Bizarre, Politics, Society

Obama: “Unfortunately” Dying In Car Crash More Likely Than Dying In Terrorist Attack

President_Barack_ObamaWith four kids and a new puppy, I do not get to watch much television. This morning therefore I was probably one of the last to read this odd comment from President Barack Obama on Jay Leno last night:
“The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.” It was clearly a slip of the tongue but for civil libertarians it was a signature moment since our burgeoning security state seems to be working desperately to keep fear alive. For many who have criticized the rise of the security state, it sounded like an authoritarian Freudian slip. The comment is particularly interesting in light of a recent poll showing Americans afraid more of their own government’s attack on privacy than terrorist attacks.


Despite new reports of additional massive warrantless surveillance programs, Obama continued the campaign of denial by his Administration and allies in Congress. He insisted “We don’t have a domestic spying program.” That is clearly untrue given the public acknowledgment of these programs but it does not seem to matter. As usual, Obama seems to be drawing a distinction between collecting such data on every citizen and actually using that surveillance. They only use the information in these massive databanks when they want to. It also does not seem to matter that the only serious questions on this issue for the president appear to be coming from a comedian.

On Snowden, Obama stated “We don’t know exactly what he did, except what he said on the Internet and it’s important for me not to judge.”

That is also likely to strike civil libertarians as a bit odd since this is the president that claims the right to kill any American citizen without a charge, let alone conviction, based on his own authority. He vaporized Anwar al-Aulaqi on this basis. His teenage son was killed later.

Of course this is just comedy . . . the show that is.

57 thoughts on “Obama: “Unfortunately” Dying In Car Crash More Likely Than Dying In Terrorist Attack”

  2. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/obama-on-leno/?hp

    “Mr. Obama assured Mr. Leno and his audience that “We don’t have a domestic spying program.” If by that, Mr. Obama meant there are no black helicopters hovering over your house or agents skulking in your bushes, then probably we don’t have a domestic spying program.”
    -Andrew Rosenthal

    There’s a coast-to-coast “domestic spying program” that’s still under wraps. Obama is a liar or an idiot. Or both.

  4. In 2011, when awarding him a Medal of Freedom, president Barack Obama described Lewis as “the conscience of the United States Congress”. -from the following piece in The Guardian

    Veteran civil rights campaigner praises Snowden’s act of ‘civil disobedience’

    John Lewis, the man Obama called the ‘conscience of the US Congress’, said whistleblower was continuing MLK’s tradition

    • John Lewis: ‘This is not a post-racial society’

    by Paul Lewis, August 7, 2013

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/07/john-lewis-civil-rights-edward-snowden

    John Lewis, one of America’s most revered civil rights leaders, says the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was continuing the tradition of civil disobedience by revealing details of classified US surveillance programs.

    Lewis, a 73-year-old congressman and one of the last surviving lieutenants of Martin Luther King, said Snowden could claim he was appealing to “a higher law” when he disclosed top secret documents showing the extent of NSA surveillance of both Americans and foreigners.

    Asked in interview with the Guardian whether Snowden was engaged in an act of civil disobedience, Lewis nodded and replied: “In keeping with the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence, in keeping with the teaching of Henry David Thoreau and people like Gandhi and others, if you believe something that is not right, something is unjust, and you are willing to defy customs, traditions, bad laws, then you have a conscience. You have a right to defy those laws and be willing to pay the price.”

    “That is what we did,” he added. “I got arrested 40 times during the sixties. Since I’ve been in Congress I’ve been arrested four times. Sometimes you have to act by the dictates of your conscience. You have to do it.”

    Lewis was among the majority of Democratic congressmen who voted for an amendment in the House of Representatives last month that sought to effectively end the NSA’s bulk collection of millions of phone records.

    The vote was narrowly defeated, but revealed a surprising degree of congressional opposition to the spy agency’s collection of data.

    Snowden, 30, who passed highly-classified documents to the Guardian and Washington Post, has argued he was acting out of conscience because he wanted to shine a light on a surveillance apparatus which he believes is out of control.

    But the former NSA contractor has mostly been condemned on Capitol Hill, where he has few defenders, even among those who say his leaks have revealed important details about the NSA which were previously unknown.

    The White House insists that Snowden is not a whistleblower, but a felon who should be returned to America from Russia, where last week he was granted temporary asylum.
    John Lewis Martin Luther King John Lewis (right) and the leaders of the Freedom Riders: Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr, in Montgomery, Alabama, May 1961. Photograph: Corbis

    When it was pointed out to Lewis that many in Washington believed that Snowden was simply a criminal, he replied: “Some people say criminality or treason or whatever. He could say he was acting because he was appealing to a higher law. Many of us have some real, real, problems with how the government has been spying on people.”

    He added: “We had that problem during the height of the civil rights movement. People spied on, and got information on Martin Luther King junior, and tried to use it against him, on the movement, tried to plant people within different organisations – that probably led to the destruction of some of those groups.”

    President John F Kennedy resisted authorising the FBI to place King under surveillance in the lead-up to the 1963 March on Washington, where he gave his famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.

    However other senior figures in the movement were wiretapped, and federal authorities, who suspected civil rights leaders had communist connections, recorded phone conversations King participated in.

    Although only in his early 20s at the time, Lewis, a student leader, was one of the ‘Big Six’ civil rights leaders from the civil right era.

    He is the last surviving speaker who shared a platform with King at the famous rally in 1963.

    He was first elected to the House of Representatives, for a district in Georgia, in the 1980s and since has become an elder statesman in Capitol Hill, respected across the political divide.

    In 2011, when awarding him a Medal of Freedom, president Barack Obama described Lewis as “the conscience of the United States Congress”.

    ===

    Obama could learn a few things from John Lewis.

  5. raff, I have seen him w/o a teleprompter many times. He’s not W, but there are a lot of “Ahh, ahhh,” He makes many mistakes, some pretty bad ones. He’s smooth, but he is no Kennedy or even Clinton w/o the teleprompter.

  6. Jill 1, August 7, 2013 at 2:07 pm

    A.P.,

    Thanks. It also goes with Elainie’s post. Not “liking” USGinc.’s foreign policy is a matter of sanity and ethics, yet to the would be overlords it’s a sign of being a traitor.

    Just as seamus pointed out another time. The would be overlords define what is “bad”. That definition is anything which threatens their power and wealth.

    I think these people are really scared by Snowden. They are letting out bizarre statements and actions which I think they would have hid for a longer time. They seem not to quite know what to do.

    =====

    Jill, Elaine…,

    Didn’t mean to overlook anyone. Busy, skimming,… and I don’t always see everything.

    “They seem not to quite know what to do.” -from your comment, Jill

    They should be very afraid because, when the full truth about some of their hidden programs comes to light (I’m aware of one of these programs, and I can’t believe that it’s the only one…), I would expect heads to roll, just as I would expect jail sentences for some of these sociopaths.

    Thanks for the Matt Sledge link, Elaine.

  7. Classic bho. The chance of dying in terror attack (other than by the US govt.) is .00000001% and no comparison to car crashes. Terror tales from the US govt. are not about protecting the public. They are about controlling and silencing them. bho’s bravery, becoming legendary, goes on late night tv, in front of an audience of partiers and silly softball questions/statements, but HE is afraid to go one-on-one with Vladimir Putin. He pretends he’s punishing Putin for harboring Snowden (did we ever return THEIR dissidents?). But let’s face it, his knees would be knocking so loudly at the photo op, that they’d have to bring out the smelling salts. Being the Commander-in-Chief means you never have to come close enough to the (new) enemy to risk personal injury or the appearance of fear. That’s what the free market draft is for.

    The “unfortunately” part was his “great orator” method of informing “folks” (his folksy term) that they need to ramp up those traffic collisions so he doesn’t have to trouble himself with the upcoming disposing of so many Americans.

  9. A.P.,

    Thanks. It also goes with Elainie’s post. Not “liking” USGinc.’s foreign policy is a matter of sanity and ethics, yet to the would be overlords it’s a sign of being a traitor.

    Just as seamus pointed out another time. The would be overlords define what is “bad”. That definition is anything which threatens their power and wealth.

    I think these people are really scared by Snowden. They are letting out bizarre statements and actions which I think they would have hid for a longer time. They seem not to quite know what to do.

  12. Is it anything like “gettin’ those terrorist killers. Now watch my swing.”

  15. Off Topic:

    Unhappy With U.S. Foreign Policy? Pentagon Says You Might Be A ‘High Threat’
    By Matt Sledge
    Posted: 08/07/2013
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/insider-threat-training_n_3714333.html

    Excerpt:
    Watch out for “Hema.”

    A security training test created by a Defense Department agency warns federal workers that they should consider the hypothetical Indian-American woman a “high threat” because she frequently visits family abroad, has money troubles and “speaks openly of unhappiness with U.S. foreign policy.”

    That slide, from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is a startling demonstration of the Obama administration’s obsession with leakers and other “insider threats.” One goal of its broader “Insider Threat” program is to stop the next Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden from spilling classified or sensitive information.

    But critics have charged that the Insider Threat program treats leakers acting in the public interest as traitors — and may not even accomplish its goal of preventing classified leaks.

    DISA’s test, dubbed the “CyberAwareness Challenge,” was produced in October 2012, a month before the Obama administration finalized its Insider Threat policy. The slide about Hema is included in a section of the training about “insider threats,” which are defined by an accompanying guide as “threats from people who have access to the organization’s information systems and may cause loss of physical inventory, data, and other security risks.”

    Both Hema’s travel abroad and her political dissatisfaction are treated as threat “indicators.” Versions of the training for Defense Department and other federal employees are unclassified and available for anyone to play online.

    “Catch me if you can,” the training dares.

  18. I have to agree that this slip of the tongue is just that. This urban myth that Obama is lost without a teleprompter is just that a myth. While I agree with the criticism over his actions against whistle blowers and the NSA spying, I think we need to realize a slip of the tongue when we see it.

  19. I get the points of Snowden etc that the prof makes but hanging it on a statemen that seems, to me, to be trying to calm, not excite, is ridiculous.

  20. Obama has been the sweetheart of the media and for a long time, of late night television. However, of late, they have been very tough on him. Even Letterman has ripped Obama and he’s a Paul Newman Dem. That is a real problem. If you are laughed @ on late night that hits folks who aren’t that into politics. Our prez is trying to put out that fire.

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