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According To YouGov Poll, Snowden Support Declining Among Americans
eldavojohn writes "A recent poll from the YouGov consisting of one thousand responses shows that Snowden's support among Americans has shifted. Now, according to the poll, more Americans think he did the wrong thing rather than the right thing when asked: 'Based on what you've heard, do think Snowden's leak of top-secret information about government surveillance programs to the media was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?' The results and breakdown are available online (PDF). Without getting into racial or political breakdowns, the results now show that 38% say he did the wrong thing, 33% say he did the right thing and 29% remain undecided about the results of his actions. Instead of charging the populace into action Snowden may be facing apathy at best and public disapproval at worst."
Snowden is an attention whore, I've said so from the very get go of this thing. It's not what we think of him that is the big failure here, but that we even have a discussion of the opinion on him at all. Stop focusing on him or his' girlfriend's tits and start debating the issues he exposed. Oh, nobody cares about Snowdem? cry me a fucking river, how about we discuss the citizens of the nations that have been exposed as borderline police states?
Discussions pro/con Snowden have way too much room around here, and the internet in general, and who do you think pushed this agenda? Who would have a motive to focus the discussion on him rather than his proof. In cases like these, it really doesn't matter whether we talk good or bad about him, what matters is that we talk of him instead of the documents.
Don't get me wrong, we need to discuss Snowden too and keep an eye on how his saga ends, because that has the potential to be yet another Bradley Manning story, but we really, really need to keep focus on the actual issue. I'm willing to bet that even more nations will be exposes as hypocritical fucktwats soon, and sitting around yelling at each other about Snowden's dick size is going to hurt us all in the end.
... whatever
You Americans deserve what you're about to get.
Oh the irony, how she bites. You're just as much a part of the problem, you and your retarded post is one in a sea of redundant drivel flooding the internet. You're helping them obscure the issues of GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION in at least three different nations so far. So take the fucking buttplug out of your ass, and warm up that armchair warrior keyboard of yours and get to focusing on the real issue here. Bob.
... whatever
First off, the Government is NOT watching you. They are watching for attacks. In fact, the reason why Boston got through is because they have a cleaner separation on what is allowed to be listened to. In a nut shell, it appears to be that if you have a connection with a known terrorists, only then will you be picked up. However, if you talk terrorism, then it will not be picked up.
Secondly, Snowden has made some accusations and sadly, others, mostly neo-cons, have taken those and blown them up much further than what he said. And of all the accusations that he came up with, he has presented some proof, but nothing substantial.
Wealthy elite are enslaving you? Politiicans are oppressing you? When did Snowden say that? He did not. BUT, others wrap all sorts of wild things in his statements, which makes him lose his statements.
BUT then to discredit him, he ran to nations that are generally regarded as NOT friendly towards USA, while telling them how NSA may/may not be spying on them. IOW, he is not seen as a whistleblower, but a traitor. And BTW, in any other nation, that is exactly what he would be considered if he did this to them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes because all of us sit around waiting for Americans to teach us everything. Independence Day taught me that. Yanks learn how to destroy things while the rest of the world sit around waiting for those proud Americans to tell everyone else.
We're just as competent setting up our own invidious spy organisations, thank you very much, and I'd imagine that the American agencies have learned significant amounts from the British in particular (thanks to the information-sharing treaties), as well as the French, Russian, Chinese, Canadian and the rest. And obviously the other way round.
Pull your head out of your arse. America is not the centre of the fucking world.
If the founders were so worried about the people's decisions, why did they bother mentioning things like "we the people" that emphasized a nation made up of free citizens?
- yes, 'we, the people', means all people who want to be free individuals, live free from government oppression, people who fought the American revolution.
I'm not sure who you are saying is being attacked when you say "productive class". Are you saying that only people who own business are productive?
- 2 parts to answer this:
1. In absence of savings, which come from overproduction and underconsumption there is no productivity in the world but what one person produces to feed himself, so it's all subsistence. However once somebody saves enough (and I am not going into specifics how they did it, I am sure everybody is aware that while many did it by being clever and hardworking, many others did it by being violent, stealing, things of that nature) once somebody saved enough, they could now provide capital that was used to multiply productive output that one person is capable of and that's what increased productivity - CAPITAL, capital investment.
