The recent scandals on far reaching and intrusive data gathering are far more serious and pervasive than most Americans dream.
The NSA and the FBI have been caught out mining internet providers for private data on millions of Americans, and coercing telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T to over data on every call, text, e-amail or other internet usage to them.
The private data of millions of Americans was scanned and almost certainly digitally archived.
This was all done in secret, and was only found out because the British Guardian published a scoop on it.
And it gets worse. We've now being told about a top secret project known as PRISM. What essentially happened is that someone in the intelligence community was so revolted and concerned by what he or she saw everyday that they went to the Washington Post with a PowerPoint slide presentation, talked to the Post and their reporters, and the Post wrote the story up and put it out. And the story is that practically every major company involved in digital usage in America is being forced to allow the Obama regime access to their servers and all the date contained on them...all of the E-mails, texts, tweets, phone calls, online sales, photographs, everything done via the Apple, Microsoft or Google servers, which the NSA is able to look at in real time. The Post quoted their source as saying, "It was so scary. They can watch us as we type."
And they're hoovering it up by the truckload.
This is so far beyond the scope of anything that's ever been done before that the inevitable comparisons by the Left with the Bush warrantless wiretaps borders on ludicrous.
The Bush Administration program, which was outed by the New York Times a year after the Times found out about it was an entirely different animal. It involved not a blanket dragnet of American citizens and the pillaging of their privacy but the concentration on calls by individual and select suspects in the United States to suspect numbers overseas in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
As Stephen Hayes' superb biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney relates, the Times was fully briefed by the administration when they first got hold of the story via leaks, and the Times agreed to keep the program confidential.
That changed on year later in the run up to the 2004 election, when getting John Kerry elected and defeating George W. Bush became more important to the people running Pravda-on-the-Hudson than keeping a program vital to our national security secret from our country's enemies.
President Obama's sole comment on this is to reaasure Americans that no one is 'litening to your telephone.
After Benghazi, after Fast and Furious, after the AP scandal, the use of the IRS, HHS and Department of Justice as weapons against the Obama regime's political enemies, does anyone seriously believe that anymore?
Even the New York Times doesn't believe it, and that's simply amazing given how they've covered for this president at every turn. Although true to form, they exercised their usual hypocrisy and bias selectively 'edited' their original harsh criticism to tone things down.
Meanwhile,Obama's Department of Justice is fighting tooth and nail to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.
What we are seeing is no less than progressive fascists resorting to type. It is tyranny by stealth.
Take a few minutes and go to the above link. It may ring some bells.
I'll have more on this later.
You say the companies are being coerced, later referring to PRISM, you say companies ''forced'' - I don't think they were forced, I think they were happy to comply voluntarily. This kind of ''cooperation'' between big business of this type & big gov't. is the essence of fascism.
ReplyDeleteIt is tyranny by stealth, indeed.
ReplyDeleteBut just as Hitler eventually had to throw aside all pretense, so too must Obama and the radical Far Left do so as well.
In reading your outstanding post to which you link; "Adolf Hitler - Progressive Pioneer"...I was struck by the many similarities between Hitler's progressivism and today's progressive movement.
Just as Hitler's path to power was directly influenced by the worldwide depression of the 1930's,
it is my contention that Obama and the Far Left are attempting to precipitate the same conditions today.
Obama financial policies only make sense if one considers the possibility that he is intentionally driving the US economy toward sovereign bankruptcy. Since the US is the world's 'default' currency, a collapse of the US financial system would precipitate the sovereign bankruptcy of the West, creating the very societal conditions that paved the path to Hitler's rise to absolute power.
Consider how that 'crisis' might be taken advantage of by Obama;
The inevitable and unavoidable result of US sovereign bankruptcy would be the declaration of nationwide martial law that would last for the 'duration of the emergency'.
Under martial law, Obama would be free to cancel key provisions of the US Constitution. There is ample precedent for this, such as Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus. In the name of bypassing 'partisan gridlock' Obama could demand full legislative powers for the 'duration of the emergency' and bypass the US Constitution. Just as Hitler did with his Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act)...
Once he gained those powers, there would be no legal obstacles preventing his "fundamental transformation" of America.
Interesting..
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, I would correct you in one important instance. Rather than 'big business' as w hole, it is selected big businesses who often support the political agenda of the Ruling Class.
Goldmann-Sachs, Google and Hollywood's support for Obama and Loral, a defense contractor and heavy Democrat donor who made billions when Bill Clinton chose them to be the conduit to ship billions worth of military grade SOAT supercomputers to China to repay the help the PLA connected Riyadi Brothers back for the huge loans given to hum during the '92 campaign are some good examples. Most experts say that China's abilities on missile control and defense took a leap forward of 20 years during Clinton;s 8 years in office.
Geoffrey, I don't personally think Obama is engineering an economic crash purposely as much as out of sheer fecklessness and incompetence.
Remember that the Reichstag crisis was a political crisis not an economic one...for which Hitler, like Obama would have been blamed.
BHO already HAS far more power than Hitler did as reichskanzler prior to the reichstag passing the emergency decrees that made him effectively a dictator.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, that's exactly what I meant, certain businesses, not all big business.
ReplyDeleteYou gave the perfect examples & there are many others.
