 30 times by the Bush administration on what it was doing and why, and Congress not only went along with it but in some cases asked if what Bush was doing was enough. See, there may be the Catch 22 to insisting on so-called Truth Commissions and/or federal prosecutions - they may come back to haunt some Democratic leadership, as well as members of the Bush administration and the intelligence community, notwithstanding Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's blank-stare protestations of "I don't know what I knew or when I knew it" to the contrary. (May I get you a bigger shovel, Miz Nancy, or is the hole you've been digging for yourself getting deep enough already?)

There are several ironies involved in all this.

The first irony is that the CIA stopped waterboarding in March 2003, after using it on only three high-value al-Qaeda detainees in 2002 and 2003, and the practice was removed from the CIA authorized list of techniques altogether sometime around 2005. In other words, waterboarding not only began but also ended during the Bush administration, long before Obama "banned" its use in January 2009.

The second irony is that Obama ostensibly released the classified CIA methods in another show of "transparency" and "openness" but he calculatingly and politically really did it to further the Bush-bashing which he and Team Obama have engaged in (and hidden behind) before, during and ever since he became president, as well as offering it up as another sop to his left-wing base of supporters. Well, ironically, his "lefties," instead of being "placated," became emboldened and wanted still more. For them, Obama's naive miscalculation in releasing the previously classified techniques was like fresh blood in the water.

The third irony is that Obama's own Director of National Intelligence, his own hand-picked Director of CIA and four previous CIA directors all told him not to release the classified techniques, and why, yet he yielded to the pressure from the likes of liberal godfather George Soros, MoveOn.org and other far left agents and did it anyway. However, I will give him credit, so far at least, Obama has shown that he will listen to his military experts (a smart thing, especially when you yourself don't know much about "military things," like the difference between a battalion and a brigade). But an additional irony therefore is, why didn't he also listen to his intelligence experts?

The fourth irony is that, once Obama let the cat out of the bag, he found he couldn't put it back. Oopsie! My bad. Naivete and inexperience, sometimes described by Team Obama as boldness, showed themselves once again. He vacillated back and forth about what to do, a firestorm of criticism followed (something Obama has demonstrated an overly thin-skinned ability to handle in the past), and so he passed the problem off to his Attorney General, saying Eric "Americans are cowards about race" Holder would determine whether any prosecutions needed to take place or not. We're still waiting, Eric, but if you decide to prosecute anyone, make sure you include all those fellow-traveling Democrats in the House and Senate who were briefed on, approved, supported and funded what the CIA was doing, okay?

The fifth irony was Obama going to speak to the CIA intelligence community and telling them he supported them and not to worry about being prosecuted for doing what you were told, while they sat there knowing that he had compromised their classified techniques and would probably sell them out in a heartbeat if he had to for political expediency. The mere possibility of a new round of federal investigations has sent the real message to all U.S. intelligence agents that there is no upside in aggressive interrogation. To the contrary, it's not only a career killer but also may land you in prison.

The sixth irony is that the 9/11 commission was supposed to prevent intelligence lapses so that 9/11 could never happen again. Now, Senator Leahy and other Democrats want to "investigate" what they claim were post-9/11 intelligence "abuses." So, the 9/11 commission didn't really work? So, you want something similar done again? Let's be honest, this isn't about gathering more information to prevent any further "abuses." This is another attempt at Democratic payback for the liberally despised Bush administration, pure and simple. To call it anything else is.....well, ironic.

And, Heaven forbid, but what may become the most tragically ironic thing of all: If Obama plays politics and so dismantles what Bush assembled that we don't see another attack on our homeland coming. In other words, we are back to "not connecting the dots" again. Those who ignore history are not only ignorant but also doomed to repeat it, and tragic history usually repeats itself with a vengeance. Beware the irony - or ironies, as it were.

Hundreds of thousands of "ordinary Americans" rallied across the country for lower taxes and more limited government during the April 15 tax day tea parties, organized by conservative grassroots activists, mainly through the Internet and by email campaigns, with little or no funding. Still, Americans for Tax Reform estimated that over 360,000 attended, despite bad weather across the East Coast and the fact that it's harder to get conservatives to a protest than it is to get liberals to turn out, perhaps because conservatives often have jobs to work rather than just protests to attend.

The protests elicited widespread criticism in the mainstream media, with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow labeling tea party protesters "tea baggers." Since MSNBC stands for Mostly Snarky, Namby Brained Commentary to me, I didn't think that much about the term one way or the other at the time. I had just been watching the Tea Party coverage on Fox News and decided to see what MSNBC coverage was like, so I switched over and there she was, Rachel Maddow, about whom I had only been told that she is a self-professed lesbian and supposedly a sharp and savvy, even witty, commentator. After showing a couple of shots of some of the Tea Party protesters, Ms. Maddow's so-called "wit" amounted to no more than saying "Wow" a few times with a bemused look, one might even say smirk, on her face. She then launched into a series of fake "statistical comparisons" intended to show how unpopular the apparently pretty popular Tea Party protests were. I say "fake" because they were not relevant comparisons; they only appeared to be. They were like comparing the Tea Party protests to the Million Man March on Washington, which was more centrally organized, funded and had bunches of buses delivering people to the National Mall and which, by the way, never totaled even close to a million men. Or like comparing the Tea Party protesters to the turnout for Candidate Obama when he spoke in Germany, a highly staged, centrally organized and controlled event at which the German Polizei originally estimated the crowd at between 100,000 to 200,000 but which got "rounded up" by the MSM to 250,000 and without much, if any, reporting of the facts that the Germans attending were also promised free beer, free food and some free rock band performances if they would show up and also listen to Obama.

But soon, it was obvious that the terms tea baggers and teabagging were being used not only to describe but to also deride the Tea Party protesters (you could tell by the accompanying high school-ish, sopho-moronic snickering) all over the MSM, especially at NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Being unfamiliar with the term teabagging, I had to look it up on Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary before realizing why Ms. Maddow, perhaps as a lesbian having had the term previously explained to her, apparently thought its use and application to the Tea Party protesters was so wickedly witty. Like I said, Mostly Snarky, Namby Brained Commentary. Snarky is as snarky does. 

On the other hand, David Axelrod, door-to-door-salesman-looking top adviser to President Obama, merely called the protests "bewildering." However, Mr. Axelrod, it seems none of the 360,000-plus attendees reported any cases of bewilderment. In fact, David, it's only "bewildering" to those of you who are so out of touch, not with the "ordinary Americans" which you only TALK about and refer to in your class warfare rhetoric but with the REAL "ordinary Americans" who were protesting you and your boss trying to take this country so far to the left so fast and spending scads of money we don't have to do it. They were just angry and fed up with the government spending all of their, their children's and their grandchildren's money on things they didn't vote for. And they - Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike - peacefully protested by the hundreds of thousands to say so. What's so "bewildering" about that? If you're bewildered now, wait until the Tea Party protest movement grows. Wait until July 4th. Wait until 2010. Then, maybe you will overcome your bewilderment and begin to understand. But, by then, it will be too late and whether you "understand" or not won't matter.