"It is my understanding that President Obama was not aware Chancellor Merkel's communications were being collected since 2002," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said. "That is a big problem."
But other officials said Obama — or at least his White House staff — did know about it.
Questions about what the President knew and when he knew it have important implications, analysts say. If Obama was aware, that could mean he isn't being clear with the American public now. And if he wasn't aware, that could mean his own staff kept him in the dark.
"There's really no good answer," said Republican strategist Kevin Madden. "If he knew, essentially we're being misled by different people in the administration about the extent of the President's knowledge. If he didn't know, it's an abdication of even the most basic responsibilities of the command and control over very important parts of his administration, and that becomes a problem." CNN
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So Feinstein as Chair of the SSCI did not know what the NSA did and does? Is this some sort of sick joke? Agencies like the NSA, CIA, DIA, etc. are quick to brief key members of Congress and the president about their accompishments. Boasting is the order of the day in the contest for appropriations. So, just accept the fact that our seeker after justice POTUS knew all about it, all of it.
He also knew about the havoc that would be wrought upon the present insurance coverage of many Americans who unlike the favored uninsured will not be put on free coverage in Medicaid, and may not be able to handle increased premiums in new policies even if they can qualify for federal subsidies.
Basically, Obama does not tell the truth. It seems that reports of the cocoon of sycophants around him and their effect on him are correct. pl
YES! He knew! A basic problem exists with BHO! A second rate mind mind [at most] and a lousy staff!
I have no doubt that Obama is a serial prevaricator, like all his predecessors. The last two administrations seem to be in some sort of sick contest to see who can tell the biggest whopper and get away with it.
I also have little doubt that the covert community is doing things that those up the line do not know about. It has been suggested that Benghazi was one of those, as indicated by the covert community’s intense desire to keep any information about that operation from seeing the light of day.
Please indulge me:
“We know little about the controversial NSA intercept materials (and roster of redacted names of U.S. officials mentioned in the transcripts) which were requested and reviewed by John Bolton.
What we do know through sources is that the bulk of the material dealt with incidents in 2003 and 2004. This could mean that Bolton was spying on his colleagues’ North Korea diplomacy, on the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, or other cases.
But one of the biggest issues that has eluded the mainstream media and venues like TWN is what Bolton did with the intelligence he reviewed.
Anyone observing the brewing NSA intercepts controversy and the impact on Congress’s role in investigating Executive Branch appointments and in the principle of “separation of powers” in general must be impressed by the administration’s enormous efforts to keep these intercepts from falling into public hands — so much so that the Director of National Intelligence believes that he has the right to defy the Congressional mandate of U.S. Senators conducting an investigation of an Executive Branch official.
But John Bolton could get the intercepts easily. And then he was able to ask the National Security Agency for the redacted names of U.S. officials that had been routinely scrubbed from the intercepts. Bolton did this ten and perhaps more times; more if the requests were made by analysts working in Bolton’s department but made in the name of other officials.
What TWN has just learned from a source — a single source — is that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is now looking into whether or not Bolton misused the super-secret information he retrieved from the intercepts.”
Date: 5 21 2005
Steve Clemons
http://washingtonnote.com/what_did_john_b/
Pardon me, but everything that our elected officials are saying right now is probably the stuff that falls out of the backs of good horses everywhere…
So, basically everybody lies…welcome to politics 101!
Tony
No. Not everyone lies. Incidentally, several networks called today to ask me to say that Obama is a liar on TV. I declined. enough is enough. pl
John Bolton has never worked for the Obama administration.
The Obamacare web site is a mere speed bump.
Their long range goal is destruction of private insurance and introduction of single-payer, rationed, rule-by-death-panel,government control of “health care.”
A Canadian just told me that if you don’t use their government-run health for more than non-urgent needs, it’s just fine.
If you need serious care and you have the money, you “go down south.”
THAT’s how you reduce costs.
Obamacare is not about health care;it’s about power.
Power by the “elites” and their brain dead bureaucracy over the rest of us.
Is Obama lying?
I certainly don’t know, BUT I do know that he has the management ability of a community organizer/part time lecturer.
That is to say no management ability with a good dose of outright laziness.
He seems to want to reprise “West Wing” – in between trips to Hollywood and the golf course.
Fred,
Interesting that you did not pick up on the hypocrisy and went straight to trying to ignore recent history. Why?
Please re-read the title of the host’s post and the quote from the Senator, which is from a current CNN article. Neither have anything to do with John Bolton’s activities.
