I just don't see that scenario as likely.

He'd have to get home by way of jail.

He didn't tell the US government what their problems were (which is what "whistleblowers" do, particularly when the subject matter is classified), he told everyone BUT the USG.... the Chinese government (masquerading as a SCMP reporter), and the Russian government, while he sequestered himself in their Hong Kong consulate pondering his next move. Oh, and every reporter that would answer his e-mails.

He was a fan of the Paulbot crowd, a political donor to the failed aspirations of the Pater Nincompoopus of that crew, and he had a "friend" in the form of Dandy Randy, with a catbird seat to make some real change (and some history for his self-aggrandizing self) on the Intel Committee in the Senate. He could have blown that whistle to his libertarian li'l buddy with the squirrel on his head. Randy coulda sputtered like a wet hen and PROTECTED Snowden. But hey, Ed didn't play it that way.

Instead, he ran to ... Russia. By way of ... Hong Kong. He thought he could skip-jump to Iceland, but he didn't Google them, and see what the relationship between this administration and the Icelandic government was looking like. He "ass-umed" that they had a shitty 'tude towards USA, because that was the case under the Bush regime. Not so today, where the trade relationship is robust. Then, he thought he'd skip through Cuba, but gee...Raul just didn't come through.

Which makes me think that "handshake" thing at Madiba's funeral went something like:

POTUS: Yo, Raul my man, thanks for the solid. That no-fly thing was just what we needed. I won't forget ya.

CASTRO: And thank you for moving the marker one step closer to elimination of sanctions, Presidente OBadass! We'll dig the commercial flights from Key West, and keep the charter flight "cultural exchangers" coming in the meanwhile. Every dollar helps! We'll get there one day, amigo! Putino is no damn help, these days!! I gotta look out for MY peeps, too!

POTUS: Cool--now let me go kiss Brazil twice! She's so funny, people believed her ire about the spying so much that we had to drop a dime on her that she's been doing the same damn thing to us, too (like everyone does--but the only one that doesn't know that is enjoying the Russian winter). Hang loose, compadre!

wing Republicans or "Paulbots"? I bet at least 85-90%.

In the 50s they would have worshiped at the feet of Joseph McCarthy.

In this interview, Thomas Drake describes the Hell he was put through after he blew the whistle to his superiors at NSA.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017167635

No doubt, Snowden determined that it would be futile to go to his superiors.

He donated to the Big Paul cheese, and he was in the authoritarian "Shoot the leakers in the balls" club while he was cheering for the prostitutes of Switzerland and griping about the cost of a hamburger.

And there IS a Paulbot in the Senate he could have gone to, on the INTEL committee, too--with higher clearance AND access; smarter on these topics than the average Senate bear. Someone to whom he could have spoken in confidence. Someone who would have been able to clear a path for him.

Sorry--I have no sympathy for the guy. He had options and he didn't take them. He could have parlayed his information into fame for Ron Paul (maybe even a j-o-b if he wanted it) and immunity for himself--and he could have stayed in his job while Rand Paul championed a huge "expose" without stealing a single thing.

I think it's entirely possible that he was a turned asset. And he may have been turned when he worked in Japan, and visited Hong Kong, some years ago. It's the only explanation that makes sense. He ran quick, because he was spooked; he knew his background check was problematic and they were gonna do a real one on him for the first time ever, and his life wouldn't hold up, and he'd be screwed. His entire career was built on a CV of lies and he got caught, so he ran.

A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower)[1] is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health and safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower

Those governments know more than you or I do. They got the cake, the public and the media got the frosting.

The USG probably has a better idea of everything he stole; but we don't.

interment camps. Future generations will blame Obama for the repression they will face if these extreme, totalitarian practices are allowed to continue at the NSA and other intelligence agencies.

Dude...

Snowden sitting in a room with a computer in Russia, shooting his mouth off, giving intel to every nation in the world, is equivalent to thousands of American families, many with small children, with pregnant moms giving birth in filthy conditions, torn from their homes and imprisoned in shacks in the desert?

