Sandy

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I present to you Emily Ratajkowski - OMFG!!

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chris hayes-jeremy scahill-the bush/obama relationship

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The problem with this is how Americans continue to mistake the office of the president as this all powerful dictator position.

The office of the president is not a kingship, it is not totalitarian. It is one branch of three and it's not even the most powerful branch. Congress is the most powerful branch.

So whenever we have these scandals (left or right) the focus is always on the president even though they may or may not have anything to do with it. I'm not saying they're blameless, but they're certainly not the ringleader. There may be no ringleader. Whenever we have this scandal, there's always this mistaken notion that it was some grand conspiracy with very specific aims and goals and I don't think that is typically the case. I think most of these scandals are simply born out of laziness or negligence or simply just protecting one's ass. Government is a big machine (even in the right wing fantasy of small gov't, it will always be big) and it's more likely it's some unintentional screwup than some pre-meditated maneuver.

IMO, this is most evident during Bush's administration. The guy is obviously not that bright. There was something else going on behind the scenes pulling the strings. Even though Obama certainly is far more intelligent, it still doesn't change a thing that there is a bigger machinery at work and one person alone doesn't steer the boat.

And no I'm not talking about some cliche'd Iluminati-style group. You've just got a large go'vt mechanism that wields a lot of power and it's run by fallible people which is a far simpler plausible explanation.

The only way it's going to be better is if people demand it. But we don't even have half the nation voting. So you have a better than 50 percent chance that any time you hear someone complaining about the gov't...they probably didn't vote.

This idea is old. We used to have kings and dictators, but eventually people demanded something different so they came up with councils and parliaments and congresses, etc that wielded the real power, but they kept the kings and queens as a distraction, as a symbol even though they lost the bulk of their power.

Again, I'm not saying the office of the president is blameless, i'm just trying to inject some perspective.