Barack Hussein Obama

Obama’s Short Journey From Spying Critic To Big Brother

More than six years later, Obama the onetime constitutional lawyer is now the commander in chief presiding over a surveillance state that some of his own advisers think has once again gotten out of control.

Published

11 years ago

January 16, 2014

Geoffrey Grider

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WASHINGTON — As a young lawmaker defining himself as a presidential candidate,Barack Obama visited a center for scholars in August 2007 to give a speech on terrorism. He described a surveillance state run amok and vowed to rein it in. “That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens,” he declared. “No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.”

More than six years later, the onetime constitutional lawyer is now the commander in chief presiding over a surveillance state that some of his own advisers think has once again gotten out of control. On Friday, he will give another speech, this time at the Justice Department defending government spying even as he adjusts it to address a wave of public concern over civil liberties.

The journey between those two speeches reflects the transition from the backbench of the United States Senate to the chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Like other presidents before him, the idealistic candidate skeptical of government power found that the tricky trade-offs of national security issues look different to the person charged with using that power to ensure public safety.

Aides said that even as a senator, Mr. Obama supported robust surveillance as long as it was legal and appropriate, and that as president he still shares the concerns about overreach he expressed years ago. But they said his views have been shaped to a striking degree by the reality of waking up every day in the White House responsible for heading off the myriad threats he finds in his daily intelligence briefings.

“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone. “Things seem to have grown at the N.S.A.,” Mr. Plouffe said, citing specifically the tapping of foreign leaders’ telephones. “I think it was disturbing to most people, and I think he found it disturbing.”

Yet it is hard to express indignation at actions of the government after five years of running it, and some involved in surveillance note that it was Mr. Obama who pushed national security agencies to be aggressive in hunting terrorists. “For some, his outrage does ring a little bit hollow,” said a former counterterrorism official.

All of which leads to worries by critics of government surveillance that he will not go far enough on Friday. “If the speech is anything like what is being reported, the president will go down in history for having retained and defended George W. Bush’s surveillance programs rather than reformed them,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mr. Obama first confronted the questions of national security and privacy during his 2004 campaign for Senate, taking aim at the Patriot Act for “violating our fundamental notions of privacy” and declaring that “we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries.”

Once elected, Mr. Obama took an interest in curbing surveillance. “He would ask me about various issues that relate to the topic of the day — how do you come up with policies that make sure that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive?” recalled Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a leading critic of surveillance policies then and now.

Mr. Obama was a sponsor of a bill in 2005 to raise the standard required for federal agents using administrative subpoenas known as national security letters to obtain business records without court order. He joined other Democrats fighting the renewal of the Patriot Act until it was amended to address civil liberties concerns, then voted for its extension in 2006 after a compromise, breaking with Mr. Wyden who voted no.

Mr. Obama’s 2007 speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars came after the revelation that President George W. Bush had authorized warrantless surveillance in terrorism cases without permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A presidential candidate, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Bush’s “false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”

But as a former Obama aide put it recently, “The rhetoric was probably sharper than his votes.” By summer 2008, with the Democratic nomination secured and the White House now a real possibility, Mr. Obama voted for legislation essentially ratifying Mr. Bush’s surveillance programs. Mr. Obama realized he would “take my lumps” from the left and said it “was not an easy call for me,” but he argued that putting the programs under the jurisdiction of the intelligence court restored accountability.

As a result, after he won the election, surveillance issues were off his agenda; instead, he focused on banning interrogation techniques he deemed torture and trying, futilely, to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “There wasn’t really any serious discussion of what N.S.A. was up to,” said a former intelligence official, who like others did not want to be named describing internal conversations.

Mr. Obama was told before his inauguration of a supposed plot by Somali extremists to attack the ceremony, what David Axelrod, his adviser, called a “welcome-to-the-N.B.A. moment before the first game.” Although the report proved unfounded, it reinforced to Mr. Obama the need to detect threats before they materialized. “The whole Somali threat injected their team into the realities of national security in a tangible and complicated way,” recalled Juan C. Zarate, the departing counterterrorism adviser to Mr. Bush who worked with the Obama team on the threat.