Oooooooh kaaaaaaaay......

All I can say is "Hyperbole, much?"

would be facing a firing squad. that's a fact

we've been at war for at least the last 12 years. maybe you should pay attention.

make you uncomfortable. The NSA is stepping on our Constitutional rights, and yet you deride those that might try to expose them.

stand to have another share an opposing opinion. And DU is suppose to be progressive and liberal where differences of opinions (within certain parameters) are welcome. Hmmmm.

So I must guess that you hate whistle-blowers. If that's not the case, then speak up. So far I havent heard a decent argument supporting the NSA's spying.

end it. Where in the hell is that Ignore button?

can you.

But I admit I may be a little biased against those that hate whistle-blowers. They generally are authoritarian followers and on the wrong side of this class war. They pledge allegiance to Gen Clapper, Booz-Allen and the Carlyle Group.

in both government and corporate scandals....

Snowden shouldn't be the only one who would potentially benefit from this...

I'm sure it is not good.

Eddie should have used it. Then, he'd have protection and likely be here. There is no proof whatsoever that it has never been used and never protected anyone. People want to dismiss it because Eddie did. But if he'd been in good faith, he'd have tried. Then he'd at least be able to claim it didn't really work.

And sentenced to a very long time in prison. Anything Edward Snowden had exposed up front, would be mostly down the memory hole by now. And anything after that suppressed, never to see the light of day. We would not know how very out of control segments of our government are or even how dysfunctional the rest of our government itself is.

What Snowden did was to expose gross unconstitutional misconduct by an agency headed by General. Keith Alexander, a power hungry, paranoid, fiefdom king, who in a more functional country, would be courts-martial, stripped of his rank and in prison by now. In fact, he probably could not have gotten far enough to have done so much damage to the reputation of this country. The shake out is just starting. Wait a while. It will get worse, as other countries stop doing business with us, US, and other countries take up the slack.

And if tried, it would have been very public, could have been acquitted.

He did not expose unconstitutional conduct. They were following the laws, such as they are. If they aren't good enough for you, you have to campaign. Courts martial are also done only when certain legal standards are met, not because you deem someone power hungry.

Other countries are never going to stop doing business with us. LOL.

Other countries are already canceling contracts with Cisco, Boeing and others, and going elsewhere. It has already started.
Other countries are also reconfiguring their Internet to by-pass this country, to lessen our spying on their communications. Most of the Internet hubs are in this country. That is changing. This country is starting to be ostracized, business wise, by most of the rest of the world.

his supporters have never read, a fact which annihilates the whistle-blower claim

Pardon or no pardon. Trust is gone.

and he managed to get himself a pardon, I'd gladly buy him a beer. He seems like a good guy and he'd he interesting to talk to.

is all it takes is taking a hard drive and tossing it into an envelope addressed to a reporter. Amazing how much could happen due to one small physical act.

The hype:

In 2007, Obama was going to filibuster any bill that gave retroactive immunity to the telecoms that helped the Bush administration illegally spy on US citizens.

Obama's wiretapping flip-flop? Yes
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/obamas-wiretapping-flip-flop-yes/

In October 2007, Obama spokesman Bill Burton issued this unequivocal statement to the liberal blog TPM Election Central: "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

...

But Obama knows how to drive a hard bargain, making he (and Rahm) the top recipients in the Senate and House of 2008 campaign contributions from AT&T employees and PAC.

Obama: $270,191
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000076&party=D&chamber=S&type=P&cycle=2008

Rahm: $50,650
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000076&chamber=H&party=D&cycle=2008&state=&sort=A

...

Obama supported an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the measure. But after that amendment failed, Obama declined to filibuster the bill. In fact, he voted for it. It passed the Senate, 69-28, on July 9. The House passed the same bill last month, and Bush said he would sign it soon. (McCain missed the vote because he was campaigning in Ohio, but he has consistently supported the immunity plan.)