Rob,
ReplyDeleteI am not unmindful of the old aphorism, "Never attribute to villainy, conditions that simply result from stupidity." Many hold the view that Obama is a 'fool', rather than a 'knave'. There is certainly circumstantial evidence to support both views.
After long, careful consideration, I have reached the conclusion that he is both, but that the knave comes BEFORE the fool.
Yes, the Reichstag crisis was a political crisis and not an economic one. How would that prevent the use of such a crisis by Obama to gain full legislative powers for the 'duration of the emergency' and bypass the US Constitution? That Hitler arose during a staggering economic crisis with hyper inflation and, then precipitated a political crisis to achieve the political power needed to abrogate the German Constitution does not preclude Obama using the same elements in the reverse order.
It's my contention that we already have a political crisis. The very foundations of our society are being comprehensively attacked and undermined. Being 'eaten away' preparatory to collapse. A sovereign bankruptcy crisis would, under any President, result in nationwide martial law. What any particular President would do with such a crisis is the determinative factor. Unquestionably, a dedicated ideologue like Obama would view the imposition of martial law as an unparallelled opportunity to advance the progressive agenda far beyond what could be achieved without such a crisis.
It is my contention that the weight of circumstantial evidence indicates intention rather than mere feckless incompetence. I hope your view is the more accurate but fear that mine may be the more prescient.
Obama financial policies only make sense if one considers the possibility that he is intentionally driving the US economy toward sovereign bankruptcy.
ReplyDeleteThe federal deficit in FY2009 was $1.3 trillion. It has been steadily falling since then, will approach or go under $973 billion in FY2013 and is expected to plummet once we finish paying off the Iraq War, which was put off the books until FY2009.
The DJIA closed at 7949.09 on the day of Obama's inauguration. It is 15248.12 today.
The unemployment rate has dropped, home starts are up, the US dollar means something again...
I'd let the facts speak for themselves, but I've got to ask: what color is the sky in your world??
I have absolutely no idea what part of your anatomy you pulled these figures out of, but I want some of what you're smoking.
ReplyDeleteYou sound like one of Obama's happy talk boys.
The deficit's falling? We are $16 trillion + in debt, the stock market is only roaring because there's really no other place to invest until interest rates go up and because people are still trading out of issues affected by ObamaCare and similar legislation.
That will change, trust me on that.
The real, u6 unemployment rate is probably around 14% and may even be higher once you figure in the people who are no longer participating in the labor force, which is at an all-time low.
The dollar is being significantly challenged by Russia, China and others as the world's reserve currency,but we still have that for now, because of turmoil in the EU and the need for the GCE countries to have the American military protect them, so for the moment the Saudis, etc. are still import our inflation by allowing oil and gas trades to be delineated in dollars.
That also won't continue forever, especially since they see us leaving the region.
I personally don't predict a massive crash for now 'chauncey', just a long term stagnation and the gradual dismantling of our economic engine ala' the EU.
But it will definitely come if we keep going as we are.
You can't keep digitizing money out of thin air and using it to buy your own debt. It's like continually taking a cash advance on one credit card to pay off another that you continue to keep racking up charges on.
You can't keep attacking American business and strangling key segments of our economy like energy production.
You can't keep inflating the welfare rolls and government spending and employment the way Obama has, because someone eventually has to pay for it. Detroit and Obama's bankrupt home town of Chicago are good examples.
I could care less about politics. I concentrate on money and investment trends. What's going on now is something that will affect the American economy for at least a generation unless some significant corrective action is taken.
'anonymous' (as long as we're using quote marks):
ReplyDeleteI have absolutely no idea what part of your anatomy you pulled these figures out of, but I want some of what you're smoking.
They're a matter of public record. Anyone can look them up, even you. Facts are stubborn things, as St. Reagan so famously said.
This idea that Obama is some anti-capitalist warrior is amusing to me. If he's trying to destroy the economy, he's doing a real lousy job of it by the looks of things. And I might add that government spending has grown under Obama at its lowest rate since Eisenhower. Assuming you're a conservative, I would imagine that you would be happy to hear that would that you were not so blinded by your hatred of the president as a person.
Cheers.
Why don't you simply do what every other defender of this president's record does? Just call me a racist and have done with it.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly easier than answering any of the points I raised, isn't it?
You're seriously telling me that spending is down when we have more Americans on food stamps than ever before in history, a larger and more bloated federal government than ever in our history,a trillion dollar stimulus that did nothing and simply rewarded this president's political allies, the huge bailout on GM, the bogus investments in Solyndra and other 'green energy companies run by the president's donors, just to mention a few items?
And if federal spending is so low and everything's so wonderful, why did senior Democrat Max Baucus call Obamacare a train wreck and why is HHS secretary Kathleen Sibelius arm twisting private companies for funds to keep it from going under?
I'm sure the 'figures' you cite are available. That doesn't make them factual. That's why they keep being 'revised' in the other direction afterwards.The numbers, in the end, don't match up.
I can't seriously talk about economic or financial matters with someone who knows so little about them. That's painfully obvious since you find the status quo so lovely.
I live in the investment world, and no one who actually does thinks things are so rosy. They're just trying to minimize their exposure as best they can, and make a few dollars from the fish flocking to Wall Street lately.
Wait and see how long that lasts.
And you have the nerve to say I'm influenced by politics and hatred of the current president? Actually, that appears to be more your position. I simply recognize incompetence when I see it.