or so I have been assured by the UA (Usual Apologists).

Think of it as the theme of the prom.

never mind the FACTS , just keep believing radical propaganda to throw dirt and punmp up another fake " scandal " .

The only two I know about are Benghazi and this thing about the IRS.

I don't hear Darrell Issa calling for an investigation about whether NSA programs like BLARNEY violate the Fourth Amendment or whether the Obama Administration is generally letting too much of Bush's ham handed assault on civil liberties stand in order to "fight terrorism." He certainly wouldn't want to investigate whether the administration used diplomatic manipulation to corner the president of a sovereign state in Vienna. That's too much like Bush's ham handed assault on international law, for which he and other members of his junta have not yet been prosecuted.

So, as long as President Obama is violating civil liberties or treating the President of Bolivia like a lowly subject of the American Empire, Issa won't touch it any more than he's going to touch the administration's failure to prosecute Wall Street bankers or any other real scandal.

With ALL the gamepieces outta the bag, it's obvious how LITTLE We the People count in this new millenium. Of course, collectively, we stood by - eyes wide open - and LET it happen. Tho it likely smacks of cowardice, I reiterate that I'm glad I'm in the twilight of my years.

and female, to boot... the other three are boys.

That's why I prefaced myself with the cowardice disclaimer. I have kids and grandkids too. I'm not very proud of what I know I've been complicit in handing off to them. If I had no conscience, I might find solace in the bliss of their ignornace. But even if I'm the only one to know the ball was nuged from where it lay, the champagne simply can not taste as good as it should.

Organizations, politicians that knew what "compromise" meant, there used to be more fish to catch, and a media not co-opted by big business. We really know better! We need to rally around COMPLETE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM (CCFR) and get publicly funded elections passed! Lets take the bribes out of political office and keep our politicians from spending 75% of their time "fundraising!"

Hell, I'd run for congress if I didn't have to be wealthy to start with AND well connected.

For example,

1. Require equal numbers of campaign ads in all primary media (TV, radio, newspapers). No matter how much ad time is bought by corporations and billionaires, the media must wait until the other candidates have ad buys for equal time. I see no first amendment argument against requiring equal time.

2. Modest public funding could pay for fairly moderated televised debates.

3. Pretend news, ads disguised as news, would be disallowed, and a media entity would loose its license for at least a year for breaking this rule. This would affect all the principals, not just the name of the particular TV station, etc.

4. Cooked up demonstrations created or funded by behind-the-scenes billionaires or their operatives would lead to investigations and broadly publicized reports - multiple reports required of all primary media.

5. News coverage of in-person political events must also be given equal time among all viable candidates.

Everything that is feasible and enforceable needs to be done to neutralize the effect of imbalanced funding. Elections need to be about votes and issues, not money and dirty tricks.

your administration doesn't mind that you don't matter.

now and bears close watching. Changes in international relations will, or will not, come from them, not us.

Not only are the Latin American countries threatened by American imperialism, but the whole world. Throughout history US imperialism has only caused terror. For example, when the Reagan administration intervened in El Salvador to support the fascist tyranny. It makes me sad that the US is still an imperialist force in the world.

have increased dramatically.

Is it our fault that the Europeans try to earn brownie points with us by doing what they think we want them to do?

misuse of words to make something seem worse than it is.

Intolerable treatment

The diversion of Evo Morales’ plane reveals European weakness in the face of US pressure

El País 4 JUL 2013 - 20:36 CET

After being held up in the airport of Vienna for more than 13 hours, the presidential airplane of Evo Morales was finally able to resume its flight to Bolivia on Wednesday, after a stopover in the Canary Islands, in an episode whose grotesque aspects should not obscure the political ones: a diplomatic crisis based on a gratuitous humiliation inflicted upon a head of state.

The plane carrying the Bolivian president, who had been in Moscow to attend a meeting of gas-producing countries, had to land in the Austrian capital because several countries had refused permission to utilize their airspace on the flight back to Bolivia. The reason? The mere suspicion that the former US National Security Agency analyst, Edward Snowden, wanted in his country for having blown the whistle on its massive espionage practices, might be traveling aboard.

The delay was rightly considered an intolerable affront, and Morales received immediate expressions of support from other Latin American countries — Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Uruguay and others. Though the Bolivian vice president, Álvaro García Linera, exaggerated when he declared that Evo was being “held hostage” in Europe and that his life had been put in danger, it is true that there is no precedent for this sort of treatment, which contravenes all the treaties and rules of international diplomacy that accord immunity to the planes in which heads of state are traveling.

The fact is that the pursuit of a person wanted by the American justice system has led various governments to trample all over these rules and treaties. And behind this behavior stands the huge pressure exerted by the United States on its European friends and allies to secure Snowden’s detention, and the shameful ease with which many of them have bowed to these pressures, in contrast with the caution and timidity these same states have shown when it comes to defending their own citizens against the US secret services’ massive interference in their communications — both those of private individuals and public organizations and news media.

More:
http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/07/04/inenglish/1372962590_018332.html

no diplomat with any brains would try to search a head of state's plane. They (SPANISH) still have a colonial attitude , which is why they are held in such low regard throughout Latino America. I hope he got the bum's rush he deserved