Slashdot Mirror
Telecom Amnesty Foes On the Move
ya really notes a blog posting up at Wired reporting that foes of the Telecom Amnesty Bill have mounted a campaign on Barack Obama's own website. Though the group was created only days ago, on June 25, it has grown to be the fifth largest among 7,000 such groups, just short of Women for Obama. Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again. Meanwhile, left-leaning bloggers and libertarian activists have joined forces to raise $325,000 in the fight against the legislation. "Their Blue America PAC is already targeting House Democrats who voted for the bill, including placing a full-page ad in the Washington Post [an image appears in the Wired story] slamming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who claimed credit for creating the so-called compromise bill. The coalition plans to follow-up with a Ron Paul-style money bomb, which will be used to target key Senators..."
A slashdot story where *Democrats* are the bad guy? Did I wake up in the Bizzaro universe???
This is what happens when someone promises intangible things and bases their entire campaign upon promising 'change' and 'hope,' two things which mean whatever you want, and mean different things to different people.
Too bad he couldn't actually give real promises and expectations other than 'hope' this and 'change' that.
Bloody sheep. You all deserve the hell you're creating for us.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
it's now the fourth largest.
If you believe in this, go join the group. It takes about thirty seconds to sign up, and there's only 2000 more people needed to make it the third largest. I've seen more comments than that on many political posts, so I have little doubt that we can, in theory, rustle up that many people.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Campaign, fight, target, bomb... it sounds like a war for our liberties.
On an unrelated aside... 7,000 groups? That's a lot. Someone let me know when the group count IS OVER 9000!!!!!
It is widely known that slashdot summaries are completely inaccurate. As Slashdot previously reported, Obama has not switched his position to be in favor of telecom amnesty. He has said he will try to have that provision stripped from the compromise bill. Now don't get me wrong, he has taken a weak position and plans to vote for the (bad) bill even if they aren't able to have the provision removed, but that doesn't make the summary any less bullshit.
This is a great idea, but can it really work?
A lot of times, when laws are o the verge of being passed, these groups pop up to try and get them shot down. However, how often have they ever really worked? In a lot of cases, either the politician doesn't listen/care or there isn't enough support to make anyone's head turn.
Not to mention, we look back at the story about having evidence that Representatives that took kickbacks to change their votes and have to wonder if they will listen when they have companies lining their pockets.
There is greed and corruption going on at some of the highest levels of our government, and can a small group of people on an Obama website really change that?
Crackin' Wise - Blogging about whatever we want
Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike
Sad, I thought that he was brighter than that.
As a person who grew up in a democratic household...
You got to vote for who would be mom and dad?
A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
To put it in a historical analogy (which is bound to be a huge success), you're planning to defeat the evil Cubans by supporting the Soviet Union? Do you honestly think the republicans are the democrats' biggest enemy? They are the closest allies! The two major parties are closer to each other than to any other entity. As I said, don't be part of the problem.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
This is what happens when someone promises intangible things and bases their entire campaign upon promising 'change' and 'hope,'
John Lennon nailed it:
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
AT&T took down their ad, but it was pretty funny in a sick sort of way. If you didn't catch their new ad, it was on their bill-pay site last week. I kept a little archive of it here. Enjoy.
Reid
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
When did begrudgingly accepting a compromise mean "being a sock puppet"? I swear, you people have this out of proportion.
The immunity offered by this bill is retroactive only; it does not extend into the future. People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness if we're going to heal some of the hatred between the Right and Left.
How about letting it expire and acting on making it illegal in the next term?
How about the mythical beast with an elephant's head on one end and the head of an ass on the other? Because since the corporations own both the Democrats and Republicans, we now have a one party system with two wings, the Democrat wing and the Republican wing, both of which are beholden to the multinational (foreign) corporations and neither of which is beholden to "we, the people".
When someone who can't vote has more influence over a representative than a voter he is supposed to represent, you no longer have a representative democracy. When money counts for more than votes you have a plutocracy.
