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Jill Stein Pledges To Pardon Snowden and Appoint Him To Her Cabinet (zerohedge.com)
Iamthecheese writes: Trump hates him. Clinton misrepresented him. Most mainstream media outlets call him a traitor and worse. But if you vote Stein, Snowden will be in the presidential Cabinet. "The presumptive Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein promises to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden -- who many describe as a true American hero -- not just a full pardon, but a promotion to the upper echelons of government should she win the White House," reports Zero Hedge. "[Snowden] has done an incredible service to our country at great cost to himself for having to live away from his family, his friends, his job, his network, to basically live as an expatriate," Stein asserted during a town hall live-streamed to supporters on her Facebook page, US Uncut reported. "I would say not only bring Snowden back, but bring him into my administration as a member of the Cabinet," she continued, "because we need people who are part of our national security administration who are really, very patriotic. If we're really going to protect our American security, we also have to protect our Constitutional rights, and that includes our right to privacy." Her pardons would also extend to CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou and Chelsea Manning. Kiriakou first revealed proof of waterboarding and various other torture tactics employed by the government, while Manning leaked the Afghan War Diary and Iraq War Logs, which included footage of U.S. helicopter airmen deliberately gunning down journalists, to Wikileaks. Reddit co-founder and MIT student, Aaron Swartz, who leaked academic research to the public, would also receive a pardon under her presidency. "[Swartz] was a proponent of free and liberated internet and for sharing our resources on that internet, who was basically hounded into suicide by a very oppressive Department of Justice. So, he -- in my mind -- is another one of these heroes that we need to remember and be very thankful for."
I don't dispute that Snowden did a public service in the end. However, he also broke the law and for that there should be consequences. I worked in the US government for a long time and 99.99% of the people working there take their obligations under the law very seriously. As with any large organization, there are bad apples. I'm sorry to say, but Snowden made himself part of the problem instead of part of the solution.
He could have reported the problem to his corporate managers, to his government managers (as a contractor he had to be working for a government manager somewhere along the way), to the inspector general at the site where he was working or directly to the NSA inspector general, or to his congress person. In my mind, given the gravity of the situation I would have gone to the congress person. Many members of congress and members of their staff, particularly professional staffers, have high level security clearance. They certainly could have investigated, exercised oversight, and put a stop to anything untoward.
Believe it or not, the process for intelligence oversight mostly works really well. Sometimes, like any process, it fails and those seem to be primary focus of public attention. I worked in places where we received orders to stop certain activities because they had been reported as questionable, investigated, and found to be unacceptable by the authorities responsible for oversight.
What Snowden did was decide that none of that mattered and that, like a little kid who wants his way and wants it now, he was going to do whatever he wanted to get his way. This certainly could have been handled within the confines of existing laws and regulations without damaging national security and international relations in the process. Of course, I have no idea where someone working in government might get this ridiculous notion that "the rules apply to others but not to me" and that "it's OK to break the rules if it is more convenient for me or I can justify the end result to myself"
Its nice to live in this dream world where there are other alternatives than the two major party candidates, but its not real. If he did well, Jonson would make 5% of the vote. Those 5% are more likely to come from Clinton than from trump. Clinton would miss the 5%, meaning that Trump would win more likely. So voting for any candidate than the "lesser evil" doesn't bring you anything, but in fact has a negative effect.
The only way to fix this is to change the system. Give voters papers where they can fill in priorities, with priority one two three etc. The system is called STV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... The voters then will be free to support any candidate they want, regardless of strategy.
But not by being "pro homeopathy" and generally come across like crackpots. Sigh. We need some real alternatives to Republicans and Democrats. "Real" being the key word.
The more I read about US politics, the more I realize that what would ordinarily be normal parties here in Norway are the factions within the democrats and republicans, while the fringe crackpots are the same. Imagine a system with:
Democratic Party
Liberal Party
Socialist Party
Republican Party
Tea Party
Christian Party
Libertarian Party
Green Party
Constitution Party
It would be not entirely unlike our parliament. Anything above 4% nationally gets proportional representation (19/169 representatives are held in a pool for this purpose), under 4% you'd have to get a direct vote from your area (the other 150/169). Coalitions are common and usually center around the main "left" or "right" party but who is in and who is out varies. In the US you have the same factions but first they make a red and blue coalition that they call a party, then they put it to a vote.
As long as you got a "first past the post" system, nothing matters unless you get a majority so first you must become part of something that could get a majority, then you can try pulling it in the direction you want. That's why we see candidates like Sanders, Trump, Ron Paul etc. join the main parties even if they're way on the fringes. Nobody's going to be able to change that without changing the electorate system and the keys to that is firmly locked up by the two parties that like their pseudo-monopoly on being the red and blue pill.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Things are getting exciting. The next President will be one of those:
1) a failed business person with bad hair and a name tarnished by sex scandals who doesn't like Arabs and Mexicans
2) a failed business person with bad hair and a name tarnished by sex scandals who thinks giving US citizenship to 20 millions Arabs and Mexicans is a one-shot deal that won't bring 50 millions more knocking at the door to get their share of the American Dream
3) a feminazi who thinks women bathrooms are only for "womyn-born womyns" (not those rapists in disguise called transgenders) and who never had a non-subsidized job in her entire life
And they all lie. Constantly. With no consideration for the intelligence of the people they lie to.
How could things get to that point? Both the GOP and the Democrats have made terrible strategic choice. First the GOP could have picked a decent, middle-of-the-road candidate that somehow represents the GOP values, and following a Democrat president that failed to live up to the hype of his election, it could have been an easy win. But no, they went with Trump... And how did the Democrats react? Did they pick a normal, middle-of-the-road candidate that somehow represents the liberal values? Of course not, they picked a controversial figure with a sketchy background and a history of bad decisions that makes people fall asleep when she speaks.
If this was a movie it would get a 3.5 score on imdb because nobody would believe this could happen.
lucm, indeed.