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by borrowedhour 4061 days ago
It's incredulous that Obama is pushing this deal so hard after backing net neutrality so early on when this deal is universally frowned upon. Not able to wrap around my head around this.
4 comments

Obama appears to have abandoned any pretense that he supports good, long-term political goals: drone wars, enabling Iran's nuclear ambitions, abandoning Ukraine, mass surveillance of the American and other people, letting ISIS take over much of Irak, secret anti-freedom trade agreements, pouring oil on local riots or crimes, avoiding "Je suis Charlie" demo, etc. The infamous words of a French king come to mind.
Sorry to be a dick, but things are "incredible", people are "incredulous".
People are incredulous when they themselves are skeptical. But it can still be incredible "that Obama...". The thing that is incredible is the occurrence or the circumstance. 'Incredible' is actually the correct word in the top-level comment. The author is incredulous because they find it incredible.
It's because if you look below the talking points, nothing about TPA or TPP is new, nothing about it is "fast-track" and nothing about it is secret.
Do you know if Obama's involved (or for that matter, fully aware)? This seems like something that would mostly unfold at a lower level.
Know about it? He's all over it:

http://infojustice.org/archives/32657

And he complains that critics have a “lack of knowledge of what is going on in the negotiations”

How rich. Of course they have a lack of knowledge since he has kept everything secret. The only thing we know about what is actually being negotiated is because of some leaks.

He's absolutely involved. He's the President. If he opposed this, he could fire anyone he wanted. Also, several aspects of thes negotiations are classified which would make it unlikely that any of this originated at a 'lower level.' The U.S. Trade represenative is an ambassador level appointment which means he was hand-picked by Obama. If this lack of transparency bothers you then you should be voting for Rand Paul or Ted Cruz and against Hilary Clinton. Remember Clinton has been the queen of opacity in terms of releasing information to the public. With Clinton, government will run like this as a default. She stonewalls at Congressional investigations, destroys email servers that could be evidence in criminal investigations.. And on and on. Almost anyone is better in terms of secrecy and disclosure than a Clinton. Obama is a close second: the closed door everything about this administration is disgusting; additionally his appointment of Loretta Lynch as AG is especially horrible considering her views on civil asset forfeiture. I think the Chinese Central Committee has more transparency than the Obama administration.
Obama has just been at Nike HQ arguing for the deal and fast track. Check out the video... he's criticizing legislators for being ignorant of a deal _that is kept secret from them_. All I hear is "just trust me," from a politician.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/nike-to-create-jo...

Enough to talk about it at Nike.