In a message to supporters, Obama defended his position, citing a phrase Democrats fought to include that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the "exclusive" means of wiretapping for intelligence. The bill "is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year... (because it) makes it clear to any president or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court."

Snowden released the documents for OUR benefit. He received nothing for it (although he could have sold them for a lot of money.)

Obama promised to filibuster a bill that gave retroactive immunity for the telecoms that violated OUR Fourth Amendment rights; instead he took a lot of money from those same telecoms and voted for the bill.

You can't possibly know if that is true.

The Times noted that none of Snowden's revelations have done profound damage to the intelligence operations of the U.S., nor have his disclosures hurt national security.

That we know of? That funny thing about intelligence, when it is compromised those other intelligence communities who get their hands on it don't go out of their way to inform the world of such...

It's been pretty slim pickings so far ...

At least against the NYT and WaPo. Not sure what we could nail the Guardian for but they richly deserve to be included in any prosecution. And no this is not sarcasm. If NYT and WaPo aided and abetted a crime of treason by receiving stolen classified material without surrendering it to US authorities I don't see why they shouldn't be prosecuted. Profiting from treason is also treason.

What crimes did Snowden expose? What felonious activity? Oh right, none. And if the NYT needed Snowden to tell them the NSA was collecting metadata with warrants they have no business calling themselves a news organization. In other words their claims are a laughable crock of ...

sugar.

At the point when I read this. "the enormous value of the information he has revealed".

Basically they're shocked to find gambling going on at a certain cafe:

It's our duty, as human beings, not to just blindly follow the law when it violates human rights.

Remember the Nuremberg trials!

It's not "our duty" to let BAH employees pipeline state secrets to China in an effort to undermine the US government. That's called espionage and Snowden and his paymasters, aiders and abettors, including BAH, Greenwald, the NYT, WaPo, and (if possible) the Guardian richly deserve to be called on the carpet for their crimes. Those outfits are corrupt as they come.

Seems our intelligence community functioned pretty well prior to 9/11 without collecting and storing in mass innocent US citizen's phone calls, e-mail, etc.

Bush was warned at least six times we were about to be attacked by Bin Laden and he chose to ignore every one of them.. So now we're being told that our right to privacy has to be compromised because a former president was negligent?

Greenwald, Snowden and the NYT needs to be called on the carpet for their "crimes"? More like the citizens of this country are being called on the carpet because George Bush and Dick Cheney didn't do their jobs.

that compromised our security?

They're not only compromising US and European telecommunications companies but the heads of state of some of our allies, why would they leave out China?

We're a unregulated capitalist country "private industry hands classified information over to the government."
And for what it's worth "classified" has pretty much lost it's meaning when lobbyists are privy to energy meetings and trade
agreements while the public is kept in the dark ...

"It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it's alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away."

-Alan Grayson

I personally don't feel compromised because Xi lied to Obama about Chinese hacking or his bringing up the Guardian report. If we're so worried about being compromised by Chinese hacking why doesn't the US corporations making billions in profit off of cheap Chinese labor take their business elsewhere? It would be the patriotic thing to do.

Even the intelligence official cited in you article admitted that Snowden wasn't intentionally trying to protect Chinese hacking.

Not if you've been paying attention. That's what makes it a crime. Per the Newsweek article Snowden tried twice to nail the US with the China docs. The first time failed when WaPo didn't take the bait right away, or so we're told; the second time worked when the Guardian stepped forward and published the story just before Xi came to Palm Springs. Frankly I think Snowden is a patsy because the British papers pulled the exact same trick with the UEA emails in their Climategate caper in Nov. 2009. That time they had Assange play the role of "leaker" and we know how that turned out:

There's absolutely no proof Snowden "timed" his leaks to hurt US interests. Of course the US was embarrassed and internationally compromised by Snowden's leaks. Most people here and around the were are shocked by the extent of the NSA's secret information gathering.