Whether he knew or not is immaterial. The IC has been caught with their pants down around their ankles but is still responsible to make sure he still has deniability. They are not suppose to get caught and if they do limit it as much as possible. They need to do their job and stop crying.
As to the Health Insuance situation Insuance is nothing but covering Risk and the price has gone up for those who were skating by on cheap insurance which was not covering their risks. Most likely these were the people who were not paying their bills making those with full coverage pay higher rates. Now we are getting to a level playing field an overall benefit to this country. As to the that website come on anyone who has dealt with new software/websites knows it takes time to solve all the screw ups and this one will be fixed in time. But if your interested go to a BC/BS website and they will quote you on a number of metallic plans to cover your needs.
Bobo
“They are not suppose to get caught” They did not “get caught.” As James Clapper said today under oath this particular activity has been underway for a long time. A defector revealed the game. As I said before, defectors are a hazard of the game. FWIW I don’t hear a lot of whining. They have tried to cover for Obama and now they perceive that he intends to hang them out to dry. PL
Fred,
Colonel Lang just wrote:
“As James Clapper said today under oath this particular activity has been underway for a long time. ”
I showed you, chapter and verse, what was happening in 2005 and, if you follow the link, you’ll see that Joe Biden was in the thick of it.
In the thick of it.
They are all liars, one and all, and they know this has been the currency of statecraft for generations.
“Now we are getting to a level playing field …” Yes, leveled, just as a bulldozer levels a house we’re seeing rising prices and eliminated coverage for many in the lower middle class. So BCBS will sell me a new plan? It’s a wonderful thing the politicians (of both parties) made BCBS for profit in Michigan; I would have hated to see those so deserving ‘entrepreneurs’ miss out on cashing in. I’m wondering how long it will take a sharp political operative to relabel this whole thing the Obamatax or some variation thereof.
I remember a Canadian-origin co-worker making the same “must go South” complaint about Canada-care. I said something like “that must have cost you a lot.” She said something like “oh no . . .
Canada-care paid for it.” So I wondered what the problem was.
I have trouble imagining Obama was secretly setting out to create a system which would collapse into Single Payer. I felt (and still feel) that one purpose of ACA was to poison the well against any kind of health coverage debate for several decades to come. It was also designed to prevent Single Payer from ever emerging. Baucus’s little health-insurance-lobbyist staffer was assigned to write the bill to make sure of that. Obama’s long range goal is to degrade and attrit Medicare enough that future Presidents and Congresses can privatize the profitable wreckage, probably by collapsing it all into the ACA “exchanges”. But perhaps my feeling that way just reveals the biases and suspicions I bring to the subject.
He didn’t lie:
Moral Relativism
The philosophized notion that right and wrong are not absolute values, but are personalized according to the individual and his or her circumstances or cultural orientation. It can be used positively to effect change in the law (e.g., promoting tolerance for other customs or lifestyles) or negatively as a means to attempt justification for wrongdoing or lawbreaking. The opposite of moral relativism is moral absolutism, which espouses a fundamental, Natural Law of constant values and rules, and which judges all persons equally, irrespective of individual circumstances or cultural differences.
So they’re picking on Bolton to distract the media from their own perceived sins. Should we laud them for that?
Hardly. In the short term, there may be advantages from cheap lying. In the long run, consistent deception, or worse, a widespread suspicion thereof, destroys institutions and trust that they are built on. So a clever but not great politician lies, for short term gains, but a great statesman, someone who builds something that last more than just next few years, will abstain from lying (for the most part, although I’d never say he/she’d “never” lie). But not everyone will get to be a great statesman…
The Dahlia Lama may be the only leader who doesn’t lie and he doesn’t have a country.
Merkel wasn’t too upset when it was leaked that the NSA was spying on German citizens probably because we were sharing much of the information with German intelligence. Besides American citizens being spying on with out a warrant, what I find most disturbing is the NSA gives Israel raw intelligence with little oversight. I bet for every Snowden there are dozens of Israeli Firsters working at NSA. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were getting Obama’s emails.
Now a 59 year old woman has to buy a plan that has maternity coverage. It’s a Frankenstein plan.
It’s like that gang around him haven’t figured out he’s had his last election, isn’t it? Maybe they are unable to function unless they are trying to “win”. I’d like to tell them that now the truth will set them free, and if it doesn’t, that’s just too damn bad.
Comes out anyway, sooner or later…
As comments had closed on the “Will Health Insurance Cost Less Under the ACA?” post, I would like to say that I am pleased with my options regarding price and choice starting January 1st. No, I won’t qualify for subsidies under Cover Oregon – I will apply directly to a health insurance company.
And of course I don’t believe everything Obama says, even without the ‘help’ of Fox News.
The subject of discussion here captured nicely in a BBC Masterpiece Contemporary drama “Page Eight” available on NETFLIX and elsewhere! A British Prime Minister caught lying to his own IC!
Perhaps an Alan Farrell review?
Truth is such a wonderfully malleable feast.
It is useful to reread “The Prince” every so often
just to remember that there is really nothing new in political behavior.
Increasing one’s tolerance of depravities is rarely a positive thing for either the tolerant or the depraved.
I offer a small thought experiment. Change the setting and the names of all the actors in this drama from the US to any other powerful nation. If that nation had a Snowden, wouldn’t every scene and act remain exactly the same? If you disagree, please reply explaining why the re-written play would be different?
As to any outrage over spying on friends and allies I suggest that membership in an alliance does not make a nation a “friend” of a fellow signatory. Nation do not have friends. Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing nations. An alliance is an agreement between nations that it is in those nations self interest to resist a perceived threat together. Alliances prove that nations are willing to take strong measure to protect and further their self interests.
Your first response to the Col’s post mentions John Bolton, now you are talking about VP Biden. Congradulations. The distraction is deflecting attention from spying on US Citizens not collecting information on foreign governments to inform policy decisions at the national level.
Medicare For All was and is the only solution to lowering health costs in this country.
It’s about time we joined the rest of the civilized western world and implemented our own single-payer system.
Yes, it is socialism. Good socialism. Just as Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, Public Schools, Paid Fire Departments, are all examples of good socialism.
You are correct sir. I would also add that the current economy and the incredible disparity in wealth – greater than at any time in our history is an example of bad capitalism or broken capitalism.
I would also note that of the comments above only one mentioned personally examining the potential effect of the ACA. There were a couple of anecdotal conversations with Canadians and the remaining comments appeared to just be speculation passed off as fact.
Is there any independent organization that studies the world’s formal alliances? As in August 1914 updated to today?
And is the modern test of an alliance SIGNET sharing?
I’m willing to believe that Obama didn’t have direct, specific knowledge of the taps and intercepts being made. But only in the strictest sense. And I hope his staffers, advisors and personnel from other agencies were bright enough to obscure specific sources, in order to maintain plausible deniability.
Now, Obama would be an immense idiot if he didn’t have a pretty good idea of where his information was coming from and how it was obtained. For all his sins, he’s not an idiot. I would also point out that there is a great deal of intelligence being gathered by many methods; I doubt Obama is drinking from main trunk of the fire hose. He’s got a lot of things to do, and managing intelligence and information flows is a small part of the work day. So, I’m rather confident that Obama doesn’t have lengthy discussions about Merkel’s gossip with her friends, or about the details and distinctions of the multitude of intelligence operations that delivers his bounty.
Every leader or person with substantial wealth and power must assume that they are targets for intelligence gathering, and take appropriate actions to keep their information and conversations secure. And the greater the power and position, the greater the incentive. So all the shock and anger seems a little misplaced.
There is a real issue of just how smart it is to spy so intensively and thoroughly on the leadership of our allies. They tell us a great deal about their plans, and much of their information and discussion is available to open source collection. The blowback from being caught with both feet in the underwear drawer may be a greater price than the information gathered.
I think the average person, both foreign and domestic, deserves a higher level of privacy than leadership does. And ‘evildoers’ need to be identified, found, monitored and deterred. But that is the real problem of the revealed data gathering programs: they are too large and indiscriminate, and it is becoming clearer that the nuggets of useful information contained in those sweeps is often not identified, processed or made use of in a useful fashion. Yes, there are some people in Spain that we should be keeping an eye on, but that shouldn’t require gathering and sifting seventy million messages a month. We seem to be very good at gathering information, but rather poor of making good use of it.
” The U.S. has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone for more than 10 years, said a magazine report.
The German publication Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday claimed to have seen secret papers from the National Security Agency (NSA) which show Ms. Merkel’s phone number on a list dating from 2002 – before she became chancellor of Germany, reports BBC.
The publication said Ms. Merkel’s mobile had been listed by the NSA’s Special Collection Service marked as ”GE Chancellor Merkel” – and was still on the list weeks before U.S. President Barack Obama visited Germany in June.
PTI adds:
Obama approved spying
President Barack Obama knew about the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel for some years and he also personally approved it, according to a report published on Sunday.
Mr. Obama was informed about the NSA’s tapping of Ms. Merkel’s mobile phone already in 2010 by its director Keith Alexander.
The President “not only did not stop the operation, but he also ordered it to continue,” Bild am Sonntag newspaper said quoting a high-ranking NSA official. ”
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/us-bugged-angela-merkels-phone-since-2002/article5278293.ece
“Risk and the price has gone up for those who were skating by on cheap insurance which was not covering their risks.”
I don’t think that the German system can be compared to either the UK’s or Canada’s. Thus I would not use the term single care system for ours as “b” did on an earlier thread on the issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany
In any case I have seen the above over here to with people missing the age at which they can still return from private to a health insurance operating on the basis of our public health system.
In any case we can choose between a private insurance company, or pick one of a multitude of health insurances that operate on a not for profit basis in the public health system. There are an enormous multitude of companies under both systems.
I have never heard that anyone needing care up to really serious issues, with the heart or cancer, had any problems with our state health care system or public health care system, as suggested somewhere above. But I heard about it from e.g. UK people that concerning difficult issues prefer to pay themselves.
But I heard quite a lot about problems with our private insurance companies once people get older among friends, since the rates are based on age. They usually got lured into the private insurances when young. Since people on the average don’t need much doctors at that time, the rates in the for profit system can be really low. But there is an age limit, at which you need to have returned to the public health insurance system, or one of the health insurance companies operating under these laws/rules, the not for profit state health insurance companies.
I know or knew people that missed to return to this system before 55. After that age you cannot return to the public system. I have witnessed serious troubles at that stage. Since the rates are based on age, the private insurance rates rise steadily once you get older and above 60 you pay the highest possible rate. All you can do is then get a policy that only offers the most limited treatment.
The state health insurance companies cost you the same percentage of income no matter what age, and that is definitively an advantage.
You are correct, sir, and it’s equally constant that, every generation, we get politicians who promise that everything is different now just because and that there are always enough dupes who buy into such promises.
I hope I may be forgiven for mentioning the blog Naked Capitalism once more. Over time some of its posts and/or comments have offered detailed evidence, video, etc. of Obama lying over and over about different things. My fading memory of Nixon is that he only lied for various political purposes. Obama appears to lie for the pure fun of it.
Unfortunately the posts and comments about that are randomly sprinkled throughout NaCap’s last 6 or so years of
output. I have no idea how to find any one of the quickly or easily. Hopefully they will eventually get enough money and staff to where they can pull all the Personal Obama Dissection posts and comments together into one findable place.
I guess that’s what happens when you adopt what were originally Republican proposals for health care reform. It’s actually more likely that people of a certain age who purchase individual coverage have policies like this:
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-healthplans-20131030,0,5590179.story#axzz2jEZ7lJNY
“Many of the supposedly bereft insurance customers being paraded before viewers of network and cable news — and dredged up by House Republicans during today’s theatrical grilling of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — fall into this junk category. The news reporters never seem to lay out the benefits actually provided by these low-premium policies their subjects supposedly love, or their steep back-end costs if they actually get sick.”
I’m not a big fan of the ACA. But if it stops the insurers from flogging terrible plans that don’t really cover anything when you need it most, that’s a good thing in the long term, for everyone, including those who don’t actually have to buy these plans.
ALL! About 20% of all individual earned income pre-tax dollars go to the Life/Health and Property/Casualty insurance business. Largely unregulated by the STATES and certainly not by the Federal Governmenth [Mcarran-Ferguson Act of 1947]!
I believe I can make an argument for more deregulation under
President Obama than his predecessor. The devil as always in the details. Deprive regulators of funding and staffing and almost as good as depriving them of legal authority to regulate.
Always remember I am a fuzzy headed liberal that buys a pitch fork every month so the peasants will be armed when they storm the Bastille.
Is President Obama a Trojan Horse of the wing-nuts right or left?
I suspect Obama to be a Trojan Horse of the Upperclass/Overclass in general and of the FIRE sector lords and barons in particular. Those are the people he has gone out of his way to immunise and impunitise and further enrich. I remember reading that early in his first term Obama invited all the major Banking Barons to the White House and said, among other things, “I am the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” That was his promise of protection to them. He also immunized any potentially try-able criminals in the Bush Administration as well by refusing to allow any of its members even to be investigated for possible illegal actions.
Quite a few of our leading Catfood Democrats are also either Trojan Horses or eager advocates for these same rich and/or powerful people. For example, as soon as Pelosi became Speaker of the House she said “Impeachment is off the table.” At that point I started thinking of the CheneyBush Administration as being the CheneyBush Pelosi Administration.