So, in the immortal words of Walt Kelly, you can vote for Tweddle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber. No matter who wins, you lose. Or, you can "waste" your vote on a loser, as I plan on doing. You vote doesn't matter anyway as the fix is in, you might as well make your displeasure knows in the only meaningful way possible - vote for "other".
Fittingly, the saying at the bottom of the page is "anything free is worth what you pay for it", which is part of the Gospel Of Mammon. Mammon is the US's national religion. Bow to the god of money or suffer.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Senator Obama's promise to "fix this" when he becomes president is grossly illogical and pompous (not elitist). What if he loses the election? Then what will he be left with? A vote for a bill that he doesn't support and no chance to "fix it." If you don't agree with the bill, DON'T VOTE FOR IT!
If this issue is important to you, take the time to join this group and make it the biggest group on Obama's website. Then take the time to write your senators about this issue. I wrote both of mine:
Senator, I was filled with dismay as Democrats in the House of Representatives caved in and voted to give telecoms retroactive immunity. I feel that the representatives did a better job of representing the telecoms than they did of representing the people.
Ours is a country of laws. Where every man and woman is considered equal. A land not only of opportunities, but also a place where people are held accountable for their misdeeds.
Perhaps you and others feel that we should drop the pretense of being a fair and noble country and let President Bush and the telecoms off the hook given the president's short remaining time in office.
I would argue that this is precisely why we need to hold firm on this bright-line issue -- people who break the law should be held accountable, companies that break the law should be accountable.
Be assured that my vote depends on your decision.
Fuck forgiveness.
I'm a lot more inclined to put some heads on some pikes as a warning to future generations. That'll work much better than "passing a law" as to "make it illegal in the future"... guess what, it's illegal NOW. Why do you think they're asking for immunity?
The whole problem is that the current administration has run rough-shot over the laws by violating them and then thumbing their noses at us and show us how little teeth the current batch of laws has over them. And your solution is to pass a law? Screw that. I'm all in favor of taking a tier 1 telcom company and burning it to the ground so maybe next time they'll actually protect the citizens rights instead of kowtowing to a schmuck president. After that, THEN pass a law and poeple will actually take notice.
They had a duty to us, the citizens, and they screwed us. Fuck 'em. And unfortunately, they're just a poor substitute for the REAL criminals.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
This is retarded. How is giving more money and rewarding more vote switching going to solve anything. We need to look a little farther than in front of our noses here. I'm sick and tired of these people in office and we need to implement a scorched earth policy and vote out every incumbent we can.
Money is the root of all evil?
People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future..
It is illegal now. Why not leave it that way?
Are you so naive to think that electoral calculations did not play a part in Obama's stance?
Exactly right. AT&T deserves to be shutdown completely and made an example of. You know, kinda how this whole site cries for the same thing to happen to Microsoft BECAUSE THEY PUT A BROWSER IN THEIR OS. The vagaries of scale on this site are just unbelievable sometimes. "Bundle a browser...lock 'em up and throw away the key! Illegally wiretap American citizens? Eh, they learned their lesson, then won't do it again..."
What's most sickening is how so many people are SCREAMING to have this bill blocked, yet the politicians are actively voting against the wishes of their constituency. They're not even pretending to care anymore.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Never thought the day would come when a professional wrestler would represent our best hope as President.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Threatening the telecoms with prosecution will encourage them to cooperate with any future investigations into warrantless wiretapping. If they were coerced, I have no problem with granting them immunity based upon their providing testimony in court to that effect.
If, as the Bush administration claims, there was no violation of the law, then no immunity is needed. If they were forced to hand over data, then they aren't guilty and no immunity is needed in this case as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
To add some perspective to your forgiveness, as an aside to making it illegal (well, MORE illegal) it makes doing it legally laughably easy.
Is the goal to express disgust? Or to make someone lose? Those aren't the goals. The goal is to give the power to those who would use it properly, to select a prsident, and to decide which parties have enough support to be given the recognition and funding to participate in the debate.
