When you weren’t busy putting the world to rights, what would you do in your spare time.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to end my term without knowing the ins and outs of a cat’s ass, as the saying goes. First, I would grant myself the highest security clearance available, and then I’d want to see EVERYTHING that is supposed to still be TOP SECRET. “Black Op’s”, as cool as the name sounds, would become transparent ops for the duration of my office.
As a bonus question, would there be any way to stymie any attempts I made to do this?
I would immediately create a law that it made it a capital crime to play golf off anything less than 10. The Masters would be won by someone shooting 400.
hm, good question=) Thing is, many people don’t realize how little actual power a president has. As you see, his executive orders can be reversed immediately once he/she is out of office …
I would actually try to regularize the US again. As near as I can see, the war against drugs and the war against terror arent actually having their desired result, so I think a rethinking of what we need to accomplish and how to go about it may really be in order. Admin law has occasionally gotten out of hand in many industries. I think we actually need to stop the deregulation of a lot of industries. I think some things need to actually get some regulation.
As a real whim, along with finding out all the secrest [roswell, kennedy] I would love to change over to a school system where instead of 10 months on/2 months off, it was more like 6 weeks on 1 week off all year long. There is always a vacation coming up that is not going to be long enough to forget what you have learned … Id loove to make marriage a civil contract exclusively - if 10 people can write up a valid contract for a group marriage, it should be legal. REduce the religious sacrament to just that … IF you want a church wedding, knock yourself out, but that 6some over there is just as legal … and everybody has to file the marriage at city hall to make it lega. Only marriages not legal are any involving animals or people under 18 years old.
Silly rabbit! You know they keep on crashing them.
The Greys underestimated our ability to reverse-engineer when they left that little gift at Roswell. They ‘crashed’ a few more elsewhere, but the people who found them were dumb as shit, too.
> Personally, I wouldn’t want to end my term without knowing the ins and outs of
> a cat’s ass, as the saying goes. First, I would grant myself the highest security
> clearance available, and then I’d want to see EVERYTHING that is supposed to
> still be TOP SECRET. “Black Op’s”, as cool as the name sounds, would become
> transparent ops for the duration of my office.
You don’t have to grant yourself any security clearances, since you would already have them. You could spend every second of every day of your term reading classified documents and you still wouldn’t make much of a dent on the pile of all of them.
Black ops are black for a reason. How transparent would you want them to be?
The President most certainly has a Top Secret clearance. However, there are various flavors, some of which require a polygraph test, and so forth. And clearances are compartmentalized. If you have a Top Secret clearance it does not automatically entitle you to anything classified as Top Secret. You have to have a “need to know.” Believe it or not, the President does not have a need to know simply because he is the President. In many cases, the fewer people who know something, the better, even if that means the President doesn’t know.
Sure, if there’s something he wanted to see, I’m sure he could see it, but if you wanted to see everything that is top secret that would be your full-time job for the entire term.
I love the idea of seeing the United States’ sexy little secrets, but I have a feeling that Black Ops, Area 51, and super-secret CIA/FBI/NSA documents aren’t as sexy or interesting as we think.
Whilst I’ve never been involved in anything beyond the “restricted” level in government, I can confirm that plenty of things outside of the public domain that people assume must be really interesting are in fact very dull.
I know people who HAVE had much higher levels of clearance than me, and they confirm that things kept secret at said higher levels are also in fact mostly very dull.
After I dealt with all of the “important” stuff, I’d use my power to do cool stuff, like:
1- Stand on the sidelines of a NFL game with the team
2- Pet a (drugged by a vet for medical reasons) tiger, swim with the dolphins, etc.
3- Visit the backrooms of places like Vegas casinos, basements of skyscrapers, etc.
4- All access to places like San Simeon, Monticello, Smithsonian
5- Any other cool thing that the general public is banned from
Basically, I’d check out every Food Network/Science Channel/Discovery Channel documentary for real, which is something I often think about when I fantasize about being rich and powerful.
In my spare time, I’d probably keep playing WoW. Guild applications would be… brisk. Similarly, I’d probably go to the occasional SCA event, just to see how they do things in the East Kingdom.
And I’m afraid I would almost certainly have to run a D&D campaign in the Oval Office.
To me? Totally. I’d want to know exactly what peoples taxes are paying for outside of the public eye. How can I best help the economy if I don’t know where to make cut-backs?
Well, that narrows things down then. I just want to see all the “need to know” stuff. Because I need to know. If there’s a lot, I’ll draft a trusted team to help me go through it. And if I’m told I don’t need to know, I want a damned good explanation. Can you provide a likely example of what I might get turned down on?
But you realize that the vast majority of secret documents are just mundane information about logistics, force concentrations, and weapon designs that a foreign country poring over them might possibly find a weakness to exploit, right? I mean, sure, I would ask what’s at Area 51, but I wouldn’t be surprised when they just showed me the latest fighter prototype.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And in a lot of cases, “need to know” means the kitchen staff “needs to know” how many people are stationed at Area 51 so that they can buy enough food.
This would probably be the end result of me being elected president - I’d spend way too much time poring over a bunch of stodgy old documents that reveal very boring classified stuff that we made up really neat-sounding conspiracy theories to explain away. Area 51 would probably be really freaking dull military aircraft prototypes and spy equipment that never found anything interesting.
I have a feeling that every time there’s been a new President since those incidents the introductory conversation went something like:
President: “Not that I really believe in the conspiracies, but while I’m here…”
Others: “Trust us, sir, they’re not that interesting.”
President: “Either way…”
Everyone else: Sigh “Fine… go get the documents.”
Two weeks later: “Wow that was… stupid, I could have actually DONE stuff. Also, I think my IQ dropped 20 points somewhere in there from how wrong all the conspiracies are.”
Last I heard (on History or Discovery Channel FWIW) Groom Lake/Area 51 was seemingly abandoned, they still have people on watch but no one has been seen being ferried in and out in a while, i.e. no workers. Any and all research has been moved, I think they said the most likely are was somewhere in Arizona (the part with the two iconic pretty plateaus, can’t remember the name) but I can’t recall and may be getting it confused with something else.
Edit: There are REASONS I’m going into politics. If I was elected I’d probably spend as much time pulling elaborate pranks and setting off every blog’s conspiracy meter for shits and giggles as I would actually serving the country.