Again if the government was serious about China's hacking it's not that we don't have leverage. There are other third world countries with cheap labor to profit off of.

Ever heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Worth a read!

See, for example, Article 12.

Then, maybe a peek at Article 30.

from your link:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Collecting telephony metadata, as you put it, is arbitrary interference with privacy -- if arbritrary interference with privacy means anything at all!

Do you really not see this -- or are you just getting your jollies by yanking people's chains?

It named a specific carrier, cohort, and date range. What we don't know is what criminal activity the NSA issued it to investigate, but it was something specific or they wouldn't have gotten the warrant. Of course Mr. Ed and Wilbur didn't tell us all that because it wouldn't help them sell their neocon narrative.

Neither Big Brother nor Peeping Sam have a place in a free society.

George Orwell, and the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could see this clearly.

Somehow, you seem blind to it (either wittingly or unwittingly).

Presumably landlines. Millions seems high. Definitely not billions. And it depends who's collecting it and why. In this case I'm satisfied that the request was not arbitrary. Here's the warrant:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

it is now long-standing judicial interpretation that government may collect telephony metadata

Big Brother is watching everyone, all the time, and the courts just let it happen.

... then what do you call gratuitous slanging of people who express their views?

When the law changes or the courts strike it down, we'll know it. So far they haven't, Richard Leon's personal intuition notwithstanding. And you can't "break" the fourth amendment, you can only break a law, and the Obama NSA hasn't.

p.s. perhaps you'd better ask your parents if Yoda is real...

They passed a law that said it was just fine and fucking dandy to violate the constitution. It's similar to getting felt up before boarding a plane in that we had these rules about not being allowed to search people without probable cause, but they decided that for a 100 miles around an airport was a "border" and constitution-free.

I seriously get sick and tired of people who crow about how free this country is, then turn around, open their cheeks, and beg for a hot beef injection of security.

It's up to those two bodies to sort out the FISA legislation but in the meantime it's the Obama administration's constitutional responsibility to follow the law. You wouldn't want anyone to violate the constitution, would you?

saying the government can fuck everybody in the ass all the time, and you'd be sitting there getting pounded and saying, "but it's legal, until the courts say otherwise." The judge that ruled the other day data collection was legal gave the argument that basically said, because the government didn't intend for anyone to find out about its illegal activities, the ACLU didn't have standing against it. That's a bullshit argument if there ever was one.

But here's the real issue: we've got a country where supposdly there are protections against the government doing really bad, intrusive things. Arguably, needing some reason before searching through your stuff is a very important protection. The reality is we have to fight for those right continuously and especially when the government oversteps its authority. Unfortunately there are people like you who will wimp out and make excuses for why the government should be able to do whatever it want or say, as you have, that it's up to someone else to decide that it's wrong. While that happens, you happily continue to take it up the ass.

In the most real sense possible, you are not American.

For one thing, the Supreme Court declared in 2003 that anal sex, which you also invoked in your previous post, is legal in all states:

What I said about anal sex had nothing to do with consenting adults, it was rather a metaphor for getting screwed over by the government. You know that.

Secondly, spying on all American citizens or as you probably sanatize it, "collecting metadata," is a really bad, intrusive thing. Yes, Bush started it but yes, Obama is continuing it. Sure, it would be very hard for him politically to stop, so we need to keep pressure on him to do so. He may want that, he may not, but it doesn't matter. We still need to put pressure/political cover to stop these abuses. It's been pointed out many times before why collecting metadata is just as intrusive as directly recoding coversations. And what do you think the government is doing with this data? They say it's for fighting terrorism, but several people have pointed out that it's had no effect on that. And "fighting terrorism" has already been used to take away all sorts of rights and freedoms, just like communism was used in the 50s.

What could this data be used for, given that it's not for terrorism? The possibilities are endless and frightening, and that's why we have constitutional protections.