Any party that gets 5% of the vote gets federal funding and is likely to be in the debates. Since 50% of the people don't vote at all, that's a lot of potential for the green or libertarian parties to get noticed. Heck, if those 50% just voted completely randomly, it would be a landslide change in politics.
Engrish is my forth language, but I remember an old saying....
Cutting your nose off to spite your face
...if you weren't reading his books or listening to his speeches (as opposed to the sound bites), I suppose you could miss it. The "new kind of politics" he discusses isn't a change in what he as a Democrat supports; the change is in how he goes about supporting it.
If you've been paying attention to American politics lately, you'll notice that you've got the Left and the Right, and they pretty much hate each other. The Left paints the Right as being a bunch of religious war-mongering nutjobs who hate people having freedoms their religion proscribes, and the Right paints the Left as being a bunch of new-age peacenick nutjobs with no regard for personal accountability who hate their religion.
The 'change' Obama speaks of isn't in terms of what he votes for, but how he gets support for it. No more using religion as a wedge -- or trying to avoid it altogether. No more using fear to try to drive votes ("but the terrrorists will get you!"). Read A Call To Renewal, and appreciate how its message different from the way Democratic politicians have behaved in the past. Obama is promising a presidency which is serious about the "uniter, not a divider" thing, even while still effectively backing the Democrats' agenda -- by coaching that agenda in terms that speak to more than just the Democratic base. For someone young enough to have never seen American politics that aren't divisive, that's genuine change.
The 'hope' Obama speaks of is getting past all this petty divisiveness and reversing the actions which have destroyed our reputation in the world. Except for the getting-past-the-divisiveness part, that's something all Democrats want to do. This is neither unrealistic or poorly defined.
So there you are -- real promises and expectations, described by 'hope' this and 'change' that.
the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
So the message is: Your masters can get away with anything.
No wonder Cheney can hunt the most dangerous game with impunity, he knows damn well that even if he shoots people in the face, there's nothing the People will do about it. That would mean the "left" would "won"! Can't have that!
Slaves to their "sides", sheeps, argh!
You can't take the sky from me...
A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.
actually, that's not the saner thing. That doesn't guarantee their defeat in the same way voting for their strongest opponent does.
Or, here's a crazy thought, instead of getting pissed enough over this to want the other guy to win out of spite, perhaps historical voting records regarding civil liberties for Obama and McCain would be useful. I'm very upset with Obama over this (Unity is all well and good, but not at the expense of the rule of law), but in no way is McCain a better choice where civil liberties are concerned.
Yes, that's the ACLU, and lots of people strongly disagree with them for various reasons. Just take their spin into account and make your own decision.
Thanks to this man I will never believe again, and I will vote republican across the board, even as a staunch progressive libertarian, until the democrats wake from their sleep.
And yet, looking through your previous postings, it is obvious that you ARE a republican, not a libertarian. Nice move. You are worthy of working with W or Rove.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That raises an interesting question. Where is the parallel movement to get John McCain to oppose this bill? Why is it a foregone conclusion that people who oppose immunity must be liberal? There have to be like-minded conservatives out there somewhere. Why aren't they putting pressure on Republicans? Are Democrats truly the sole defenders of our liberties?
The immunity offered by this bill is retroactive only; it does not extend into the future. People who say Obama is pro-warrantless-wiretapping don't know WTF they're talking about; he's supporting a bill which will make it illegal in the future, but the only way to get that bill passed for the future (with a President who's sworn to veto anything w/o the provision and a Republican party with enough votes to prevent that veto from being overridden) is to forgive what happened in the past.
Why does congress need to pass any bill with an immunity provision? Wait for the next president, and then pass the law. It is only six months away (Thank God!) Whoever it is, the next president will be an improvement over W. Deal with any other FISA issues that may need to be handled (although IMHO FISA is fine as is, if anything, the standards for getting a wiretap need to be tightened, but I'm not holding out hope for that in the current climate of fear.)
