Obama talks like the president of the ACLU but acts like Dick Cheney.
How to trap a whistleblower
51–60 of 116 posts
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#52If the head of state is a proven liar, is there any moral reason to tell the truth to any of the organs of state you deal with?
Invoke your right to remain silent when dealing with the government, but be loud as hell in public.
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#53And that's the answer to everyone refusing to call Snowden a whistle blower because he left the country rather than face the legal consequences. The consequences involved were anything but legal.
Goverment is clever enought to change the law befor doing anything. So they can clame that what they do is within the law.
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of that entire group you just mentioned, the most divisive class warfare big government statist was Obama. At least if McCain had been elected then we would have had opposition party contention between the executive and legislative branches. At least with a Republican in office, the media would have been more likely to do its job by asking tougher questions and analyzing rather than fawning and adulating. Before all…
right, because when we had republicans like Bush/Cheney in office, everything went far better than they are now. Feel free to be a Republican just as I feel free to be a Democrat, but that's not really relevant to this issue. The majority of Obama's support on these issues comes from Republicans.
Not really, there is a small minority of democrats and a small minority of republicans that don't support him on these issues and all the rest do on both sides.
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#55Obama could have been special. The symbol, the icon for an America forgiven of its past and now authoring hope for future people of all races. Perhaps it was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied his original purer motives. I remember feeling so proud that we had a black President. I knew he was human, I know that skin color does not matter, but it was hard to not hope that given wh…
"Obama could have been special."
I have a honest question, did you read his voting record, see what bills he had wrote / sponsored / co-sponsored, or listen to his podcast[1] before deciding he was worth your hope for that symbol? The media narrative for both sides is smoke and mirrors. The only real truth is what the do in legislation.
1) Yes, he had one as a US Senator.
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of that entire group you just mentioned, the most divisive class warfare big government statist was Obama. At least if McCain had been elected then we would have had opposition party contention between the executive and legislative branches. At least with a Republican in office, the media would have been more likely to do its job by asking tougher questions and analyzing rather than fawning and adulating. Before all…
right, because when we had republicans like Bush/Cheney in office, everything went far better than they are now. Feel free to be a Republican just as I feel free to be a Democrat, but that's not really relevant to this issue. The majority of Obama's support on these issues comes from Republicans.
Since I never voted for any Bush, your straw man does not apply. I'm not advocating being a Republican. I'm advocating being independent and making strategic decisions about candidates based upon core principles - rather than being a jersey-wearing die-hard fan of a political party.
That said, I do think that having a Republican administration take the blame for the current scandals (IRS, NSA, AP, Benghazi) would have been a good thing.
If we extrapolate the level of anal probing that went on as a result of the Valerie Plame outing to the above scandals, the media wouldn't let any of them go until something more meaningful happened in congress, in the courts, or in voting booths.
As it is, these scandals are all disappearing from the MSM's coverage. Maybe they can do another multi-month coverage of George Zimmerman-like trials to take our minds off of important things.
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#57Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#58My guess is that much of Obama's political strategy is mostly just to pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something, just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something else in the headlines. Except for the fantasy stat…
Unfortunately for the American people, more people will have seen Obama make his remarks on Leno than those who read the Salon article. Getting your news from clowns is dangerous to our liberties.
Who is the clown here ? Obama or Leno ?
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#59Obama could have been special. The symbol, the icon for an America forgiven of its past and now authoring hope for future people of all races. Perhaps it was power that corrupted him or maybe it was his close advisors that stymied his original purer motives. I remember feeling so proud that we had a black President. I knew he was human, I know that skin color does not matter, but it was hard to not hope that given wh…
Another explanation that I sadly believe to be much more realistic is that Obama never had pure motives. He was just playing the game (as any candidate must to win the support of either establishment party), and he took many millions of hopeful people along for the ride. It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...
I wonder, though, if perhaps a lot of "power decisions" are made at the margin.
(I mean "making decisions at the margin" in the way that economists use the term. For example: I wish cheese was free. But, in real life, I have a choice between $2.49 cheese and $2.19 cheese. So I buy the cheaper cheese, not the free cheese. Because the free cheese doesn't exist.)
If the President has to make small decisions about "the lesser of two evils", then how much power does he really have?
For example: He said he would close Guantanamo Bay, but didn't. One theory is that he was full of shit. He's just a tool. Another theory is that there wasn't the political capital to accomplish such a thing. As in: there was enough push-back from his own party... he didn't want to alienate some of his friends... as in, he couldn't afford to. So he says: "Screw it. A couple hundred people in hell isn't worth my career if I can focus on other things that can benefit more people."
(I'm not trying to be an apologist for Obama here. I think Washington is pretty horribly corrupt in both parties...)
So I'm left to wonder: Sure, no smart politician is going to burn his own career for a couple hundred foreigners that the citizens hate anyway (I guess...). But why is Gitmo still open? What does it accomplish? (I keep going around in circles trying to figure out why anyone loves Gitmo...)
A president "spends power" at the margins. He spent a lot of power on Obamacare. (You call in favors, you do the horse-trading...) But he has spent no power against the "Security Industrial Complex". I guess it's not something that he cares to achieve. People are calling it "Bush's 4th term". I understand the contractors profit from "Fear of Terrorists". And I'm sure there are some military / intelligence people who are actually hard-core about it. But, outside of that.... who the fuck loves it? I just don't get it... Washington has wrapped itself into a self-sustaining engine of fear...
... oy vey. And here we're not supposed to be getting all political on HN... :-/
Re: How to trap a whistleblower
#60My guess is that much of Obama's political strategy is mostly just to pretend. So, there he sees a public issue and says something, just something, just says it, to defuse the issue and, then, counts on (1) the mainstream media not getting into the details of what is wrong with the fantasy statement, (2) the voters being busy with other things, and (3) soon something else in the headlines. Except for the fantasy stat…
How would you classify handling the American economy during the worst banking crisis, killing OBL, pulling US out of Iraq, etc, etc? Pretending or Doing?