The Loony Left’s Core Competence: Stupidity
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There are few causes more noble than fighting terrorism, but even in such a noble endeavor, there will be mistakes and even abuses. They will not necessarily stem from cynical bastards using wiretap information for private or political purposes, but also from overzealous underlings eager to impress thier superiors.
Our constitution provides for a system of checks and balances, a right against illegal search and seizure as well as the right to petition for the redress of grievances.
There is a mechanism in place that provides blanket warrants for wiretapping, and provides for some transparency and answerability in the event of any mistakes or abuses. Bush just finds them too tedious for some reason.
Comment by ralphieboy - August 28, 2006 @ 11:22 pm
ralphieboy
Its so easy to bash Bush, but this can of worms was opened by Clinton in the 1990’s and the New York Times had no problem with it in an article about Project Echelon in 1999:
““Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists….”
So whats changed since then besides the President?
Comment by preiss is nice - August 31, 2006 @ 10:52 am
Very little has changed except the extent of the eavesdropping. The other aspect that has caused concern in the general public is its association with other activities, such as torture, detention & deportation without warrant.
I find it worrisome when anyone, regardless of party affiliation, is allowed to apply arbitrary, subjective and untraceable methods to our citizens.
Comment by ralphieboy - August 31, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
The question is: is it really (in fact!) possible to receive or save freedom for free at any time, or does it cost a little bit sometimes every now and then? If it costs a little bit, I willingly pay the prize for it. But that seems not to be the ACLU’s and CAIR’s position, as well as their sympathizers.
Comment by Juergen Krafzik - September 1, 2006 @ 1:32 pm
The only difference between American democracy and Putin’s Russia is our constitutional system of checks and balances, an independent judiciary and the right to petition for the redress of grievances.
There are mechanisms in place to allow retroactive search warrants for wiretapping. I have no problem with that. I have problems when there is no transparency and answerability for their actions. That is truly the first step towards an authoritarian government.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 1, 2006 @ 11:56 pm
Truth is the ACLU is a Leftist agenda masquerading as the American Civil Liberties Union. They are part and parcel of the Left’s strategy to establish through judicial advocacy/tyranny what could not be accomplished at the ballot box.
I’d love to make a handsome civil-liberties arguement. Problem is. Our search and seizure laws were crafted in an age when a lucky cannon ball might kill a half dozen men in single file. We ain’t dealin’ with no ‘gunpowder plot’ here. If, God forbid we get hit with WMD, millions die, even Amy (Democracy Now) Goodman will be calling for an electrodes-to-the-testicles-without-a-warrant policy. All bets will be off…Period. And on the “day after” the “moral highground” will be a fine place to have one’s legalist thumb up one’s legalist ass.
Comment by Del Hoeft - September 3, 2006 @ 3:38 pm
DH,
If the ACLU is so leftist, why did they support the right of American Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish community of Skoke, Illinois in the 80’s. Oh yeah, because liberals are also anti-Semitic and found common cause with the skinheads…
Twist and shout.
The right to be secure in one’s home is one of things worth fighting for in a Democracy. There are mechanisms in place to allow for retroactive search warrants, and the law recognizes the necessity of extreme measures when in “hot pursuit” of a suspect.
If we give up these principles out of expedience, the terrorists will have succeeded in doing a lot more damage to our country than they could ever do with a hijacked plane or a dirty bomb.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 5, 2006 @ 6:15 am
Ralphieboy
So that 20-odd years later people like you could point to a single token incident as a defense. As though the rest of us could n’t or should n’t see through the onion skin.
Answer me this Ralphieboy, Why do I think the thoughts and deeds of our Islamofascist enemies should be PARADED for all to see? A) So I can gain “street cred” with my coffee klatching Libertarian homies? Or B) becouse the Islamofascists can discredit themselves amongst the fence straddlers and scare them straiter than any conservative can?
If I were a betting man I’d say your “principles” are untested self-indulgence. I pray we can all afford such attitudes. “What is a conservative but a Liberal mugged by reality” as the adage goes.
Comment by Del Hoeft - September 6, 2006 @ 9:06 pm
DH,
You made an interesting point about how our search-and-seizure laws date back to a time when gunpowder was the nastiest thing afoot.
They also date back to a time when you had to physically enter somebody’s house to search and seize.
Nowadays, you don’t have to get within 1,000 miles of someone to spy on them: you can be searched and seized electronically through bank records, wiretapping and video/satellite surveillance.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 6, 2006 @ 11:49 pm
How can you have a picture saying “American President’s job is to make sure people have the freedom to take care of themselves!”, while you feature such a rubbish cartoon?
