My "least untruthful" post of the day.

[kentuck]

Your government is not spying on you...at least, not intentionally.

They have been doing this shit for so long that they know no other way. They are spooks. They have their black SUV's and secret budget. They know shit even the President doesn't know. They understand that the "new guy" will only be there for 4 or 8 years and they will be here forever. They tell him what they think he needs to know. They don't tell him everything.

They even have a "secret" budget within their secret budget who only a handful of people know about. That is for missions outside the realm of government or oversight. Sometimes jobs are too dirty for respected people to know about, especially Senators and Congressmen.

Yeah, sometimes the big men in the company turn their heads the other way if some ambitious company man wants to make a few extra dollars, in drugs or whatever, so they can live more comfortable in their villas in the south of France. In case you didn't know, they don't go to church every Sunday.

Yes, they get information anyway they can get it. The laws are for the lounge chair people and the politicians - it's not for them. It's a dog-eat-dog world and the little fluffy puppies just don't make it.

We now resume regular programming...

[Warpy]

1. What gets me is how little all this spying has actually produced

in the way of useful intelligence.

The CIA never anticipated the fall of the USSR. If the NSA had any inkling of it, they didn't bother to share the information with the mere elected government.

They were also unable to anticipate any of the Al Qaeda attacks beyond citing general increases in phone calls and web activities that might sorta kinda mean something, put it on the PDB.

Yet people in government still find them necessary. Oh well.

[kentuck]

3. It's a culture that rotted about 60 years ago...

And they have been stinking up our government ever since.

[Lasher]

6. Realization that the USSR was a paper tiger = Buh bye Reagan war money

Anticipation of al Qaeda attacks = no blank check for Bush invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan

[Electric Monk]

2. I find myself thinking of Bill Hicks a lot these days...

[kentuck]

4. Any questions?

We didn't think so...

[Skidmore]

5. This I can agree with you on.

The problems are systemic and the system needs to be corrected. New laws must be written to accomplish this.

[kentuck]

7. They loved Nixon...

He was their favorite man in the White House. He loved the dirty tricks. He didn't get the name "Tricky Dicky" for nothing. He wanted to be part of their little clique. Being President allowed him to join in the games and laugh with the big boys, Liddy, Hunt, and the rest. He was more "inside" the company than any President since or before. He really enjoyed it.

[madamesilverspurs]

8. Around 2002-03

I had a neighbor, a young man who helped carry in groceries and kept my stairs swept clear of leaves and snow. He'd had a rough childhood and rambunctious teen years, but by his mid-20s had decided to pull himself together. After getting his GED he enrolled at the community college with a view toward eventually getting a degree in the criminal justice field.

At a jobs fair on campus he spent quite a bit of time speaking with someone about working for the FBI; he told the guy about his background, thinking that might be a barrier to such work. But he was given the application paperwork, which he completed and submitted. He told me that he laughed when he sent it, thinking that would be the end of it.

Some weeks later he knocked on my door. He was both excited and a little dismayed that he'd heard back from them; he'd gotten a phone call in which they set up a time for an interview. What caused his dismay was the caller's last question -- about an incident, a playground scuffle that had happened when he was in fourth grade, a kids' spat about some milk that had gotten spilled at lunch. He was expecting questions about the times he'd wound up at juvie in his teens. But spilled milk?

He moved away shortly after that. I've often wondered if he ever got the job in spite of the milk.

[bluestate10]

9. You're being devious. Of course if you aren't, your former allies will accuse you of

going over to the dark side.