I note, with some chagrin, that our resident cadre of trolling r****ds are (naturally) not interested in posting substantiative complaints in regards to the Obama Administration and its actions. Allow me to fill this void briefly so as to maintain some semblance of rational thought in the "Obama may not be doing a good job" crowd. I hope this balances nicely with the "OMG OBAMA GREETED THE SAUDIS" and "HOLY $%@# OBAMA CALLS AMERICA A NATION OF AMERICAN CITIZENS!!!!" and "OMGWTFBBQ OBAMA IS UNFAMILIAR WITH THE LINGUISTIC ROOTS OF "AUSTRIAN"! WHAT"S NEXT - MANDATED PUPPY DROWNING!??!11" Without further adoo then I submit the following as proof that Obama is, indeed, just another douchey politician at times (note: these links are shamelessly stolen from slashdot.org): The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has stepped in to defend AT&T in the case over their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program started by Bush. The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.' The Electronic Frontier Foundation has described the action as an 'embrace' of the Bush policy." Glenn Greenwald writes a nice summary: I urge you to go to Greenwald's article. He has a word-to-word comparison of the Bush Junta's DOJ defense and Obama's. One might think the Obama DOJ was plagiarizing (note that this will never be brought up by basso). Suffice to say that Obama was a gigantic freeking liar on his boasts of a "new era of transparency", and worse, utterly disengenuous to an army of supporters that desired a return to civil rights standards demanded by the constitution. Furthermore, every democrat congressman who insulated the telecoms with immunity under the pretense that the blame (and prosecution) should be brought on the Bush officials responsible were lying - an absolutely enormous backstab to the fed-up populace they so brazenly catered to. Congrats, dems. You have maintained the status quo you inherited from Bush. Change, it seems, is highly relative, and often absurdly superficial.
I just want to hold this out as a possibility: maybe transparency is a naive idea that is dangerous to this republic... and you only would really understand it until you are at that place where the buck stops.
I counter that without said transparency, the notion of a government "by the people and for the people" is impossible. The people need to know what is transpiring within the government to make such a sentiment possible. The entire ideology of democracy is moot without such an understanding. How can one understand how to vote without knowledge of what's at stake? What you adovocate would be better termed an "oligarchy (or authoritarianism) disguised in the trappings of a farcical democracy".
I should expand my answer. I don't think transparency is at all dangerous to our republic as it was intended. I do think transparency is dangerous to the empire. I don't think it's coincidence that the CIA started right before we started the perpetual-war state with the Korean Police Action. Before that, spying was a military function, given pretty much free reign during wartime, but strictly limited outside of that.
well, this was on my thread starting list, but just hadn't thought of a clever title yet. of course, i could've just dug up this thread.
Unless I read the article wrong, it seems Obama is covering Bush's ass on the warrantless wiretaps during his presidency. Obama, so far, has promised no warrantless wiretaps. I give him the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
His general philosophy on all of this (right or wrong) seems to be to move on and try to do better in the future, but not try to prosecute the past. He's said the same on a number of issues like investigating torture memos and all that stuff.
But what is transparency in government? Telling you a bit more than is routinely imagined... There are all kinds of things that remain hidden (and should remain hidden). Should we out our spies? That would fall under the category of Transparency. Where is the line drawn?
This is basically what is going on. It's not saying Obama is authorizing wiretaps, only that in dealing with the fallout of what's actually happened, Obama believes that any further progress in the case will involve revelation of state secrets.
Correct - I am unsure how it appears that I implied otherwise, but such was not my intent. Of course, it should be noted that Obama has not stopped them yet, either. I find advocations of trust at this stage reasonably naive. 1) Absurd. 2) One might venture to state that if such important "secrets" are being gathered, it might be a grand idea to do it legally. This type of backtracking is akin to allowing any illegal activity provided you claim a mysterious connection to "state secrets". Frankly, I find that wholly unacceptable. On that note, I find Major's argument equally perverse. Simply wanting to "move past" previous transgressions is an absolutely irresponsible path to take. Without accountability (even courtesy of opposing political parties) what's to stop any subsequent illegal activity? It sends a painfully wrong message: First, that the democrats are perfectly willing to lie to the very groups vested in them; and secondly, that there is little cause for concern that blatantly illegal activity will be met with the according punishment provided you are sitting high enough up in the federal government.
