Kettle/Pot-gate
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-documents-bungle-seen-as-p...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This week's revelations that U.S. President Joe Biden stored classified documents in his Delaware home from his time as vice president has caused a political headache for him and the Democratic party, just as he approaches a difficult re-election bid.
Biden began 2023 buoyed by unexpectedly strong midterm election results for Democrats. Since then inflation has fallen, and the opposition Republican Party appeared in such public disarray that it took days to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives.
The president, 80, was poised to ride that wave into an announcement that he will make another run for the White House, perhaps as soon as next month, after the State of the Union address on Feb. 7, sources told Reuters.
But Attorney General Merrick Garland's naming of a special counsel on Thursday to probe the Biden administration's document handling has neutralized Democrats' ability to target former President Donald Trump, Republicans' top 2024 candidate so far, over classified documents.
"It basically ... is a huge gift to Trump," said David Axelrod, a former political adviser to President Barack Obama. Axelrod said the latest developments were an "embarrassment" because Biden criticized his predecessor after the FBI found classified government documents during a court-ordered search of Trump's Florida resort.
"He's been on a huge run here. And he had a lot of momentum going, and this is a bump in the road," Axelrod said.
After Biden aides found classified documents at his residence in Delaware, including some in his garage, and at a Washington think tank he was associated with, Biden's counsel said on Saturday that he had found five additional pages with classified markings at the president's home.
The White House has promised to cooperate with the Department of Justice investigation and says the documents were inadvertently misplaced. It has declined to elaborate, citing the Justice Department probe.
In September Biden called Trump's handling of classified documents "totally irresponsible." The former president, responding to the latest developments on his Truth Social platform, questioned when Biden's homes would be searched. Trump announced his own re-election bid last year.
Political "News" like this article has for decades been indistinguishable from "sports" -- analysis of who is likely to win.
We have been treated to six years of apocalyptic rhetoric making mutual accusations of treasonous misconduct and fundamental abuses of power, and now mutual accusations of sloppy filing habits. Could American politics get any more absurd? Or any more divorced from the lives we citizens lead?
Neither "side" can afford to say that this "classified material" concept is preposterous to begin with, or that all this mutual huffy indignation is ridiculous. That would undercut the "awesome power of the Presidency" meme that keeps the silly game relevant, at least to the folks who keep up with the details of politics as covered by outlets like Reuters.
I hope to hear on the MSM, the calibration of the degrees of irresponsibility as the Other Side is so much worse on protecting classified documents.
I don't vote because it just encourages the main stream media to keep covering this freak show. If nobody voted, they'd quit telling us how we are going to vote.
Comments
If nobody voted, they'd quit telling us how we are going to vote
Unless, of course, the AI algors could tap into the voting machines and
convince the media feeds it was still a record turn-out!
No proof, no problem.
question everything
The whole classification scheme is actually
nothing but preemptive cover-ups of improper plans and behavior. Nonetheless, one does and cannot simply misplace that shit unless one is mentally incompetent. One accesses and peruses it on a need to know basis, makes such mental and illegally written notes as one thinks one needs and returns it to whence it came. If it need be retained for some short period it is kept in a specified type of locked cabinet or safe for that period and an annual review of the contents of same is meticulously carried out in order to find and return all but that for which there is still some pressing need.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Over the last 40 years or so
the idea of classification has taken on what you suggest, that it is a means for coverup. Unfortunately the same oversight which might have identified that nefarious purpose has been corrupted just as much as the deed.
In my case the materials that I had access to were to prevent disclosure of assets, either foreign or domestic. A secondary issue involved the identification of persons who might be used as leverage to force those assets to act against our national interests. It was not my purview to identify what those interests were, just protection of the information. That information was taken vary seriously. Very.... eg, beautiful son you have in kindergarten, be a shame...
The second area for which I was involved was the protection of access to our databases and/or communications facilities. Eg, access points, physical connections, etc. While this was directed specifically at external threats it also applied to internal corrupt activities.
And yes, I was periodically investigated and regular background checks performed.
My primary concern is the illegal access to anything which might be classified for whatever reason by anyone, and I mean anyone, who is not subject to the type of checks made on me. When I left DoD contractors were wandering around with little oversight.
Eg, Hunter Biden, anyone in Trumps family, Hillary's digital support, her servers, her staff's servers, etc. Where the hel is our oversight? Who in their right mind would give Paul Pelosi access to anything?
Fookin place is an asylum run by the ones who should be in the padded room.
/rant
4 days to the big move! Stress level currently in triple digits. This too shall pass.
Never believed accusations that Snowden gave Russians info
I read from Snowden that he could get any information on anybody that he wanted just as a mid level contractor. And that the private contractor in charge of background checks was fundamentally incompetent, how could the Russians not put in their own or pay off somebody to get info as they did in some big previous espionage cases.
And if you had pocket credentials they warranted
more protection points than a desk drawer or ordinary file cabinet, especially in your home office; right?
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Security, it seems, is only for the little people
All of this username / password hyperbole doesn't make me feel secure
when major corporations have their data bases compromised on a regular
basis. what on earth would some spook want to know about little ol' me?
I can see where stealing secrets of government and military would be
useful to the 'enemies of state', but I am not even a blip on the radar.
question everything
The intelclowns are of the mind that they cannot know
at any given time what wrongdoing could come down the road and what the indicators and clues might be so it it best to collect all possible information on on living beings in ordere to comb it later for indications of potential to be engaged in the latest theoretically possible threat.
be well and have a good.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I don't give the people doing this collection
as much credibility. I don't think they have a clue what they are doing.
I believe that the road ahead is a lot easier if you have at least a semblance of a plan which direction to take, what goal you want to reach, what paths to take along the way, what tradeoffs have to be made, etc.
I think so much of what they are collecting is done because they can, not whether they should. The danger in what they are doing is that the information being collected can be harvested in ways that hurt the common people.
It's like they are paid by the byte. I really don't think much of the business school model that is so pervasive in our society today. Cost of everything, value of nothing.