So while instituting additional procedural changes, Mr. Obama undertook no major overhaul of the surveillance programs he inherited. “He’s sitting on the other end of the pen now,” said the former Obama aide. “He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration.”

Just weeks after the inauguration, Judge Reggie B. Walton issued a secret ruling reprimanding the N.S.A. for violating its own procedures. But when Mr. Obama was briefed, the case did not stir consternation. The president’s team instructed the Justice Department to fix the problem, but “this was not a central concern and he was very quick in knowing how to deal with it,” said a former administration official.

The calculus had shifted enough that Mr. Obama began presiding over a record number of leak prosecutions. When civil liberties advocates visited to press him to do more to reverse Mr. Bush’s policies, Mr. Obama pushed back. “He reminded me that he had a different role to play, that he was commander in chief and that he needed to protect the American people,” recalled Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U.

That was brought home even more starkly at Christmas in 2009 when a Nigerian man tried to detonate explosives in his underwear aboard an airliner. At a meeting at the White House afterward, an agitated Mr. Obama “was extremely firm” with intelligence officials, saying that he “expected us to do better,” recalled one who was in the room.

“We hadn’t had a major attack in a number of years and the fact that this guy came as close as he did — basically the detonator didn’t work — and the fact that we hadn’t detected it in advance really came as a shock to them,” said John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy C.I.A. director who participated in a review of the incident for the administration.

Feeling little pressure to curb the security agencies, Mr. Obama largely left them alone until Mr. Snowden began disclosing secret programs last year. Mr. Obama was angry at the revelations, privately excoriating Mr. Snowden as a self-important narcissist who had not thought through the consequences of his actions.

He was surprised at the uproar that ensued, advisers said, particularly that so many Americans did not trust him, much less trust the oversight provided by the intelligence court and Congress. As more secrets spilled out, though, aides said even Mr. Obama was chagrined. They said he was exercised to learn that the mobile phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was being tapped.

Mr. Obama appointed a panel to review the programs. “The point we made to him was, ‘We’re not really concerned about you, Barack, but God forbid some other guy’s in the office five years from now and there’s another 9/11,’ ” said Richard A. Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism adviser who served on the panel. He had to “lay down some roadblocks in addition to what we have now so that once you’re gone it’ll be harder” to abuse spying abilities.

On the other hand, Mr. Obama was acutely aware of the risks of being seen as handcuffing the security agencies. “Whatever reforms he makes, you can be sure if there’s another incident — and the odds are there will be in our history — there’ll be someone on CNN within seconds saying if the president hadn’t hamstrung the intelligence community, this wouldn’t have happened,” Mr. Axelrod said.

Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser working on Friday’s speech, said Mr. Obama saw the issue as two separate questions — abuse of government power and extent of government power. With the 2008 legislation setting a new structure, the president had focused on avoiding abuse until the latest revelations. “At this point, we’re looking more systematically at these programs to ensure that we’re taking into account both technological advances and also the need to inspire greater public confidence,” Mr. Rhodes said. “We have an ability to do essentially anything technologically. So do we have the appropriate legal and policy overlay to ensure that’s focused?”

That will be the question Mr. Obama tries to answer in the speech. source – New York Times

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Barack Hussein Obama

THE PRESIDENT THAT WASN’T THERE: Joe Biden Comes To An Ignominious End As The Third Term Proxy Presidency Of Barack Obama Comes To A Close

Published

1 day ago

December 19, 2024

Geoffrey Grider

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For 4 years, the White House has run a con game that Joe Biden was a functioning leader, in reality it was the presidency by proxy of Barack Obama in his third term pulling the strings

Earlier today, the usually conservative Wall Street Journal ran a blistering story on how the entire Biden administration spent 4 years conning America that Joe Biden was actually in charge and calling the shots. It’s a stunning article, a segment captured below, and we encourage you to read the whole thing on wsj.com. What they left out, however, was that it was way more than just a con game, it was the literal third term of Barack Obama, made possible by the president who wasn’t there, Joe Biden.