Wiretaping is a specifically nasty intrusion in to the private environment of citizens! How can you reconcile this with the slogan on the picture “to take care of themselves!”, obviously you are supporting a nanny state that “takes care” of its citizens by, well, surveillance technology.
Comment by Max - September 22, 2006 @ 11:56 am
What makes you think you’re so important on this planet that Bush has to send out scores of men to listen in on your conversations on the phone? And how many people do you think it would take to spy on 300 million Americans 24/7? 300 million? 900 million if they do it in three shifts?
The BIG SCANDAL “domestic spying” is a way for the MSM to tell idiots like you that Satan W. is coming to get you, and that’s why you have to vote dummycrat. And you fall for it! If you were an informed idiot or at least misunderestimated, you’d know that there is no such thing as “domestic spying” going on in this country.
But then again, maybe you should stop calling your buddies in Iran all the time …
Comment by Michael Meyn - September 22, 2006 @ 5:45 pm
The phrase might read “people should have the freedom to take care of themselves”, but it has come to mean that “people should be left to fend for themselves.”, without job security, health care or pensions.
But corporations (especially those who contribute heavily to the right party) will be taken care of with tax breaks, favorable legislation and no-bid, cost-plus contracts to rebuild Iraq or Louisiana.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 23, 2006 @ 3:24 am
Do me a favor, ralphieboy, and stay away from Germany. Job security? What are you talking about? Do you actually believe there’s a government in this world that could give you job security? You can’t be serious!
Pensions? You do realize that big companies such as Ford are struggling to compete because they are still paying people who haven’t worked for Ford in years?
Health Care? Have you even bothered to look at Health Care in Germany, for example? There’s a reason the German health care system is slowly but surely shifting towards the American system. And there’s a reason why your boss shouldn’t be financially responsible for your health. Simply because it’s not profitable!
Nice try, by the way, to bring up the old “tax cuts for the rich” myth. It’s a fact that the richest people in American pay most of the taxes. Actually the top 1% in this country pay more than a third of all taxes. The top 50% pay more than 96% of all income taxes. There wouldn’t be a USA as it is today if it weren’t for those evil corporations as Wal-Mart, etc.
And you should be happy that it is America who rebuilds Iraq and not France …
Comment by Michael Meyn - September 23, 2006 @ 6:44 am
Ralphieboy
Just when I think you are a Liberal we can “deal with” you go and take something out of the dog-eared pages of the 68er playbook. Ye Gods! that the “people…should fend for themselves”. I understand why a good many inner-child-aware Lefties might need to be wards of the State but leave those of us with adult-levels of cognitive skill to negotiate the pitfalls of life for ourselves. Ralphieboy, I respect-you-so-much. you may be a son-of-a-Liberal but you are OUR son-of-a-Liberal. As has been said, the purpose of arguement is not to convince so much as to sharpen ones own point of view.
Comment by Del Hoeft - September 23, 2006 @ 8:41 am
*Ahem*, I’m IN Germany, having been there since 1988. And, to clear up another point: my wife and I are entrepreneurs here, we pay for our own pensions and health care. Our “job security” consists of our ability to continue to turn out our work.
When our “free enterprise-friendly” government issues no-bid, cost-plus contracts to Halliburton, Northrup-Grumman or Boeing, it is just practising socialsm in sheep’s clothing. And yes, I would rather have the French in there rebuilding iraq than Cheney’s cronies.
My dad worked over 30 years for US Steel in Gary, Indiana, and made the mistake of dying before he retired. My mother was told that she was not entitled to a widow’s pension. (You can’t just up and kick off without permission from your bosses, can you?)
If it had not been for that old pinko FDR and his Social Security, we would’ve lost our house and had to live in abject poverty. (She later received a settlement from a class-action suit, but it ws only a patch on what she had coming to her and did not replace the money when we needed it in the 1960’s.)
And of course, providing health care and pensions is not the way to optimize profits and enhjance shareholder value. But are the markets there to serve people or are the people there to serve the markets?
Our modern system has begun to reduce labor to just another cost factor, like staples or copier paper, something to be minimized or abolished entirely. Americans live and work looking over their shoulders at the threat of two weeks’ notice.
Unfortunately, people cannot just be dumped on a landfill to rot like old office furniture.
We tried a system that “let people take care of themselves”, back before the New Deal. The collapse of the private enterprise system in the 30’s left millions of people unable to earn a living, even if they wanted to, and deprived millions of the money they had saved for their retirements.
That’s why we created the New Deal: it was a social contract that said, “Free Enterprise has failed in one of its key responsibilities, the government has to step in”.
