Reconsidering the election promises of 2008 - Obamessiah was the anti-Bush. He was character to Bush's dirt. He would shine a light on all the dark corners. He would do housecleaning - as he joked, when he moved in. No more government in secrecy. No more intrusion into the lives of Americans - we were not criminals, the government should not be spying on Americans - we have rights after all, and he made comment after comment about the Bill of Rights and Constitution. During the long campaign, he was in Philadelphia and he pulled the Constitution out of the closet where Bush had neglectfully stuck it. He shook it off and told the people that he would uphold this Great Charter.
Obamessiah went on to tell the crowd in Philadelphia and everywhere he stopped, that he would rebuild relations with the countries of the world - relations that had been neglected or abused under Bush.
Two years later life is considerably different. The world community is no closer than it was on October 30, 2008; the world community no longer fears or respects the United States. We are not friends or allies, respected, or feared. Bad.
Biden holds meetings in secret, even meetings on the transparecy of government are held in secret. Rarely is anything Biden does not secret. Yet no liberal groups are demanding access to those records like they did Cheney's meeting with energy executives (1 meeting of energy company executives with Cheney versus scores of meetings Biden holds in secret).
Congress and the White House are not transparent - from Biden's secret meetings on everything to the intentional failure by Pelosi/Reid and Obama to post the bills up for debate on the internet for everyone to see and read before voting / signing. Failed every time. In fact, Obama has stopped using Congress and simply governs by fiat - he is coming close to using Executive Orders more than George H Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush combined.
This is the difference liberals wanted? A president who governs by fiat. Liberals were apoplectic over Bush and the ruination of government as they saw it - with Obama, his appearance gives off the impression he doesn't care that he is ruining government. With Bush - his actions were consistent with his values and the policies of one section or another of the American people. Obama has lost the right, middle, and the left - he governs by fiat, unconcerned about his promises to anyone - but the big money donors.
Meanwhile, back here on earth, his cavalier attitude toward infringement of our rights has had an impact -
Govt 'creating vast domestic snooping machine'
Dec 20 07:27 AM US/Eastern
AFP
The government is creating a vast domestic spying network to collect information about Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent terror plots, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added.
The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted.
The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter.
According to the report, the network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counter-terrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.
At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks, The Post said.
The probe has revealed that technologies and techniques developed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in the United States, the paper pointed out.
In addition, the FBI is building a database with the names and personal information of thousands of US citizens and residents, the report said.
The database is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, the report noted.
In a bid to counter what is seen as a threat from radical Islam, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers people whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by US intelligence agencies, the paper pointed out.
The cost of the network is difficult to measure, the paper said. But the Department of Homeland Security has given 31 billion dollars in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, The Post said.
Only this year, it gave 3.8 billion dollars to local law enforcement agencies.
civil rights
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