Anyone watch the Snowden interview?  Anyone else think, like me, that John Kerry's comments were bad enough before the interview, but after, when juxtaposed against Snowden's, revealed Kerry to be an a$$ of major proportions?  

I'm hoping for a transcript of Snowden's remarks.  Kerry had to resort to "man-up"-macho rhetoric, while Snowden elegantly and eloquently spoke of the meaning of freedom and democracy.  This, which I found at The Guardian, I found particularly incisive, and poignant:

"I take the threat of terrorism seriously. And I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort of scandalize our memories, to sort of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up and our constitution says we should not give up."

President Obama gave the commencement speech at West Point yesterday, but he didn't impress "the Big 3" with his foreign policy vision - the NYT:

President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left

SNIP

But he provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years, and many still doubt that he fully appreciates the leverage the United States has even in a changing world. Falling back on hackneyed phrases like America is the "indispensable nation" told us little.

nor The Washington Post:

PRESIDENT OBAMA has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who "say that every problem has a military solution," who "think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak," who favor putting "American troops into the middle of [Syria's] increasingly sectarian civil war," who propose "invading every country that harbors terrorist networks" and who think that "working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness."

Few, if any, of those who question the president's record hold such views. Instead, they are asking why an arbitrary date should be set for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan, especially given the baleful results of the "zero option" in Iraq. They are suggesting that military steps short of the deployment of U.S. ground troops could stop the murderous air and chemical attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. They are arguing that the United States should not be constrained by Cyprus or Bulgaria in responding to Russia's invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine.

nor even the WSJ (possible paywall):

The speech President Obama delivered Wednesday at West Point was intended to be a robust defense of his foreign policy, about which even our liberal friends are starting to entertain doubts. But as we listened to the President chart his course between the false-choice alternatives of "American isolationism" and "invading every country that harbors terrorist networks," we got to thinking of everything that wasn't in his speech.

SNIP

We know that no foreign policy speech can cover the entire world. But listening to Mr. Obama trying to assemble a coherent foreign policy agenda from the record of the past five years was like watching Tom Hanks trying to survive in "Cast Away": Whatever's left from the wreckage will have to do.

The phrase that particularly moved me was Kerry's saying that Snowden should "man up", and come back to the US to make his case. Apparently, John hasn't noticed that Mr. Snowden has made his case quite convincingly.

Be a man, Snowden?

Be a chump is more like it.

What is wrong with someone like Kerry. He seems to have the capacity to walk and chew gum at the same time, and then he reveals in an instant that he is a bumbling arrogant fool, and prone to the use of sexist imagery on top of it.

A group of female Utah high school students say they're shocked to discover their yearbook photos were digitally altered to cover up bare skin.

Those three little words from Bryan Cranston have sent Breaking Bad fans crazy with hope, crazy with thinking that maybe, just maybe, we haven't seen the last of Walter White.

It all happened in an interview with CNN's Ashleigh Banfield on Thursday night, when she questioned that final moment.

 Ms. Stanley starts by missing Barbara Walters who would have been "nosier".  No questions such as "do Russian women consider him a catch?" Then moves on to report that the NBC interview gave Snowden a chance to show that he isn't a wild-eyed lunatic (in case you were wondering).

Ms. Stanley also reports that Snowden charges that the government has not shown how any of his revelations have harmed national security or individuals, but cunningly counters that Snowden, in turn, has not shown how government surveillance has harmed a single American either--putting her vast knowledge of the US constitution on display for the TV viewing public to marvel.  

Ms. Stanley acknowledges how nice Snowden speaks, so fluent, no   "Ums" or "like"--but this is not necessarily good, since it reminds her of Eliza Doolittle, of my Fair Lady, who it was said her English was so good she must be foreign.

 And, Snowden has a tinge of superiority in his tone with Brian Williams, when he said that Brian's questions were fair.  He showed that he was smart alright but a high school dropout you know)  but, again, that is not all good.  Because if he was that smart it calls into question, for her, why he would flee to Hong Kong without an exit strategy and be stuck in Russia.  

And, of course, she go in a jab at Glenn Greenwald saying that, despite all her reservations, Snowden is a better ambassador for himself than the "smug and unreasonable" Greenwald.  A plus for Snowden, a minus for Greenwald.

The animatronic figure, which was created by Jordan Wolfson and Spectral Motion, can currently be found wowing (and creeping out) visitors at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York.

A video showed the creation moving like a real life dancer to the amazement of people at the exhibit.

He tells me I'm a light weight, and those aren't bacon wrapped onion rings.  Those are just rings of onion.  I ask who bacon wraps onion rings and he hands me his phone with Epic Mealtime playing

http://youtu.be/m8u8Z3bUQfs

When it's over he says, "Yup, they're Canadian."

A team of physicists have provided what has been described by the journal Nature as the "clearest evidence yet" that our universe is a hologram.

The new research could help reconcile one of modern physics' most enduring problems : the apparent inconsistencies between the different models of the universe as explained by quantum physics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

The two new scientific papers are the culmination of years' work led by Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan, and deal with hypothetical calculations of the energies of black holes in different universes.

The idea of the universe existing as a `hologram' doesn't refer to a Matrix-like illusion, but the theory that the three dimensions we perceive are actually just"painted" onto the cosmological horizon - the boundary of the known universe.

This model of the universe helps explain some inconsistencies between general relativity (Einstein's theory) and quantum physics. Although Einstein's work underpins much of modern physics, at certain extremes (such as in the middle of a black hole) the principles he outlined break down and the laws of quantum physics take over.

LINK

You never know of course but Republicans seem very likely to get to 51 or 52 based on the latest polls and the overall environment.

The ACLU sent a letter urging senators not to vote on the nomination until the WH shared the full memo with the senate.  Senator Mark Udall (D.CO) indicated that he could not vote for Barron's confirmation until the memo was released.  The WH then indicated that it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling to make public portions of a DOJ memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a US citizen.  That decision changed the politics of the confirmation.

Subsequently, the DOJ asked in a motion, the second circuit in NY for further redactions  before being made public  claiming that there were still some sensitive components remaining.