I wish everyone could get along on their own as well as we do, and I wish that we did not have to rely on the government as a social back-up system. But I guess I would rather trust someone I can at least vote out of office over some bloated grey corporate entity that I cannot influence.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 23, 2006 @ 9:29 am
Ralphieboy
FDR ? The man responsible for escalating WW2? with his unmeasured response to Shinto and Aryan militancy.
Who wants to completely eliminate the safety-net? A few Libertarians doing coffee and doughnuts at Bob’s Big Boy. The real issue is the degree of Government involvement, intrusion and social engineering. Free people enjoy options. The Social fascist wellfare state offers a one-size-fits-all program, ineptly administered. I ‘ll take my chances with the fat-cats that have to sell goods and services as opposed to the fat-cats that can impose, confiscate and adjudicate them.
The European social-model was on holiday when Fifteen thousand elderly French died for want of an air-conditioned room and a cold beverage. The Social-Model needs a face-lift and a boob-job if she’s to satiate another generation of sucklings. The Jihadis will not be giving spunge-baths to Europeans in their dotage.
Comment by Del Hoeft - September 23, 2006 @ 7:16 pm
Del,
where was the “American social model” afer Katrina? Busy turning down offers of help from abroad and assigning blame to anyone who could not wiggle out from under it.
Both sides have their strengths and weaknesses. An I admit that the American system has some serious flaws: my mom, for example, had to go to work cash-in-had to avoid having large portions of her earning deducted by Social Security.
The point is that I and a lot of other Americans have a rather healthy distrust of the wisdom and foresight of the captains of industry.
Americans were not upset so much about 5,000 prople losing their jobs when Enron went belly-up, but lots of them heard alarm bells when they saw that these people lost the bulk of their pensions as well.
I think that is one of the major factors in Bush’s inability to put through his Social Security reform package.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 24, 2006 @ 12:42 am
Ralphieboy
I have a “healthy distrust” of everything. I’m in the choir on that one. And Granted, Katrina was a tragic comedy of errors, local, State, federal and Natural. Having read the German media’s gleefull reportage of the “chaos’ wrought in America. I half expected to see the flood waters lapping at the foothills of the Rockies and the entire Midwest headed for highground. It was truely laughable coverage, A self parody.
Comment by Del Hoeft - September 24, 2006 @ 6:59 am
DH,
I also share your attitude about the German media. I find them fairly balanced and neutral when covering domestic issues, but ther bias on covering America is astounding.
I think it is a combination of them secretly admiring and adoring America and yet longing to show that their idol has feet of clay.
Comment by ralphieboy - September 24, 2006 @ 7:45 am
Americans live and work looking over their shoulders at the threat of two weeks’ notice.
Comment by tax liens - February 21, 2007 @ 2:43 am
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.
Comment by lina - February 27, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
@lina
It’s freedom and ain’t it wonderfull, I hail from a country that fought a revolution in 1776 so that We-The-People would not have to ask for permission from our social superiors to speak our minds. The EUnuchs just do not get it. Internet Democracy freightens the “Chattering Classes” and the “Professoriat” as it threatens their monopoly and calls them to account. there is an explossion of Information and “The News” is being left in the tarpits. To barrow a phrase from Austin Powers “It’s a very groovy time, Baby”.
Comment by Del Hoeft - February 28, 2007 @ 9:59 am
@Tax liens
Perhaps somebody in Brussels wears the Daddy-Pants for you. I am not a surf on the manor. I’m a free agent and yes I have and no doubt will lose jobs. I also am invested in a Capitalist system most Europeons fear and do not understand. Adulthood has it’s ups and downs and I for one will not forfeit it to some Social engineer or Whoredogging Social Fascist Aperatchnik.
Comment by Del Hoeft - February 28, 2007 @ 10:25 am
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.
Comment by Alisya - March 4, 2007 @ 11:43 pm
Alisya and Lina, must be identical twins, they sure seem to think alike…
Comment by ralphieboy - March 7, 2007 @ 7:10 am
If memory serves, there was two creepy little twins in ‘The Shinning’. Methinks they are haunting this blog.
I want feedback from my “stuffs declared” damn it. Anyhow, I found out that I can add 16 bedrooms and 7 crappers to my humble Hermitage, my beloved Tera and still have a “carbon neutral” lifestyle, a la Al Gore. Further more, the Martian icecaps are melting. The canals will flood, New New York (Martian Cronicles) will be under six feet of water. We terrans have set a bad example, I do declare.
Comment by Del Hoeft - March 7, 2007 @ 10:20 am
This blog is just as abandoned as that resort hotel in the winter, isn’t it? But then again, they could also be the Olson Twins in mufti…
The main problem I have with hydrocarbon-based energy is that the bulk of the reserves are in the hands of unstable governments. The quicker we get away from them the better.
Comment by ralphieboy - March 7, 2007 @ 11:51 am
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