Exactly. The government is enormous. Telling POTUS about a call that was listened to would be tantamount to your secretary telling you she opened a new box of paperclips. It’s too much detail at that level.
I thought the idea was not that they were listening to your phone calls, but that they had lists of who you called and when.
No. Given the ample history of unlawful wiretaps I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation that each President takes his own action regarding them. It’s certainly not quotidian trivia as you suggest. If an unlawful wiretap by a federal agent is taking place, the POTUS damn better know about it, especially if on the scale that the NSA may be getting up to. Part of management is knowing what is going on in your organization. Either he knows and lied, which is its own thing, or he didn’t know, which is a failure.
I’m not suggesting Obama be crucified for said failure, but it is amusing to see people on this board and in real life backpedal all over themselves when domestic surveillance becomes a political hot potato for a Democratic administration. The willingness to pull the wool over one’s own eyes against all historical evidence is staggering, although by this point it shouldn’t be.
IMHO the worst possibility is that early in the term of a POTUS they tell NSC “do what you need but be careful with what you tell me because I have to cover my ass.” I hope that abdication hasn’t happened.
What’s he supposed to do if his security guys do something they shouldn’t have done, strictly speaking, but it turns out to save lives? Fire them? Hang them out to dry in front of a Congressional committee?
And the message that would send? Maybe I’m just weird here, but it seems to me the guy we want is the guy who will go ahead and do it. Am I wrong about that, we want the guy who says to himself “This is a serious threat, and if I sit on my hands and cover my ass, my career is safe but somebody takes it in the neck”. An apparatchik.
For me, I would want the guy who does what has to be done, and turns himself in, saying “Yeah, I shouldn’t have, but I did, here’s my letter of resignation, fuck me, right?”
We probably don’t have many people like that, they aren’t that common, in my experience. And we won’t have them for long, either.
I’m sure if Obama knew about it he would have stopped it, and he will now that he does know.
So Terr’s whole OP is based on something Nadler said. Now, Nadler says he was wrong and retracts his statement. Which, by the principle of the transience of untruth along with the theorem of magnifying the intensity of statements the further one is from the actual source, proves that Terr lied when he started the OP accusing Obama of lying. Yep, Terr is a big fat liar.
That’s how it works: if you say something and it turns out not to be fully accurate, you have LIED LIED LIED and you’re a filthy dirty LIAR LIAR LIAR. Which is Terr, because nobody is ever allowed to be wrong – or, in the case of Obama’s statement about listening in to conversations, to be right (apparently) – without being called a LIAR.
Certainly, I’ve always operated on the assumption that they could listen any time they want.
Also, I’ve got a cordless phone. Heck, the kid next door could probably listen!
And even those lists weren’t accessed without warrants. After Bush and warrantless wiretapping, this is a total doze!
LOL! Another Terr topic and more manufactured outrage. So what else is new? 
Yep. Someone had a talk with Nadler.
When will this be denied?
Riiight, exactly as they should have done. Ignorance of a congressman is fought. You should be happy that it’s been fought, and you should also do what Bricker does in similar situations and admit you went off half-cocked.
What, when will it be denied that the US engages in espionage against foreign countries? Probably immediately; that’s when it’s been denied for the last eighty years at least.
I don’t know how his attendance has been lately but up until fall of 2012 the President had been skipping about 44% of his intelligence briefings.
This was something that had begun to concern me because when the boss doesn’t show up it doesn’t take long for others to start taking things into their own hands. If they do ultimately he is still the guy left with the responsibility.
Perhaps half a job is sufficient for those defending him but I consider the office to be important enough that he’d put a little more obvious effort into it. He can hardly point to that record and say that he was totally on top of things without giving the impression that he thinks people will settle for less than total commitment. He says he’s engaged but his actions have to match his words for me to buy that.
Why was he missing them? I can think of several explanations:
- He was sleeping off a bender.
- He was golfing.
- He forgot.
- He asked for the briefs to be emailed to him as a time-saver.
