Why a more transparent NSA would be good for Barack Obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/03/why-a-more-transparent-nsa-would-be-good-for-barack-obama/?tid=rssfeed

by Libertatea • 13 years ago

72 30 13 years ago

washingtonpost.com

kimlelly8• 13 years ago

Why a more transparent NSA would be good for Barack Obama

Who cares, it's time to start talking about what's good for the People, for real democracy.

imalousyhero• 13 years ago

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

kimlelly8• 13 years ago

You wouldn't be talking about the 2-party system in place, would you?

In other words: That's what we can observe in the US. But that's not democracy.

That is: Two parties systemically killing off any 3rd party competition (even worse, actually, because in reality, the "two" parties are more or less 1 party).

gizmo686• 13 years ago

But you could have it set up such that in order for the wolves to eat the sheep, they must first repeal the law saying you cannot eat living animals. While the majority might be in favor of eating the sheep, they would also realize that to repeal that law would put themselves in danger, so the sheep is protected.

stef252• 13 years ago

Obama has lost all credibility, nothing much else to say about it. His charisma and intelligence hides the fact he's no different from all the rest.

kimlelly8• 13 years ago

And the sad truth is:

The following elections will just repeat this f#@ked up cycle.

The US suffers from several _systemic_ failures. It's a systemic problem and needs to be addressed as _such_.

threeseed• 13 years ago

He may have lost credibility with you but then again you don't speak for everyone.

The majority of the public support the programs and his approval rating has dropped but not significantly:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obam...

kimlelly8• 13 years ago

And even the degree of his credibility has become totally irrelevant.

It's the political _system_ that needs some very serious overhaul. Now, if this is possible without _major_ pain for the People, I'm not so sure anymore...

ianstallings• 13 years ago

That link you posted claims that the majority, 52%, that disapprove of him. In fact that poll claims he's doing a bad job from what I can see.

Here's another link that shows more polls illustrating the point: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obam...

I think in general the approval rating for government is pretty low. Not sure if it's at it's all time low, we've had some pretty rough times, but it's not in great shape.

cema• 13 years ago

  His charisma and intelligence

Oh. Ok, many people say he has those. How do they know? I do not see much, or rather, do not see anything special that would distinguish him from the other recent presidents (in a positive way). What have I missed?

stef252• 13 years ago

Compare him to Bush.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

"More" transparent? Seriously? Maybe the writer should have gone for "even less untruthful."

flyinRyan• 13 years ago

In this context "transparent" means "we can see what you're doing" not "hide even more from us".

sgaither• 13 years ago

After seeing some of the NSA protests yesterdays, it's easy to see Obama the college student taking part in those:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/recollections-o...

Funny what becoming part of a bureaucracy will do to your ideals

kimlelly8• 13 years ago

Funny what becoming part of a bureaucracy will do to your ideals

That's what I'm talking about - fundamental systemic failure.

ihsw• 13 years ago

Calling it a failure ignores the actual goals of a bureaucracy: consolidation and centralization of power.

In that regard it's been a roaring success because there has never been such a tight and unified cooperation between the three branches of government (executive, judicial, legislative), between congress and the White House, between government and private industry, between our surveillance agency and foreign surveillance agencies, and so forth.

If there's anything to glean from this entire fiasco it's that a global world order has indeed been quietly established, and the rumblings in the EU will undermine it. Expect the US' allies to start publicly picking sides as the USG starts spending political capital.

DennisP• 13 years ago

This assumes the president doesn't want to maintain plausible deniability.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

I would have liked the headline of the article (the correct original article headline was submitted here, as preferred by the HN guidelines) better if it had referred to "the President" rather than to "Barack Obama." This is an issue for every President. If government agencies can conduct operations that are secret even from the leader of the executive branch of government, they will not have effective leadership that reflects the values of the American people. I participated in the Restore the Fourth protests in Minneapolis yesterday (which were very lightly attended--my family of two adults and two children attending probably made up 3 percent of all protesters present between 6:00pm and 7:00pm). I also attended annual fireworks in the outer-ring suburban lakeshore town where my two older children had their earliest memories. Thousands of people there and tens and thousands in nearby locations watched fireworks and celebrated Independence Day together, with the celebration I attended including the whole crowd standing for the singing of the national anthem. Americans are glad to live in a country with a government with limited powers and constitutional checks and balances. If we are assured that government agencies have to follow the law set by Congress and are accountable to the President, we will be glad to go right on celebrating our freedom each year, whoever is President.

pavs• 13 years ago

This article assumes that NSA and other agencies are doing something nefarious without the consent and knowledge of the president.

I think it would be nice for newspapers to concentrate on what would be good for citizens as opposed to what would be good for the president and people's perception of him. He is on his last, does he really give jack shit what people thinks of him?

Why a more transparent NSA would be good for Barack Obama

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