As for patriotism being the last refuge, that's true but more of a diversion in this case. I'm saying that you are not standing up for your rights, and are therefore allowing them to be taken away. In fact, you are making excuses for the government taking them away. An important foundation of this country, and one that should be applied across the world because it leads to better societies, is that government can't just do what it wants to people - that its powers are limited. We all have a responsibility to keep government overreach in check, simply becuase not doing so will cause harm to our society and lead to its destruction. That's why I find your willingness to "take it up the ass" from government, in the name of security, so repugnent.

Those are the titles of your two and only two DU journal entries. Can I ever so politely suggest that one of us might be fixated on their sit-down?

It might have some truth to it - it might have a lot of truth to it.

The point stands that you are willing if not eager to give up your freedom to the government in the name of security. And you don't even get security. Like has been pointed out many times here, there is no evidence that collecting all the meta-data (spying) on all of us has stopped any terrorist attack. So I talk about butts a lot. How do you feel when the TSA grabs your butt as you go through the airport? I think I've read that it hasn't stopped any bombers either. In fact several people have gotten through "security" at airports with things they shouldn't have.

My point is this. You are so happy to give up your privacy, your rights, your freedoms in order to get just the faintist illusions of security. The real threat of losing this democracy is right in front of your face, but when Snowden shows this to you, you get mad at the messenger. Hell, more people die in a month from traffic accidents than from 9-11.

This is how I'm afraid democracy will get killed. People are so easily manipulated into giving up their rights and freedoms, and all the powers that be have to do is shout "terrorism" or "communism" and too many people just fall in line. Attacking Snowden and Assange illustrates all too well that, in my own color language, are you not only happy to spread your cheeks for "freedom," you don't want anyone showing you how much of an illusion you're living in.

Dec.
29
Before the year ends, I wanted to capture a few points that stand out for me about what is unquestionably the biggest news story of 2013.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing…

The moment I read that — it’s in Glenn Greenwald’s first report from the Snowden files on June 5th — I started following, closely, the story of the surveillance state’s unveiling by Edward Snowden and the journalists who received the documents he took.

I also wrote about it: a lot. I attended Eben Moglen’s lecture series, Snowden and the future. I watched countless television segments about the revelations. Over Thanksgiving, I talked to my brother, a computer engineer, about the NSA and encryption. And of course I have had hundreds of conversations with journalists, colleagues and friends about what is without question the biggest story of 2013.

Before the year ends, I wanted to capture a few points that stand out for me from all that.

1. It’s not “privacy” but freedom. In news coverage of the Snowden files you frequently see this shorthand: “privacy advocates say…” From an AP story:

Feinstein’s committee produced a bill last week that she says increases congressional oversight and limits some NSA powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Privacy advocates say the measure codifies the agency’s rights to scoop up millions of American’s telephone records.

So you have defenders of the NSA on one side, and this creature called “privacy advocates” on the other. But at stake is not just privacy. It’s freedom. This point was made by British philosopher Quentin Skinner in a July interview on opendemocracy.net:

The mere fact of there being surveillance takes away liberty. The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it’s true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It’s no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won’t necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.

The point holds for collecting phone records. Even if no one in the government reviews whom I’ve called or texted, my liberty is violated because “someone has the power to do so should they choose.” Thus: It’s not privacy; it’s freedom. But “freedom advocates” would be an awkward construction in a news story.

2. “Collect it all” was the decisive break. Over the summer, I told Glenn Greenwald that he should title the book he’s working on, “Collect it all.” Because that was the point of no return for the surveillance state. The Washington Post took note of it in this profile of NSA director Keith Alexander:

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. .?.?. And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

This was the fateful decision. The people whom Eben Moglen calls “the listeners” passed some invisible barrier (invisible to them) when they decided to go for the whole haystack. The line they crossed separates the possibly legitimate, though dirty and distasteful tactics of spies from the impossible-to-justify, “let’s hope it never becomes public” stratagems of an out-of-control surveillance establishment.

