||:Scandal, Scandal, Scandal:|| - Granite Grok

||:Scandal, Scandal, Scandal:||

Source: The Independent

Two more scandals, involving the same military agency, the NSA, erupted emotions and stirred suspicion in the nation last week. The same week when groups targeted by the IRS testified before the House Ways and Means committee on the abuses of power they experienced by that wretched department.  It was leaked that the NSA collected millions of phone records from Verizon last week and that it has be data mining in the servers of internet giants like Google,Yahoo, Facebook etc.  It was even reported that the “NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans”.

What number scandal were we on when we started the week, and now we have what, two more? How much can this country take? I didn’t think Obozo could run the country (my goodness, how right were we who thought alike on this point?), but I also didn’t think things would atrophy so badly, so quickly on his watch either.  What is going right?

Before the fusillade of scandals started peppering the daily mind, we had the deficit problem, mountainous debt, massive real unemployment, the Boston bombing, immigration… heck, who knows what’s going on with that? You get my point.  There are real issues and now, nobody trusts the government to do anything.  Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for High I.Q. Biden (to borrow a C.Dog phrase) sitting as V.P., I think I wouldn’t be alone in starting a serious movement to have Barack step down, but that’s not gonna happen with the bloviating buffoon next in line. O’s bad, but not that bad.

I’m also not quite sure that these two NSA issues are really scandals in and of themselves, at least at the time of this writing.  In fact, high officials in both parties have stated that there is nothing wrong or illegal with any of this and that all areas of the government were informed and performing their role appropriately.

Which is actually part of the problem in keeping these issues out of the “scandal” column.

With all of the other scandals set in motion by this administration just in the last few weeks, how can it be trusted to perform any of their actual duties?  These two issues seem to be really controversies coming to light in the context of recently discovered shadowy government abuses of power as it targeted citizens and press alike.  I think the “issues” rise to the level of scandal because of the secretive constitutionally subversive atmosphere aroused by the many scandals, at least in the minds of the skeptical and suspicious public anyway.

Obama tried to quell the public’s mind and dismissed some of the reports as “hype“.  And also offered his usual.  He said in part “No one is listening to your phone calls”.   By usual, I mean a straw man.  No one has claimed that the government was “listening to our phone calls”.  No, the NSA was/is collecting phone records, not tapping phones. However, the records seized contain more information than first comes to mind. Think about it for a minute.  They contain not only numbers used for the call, the time of the call, and the duration of the call, but also the location of the both phones used in the call.  Do you know what, say, some malevolent miscreant programmer/algorithm hack with access to this information can do with that?  Well, he can track and learn your normal movements and build a graph of relationships, into what’s known as a normalcy model.  A model of your movements.  Do you trust this government with this information? To use it responsibly? Well, let’s answer that as we recap the parade of scandals marching in this administration (at least the ones that I can recall right now… there are probably more).

  • Benghazi- Stonewalling, not being forthright with the American people with regards to many questions: what happened before, during, and after our Ambassador was killed on 9/11/2013. Why were the talking points altered? What was the president doing at that time of the attack? Why were the stand down orders given? etc. This isn’t an exhaustive list of unknown, but you get the point: non-transparent government hiding something.
  • IRS targets and goes after political opponents of the administration.
  • Department of Justices seizes phone records of the  Associated Press.
  • DOJ monitors and searches emails of a reporter and labels the reporter as a criminal co-conspirator.
  • HHS Secretary was courting/coercing corporations for cash to fund ObamaCare
  • EPA singling out conservative groups

So now we can add NSA spying on its own citizens, but it’s just hype.  So, don’t worry your silly little head.  There’s nothing to see here.  Please go about your business and say… logon to Facebook and chat with your friends.  No worries.

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