Edward Snowden offers to help Brazil over US spying in return for asylum

[Pholus]

81. Personalities again? Unsurprising.

Of course you can't defend it. The surveillance is shocking and un-American.
Five year retention of as much info as they can hoover? Cool with you,
I guess. Why? Because the President is cool with it, and no other reason.

Consider the irony of what this "Libertarian hypocrite apologist" is about to
tell you.

Think like a damned Democrat for a change. Here we are in the midst of another
budgetary crisis where the safety net, the NSF, the NIH, the DOE and everything
else that makes this country great will be on the block. Wrap it around your
skull that "intelligence" takes up 10 percent of the DoD budget and realize that
dollar per dollar discretionary spending (EVERYTHING THAT MAKES THIS COUNTRY
ACTUALLY WORTH LIVING IN) doesn't even add up to close to that.

Oh, but we need those goddamned whooshing starship doors.
Certainly, the country will CEASE TO EXIST without those "Captain's
Chairs" and "Command Centers with floor to ceiling monitors."

The NSA's dragnet surveillance is expensive but these programs have demonstrated very
few actual successes. Certainly their "fifty four thwarted plots" assertion
didn't stand up to scrutiny.

https://www.propublica.org/article/claim-on-attacks-thwarted-by-nsa-spreads-despite-lack-of-evidence

Yup, there is bin Laden laughing again. They spend a few thousand
bucks and make us outspend them a million to one. Mostly on wasted shit
like those command centers. Basically because
the corporations have to get paid and for no other reason. Oh, and incidentlly
we clamp down on the society with its freedoms that bin Laden hated so much.

You claim to be a Democrat but you CERTAINLY are f'ing clueless about the actual
threat of this system to progressive causes.

Sure, I trust President Obama. But I don't trust President Cruz or President Palin
and you can DAMNED well bet the Republicans that President Obama left in charge
of this crap will roll right over when some extra-Constitutional tea partier demands
the dirt on their political opponents or the newest list of Quakers to punish for
protesting their next dumbassed war.

Oh yes, we'll be in agreement again at that point. But by then it's too late Sparky.

So take your "hero worship" accusations and shove it in the drawer of "Failed Talking Points"
and actually try to stop me on the basis of the merits of what this program actually
does for national security.

Seriously, why not make an argument that the country simply cannot survive without
the program, regardless of the cost and potential for abuse. I think it would be a positive
thing to hear one of those that didn't contain the statement "We'd tell you, but it's CLASSIFIED."