@p cook

Yup, with Bush back in the limelight, I suppose it is again nucular... Probably our best hope is that the nucular bombings are to be saved for The Clinton's Next Turn and that this never actually works out for them.

Ralph was spot on. The partisanship in this country drives me crazy because it's all kabuki(theater; but kabuki is a great word!) - Repugs are not conservative and Dems are not liberal. They're all just crooks and pawns for the deep state, comprised of military, banking, and other corporate concerns. Their policies when in power reveal their duplicity to TPTB. No morality. No profiles in courage. Phony patriotism.

My Senator is that comedian from SNL. I can't stand his warmongering self. Just to vent; he loves his military. And partisanship. And that's about it.

[But hey, all this nonsense has spawned Mel Gibson movies, in a way, which I do enjoy. Apocalypto was awesome, especially the subaqueous birth - magnificant!. The Patriot. And others.] And he's an Aussie.

Yes, Russia seems to be in their sights. I don't get it... I hope not nuclear. {nucular!}

Peace.

Or was that TCBY?

@2andfro it seems that most that are drawn to power are kinda dumb.

@Big Al

“The major problem -- one of the major problems, for there are several -- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

@Strife Delivery

…for the NSA. I think many people did not fully understand the controversy that came from Ed Snowden's whistleblowing. Spying on and info-stripping the American people was not the significant issue. The American people enabled and certified what was done to them every time they fear-voted. It was widely assumed that if they didn't benefit from it, they could use their exceptional democracy to change it. The American people were not really central to the Snowden event, unless they chose to rise up and neuter the NSA, internationally. Only then, would they have something to say that the world would find relevant or interesting.

The issue was this:

The NSA was collecting full-spectrum awareness data on every single human being on the planet. Not just leaders, but ordinary citizens of foreign nations. All of them. Thanks to internet architecture with a backbone that runs through the US.

But, Nations of the world have constitutions of their own. (Believe it or not.) They have modern constitutions that actually function with clarity in the 21st century. Their constitutions directly address things like people's rights to electronic privacy. (I know, right?) Therefore, it is their government's job to protect them from the NSA, which those populations demanded. After all, they are under attack by a foreign government. So now you have 190 nations that are constitutionally bound to block the NSA. These nations were activated when Ed Snowden revealed what the NSA was doing.

It's astonishing what was triggered by that, geopolitically. I assure you that the rise of Eurasia and the overthrow of Ukraine were both born the day Snowden's documents hit the press. First he flees to China, then to Russia, where the US instantly revokes his passport and strands him there. Makes you wonder who is working for whom.

Anyway, that's the scope of the NSA affair.

People here have mentioned NSA and all their record keeping.

Something that I am now just curious on I realize is how much data that actually is...

I mean over 300 million people, with various phone calls, texts, emails, web sites, etc. etc for X period of time kept.