Of course: Somehow, GOP is to blame for “Wrongheaded” and “Cynical” distrust of Government…

Obviously, it’s not as if the President and the Democrat-led Senate could ever be to blame:

(via The Hill; May 13, 2013) – “…What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008, and in the midst of crisis rather than saying now’s the time for us to come together, decided to take another path,” Obama said. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet.”

“I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them,” Obama said. “And as a consequence we get the kind of gridlock that makes people cynical about government…”

Ah-ha!! So, it was “gridlock” (which was mysteriously created by the combined efforts of the Republican base and Rush Limbaugh) which was/is responsible for Americans becoming increasingly “cynical about government”. Sure. That, like, makes total sense, …right?

Riiiiiiiight.

Okay, so it doesn’t. Which is precisely why barely a year later, the President realized that he needed to remind us all (again) what silly little ninny-heads we seem to be:

Democrat Senator Feinstein on Gov’t Surveillance: Rules for Me, but Not for Thee

It must be wonderful to live in a world where the rules don’t apply to you, …because you make all the rules.

And it must come as quite a shock when suddenly your rights are being usurped, right along with those of the hoi polloi:

(via Washington Post) – “…Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.) made waves Tuesday when she publicly accused the Central Intelligence Agency of spying on Senate computers in an alleged attempt to thwart her committee’s investigation into Bush era interrogation and detention practices. The senator even suggested that the agency had violated the Constitution and federal law.

But while Feinstein is up in arms about the intelligence agency’s search of her staff’s computer system and network, she has been an avid defender of National Security Agency surveillance programs. “It’s called protecting America,” she said shortly after the news broke that the NSA was collecting domestic phone records in bulk...”

#NSA spying: New Efforts and New Effects

A couple NSA-related news articles from the last few days which, for whatever reason, haven’t generated nearly enough buzz:

NSA surveillance hurting tech firms’ business

(via USA Today) – The National Security Agency, and revelations about its extensive surveillance operations — sometimes with the cooperation of tech firms — have undermined the ability of many U.S. companies to sell products in key foreign countries, creating a fissure with the U.S. government and prompting some to scramble to create “NSA-resistant” products. The fallout could cost the tech industry billions of dollars in potential contracts, which has executives seething at the White House.

Obama and the #NSA: “Trust us!! It’s not like we’ve ever lied to you BEFORE…”

President Obama’s latest speech/presser about the NSA could be summed-up by the following Tweet: 

The guy who never asked a single question about how his “signature accomplishment” was coming along is ALL OVER this NSA thing, folks.

— John Hayward (@Doc_0) January 17, 2014

Quite so. It was a rambling, barely coherent collection of blather and nonsense, laced with pinkie-promise assurances of “only when necessary” & “Hey, we’re not interested in YOU“.

Here’s just a snippet:

Without Gov’t, who else would audit, spy on, target, fine, harass, intimidate and arrest us?

Remember this?

(Sen. Harry Reid, from the Senate Floor, April 23, 2013): “…Government is not inherently bad; government is inherently good. 

That’s why we have a Constitution and that’s what we direct the activities of this government based upon…”

When I called that the single most ridiculous statement of the year, I was probably soft-selling it. It may now be the most ridiculous statement of the decade.

Consider this newest example:

Open letter to the #NSA…

Running short on time today, so I’m ‘re-blogging’ a great post that I read last week. Written by a blogger known only as “zombie“, this is easily one of (if not THE) most creative takes on NSA snooping/spying yet. 

Enjoy. 

–JTR

————-

(**Originally published at PJMedia.com on June 12, 2013)

To: doesn’t_matter@you’ll_read_this_regardless_of_the_address.com

From: zombie@z0mbietime.com

Dear NSA,

According to Janet (Big Sis) Napolitano, comparisons to an “Orwellian State” are just crazy talk!

Well, that just settles everything, doesn’t it?

I mean, if Janet Napolitano says north is south, and east is west, we all should probably just start recalibrating our GPS systems immediately: she and her cohorts wouldn’t LIE to us, after all!!

Lest you think I’m taking her out of context, here’s the whole thing:

“I think people have gotten the idea that there’s an Orwellian state out there that somehow we’re operating in. That’s far from the case,” she told Errol Louis during an appearance on Road to City Hall.

Thanks to the #NSA, you’re now an “Enemy of the State” (or you soon could be…)

One of my top twenty movies of all time is Enemy of the State, a 1998 film starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith. If you haven’t seen it, Smith plays a normal guy (married, good job, etc.) who unwittingly gets mixed up in an NSA-ordered murder of a politician. The rest is about what happens to Smith’s life when the NSA decides it needs to rip that life to shreds.

This man, almost overnight, loses his job, his wife, access to his bank account, and is hotly pursued by law enforcement. Through satellites, cameras, and tons of cool tech, he’s tracked everywhere: nowhere seems to be safe. The film’s title is accurate: he literally is made into an Enemy of the State. If it weren’t for Gene Hackman’s character, Smith would have been jailed, or dead, or both.

Back in 1998 this was still relatively fantastical, taken seriously only by the professionally paranoid. We couldn’t have that sort of thing happen in the cradle of freedom and liberty.

Welcome to “Enemy of the State”, circa 2013: