Political blog mad-lib or actual blog headline: U.S. Official Blames Shutdown for Failure to Explain - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Ever since the first disclosures of global surveillance by the National Security Agency this past June, the Obama administration has maintained a consistent public response: The intelligence gathering programs are effective, legal, and meet with the approval of President Obama. In remarks in August, Obama said, "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused, above all, on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people, and -- in many cases -- protect our allies." But now come revelations that the United States has also been spying on those same allies. Questions about how far that surveillance went, and what the White House knew about it, have caught officials off-guard and tied their public response in knots. The NSA is insisting that all of its spying operations are done with the White House's blessing -- while Obama administration officials say that the President was unaware of some of the NSA's most politically-explosive missions. No wonder there's a growing sense at the upper levels of the administration that the NSA has gone too far, and needs to be reined in. The latest trip-up came Monday, during a scheduled hearing of the Organization of American States (OAS), a long-standing continental organization that includes 35 independent states of the Americas. U.S. diplomats were scheduled to explain NSA practices at the hearing for the first time on the international stage. But Deputy U.S. Permanent Representative to the OAS Lawrence Gumbiner could not offer a response, citing the recent U.S. government shutdown. "With the government closed and most of its employees furloughed, we lost the time essential for us to engage our inter-agency colleagues and prepare for this hearing," said Gumbiner. The inability to respond to any of the complaints cited about mass surveillance of individuals living outside the United States, a complaint of the hearing's petitioners, clearly frustrated Rodrigo Escobar Gil, rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty of the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. "The arguments of the state have been taken into account but there's no causes beyond the control of the state like an earthquake or natural disaster or something like that, that would have made it impossible to respond," Gil said. "The fact of the matter is that the domestic matters of the state are not justification for not providing a response to international bodies. This is an important opportunity."[/QUOTE] [URL="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/10/28/us_official_blames_shutdown_for_failure_to_explain_nsa_spying"](Source)[/URL] Did anyone have "government shutdown" on their NSA-leaks bingo card, or "NSA spying disclosures" on their things-affected-by-the-shutdown bingo card? :v:

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;42688098] Did anyone have "government shutdown" on their NSA-leaks bingo card, or "NSA spying disclosures" on their things-affected-by-the-shutdown bingo card? :v:[/QUOTE] *gasp* BINGO! I WON!

How about: Both sides are fucking children who get payed too much money to sit in a large ass room and jack off on C-SPAN all day and no do their fucking jobs.

[QUOTE=SexualShark;42688709]Both sides are fucking children who get payed too much money to sit in a large ass room and jack off on C-SPAN all day and no do their fucking jobs.[/QUOTE] Which sides? This isn't a Democrats vs Republicans who-gets-blamed-for-the-shutdown story, you know.

Can someone PLEASE explain me how american politics works At this point I'm imagining a huge ballpark room with adults in them throwing their fecal matter around randomly and intentionally