Strange how the same people running around calling everyone Authoritarians

[JDPriestly]

79. If we had had more panic and outrage about this program and if we had asked more questions

during the Bush administration, maybe we would not still have the excesses in the program.

I think that the DLC wing of the Democratic Party very much wants us to just relax and trust that they are doing the right thing.

If the NSA program were the only problem right now, many of us would be less upset about it. But the fact is that the excessive surveillance and the objectionable collection and retention of metadata by the NSA under the Obama administration are just one more in a series of blows.

Think about some of the others.

the attacks on public employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere,

state adoptions of Stand Your Ground Laws that permit people like Zimmerman to shoot and kill kids like Trayvon Martin

Republican attacks on the ACA

Obama's proposal to cut Social Security

the sequester (the fault of the Republicans but still very disturbing)

the trade agreement that is reported to be likely to permit an international court of judges selected by we do not know who to declare laws our state legislators and maybe even federal legislators pass, laws that protect our food, our environment, our jobs and our wages to violate the agreement -- thereby destroying our local democratic governance or at least challenging it.

The list goes on and is maybe topped off by the cost of student loans and college tuition and public money going to private charter schools.

We have a Democrat in the White House, but he is barely and maybe not at all protecting the middle class and working people. He talks a lot about the middle class but from education to retirement, does he so much as defend what we have traditionally had?

Add the failure to prosecute most of the criminal bankers and Wall Street crooks.

The surveillance which is aimed at who knows who, maybe activists, maybe not, who knows, is just a last straw for many of us.

I was born in WWII. Americans did not fight that war only to have their government institute a surveillance program worse than anything the NAZIs managed to do (mostly because of our greater technological capacity).

When I worked for and voted for Obama, I did not work and vote for the kind of detrimental change that Obama is bringing us in many areas.

I am very disappointed.

Conservative and DLC Democrats can try to shame me as much as they wish, but I want to see some change that is positive.

I'm not asking for a pony, not for anything impossible right now. I just want Obama to protect us in the middle class the way he protected his friends on Wall Street and in the banks, and I want him to stop placing Americans under surveillance.

Obama may not be abusing this program nearly as much as he could (who knows since the program is secret), but what happens if the next president is a Republican?

Does Obama really decide that much about this program? Is he really in charge, or is he a mouthpiece like some of the other presidents in recent years?

Are the parameters of the program established by entrenched members of the military and the intelligence community? Or by our Congress? And who is enforcing compliance with the FISA statutes and regulations? The court according to news stories is not able to do that, and Feinstein and Congress aren't. Who is in charge here?

I am very disappointed. And I think for good reason. I also think a lot of DUers are as disappointed as I am.

Has Obama done some good things? Yes. So far, I support the ACA. But the disappointments at this point outnumber the positive achievements.