

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

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stef25
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.

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threeseed
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...](http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll)

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ianstallings
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...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html)

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.

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sgaither
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...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/recollections-
of-obamas-ex-roommate/)

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

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

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

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ihsw
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.

~~~
kimlelly
> consolidation and centralization of power.

Yes, that's the dangerous part, here.

What I'm seeing is an extreme centralization with the goal of projecting
extreme power on the outside, while neglecting - worse - working against the
citizen on the inside.

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tokenadult
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.

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pavs
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?

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

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

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

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

~~~
kimlelly
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).

~~~
xradionut
Here's a bad food analogy:

The two parties are two separate flavors of ice cream. Everyone loves ice
cream, so they argue whether chocolate or vanilla is better. What they really
need is an actual balanced diet, but that's not going to happen since most of
the voting public is politically a 4 year old child that wants ice cream...

~~~
pekk
Most people either strongly prefer chocolate, or strongly prefer vanilla -
let's say these partisans total roughly 80% of the population. Roughly 10% are
resolutely 'undecided,' their vote might change each election. Suppose a final
10% strongly prefer strawberry (they are partisan too, but not with one of the
two parties).

They can vote strawberry, but there is no chance of winning. Many will still
do it anyway because it is a sort of symbolism or alternative to invalidating
the ballot, or because they want to show that a significant number of
strawberries are there in order to encourage people to vote strawberry in
future elections. But many others will, in the end, vote for whichever
majority flavor they would much rather see winning. If they are serious about
getting more strawberry, they may do things like trying to win the vanilla
primary, or positioning themselves as providing vanilla votes in exchange for
a strawberry swirl.

And the two-party system continues.

Meanwhile, a tiny number of people believe we should all starve, or eat only
gravel, or human flesh. While different, these are not necessarily more
"balanced" suggestions. Some would like to bypass democracy to install their
own like-minded buddies, which isn't very balanced either.

