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Blowback from Snowden's revelations... this isn't pretty...

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wraith808:
Had this happened back in the 70s, there would be no question whatsoever about impeachment, resignations, and criminal prosecution of government officials and officers over any of this.
-40hz (June 25, 2013, 06:22 AM)
--- End quote ---

The thing about it is that it wasn't as endemic back then.  Everyone, from the top to the bottom is in some way involved, whether by empowerment, willful obliviousness, or outright complicity.

This is the thing.  I don't think that what Obama is now is what he was when he ran.  But that thing about absolute power?

In a moment of candor, he admitted that he'd been wrong on some of his votes as a Senator, and some of the things he'd said about his predecessor, because he didn't have the full picture as a Senator.

Think about that.  He'd been asked to take a vote on things that he didn't have the full picture on.  What's wrong with that statement?  What does that say about this situation, and about the US government in general?

TaoPhoenix:
Think about that.  He'd been asked to take a vote on things that he didn't have the full picture on.  What's wrong with that statement?  What does that say about this situation, and about the US government in general?
-wraith808 (June 25, 2013, 11:52 AM)
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Giving him 5% slack, congresspeople *don't* have the "full picture" because their long term political strategy is different. It just is. The thing about being Prez is that it's a bit like firing a two bullet shotgun vs someone else with a semi-automatic. Once you get that re-election, then you're "done". So you can sorta do much more of whatever you want, and then you literally officially retire and then wander around doing "Former-President-y" stuff.

Congresspeople have to *keep* getting re-elected, so they often pick votes in the mood of the times. In some ways that's really bad in the House because the election cycle whips around so fast. Also a congress rep is "one of many" so they spend all day jockeying around. The President is a "one stop shop" and is followed much more intensely.

wraith808:
But you can't make a fully informed vote that is representative of your constituents if you don't have all of the information.  That sort of strips away any illusion of a representative government.

40hz:
But you can't make a fully informed vote that is representative of your constituents if you don't have all of the information.  That sort of strips away any illusion of a representative government.
-wraith808 (June 25, 2013, 12:55 PM)
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Bingo!

But to grant him 1% slack, I also think he realized (as every president has since Kennedy) that the office of the prez is nowhere near as powerful - or secure - as many would believe should a president get a little too big for his britches and really think he was gonna rock the boat on the corporate/intel/power-broker crowd.

The president may have a secret service. But these guys have the full resources of our unelected and virtually unmonitored shadow government at their disposal: private "contractors," black ops programs, secret prisons, clandestine field operatives, omnipresent surveillance technology - the works! And it's not just conspiracy theory either. We know this looking-glass world exists. The government has acknowledged it does - even if it refuses to give specifics. Like our former VP so famously said: The gloves have come off.

I personally found it amazing how quickly Prez-O backed off on almost everything he said about transparency and accountability and repairing some of the damage caused by the excesses in the name of 9/11. Politicians don't usually betray everything they say, or do a complete 180, without fairly good reasons. And I don't think this guy was that good a liar that he had everybody conned right up front.

So what happened?

Compare the early days of this administration with the sudden change in its behavior and attitude about almost everything related to "national security" less than two years later.

I'm guessing "somebody" got cautioned. And in no uncertain terms.
 :huh:

TaoPhoenix:
I personally found it amazing how quickly Prez-O backed off on almost everything he said about transparency and accountability and repairing some of the damage caused by the excesses in the name of 9/11. Politicians don't usually betray everything they say, or do a complete 180, without fairly good reasons. And I don't think this guy was that good a liar that he had everybody conned right up front.

So what happened?

Compare the early days of this administration with the sudden change in its behavior and attitude about almost everything related to "national security" less than two years later.

I'm guessing "somebody" got cautioned. And in no uncertain terms.
 :huh:
-40hz (June 25, 2013, 02:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

This is an important side-point to go into for a few minutes. Of course we're all jaded/cynical, but it's important to at least "keep our assumptions correct." So of course, we have to briefly ask ourselves if we felt "conned".

Have we forgotten so fast that the other ticket was *McCain-Palin*?!!
Does anyone want to speculate what *they* would have done, once in power?!!

So yeah, going back to Prez O's early first term, maybe he did really try to do a few things, then discovered that this is a particularly vicious "stonewall" Republican congress. You can do lots of "strange and miscellaneous" things as President, but I think we're discovering that then it becomes a bit of a waiting game playing ping pong with Congress and maybe the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile having watched a few James Bond movies, if this Ed Snowden critter basically did one of the "top five worst acts of treason" ever, why is it this hard to take him down? What am I not getting that a nice infiltrator team with a $25 million budget including some payoffs can't get done in a week? Or does *that* create the "Game Changer" martyr they're desperately trying to avoid? Why all this prancing around with the spin campaign?!

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