2. Yes, a worker can be productive enough to produce more than for his own consumption, that's what modern technology allows, but all of this technology is based around capital that was invested into making the worker more productive. Without capital investment a worker can only rely on himself, he has no tools, no means to do more than just serve himself. It is capital that is used to create, purchase tools and knowledge and other means and instruments, basically organize land, labour and capital in a way that increases efficiency and produces something of value, which is when sold covers the costs of production and leaves some profit (savings) that can be further used to grow the business and thus the economy.
So yes, workers are also productive people but only when the capitalist puts his savings to work to multiply labour by some amount that would actually make it profitable to run the business, and profit is both: the reward for job well done to the investors and it is an indicator that the company is providing valuable service, product and it's not wasting resources inefficiently (this is why government should never be allowed into any business, the entire point of government is the exact opposite of business. While in business growing efficiency grows profits and increases success in government growing efficiency and success of some program reduces its very raison d'etre, or reason to exist. That's why such things as 'war on poverty' can never be won, because then the war could end and government workers involved in it would lose their jobs, so in reality 'war on poverty' exists to perpetuate and increase poverty, not to eliminate it, that's free market capitalist job).
How do you explain Dept. of Labor reports that say something like 'productivity increased .3% in the last quarter' then
- the numbers that come out of various government agencies are nonsense in both, the meaning, the underlying assumptions and in the actual amounts. In any case, whenever government talks about GDP for example, it is misleading, an increase in prices can grow GDP but decrease overall productivity, because growing prices can be only a response to inflation, people paying more for something reduces their purchasing and saving power and actually can mean a reduction in the economy.
Saying that productivity in USA is growing is the exact opposite of the truth because it is impossible to grow productivity while simultaneously destroy full time manufacturing jobs that actually do produce, while growing part time service sector job numbers and government jobs as well, which are not productive at all, they add to the deficit, they can't be used to export (and whatever some of them export is in the export numbers already and given the huge monthly t
MY OTHER COMMENTS
First of all, I addressed many of your complaints here, in this thread.
Secondly when I say productive, I do mean either being productive by saving and investing or also by working in some form of business that actually produces stuff that reduces the trade deficit (currently USA is importing most of the consumer goods bought by the population within the country). So to be productive you have to make something that pays for imports and of-course if you are providing capital that makes other people productive, then you are super-productive.
As to the situation in USA where people are gambling with money rather than investing it into productive capacity, that's the inevitable result of the Keynesian monetary policy, printing money, inflation, but also various other policies with the expressed goal of growing consumption at the expense of production (so any type of government guaranteed loan, where the guarantee comes as an expense on the productive population and the loans that are given out are only given out due to the guarantee and would never be given out in a competitive free market environment, because those loans have no chance of making a meaningful productive return by creating something of any value to the market place).
As to the mob using its vote as a block to give the government authority to steal from a minority to subsidize itself, well, those are not actually Constitutional powers, that's the exact OPPOSITE of the rule of law. The mob giving the government super-constitutional authority or authority that is in fact NOT granted by the Constitution to the federal government is not lawful even if the courts don't see it that way. You see, the Constitution is not there to give power to the mob, it's there to keep the government honest, keep it from becoming authoritarian, from becoming totalitarian, from becoming discriminatory, it's there to guarantee individual freedoms, not hand out entitlements and impose obligations.
The Roman empire lasted for a long time because it allowed free trade, traders weren't actually ruled by any authority, they made decisions based on the free market principles, they discovered prices and made contracts. It took centuries to destroy what was built by turning good government into a bad one there, so the pace of self-destruction depends on how quickly the corruption takes place.
As to how equality works when "both parties are responsible for paying for lawyers" is a nonsense question. 2 parties suing each other does not have to do with government, however the more laws exist the more reasons there are to sue each other and the current society has an inordinate amount of laws, which can be used for litigation, but those laws are actually mostly UNCONSTITUTIONAL laws, and I mean to say that this includes every type of business related law, labour related law, money related law, any form of subsidy, any form of income taxation (and yes, income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally).
When I talk about equality before law, I talk about equal application of government laws and regulations to all people under all circumstances regardless of their persona and their position in society, I am not talking about civil court cases that are NOT based on various government rules that are unauthorized.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Interesting. Does this make you a scab? Or just someone intolerant of opinions and viewpoints that differ from your own?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell