Showing posts with label NSA phone scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA phone scandal. Show all posts

Thursday, November 05, 2015

Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - Midterm Check Up

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 Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - The Midterm Check Up
 
Halfway through the first year of his second term as President of these United States, just what have we realized of the Obama Dream we were given when he first ran to be chief executive, commander in chief, the husband of the First Lady or maybe biggest spender in our history?
 
Is writing this story a journalist's "dream" ticket to a Pulitzer, or a "nightmare" demotion to writing those dreaded obituaries?
 
My a lot can happen by the 5th year of a presidency --- or not.
 
First you have to get elected, and then elected again.  It means the people might have been fooled once, but they presumably knew what they were doing when they re-elected you.  Now what happens really is the fault of the people who voted for Obama.
 
Ages ago a newly elected Barack Obama promised a lot and did some pretty serious Bushwhacking in the process.  In his first year as the first minority to ever be elected president he promised to deliver things like comprehensive Immigration Reform and closing Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.
 
 
Of course the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be ended immediately with a high degree of success.  The dastardly Bush recession would be fixed and everyone will keep their homes and get back their lost jobs.  In the meantime he would give everyone in our country health insurance and lower the cost of healthcare.
 
There might have been some mention of a new concept of redistribution of wealth from the "elite" class to the middle class, which in Obamaese means anyone making less than a million or two million dollars a year.  Truth is very difficult to find in the fog in our nation's capitol.
 
Now where I come from about a hundred miles from where Mark Twain grew up, if someone told me the middle class was everyone except the rich, powerful and very few "elite", I might scratch my head in wonder.
 
 
So if the middle class is everyone else, how many "elite's" are there?  Of course the wealthy "elites" have mastered hiding their money from detection by IRS or any other criminal or social tax deductible organization.  The truth is no one really knows this answer, including the All Omnipotent NSA since they REALLY are watching you all the time.
 
So it is a guess by anyone that 1-5% of Americans belong to the so called "elite".  Yet these people control all the wealth of America and much of the world according to those who know and speak the truth.
 
 
 
Now, back to my most recent line of thought, if no more than 5% are "elite" and we are going to redistribute their wealth so we all get what we deserve, then everyone becomes a card carrying member of the "elite".
 
Guess we might need all those illegal immigrants since none of the "elite" work like the middle class has been doing ever since we first drove out the British.  That's one way to drive down the unemployment rate, just eliminate the middle class.  Won't be any jobless if everyone is home managing their money instead of making it.
 
One other big Obama promise was to throw those crooks on Wall Street or Main Street, where ever they might be carrying out their predatory practices, in jail.
 
Then reality set in.  Suddenly, when he was elected president, he was expected to do what he said he would do.  Like nothing counted when he was just a presidential candidate.  Only if you were the final one elected would your promises have to be honest, truthful and delivered.
 
No first year Immigration reform or prison closings.  Five years later they are both just as he found them when he became responsible for all Americans as president.
 
 
 
As for ending the two wars being fought to end the bigger war on terror, our president's words of peace and cooperation for all Earthlings got him the coveted Nobel Peace prize a couple of weeks later as the one person in the world who did more than everyone else to bring about peace.
 
Clearly words speak louder than actions for a few weeks later he ordered tens of thousands of more American troops and billions of dollars in military expenditures in Afghanistan.  What a difference a few weeks can make.
 
Eventually, long after he had promised, we are pretty much out of Iraq.  Now that the war on terror between the US and Al-Qaeda is over the people of Iraq can finish their Civil Separatist war which is far more brutal and deadly than our Geneva Convention based efforts.
 
One thing the Obama administration did learn from all the war efforts is the value of drones, those unmanned airplanes that can successfully kill terrorists without risking the lives of American soldiers.  Any deaths of innocent civilians including children are just collateral damage to the mission.
 
Afghanistan, after billions in bribes, is just now winding down.  Both wars cost far too many lives of the brave American soldiers, men and women, sent to the war zones.
 
 
Fixing Bush's financial recession has been a little bit more complicated than Obama might have suspected since it seemed to take several years to find everything that could be blamed on Bush.
 
In Detroit he saved the world auto industry by transforming General Motors Corporation into the Government Motors Corporation.  His AIG bailout gave billions of dollars to those barons of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs.
 
Millions of Americans lost their jobs and millions of Americans lost their homes since Obama was elected.  The economy is declared to be stable and safe.
 
But people have not found new jobs or replaced foreclosed homes.  And those who have suffered most are the very middle class he promised to save.
 
Seniors saw their retirement savings vanish away.  Minorities by the millions lost their jobs and homes.  So did the Caucasians.  Ironically, many were the very special interest groups who overwhelmingly elected Obama to office.  I guess you can't bite the hand that feeds you when you are the one doing the feeding.
 
No major crooks have been sent to jail.
 
 
As for health care and costs, after a brutal couple of  years Obama Care did get approved but all the tough promises to keep were delayed until after the re-election campaign.  Now we are beginning to see that much of it is impossible to implement.
 
Neither health insurance or medical treatment costs have gone down but continue their upward trajectory.  Americans spend more being sicker than nearly all other developed countries.  We also spend far more on legal drugs than anyone else meaning we are either much sicker or love being legally "stoned".
 
 
Obama might have another first to his credit, not having a budget approved the entire time he has been president.
 
On the other hand, he has had a few trouble spots he did not expect.  The Benghazi attack in Libya left four Americans including the Ambassador dead.
 
The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) targeted Tea Party conservatives for harassment while the NSA (National Security Agency) targeted just plain people for about everything with their cell phone and internet tapping and hacking initiatives.
 
 
The Office of the Chief Executive and Commander in chief (the White House) of course knew nothing of such actions by their own agencies and people.
 
Then there is the Mexican drug war and Syrian civil war in which the big news is we have done nothing in either case.  As a result of our inaction or intellectual constipation 93,000 people have died in Syria and between 60,000 and 90,000 have died in Mexico.
 
Need we say more about the state of affairs of the nation?  To be perfectly honest there are a lot more good, inspiring or entertaining stories we need to cover.
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Saturday, July 06, 2013

Obama's Maximus Mea Culpa - NSA Aftermath



Far from the maddening lights and cameras to which he is accustomed, President Obama has been forced to offer the Maximus Mea Culpa to friends, allies and major investors alike as he is the first world leader caught with his fingers in the cookie jar of cyber scandal.
 
Leave it to the National Security Agency, NSA, the most mysterious of all our intelligence agencies in America, to give a top security clearance to a private NSA contractor who within a matter of months after getting the job was blabbering all the NSA secrets to an English newspaper.
 
 
Unfortunately these were not little secrets but really big stuff like the fact NSA bugged top secret computers of our friends and foes alike.  In fact they were hacked by the US 10-15 years ago and we have been listening in ever since.
 
From Germany and Britain to Russia and China, they were all hacked long ago and we have known all along what they were up to in terms of military, monetary or any other kind of policy.
 
 
Look what happened the past decade and a half.  There was Clinton's good time government with it's focus on strategic initiatives like global warming, alternate energy, legalizing fraudulent housing  mortgage programs, and increasing the duties of White House Interns.
 
Bush brought us the 911 terrorist attack, war in Iraq and Afghanistan and pretty much a collapsed economy, while Obama brought us, well, more of the same.  How many of our decisions were made based on information we "legally stole" from everyone else?
 
 
Better yet, if NSA was tapping phones and emails all these years surely they were aware of the 911 attack in advance.  Were they aware and did they sit on the information?  Let's hope not.
 
Regardless, they did bug all those nations and leaders through phones and the Internet so President Obama is now left with a lot of explaining to do and with a need to demonstrate a sincere Mea Culpa to those friends and allies.
 
Ironically, while it is Germany who demanded the first private meeting with the president people from Britain to the European Union are in the queue wanting similar assurances we have not compromised their national security.
 

Then there is China, our Sugar Daddy yet willing to join with Russia at any time to block Obama initiatives in the United Nations.  Many times Obama has accused the Chinese of "cheating" by hacking American computers.
 
The last time the White House made a big deal of showing how the hack attack had come from a very specific building in China.  I guess we know now how the White House knew about the Chinese hacking connection since the US has been hacking everyone for a very long time.  However, the truth that we were secretly hacking China the last 15 years while protesting Chinese attacks on us is quite disingenuous.
 
 
We need China as an ally to help us in Asia and the Middle East.  That is beyond the fact they are the largest owner of our national debt in the world.  And there is a great deal in import and export trade between the US and China significantly helping both nations.
 
We also need Russia as an ally in the same places.  Yet we accuse them both of all kinds of mischievous behavior.
 
 
Let us hope our national security policy is not guided by paranoid patriotism but by logic, ethics and a respect for individual rights and freedom.  I doubt the record as the NSA mess unfolds will be good news.
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Friday, June 14, 2013

Obamaville - June 14, 2013

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 Obamaville - June 14, 2013 - The Midterm Check Up
 
Halfway through the first year of his second term as President of these United States, just what have we realized of the Obama Dream we were given when he first ran to be chief executive, commander in chief, the husband of the First Lady or maybe biggest spender in our history?
 
Is writing this story a journalist's "dream" ticket to a Pulitzer, or a "nightmare" demotion to writing those dreaded obituaries?
 
My a lot can happen by the 5th year of a presidency --- or not.
 
First you have to get elected, and then elected again.  It means the people might have been fooled once, but they presumably knew what they were doing when they re-elected you.  Now what happens really is the fault of the people who voted for Obama.
 
Ages ago a newly elected Barack Obama promised a lot and did some pretty serious Bushwhacking in the process.  In his first year as the first minority to ever be elected president he promised to deliver things like comprehensive Immigration Reform and closing Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.
 
 
Of course the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would be ended immediately with a high degree of success.  The dastardly Bush recession would be fixed and everyone will keep their homes and get back their lost jobs.  In the meantime he would give everyone in our country health insurance and lower the cost of healthcare.
 