Bush was a globalist, corporatist who hid behind compassionate conservatism type speeches. If Obama is not a globalist, corporatist he has stumbled on 90% of his appointees and he should stop acting like one. Globalism is an attack on economic liberty, civil freedoms and the US constitution; corporations both financial and industrial run the show. President do the bidding of both corporatists and elitists. But let's not debate what cannot be changed, let's debate what we have control over... so what's for lunch?
I don't feel the telecoms should be targeted by any prosecution. the government comes to them and asks them to give them access to communications to prevent terrorisim puts them in a precarious position
That's not the state secrets argument. It's not that state secrets are being gathered - it's that a trial would reveal things that would be harmful to national security. In a general sense, are you opposed to the idea of having any state secrets? For example, in the 1970's, if a trial would have revealed the exact locations of our nuclear arsenals, giving the USSR a huge strategic advantage, would you have supported that? I have no idea what the state secrets involved here are, but there's the paradox here that the only way for us to know is by revealing them. That's certainly true - but that's a different argument than what the Obama administration faces. The possible illegal activity occurred before his administration - he has no control over that part. What his admin sees is the situation in front of them: would a trial result in the release of state secrets, and is that harmful to US national security? If so, then his Justice Dept has to take the position they've taken - regardless of what misconduct might have led to that. Certainly - I'm not suggesting its a good or bad position to take, but that appears to be the Obama philosophy. Remember, governing is about tradeoffs. Is spending political capital and time on things like investigating the past going to hurt your future agenda? If so, is that worth the tradeoff? If Obama pushes torture investigations, is that going to cause the GOP to stonewall health care reform in retaliation, for example? If so, is it better to investigate torture or cover 40 million people with health care? It sounds out there, but that's how politics works. Take the Clinton admin for example. Clinton and Gingrich had negotiated solutions to Social Security that would have made it financially viable for decades more than it was. Once the Lewinsky stuff came out, that died because the GOP and Dems went hard against each other playing politics. As a result, that investigation (even if had been strongly merited) caused massive long-term damage to the fiscal health of the country. http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washing...ow-monica-killed-a-clinton-gingrich-pact.html In public, they were oil and water. As president, Bill Clinton distrusted then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the Republican felt the same way about Clinton. But in a shocking revelation, we're learning that the political foes—desperate for a heroic legacy—made a secret pact to fix the nation's most problematic programs like Social Security. The plan crashed, however, in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "Monica changed everything," says former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. It was in 1997, when the budget was flush and partisanship at a lull, says Steven Gillon, a History Channel host and University of Oklahoma professor who reveals the deal in his upcoming page-turner, The Pact. "This was a moment where everything came together to create this possibility in 1997-98," he says. "Those circumstances will probably never be duplicated." Using Gingrich's notes and interviews with Bowles and other Clintonistas, he describes months of meetings leading to a face-to-face in the Treaty Room on Oct. 28, 1997. The plan: Clinton would propose fixing Social Security and Gingrich would back it. Both would work their sides to pass it after the 1998 elections. Other deals would follow. But the Lewinsky saga broke first, returning partisanship. "It really did matter, and it destroyed this moment of bipartisanship that both of them had worked hard for," says Gillon.
Yeah, something doesn't smell right to me. You do an about face on things like water-boarding and tax cuts for the wealthiest people and communicating with other nations... and then you kind of tiptoe around this issue? The fact that this issue won't win any votes is part of the issue, certainly. I also wonder if we really understand what happens when you start pulling these particular loose threads. How transparent do you get about what happened, and what would that lead to? I understand what some of us view as the right course, but I don't really pretend to understand the ramifications of coming completely clean at this point.
