Several years ago, while working at a major corporation I got a threatening letter from an attorney. This was no surprise because I was responsible for handling all the tort litigation nationwide so I got these kinds of letters all the time. In this particular case the attorney was demanding huge sums of money because one of our janitors allegedly destroyed a crucial piece of evidence. This plaintiff attorney was apparently planning on filing a major claim against SunGlo. He left the crucial piece of evidence, an empty SunGlo pop bottle on top of his desk. Our hero, the janitor, came in after hours; saw an empty bottle sitting on a desk, so he threw it in the trash. Then, to complete the cycle, he emptied the trash. The next day the attorney lost his mind when his crucial piece of evidence was missing. He decided we were to blame because our janitor threw out that extremely important bottle.
I contacted the attorney and told him to tee it up. I explained that we would not offer him a dime and that if he wanted to sue us and go to court that he better be prepared to explain to a jury why an $8 per hour janitor should take all of the blame for throwing away an empty soda bottle a $300 an hour attorney stupidly left on his desk. After a few more attempts at hyperventilating his way into undeserved settlement money, the plaintiff attorney hung up and I never heard from him again. I suspect he had night mares about that jury trial.
The Snowden NSA scandal reminds me of the SunGlo Ultimatum. While the Obama administration, and their RINO Republican support crew, is busy trashing Snowden and calling him a traitor, they are missing the point. What idiot allowed this clown to have access to top secret information in the first place? We are not even sure this guy graduated from high school. His first job at the NSA was as a security guard. He has no known academic credentials and certainly no significant work history. Yet he was hired, as an “analyst,” paid $120,000 per year, and given access to top secret information. Not only was he given access, apparently no one noticed that he was copying documents and/or electronic files and taking them home. It is pretty hard to deny that he had access, because he managed to leak information to the press that was so secret Peter King said this damaged National Security:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/06/12/Rep-Peter-King-NSA-Leaker-Traitor-Damaged-Natl-Sec
John McCain and Lindsey Graham are tied in a race to see who can say the dumbest things in front of the nearest microphone. It was close, but McCain managed to out stupid Graham, which was quite an accomplishment. He called for the U.S. to bomb Hong Kong until we get Snowden back:
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/06/10/john-mccain-calls-for-invasion-of-hong-kong/
“Either you’re with us or you’re against us,” McCain explained to anchor Freddie Lyon, “and clearly the nation of Hong Kong is against us. By harboring this known cybercriminal they pose a clear and present danger to the American people.
“I don’t want to hear about extradition or rendition or any of that nonsense. This man is a traitor and if we don’t get him within 24 hours I say we need to start bombing the hell out of Hong Kong.
McCain has done something I did not think possible. He has convinced me that he would have been an even worse choice for President than Barack Hussein Obama. Before this comment, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.
Lindsey Graham came perilously close to matching McCain for stupidity. It is really embarrassing when MSNBC sounds more rational than a Republican Senator:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/06/12/18922414-we-dont-need-to-censor-the-mail-but
“In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we’re all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy,” Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is.”
This is absolutely brilliant. He stopped short of bombing Hong Kong but he would consider censoring the mail. This was after he twittered that we should hunt down Snowden:
“I view Mr. Snowden’s actions not as one of patriotism but potentially a felony,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday in a post on his Twitter account. “I hope we follow Mr. Snowden to the ends of the Earth to bring him to justice.”
It was a close call as to who won the stupidity award, but bombing Hong Kong is really hard to beat.
There are only two possibilities here, both really bad. One is that a subcontractor to the NSA was hiring near high school grads off the street, paying them exorbitant salaries and letting them handle top secret information. Oh, by the way, they also let them copy secret stuff and disappear. The other is that this guy had virtually no access at all and King, Graham and McCain started lathering at the mouth before bothering to find out if he leaked anything of value. In either case, they are acting like blithering idiots. And these are supposed to be the good guys looking out for us. Please, please, please Mr. Tea Party, do whatever it takes to get rid of the RINOs. Sarah Palin, if you ever support John McCain again conservatives should disown you.
We expected the Obama administration to botch things. When you elect the most naïve and inexperienced person to ever run for President of the United States you should not be surprised that he screws everything up. The miracle would have been if this didn’t happen.
So, I think this is similar to the SunGlo ultimatum. The more anyone points the finger at Snowden, the more they will be pointing the finger at themselves. The worse he looks, the worse they look.
I don’t consider him to be a traitor. I also don’t consider him to be a hero. I guess I would sum him up, not as the man who never was, but rather the man who never should have been. No matter how you look at it, it looks bad.
TDM