There might have been some mention of a new concept of redistribution of wealth from the "elite" class to the middle class, which in Obamaese means anyone making less than a million or two million dollars a year.  Truth is very difficult to find in the fog in our nation's capitol.
 
Now where I come from about a hundred miles from where Mark Twain grew up, if someone told me the middle class was everyone except the rich, powerful and very few "elite", I might scratch my head in wonder.
 
 
So if the middle class is everyone else, how many "elite's" are there?  Of course the wealthy "elites" have mastered hiding their money from detection by IRS or any other criminal or social tax deductible organization.  The truth is no one really knows this answer, including the All Omnipotent NSA since they REALLY are watching you all the time.
 
So it is a guess by anyone that 1-5% of Americans belong to the so called "elite".  Yet these people control all the wealth of America and much of the world according to those who know and speak the truth.
 
 
 
Now, back to my most recent line of thought, if no more than 5% are "elite" and we are going to redistribute their wealth so we all get what we deserve, then everyone becomes a card carrying member of the "elite".
 
Guess we might need all those illegal immigrants since none of the "elite" work like the middle class has been doing ever since we first drove out the British.  That's one way to drive down the unemployment rate, just eliminate the middle class.  Won't be any jobless if everyone is home managing their money instead of making it.
 
One other big Obama promise was to throw those crooks on Wall Street or Main Street, where ever they might be carrying out their predatory practices, in jail.
 
Then reality set in.  Suddenly, when he was elected president, he was expected to do what he said he would do.  Like nothing counted when he was just a presidential candidate.  Only if you were the final one elected would your promises have to be honest, truthful and delivered.
 
No first year Immigration reform or prison closings.  Five years later they are both just as he found them when he became responsible for all Americans as president.
 
 
 
As for ending the two wars being fought to end the bigger war on terror, our president's words of peace and cooperation for all Earthlings got him the coveted Nobel Peace prize a couple of weeks later as the one person in the world who did more than everyone else to bring about peace.
 
Clearly words speak louder than actions for a few weeks later he ordered tens of thousands of more American troops and billions of dollars in military expenditures in Afghanistan.  What a difference a few weeks can make.
 
Eventually, long after he had promised, we are pretty much out of Iraq.  Now that the war on terror between the US and Al-Qaeda is over the people of Iraq can finish their Civil Separatist war which is far more brutal and deadly than our Geneva Convention based efforts.
 
One thing the Obama administration did learn from all the war efforts is the value of drones, those unmanned airplanes that can successfully kill terrorists without risking the lives of American soldiers.  Any deaths of innocent civilians including children are just collateral damage to the mission.
 
Afghanistan, after billions in bribes, is just now winding down.  Both wars cost far too many lives of the brave American soldiers, men and women, sent to the war zones.
 
 
Fixing Bush's financial recession has been a little bit more complicated than Obama might have suspected since it seemed to take several years to find everything that could be blamed on Bush.
 
In Detroit he saved the world auto industry by transforming General Motors Corporation into the Government Motors Corporation.  His AIG bailout gave billions of dollars to those barons of Wall Street like Goldman Sachs.
 
Millions of Americans lost their jobs and millions of Americans lost their homes since Obama was elected.  The economy is declared to be stable and safe.
 
But people have not found new jobs or replaced foreclosed homes.  And those who have suffered most are the very middle class he promised to save.
 
Seniors saw their retirement savings vanish away.  Minorities by the millions lost their jobs and homes.  So did the Caucasians.  Ironically, many were the very special interest groups who overwhelmingly elected Obama to office.  I guess you can't bite the hand that feeds you when you are the one doing the feeding.
 
No major crooks have been sent to jail.
 
 
As for health care and costs, after a brutal couple of  years Obama Care did get approved but all the tough promises to keep were delayed until after the re-election campaign.  Now we are beginning to see that much of it is impossible to implement.
 
Neither health insurance or medical treatment costs have gone down but continue their upward trajectory.  Americans spend more being sicker than nearly all other developed countries.  We also spend far more on legal drugs than anyone else meaning we are either much sicker or love being legally "stoned".
 
 
Obama might have another first to his credit, not having a budget approved the entire time he has been president.
 
On the other hand, he has had a few trouble spots he did not expect.  The Benghazi attack in Libya left four Americans including the Ambassador dead.
 
The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) targeted Tea Party conservatives for harassment while the NSA (National Security Agency) targeted just plain people for about everything with their cell phone and internet tapping and hacking initiatives.
 
 
The Office of the Chief Executive and Commander in chief (the White House) of course knew nothing of such actions by their own agencies and people.
 
Then there is the Mexican drug war and Syrian civil war in which the big news is we have done nothing in either case.  As a result of our inaction or intellectual constipation 93,000 people have died in Syria and between 60,000 and 90,000 have died in Mexico.
 
Need we say more about the state of affairs of the nation?  To be perfectly honest there are a lot more good, inspiring or entertaining stories we need to cover.
.