Moglen calls Collect it All one of the “procedures of totalitarianism.” He’s not saying the U.S. has become a totalitarian state. He’s saying it adopted one of that state’s procedures. Legitimating such a move before a self-governing people is very, very difficult. And this is why the surveillance state is in such trouble, politically.

3. Snowden going public changed everything. I have written about them before, but for me these words from Edward Snowden are the most important he has uttered since his name became public. They are in Barton Gellman’s June 9th report:

Whistleblowers before him, he said, had been destroyed by the experience. Snowden wanted “to embolden others to step forward,” he wrote, by showing that “they can win.”

By deciding to go public — as the one who leaked the documents to journalists because he could no longer live with himself if he didn’t — Snowden ended the whodunit before it could start. It wasn’t only that he revealed his name, security clearance and position. It’s that he made arguments for why he did what he did. These arguments, the most important of which was that the public should decide if the surveillance state has gone too far, were met with a furious counter-attack, and of course many of his fellow citizens rejected them.

But this is precisely what he meant by “win.” Now there was a debate. It was easy to despise and reject Snowden. Much harder to despise and reject the discussion he touched off. (Obama couldn’t.) None of that would have happened if he hadn’t gone for the win by revealing himself and his motives for leaking the documents.

http://pressthink.org/2013/12/three-things-i-learned-from-the-snowden-files/

"These arguments, the most important of which was that the public should decide if the surveillance state has gone too far, were met with a furious counter-attack, and of course many of his fellow citizens rejected them."

yes, this is a profound point

Summum jus, summa injuria. (The height of a law is the height of its wrong. The law is made to serve us, not us serve it.)

I very much appreciate the well-thought-out summary!

Should be an OP in General Discussion. If it isn't already (haven't looked yet).

The NSA is a scandal and a swindle that’s revealing huge corruption.
Reflecting on this NSA whistle blower is really something for me. Snowdens Whistle Blower action happened about the same time I experienced an on the job injury at the Union Pacific Rail Road.

The interesting parallel about this is to report an accident honestly, please indulge me in my explanation. The rail road industry is governed by the Federal Employee Legislative Act, called the FELA, where an individual is protected by OSHA against retaliation. That was something I did not know a great deal about, but now finding out. However, the Union Pacific runs the crews like a cattle drive that reeks of arbitrary personal bias.

In my case the Union Pacific Rail Road with a plan intended to ditch my injury from being reported on a federal record. High level management to include those at the central office in Omaha at the Harriman Center with intentional plans scheduled a safety briefing where I was accused of creating an incident, then terminated with allegations of immorality just to make conversation and ask questions about training and safety. Isn’t that a hoot.

Talking with legal people it appears the Union Pacific is really hades on wheels. The rail road is ditching injuries or intentionally avoiding healthcare responsibility for injuries experienced in many cases across the system do to maintenance negligence.

The troubling part is the very top officials are college graduates many of that aspired to level of Magna Cum Laude with degrees in business management, yet throw around the term whistle blower when the same notion is what many call “The Challenge”. Even our political leadership and journalist use that expression prolifically.

Thinking about this thing called whistle blower, or just to challenge an action or management decision is a true tool of the people that makes the separation of powers. That simple notion of whistler or to make a challenge is intrinsically the separation of power by the Democratic people. If the citizen cannot Challenge and submit grievances to the government, there is no real Constitution. My wonder is how in the world a man, President Obama who taught the Constitutional theory for ten years can just ignore this truly powerful element.

Everyone must understand my respect of President Obama is fading rapidly. I voted for him twice and now with this news about President Obama essentially ditching his promise not to support all those that challenge the system is more than sad and disappointing, it shows his “Audacity of Hope”, that is vanishing and inspires my turn to write a book about my experience in an industry that is essentially the face of the Congress and the Senate that relates to oppression in the healthcare industry.