Again, that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. Pol Pot presided over roughly 15% of his population getting killed through mass executions and induced famine. If saying that I wouldn’t want to live under Pol Pot is jingoistic, basically everyone human in existence is “jingoistic”. Again dude, that word REALLY doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Again dude, you keep using the word jingoism, but that word really doesn’t mean what you think it means. Jingoism is specifically related to foreign policy with other nation, but ignoring that for a moment, I never mentioned “Obamacare”. While I don’t think ACA was a perfect piece of legislation, it certainly was better than what we had before. I have no real beef with ACA.
Congress certainly gets its fair share of blame, but the president gets more. The president is the executive. He is literally the boss of everyone at the NSA. They report to him. He doesn’t need to ask congress for permission to shut down mass warrantless spying. He can just issue an executive order and it happens. The FISA court was created specifically because presidents were pissing all over the constitution. The FISA court is (in theory at least) a check on the power of the NSA. The FISA court doesn’t tell the NSA to do something. The FISA court tells the NSA to NOT do something. Without the shitty and pathetic protection of the FISA court, the NSA would be even worse.
When it comes to domestic spying and the running of the federal agencies, congress is nearly powerless. They can only tell federal agencies to NOT do something or they can make it legal for them to do something. What they actually do is a power solely held by the president. If the president said tomorrow to the NSA “stop all warrantless domestic spying” the NSA would have to comply and there is fuck all congress could do about it.
However, lets pretend for a moment that federal agencies get their orders from congress. They don’t, but lets pretend for a moment they do. The president could still merrily declare his opposition to the horrible domestic spying. He didn’t. He defended the domestic spying. The president unquestionably has the power to pardon Snowden. He hasn’t and he won’t. The president has the power to order agencies to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, he has refused to. Obama isn’t being strong armed into being a pro-domestic spying piece of shit. He IS a pro-domestic spying piece of shit. He has said this publicly and defended the NSA.
Obama could end this all tomorrow and congress can do fuck all to stop him. It is actually one of the few things he can do that congress do a god damn thing about. Congress can kill the Affordable Care Act through a number of methods, but if Obama told the NSA to cease being a bag of dicks tomorrow, they would have to comply and congress could do nothing to stop them. Face it. Obama is asshole. He might be less of an asshole than Romney, but that isn’t saying much.