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Proverbs 29:2 (KJB)

We have told you before Joe Biden was ever sworn in that the whole reason he was chosen was because of his highly diminished mental faculties, that way he could be propped up before the cameras while Barack Obama called all the shots like the Wizard of Oz from behind the curtain. Biden went bad, to worse, to “replace him with Kamala” in sickeningly realistic fashion. The main stream media did their part by refusing to report on Biden’s obvious ‘absent while present’ speech patterns, weird gesture and motions, and everyone’s favorite thing to pretend is not happening, his walking away from the podium as if he had no idea where he was. He had no idea. What does all this have to do with drones over New Jersey? The same government that told you Joe Biden was fine is the same government telling you there is nothing to worry about with the drones. That’s the memo.

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How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.

Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.

The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.

The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.

For the past 3.5 years, Barack Obama has been operating his Third Term through the rented body of Joe Biden. Listen to what he said to Stephen Colbert about how that term would function. Now you know why Democrats nominated a mentally-impaired person. pic.twitter.com/qGgviU6Kek

— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) July 20, 2024

The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.

The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down. Biden dropped out of the race eight days later. READ MORE

The sad and strange decline of Joe Biden

Joe Biden dropped out of the race to become the next president, after a series of gaffes in 2024 raised concerns about his age, and a disastrous presidential debate performance caused alarm within the Democratic party.

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Barack Hussein Obama

New Netflix Movie ‘Leave The World Behind’ Produced By Barack Obama Released As Chinese Cyber Army Hacks Into US Power Grid And Utilities, Coincidence?

Published

1 year ago

December 12, 2023

Geoffrey Grider

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‘Leave the World Behind’ is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological thriller film executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama for Netflix

For starters, we have covered for many years, the money-path that the Barack and Michelle Obama have taken after their first two terms in the White House. One leg of that path led straight to Netflix where, for a cool $50,000,000.00, they were invited to produce movies supporting their Leftist Agenda. Predictably, their first effort ‘American Factory’ was awarded the Oscar with seemingly no effort at all. It was a ‘Christmas Miracle!’. So let’s talk about their latest release, an end times apocalyptic thriller, (yes you heard right), called ‘Leave The World Behind’.

“And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.” 2 Kings 10:26 (KJB)

The first thing I’d like to direct your attention to is the movie poster itself, proudly featuring the names of the 4 stars who act in it, is the fascinating little acrostic it contains. We have gone ahead and highlighted what we found in red, and you will see it forms the word ‘Baal’. That’s not a review, that’s the marketing, so you can see the position we start this from. But honestly, did you expect anything different from Barack and Michelle Obama? I certainly did not.

As far the movie itself goes, I gave up my Netflix subscription when they started showing movies promoting kiddie porn, pro-abortion and such like so I had to rely on various sources like social media and a plot synopsis. The least troubling part of the ‘Leave The World Behind‘ is the overt racism it promotes where the main characters are reinforcing the troupe that blacks cannot trust whites. Democrats have nothing if they stop peddling racism, and it is peddled quite well here.

The new Netflix movie produced by Barack and Michelle Obama stokes the fires of racial hatred with jarring line about not trusting ‘white people’. Racism is truly a Democrat ideal, sad but true. #ObamaDidThis pic.twitter.com/CET0iwKZc4

— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) December 12, 2023

THE MAIN THEME: “After a prolonged stand-off, Danny decides to help Archie in exchange for money and directs them to a nearby underground bunker prepared for doomsday. G.H. confesses to Clay that he knows what’s happening – he says that a political coup d’état is afoot, which is why the people in positions of power are letting a civil war take root by disrupting technology and feeding chaos. Amanda and Ruth see New York City being bombed, and Rose has walked into the neighboring home and found the bunker, where an Emergency Alert System interceptor reveals that the U.S. is at war with rogue armed forces with the suggestion of radiological weapons being involved.” Basically, it’s a story about the end of the world written by lost people without the Bible. But you get the idea.

