Drizzling rain and chilly this early Tuesday on California’s north coast with extra precipitation forecast for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow and the rest of the week is expected to be rain-free, and maybe a bit warmer than the last couple of days.

Are weather warnings/forecasts just another form of ‘“too cute by half“‘ reactions to what’s happening to our environment?
Hope to shit not.
Yet, the assholes who run the US government can bullshit, or straight-out lie regarding anything — especially when it comes to spying. And spying on everybody.
Now James Clapper, asshole director of the NSA, and himself, too cute by half, has again shifted his innards and whines the agency’s ugly shit was really “things we do for the common good.”

(Illustration found here).

One must remember big-boy Clapper has been caught in ‘truthiness’ on several occasions this past year, especially in the ‘too cute by half’ bullshit while testifying before Congress, and under oath, paring a question from Sen. Ron Wyden:

Wyden: “[…] So, what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or now answer to the question: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Clapper: “No, sir.”
Wyden: “It does not.”
Clapper: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not, not wittingly.”

See — completely full of shit.

And just last month, Clapper shit out words about Eddie Snowden and the journalists who broke the continuing, and confounding stories on the NSA — reporters were criminals.
Via HuffPost:

“Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished,” Clapper said, according to a transcript from the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, posted by the Washington Post.
“If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed, to prevent even more damage to U.S. security.”
So who, exactly, are Snowden’s “accomplices?”
…
HuffPost put the question to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which didn’t rule out that journalists could be considered “accomplices.”
The office’s public affairs director Shawn Turner said in an email that “director Clapper was referring to anyone who is assisting Snowden to further threaten our national security through the unauthorized disclosure of stolen documents related to lawful foreign intelligence collection programs.”
The suggestion that Snowden is conspiring with journalists, rather than acting as their source, has come up ever since the National Security Agency surveillance story broke last spring.
In June, “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked journalist Glenn Greenwald about having “aided and abetted” Snowden, language that suggests the reporter was a participant in a crime. Earlier this month, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) described Greenwald as Snowden’s “accomplice.”

Meanwhile, just last week the reporters who broke the Snowden stores were awarded one of the highest/best prizes in the industry — the George Polk Awards in Journalism for 2013.
And to top the shit pile, Snowden himself has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize — some thieves get all the luck.

Clapper, however, maintains he’s above the stink. In an interview at The Daily Beast, he whines:

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will.
“Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.
“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden.
If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it.
“I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”
…
In the interview Clapper said the 215 program was not a violation the rights of Americans.
“For me it was not some massive assault on civil liberties and privacy because of what we actually do and the safeguards that are put on this,” he said.
“To guard against perhaps these days low probability but a very (high) impact thing if it happens.” Clapper compared the 215 program to fire insurance.
“I buy fire insurance ever since I retired, the wife and I bought a house out here and we buy fire insurance every year. Never had a fire. But I am not gonna quit buying my fire insurance, same kind of thing.”

No, asshole, not the same kind of thing.
And once again, Marcy Wheeler concludes, too, Clapper is full of shit — starting first with the Clap’s own words (at emptywheel):

At the time of the Mitchell interview, the U.S. government was still in the process of declassifying elements of the FISA 702 program. “There is only one person on the planet who actually knows what I was thinking,” Clapper said of his testimony from last March. “Not the media, and not certain members of Congress, only I know what I was thinking.”

But yet, as Wheeler concludes:

If only one person knows what he was thinking, then how was Robert Litt in any position to tell us Clapper was “surprised”?
And has Clapper decided he wasn’t “surprised” (perhaps because he had been briefed, not to mention had received months and months of letters, about the question), but instead simply “misunderstood” the intent of a question he had received months of letters about?

Yessssss.

And why is it that the US has millions incarcerated for all kinds of crimes, yet no Wall Street assholes, no liars under oath, and people who can’t handle the Constitution as written.

Clapping all day.