Is Obama a super villain?

[Quantum Windbag]

Bit of hyperbole in the title here, but it sounds a lot better than the actual article title.

I actually know a guy that was told that if he voted for McCain we would end up a government that ignored privacy. The best thing about that is he went to the guy who told him that and apologized for his vote.

This, so Barack Obama used to say in his stump speech of 2008, “is not who we are”, and the thousands who ecstatically cheered that slightly glib line instinctively knew what he meant. “This” was shorthand for George W Bush, and for those oppressively dark and fetid corners of government activity with which his name was synonymous: Guantanamo Bay, drones, the surveillance powers granted to the state by the Patriot Act, and the other measures taken in response to the atrocities of 9/11.

As for the “we”, in its royal or imperial usage that of course meant “I, Obama”, but it also referred to the wide-eyed disciples who worshipped him as a deus ex machina, floating down from his Illinois Olympus to cast healing sunlight on all those dirty little nooks and crevices, and allow America to call herself the land of the free without inviting sardonic smirks.

Five years on, Guantanamo Bay survives, the teenage computer gamers of the US military guide ever more drones to deliver remote control destruction, and we now learn that the government’s use of electronic surveillance is so wide-ranging that the default adjective of Orwellian barely seems adequate.

There is no form of communication or online activity – phone calls, emails, web page visits, Skype, social networks, and so on – that the National Security Agency, under its Prism programme, may not follow as and when the fancy takes. It can track users’ activities in real time. Assuming it has the technical capability remotely to activate lap top cameras, the age of the telescreen has arrived.

Not superhuman Barack Obama, just a very naughty boy - Telegraph

 

[flacaltenn]

'bought sums up my dissappointment with the Leftist option.. I said the other day that I thought AT LEAST we'd be gaining some true Liberal ground on surveillance and endless wars after Bob Barr lost in 2008.. (Yup dammit.. I was devastated)

Well written. I should link this to a new thread I'm posting on His Highness and the hissy-fit he threw this morning threatening "to prosecute the leakers" from the NSA revelations..

That --- was more arrogant than Nixon's speeches..

 

[The2ndAmendment]

Yes

 

[Yurt]

no...he is just another political patsy

 

[TemplarKormac]

His Supervillain name?

The Empty Suit.