Smoke and Mirrors

I'm not really interested in getting into this nonsense in any detail, but let me just state the obvious:  President Obama's speech yesterday about NSA spying was nothing but an attempt to obscure the obvious fact that he intends to do as close to nothing as he can get away with to deal with this grossly out of control agency.  At this point, all he seems to be up to is hanging on for dear life, trying to finish out his term without giving the Republicans an excuse to impeach him.

Not really what we voted for.

Comments

joseph said…
Some things are easy, some are not. There are people who want to blow us up, I don't want them to and I want the government to stop them. I would have liked a competent president to have looked at the possibility of 9/11 before it happened. The real question is who has access to the data and what safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of that information.
January 18, 2014 at 7:05 PM
Green Eagle said…
If Obama were really interested in dead Americans, he would be working to reclassify tobacco as a schedule 1 narcotic- something he could do all by himself. Millions of Americans have died due to tobacco related illness in the twelve years since three thousand Americans were killed on 9-11. I personally am willing to accept an absolutely imperceptible increase in the likelihood that I will be the victim of a terrorist attack, rather than have rogue intelligence agencies allowed to do whatever they damned please regardless of what the law says.
January 18, 2014 at 8:08 PM
joseph said…
Mr. Eagle,

I understand the issue of tobacco way better than you know. The problem with addictive substances is that we have learned that prohibition doesn't work. See the 18th Amendment. But the issue of domestic surveillance is another matter and I still think the critical issue is who has access and how do we prevent abuse.
January 18, 2014 at 8:55 PM
Green Eagle said…
I am talking about punishing the murderous purveyors of this substance, not the addicted users. When sales of tobacco gets people a 20 year sentence like sales of heroin does today, the death toll will go way down.

And I must admit that I have never smoked tobacco. As a teenager, I saw my father die of cancer, and that was enough to put me off tobacco for life.
January 18, 2014 at 11:21 PM
joseph said…
Mr. Eagle,

I never smoked either, but suffer from a pretty serious cancer from second hand smoke. What we should do is just make the people who put dangerous products, including guns, pollutants and cigarettes, into the stream of commerce responsible for any damages that result. Furthermore, I agree with the libertarians who say that nobody should be able to hide behind a corporate shield for the injuries they cause. Freedom Industries can file bankruptcy, but their officers should still be on the hook for the monstrous damages their malfeasance has caused. But back to domestic surveillance, there has to be a way to reasonably keep tabs on what is going on without abusing that process. One big problem with just allowing the FBI or some other police agency to simply infiltrate certain organizations is that they wind up promoting more crime than they prevent.
January 19, 2014 at 8:49 AM
Blow Stand said…
I really think that vaporizers are the real substitute for leaving tobacco habit.Electronics smoking are the real safe alternative to smoking , that don't cause any health risk and are safe.
January 21, 2014 at 3:43 AM
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