- They weren’t specifically his briefings, but rather cabinet briefings, and he asked to be told if the briefing contained something that required his presence.
- The stat is misleading or inaccurate.
Do you know if it was one of these, or something else? By itself, the stat doesn’t mean much.
:rolleyes:
Are these the daily briefings where someone read the PDB to Bush every day, but Obama can do his own reading?
He prefers to read.
Well, he tells us that he reads his briefings. We know that much. But what is he learning from his staff if he isn’t there to ask questions?
It’s crucial when you’re in high end supervision to ask questions. And to give feedback. Not to mention that human interaction is always the best way to ensure that there aren’t misunderstandings. Teamwork, you know. Because, yes, the whole thing is too big for one man to be winging it on a daily note which he may or may not read.
You really do have to show that you are engaged.
Example: If you miss all the class discussion on War and Peace and make up for it by skimming Cliff’s notes you aren’t an engaged student. A President needs to seek information as much as give it.
It perhaps wouldn’t seem like much of an issue if questions hadn’t arisen regarding his whereabouts during other problems that have arisen in the Administration.
You can write all day about it and not convince me that a President doesn’t have to be present for more than speeches, fundraisers and dinners. That’s been a real disappointment for me.
I get that he’s a loner and maybe uncomfortable in his role at times but nobody gets better by avoidance.
Those of you who are not taking the current issue seriously are putting up a good front of support but I’d much rather that you step forward and acknowledge the concerns involved and work to help resolve some potentially dangerous crap here.
I get so dratted tired of people making everything a Dems against Repubs issue. It’s foolishly self-destructive for us all.
Presumably he’s learning:
- The things in the briefings that he reads; and
- The answers to the questions that he emails back to them.
This is a really stupid issue, and you should drop it. If there are other things that are bigger issues, bring them up instead, but defending this attack on Obama makes you look dumb.
That is one fucking stupid post, TK.
I’ve had all kinds of bosses. Bosses who liked to read and who didn’t want to read more than five bullet points. Bosses who wanted constant meetings and those who carefully scheduled meetings only at critical events. Bosses who liked to have a small number of trusted advisors and those who wanted to hear from everyone. I dare you to conclude from those traits which ones were the great bosses and which ones were bad.
The idea that you can conclude from hearing that someone is a lousy manager because they want to read more and have briefings only three days a week instead of five indicates either that you read too many fad management how-to books or you’ve already reached your conclusion and you twist evidence to fit it.
And it sounds like you don’t read a whole lot, so you’re probably an idiot.
Well, that takes care of .01% of the abuses of this program.
People get defensive and stand up for him when he’s making mistakes because they think it’s about the man. I get that. Maybe you don’t understand that no one should be above criticism. Especially with all that power.
Again, to me it’s about the country running in a way that provides the most freedom for the most people. There is nothing stupid about our freedoms. I wish people could see that it’s more than a popularity contest. It should be about our rights.
I felt the same way about some of the mistakes I saw Bush and Co. making. Terrifying.
It wasn’t meant to be all about whose party is in office. Unfortunately that seems to be all we’re left with.
Truly a bad situation and not improving.
I wish you could understand what I’m saying.
I’m outta here.
No, you don’t. That’s not what it’s about. We’re “standing up for him” because your criticism of him is really dumb, and you refuse to back away from it as you should. Nobody, INCLUDING YOU, is above criticism. Before you’re “outta here,” I suggest you stop for a minute and consider whether maybe you, too, went off half-cocked.
There are legit criticisms of Obama. His use of drones is troubling. His dedication to secrecy is not at all good. His refusal to do more on behalf of LGBT folks makes me cringe. Criticize him for issues like that, and I’m likely just to read what you say and not chime in much, because I don’t have much to add and spend more of my time learning than talking.
But your criticism is different. It’s based on a poorly-understood statistic that suggests he doesn’t care about intelligence. It’s a shitty criticism.
It’s not sad that people are defending Obama from this particular shitty criticism. It’s great that people are doing so. It’s sad that you cling to it like a redneck to his guns and religion.