Translated it reads like this. Barack and Michelle have produced an end times movie showing the United States government turning against the people, and using the military to bomb them into submission. Hmm, sounds like someone has been roaming in the corridors of Now The End Begins. We’ve been warning of things like that for 15 years now. I’m sure it’s just a ‘coincidence’, but ‘Leave The World Behind’ comes out just as reports of the Chinese Cyber Army hacking the US power grid are revealed. I’m sure that’s just a crazy coincidence. Now back to your bunker.

Chinese Cyber Army Hacks US Power Grid As Obama Netflix Movie ‘Leave The World Behind’ Is Released

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“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Obama Parses His Words Very Carefully As He Calls For An ‘End To The Occupation’ And An Implementation Of The Two State Solution

Published

1 year ago

November 4, 2023

Geoffrey Grider

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Former President Barack Obama called the Israel-Hamas conflict a ‘moral reckoning for all of us’ at an event hosted by his foundation Friday, says ‘occupation must end’.

Last time I checked, Israel was not occupying anyone. They are in their land, given to them by God, as the Bible clearly points out in Genesis. But there is indeed an ‘occupation’ of Gaza and the Palestinians, only it’s Hamas who is doing the occupying. But as Obama was throwing around phrases like ‘end the occupation’, he never mentions who is referring to, and that’s quite intentional. He needs to keep things ‘open ended’ so as not to cause his donors to flee, without alienating his Jewish staff members.

“In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Genesis 15:18-21 (KJV)

For those of you who are not geographical scholars, here is the original land grant God gave to Abraham in bullet points:

The upper-right portion of Egypt
All of modern-day Israel
All of Lebanon
All of of Syria
A piece of Turkey
Half of Iraq
The northern half of Jordan
A little slice of Saudi Arabia

Now I understand that in this dispensation of the Church Age, that is something that will never be realized. Israel is actually preparing to go into the time of Jacob’s trouble which includes the 3.5 year time of the great Tribulation. But there is a Day coming where, in that day, all the land that I just told you belongs to Israel will be given back to them by the LORD Himself. In the meantime, Israel is a ‘deadly piece of dirt’ that grows deadlier with each passing day. One day, people like Barack Obama will bow down before the Jewish King of Kings, and confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father. And there will be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD. That’s a fact, and that’s Bible. Go look it up.

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Obama calls for end of ‘occupation,’ security for Israel, state for Palestinians

FROM FOX NEWS: Obama spoke at the Obama Foundation’s Democracy Forum on Thursday, where he called for a two-state solution and an end to the “occupation,” while not clarifying what occupation he meant.

“All of this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the former president told the forum audience.

Obama continued, “One that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”

Especially you sir. https://t.co/YayYznQweU

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 4, 2023

Palestinian governing authority Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel on October 7 that killed over 1,400 Israeli citizens. Since then, more than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza as Israeli Defense Forces continue their ground incursion of the region, the Gaza Health Ministry claims. The death toll is expected to rise once buildings are cleared and rubble is taken away.

“Now, I will admit, it is impossible to be dispassionate in the face of this carnage,” Obama said Thursday. “It is hard to feel hopeful. The images of families mourning, of bodies being pulled from rubble, force a moral reckoning on all of us.”

“We’ve had to sort through our anguish, our outrage, our fears and our differences on the issues,” he said. “I had a conversation with a group of you around this issue, and you were passionate and pushed me around some of the public statements I’d made.”

“And the issue is not a wish for different outcomes – an end to the killing, peaceful coexistence between two sovereign and free peoples – but rather different assessments of the path that we need to take in order to get there,” former president Obama continued.

Welcome to Saturday night in Berlinistan, where tens of thousands of Hamas supporters took over the streets demanding that Israel cease to exist. Germany getting ready to ‘do it again’ for the triple play. #FreePalestine #FromTheRiverToTheSea #WWIII #FreeGazaFromHamas pic.twitter.com/wlWxDuvLy2

— Now The End Begins (@NowTheEndBegins) November 4, 2023

The United States does not officially support a cease-fire, as President Biden has repeatedly affirmed Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas. Biden has recently shifted his tone, amid pressure from progressive groups and world leaders, to express support for a humanitarian “pause.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that a pause in Israel’s ground invasion would give time for Hamas to reorganize or plan other attacks. READ MORE