Given the fact that some of our Congressional leaders have openly
admitted to never using email, which is to sing nothing of social media, it's not
surprising that ISIS has a more effective presence and messaging when it
comes to social media in its initiative to recruit followers. As Senator Dianne
Feinstein (D-CA) outlined, there are ISIS supporters in all 50 states
according to the FBI, and you can imagine that most of those supporters have
been contacted through social media. She also explained that it takes 30 agents to monitor
and follow a single terrorist suspect. Well, we hope that they can survey of
more than one person at a time because if that's not the case then the FBI is in effect greatly outnumbered.
On June first, the Patriot Act expires so this month
Congress will be debating the renewal of this legislation. Obviously the key
sticking point is the NSA data surveillance. The bottom line there is no
matter what law is passed, what amendment is made to that part of the law, and no matter what court deems unconstitutional the NSA is still
going to collect data. That's all you need to know so you as an individual must
act accordingly with this knowledge and awareness.
In terms of Meet The Press's constant omnipresent topic, presidential politics, what does this mean? This brings us to two of the program's feature series - one old, one new. In the 'Meet The Candidate' series, Chuck Todd spoke with Carly Fiorina, fmr. CEO of Hewlett-Packard. As we've said before many times in this column, Carly Fiorino is not
qualified to be president, but we will say that she
defended herself quite well when Chuck Todd grilled her on her record as CEO of HP. As Mrs. Fiorina described it, her firing was a board room brawl... that she lost. Look at it this way - a group of business leaders looked at another
business leader running a company that they have money invested in, and came
to the consensus conclusion that Mrs. Fiorina was a weak link and had to go. But overall, throughout the course of the interview today,
we realized that Mrs. Fiorina knows full weel she has no real shot at the presidency so really her goal is an advisory role and or potential cabinet position in the cabinet of administration provided
the eventual Republican nominee becomes president.
So if not Carly Fiorina, then who will be the Republican
nominee? This brings us to the new feature series introduced this week on "Meet the Press" - The Donor Series focusing on
the billionaire donors that enable all kinds of candidates to put their hat in
the ring for the office of the president of the United States. Apparently, we
have enough of these people now with high enough profiles that it is
worthy of a whole feature series, and first up is casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
It's people like this who will at the very least decide the Republican nominee
for president. From Mr. Todd's description Mr. Adelson is
fiscally conservative but socially liberal which would indicate that he is actually
looking for a candidate that more or less resembles Bill Clinton. Nevada veteran political reporter Mark Ralston said that the billionaire's criticism of the Clintons has been muted, not like his very vocal dislike of Barack Obama. But here's the rub, Hillary Clinton the candidate is going to run way to the left of Bill Clinton's positions as president so with that in mind there is no way Mr. Adelson wants Mrs. Clinton as president and has said as much. Mr. Adelson
spent $100 million trying to defeat Barack Obama and still was unable to do it.
This time around he'll be much more careful with his money not propping up
hollowed out candidates like Newt Gingrich who was as a candidate all surface
and completely no substance. Chuck Todd and Mr.
Ralston, who is great for this kind of perspective, threw around
names like Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. But as Mr. Ralston explained, Mr. Adelson wants to
see how candidates perform first. But Rubio and Walker don't quite fit the bill for Mr.
Adelson so what it seems he's looking for, to use his parlance, is a safer bet... Jeb Bush.
There's a lot of money on the line for these candidates who want
to swim in the billionaire pool. What really hurts is that we're talking about a
$3 trillion election and billionaire donors when in the
last segment they were discussing the inability of families
to afford quality child care, that mother's do not receive paid maternity leave, which is a travesty. In a survey conducted by the Save The Children Foundation, their index showed that the United States is
number 33 on a list of countries that rank good places to be a mom. (Norway was number one.) That disappointing statistic was following by the ever too familiar refrain delivered by Mr. Todd that "the United States
is behind every other industrialized nation" in terms of conditions for
motherhood. "Behind every other
industrialized nation" seems to be a place that the United States has solidified
for itself, maybe with the one exception of wasting money on elections.
Panel: Matt Bai, Yahoo News; Kathleen Parker, The Washington Post; Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post; Michael Steele, former RNC Chair.
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