Haven’t done this for a long time. And, well, this isn’t strictly really political because I’m not really picking a side on anything here. At least I don’t think I am. These are mostly just some of my thoughts from recent conversations.

I have some friends who are outraged (their words) over the NSA data collection coming to light. Granted, this is not a good thing. But did anyone think for a second this wasn’t happening? It seems like the outrage really comes from the fact that their veil of plausible deniability has been lifted. This is especially true for those who voted for the current administration once or twice.

Oh, and for those who voted for the previous administration as well.

Yeah, nobody likes it that someone has access to information that wasn’t intended for them. But maybe I should feel a little flattered at the thought that maybe someone is actually paying attention to what I say and think? I mean, I’ve been blogging/twittering for a long time–attention is a pretty hard thing to come by. I mean, unless you tag other people in your photos, good luck distracting them from their own navel gazing.

Ok…I guess I’d rather them not pay attention to me until it is too late. *evil laugh*

If you want to be outraged, be outraged that this information was used to win elections.

You don’t believe that happened? Then be outraged that the people you voted for weren’t even smart enough to use this information to help them win elections. They’d already taken 90% of the public risk just by doing it…may as well take the baby steps with the last 10% to use it to their advantage.

The problem I see is that this NSA thing has taken so much attention away from the IRS thing (and the other scandals too…can’t remember them all). When the IRS is being used to push or hinder a political agenda, we have real problems. And it doesn’t matter whose agenda is being helped or hurt. This is very bad. Yet another reason to scrap the tax code completely.

I bet they wish they’d never tapped the AP phone lines. Because if they hadn’t done that, chances are pretty good we wouldn’t be hearing about the rest of this stuff. That was stupid.

Come to think of it, maybe they really weren’t smart enough to abuse their access to information to sway the elections.