Another important issue is that someone needs to be held accountable for the illegal wiretapping. It is it not the telcos, then it should be the NSA and DOJ. Make the agency directors who pressured the telcos (and possibly the White House officials who ordered them to do so criminally responsible for abuse of power and for creating illegal wiretaps. Then and only then can the telcos be let off the hook.
In other words, someone need to be held accountable.
There's a lot more information about the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right my.barackobama.com campaign on the Get FISA right wiki. Check it out, and please join the group! Mike Stark's Will Obama feel the sting of social networking? on OpenLeft gives some great context on the campaign. And there's a Facebook group too. Are we web 2.0 or what?
It's the Democrat party, not the Democratic party, but that's a common mistake people make.
I'm sure one could forgive the GP for making this mistake, as it appears the party has it wrong themselves...
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness if we're going to heal some of the hatred between the Right and Left.
Well, forgiveness is certainly what this bill is all about. FISA courts, as laid out in past, continue with or without this bill. There's no reason for the bill at all except for the forgiveness you're looking for.
However, that's not how forgiveness works. You can't legislate it. You can, however, as this bill shows, attempt to legislate an amnesty giveaway to a bunch of unrepentant crooks.
What this country actually needs is justice. You commit a crime, you admit it and accept responsibility for it, and then you get forgiveness. I don't see any responsibility being taken, here -- I see a whole lot of weaseling out and not paying for things, which has been the way of life, to an absurd extreme, of this administration, and it friends. It's also been a way of life for AT&T.
What was done during Bush's years has been illegal, and there should be justice. AT&T was paid to break the law, so they did. Why sweep that under the rug and pretend that doing so will make things better? There's no reason for immunity going forward or back.
This is one of those compromises that should not be made.
What things are we going to allow corporations to do on the presidents assurance that it is legal? Which amendments will we stop at?
It is important that the message is sent that the president can't simple say "this is legal" and congress makes it so retro-actively.
The compromise is at least as bad as the one that made Judge "torture memos" Alito attorney general. There are situations where a compromise is warranted, and the lesser evil, but there are others where the compromise still leans too far towards "strong executive" (That's the PC word for dictatorship I think) and must not be agreed to.
This isn't compromise in the sense that you get the freeway I badly need, I get the bridge to nowhere.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
you may have noticed that every House member from Illinois voted against Fisa the other week. Even the Republican, Johnson. He was, in fact, the only Republican to vote against.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
But it is immunity nonetheless, and immunity for something that many people not only believe to be illegal, but an outright assault on the rights of the citizenry.
What's worse, in my opinion, is his wishy-washy press release on the matter. If he'd focused more on the "look, if it wasn't this, the republicans and telco-owned democrats would've killed the whole thing and we'd have no progress at all", it wouldn't have been so bad.
Instead, he hid behind the "look! bogeymen!" scare-tactics and provided a waffly excuse of "legitimate threats" this and "terrorists" that without ever actually specifying what these vague apparitions lurking in the dark are. THAT, to me, is where his political colors really showed.
I think this may, very well, be the first thing that has come out to really tarnish his image. I'm not going to stop supporting his bid over it, but I certainly am viewing him with a bit more suspicion than in the past.
Weird slashbug #455
I've got to take issue with raising money for senators so they will vote a particular way. Our taxes pay their salaries so they will vote according to the electorate AND the constitution. Since when did obeying the constitution become a la carte? These people took an oath to uphold it. Now it only applies for the highest bidder.
I think a much more cost-effective measure would be to exercise our constitutional freedoms.
I am a huge patriot, even an Eagle scout. In scouts we took oaths and we held them. We were told our leaders were doing the same. We were told to hold the constitution high, and to believe in our government.
I draw the line at a bidding war for votes. If that really is the situation, then we need to clean house. And senate.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
or express your disgust by not voting at all
Yes because political inactivity is the catalyst for change.
Right. 2 of the criminal corporations that were treated the way you say are the asbestos industry and the tobacco industry.
Workers were exposed to asbestos for decades, while asbestos companies like Johns-Mansville knew that it was causing lung cancer, according to medical reports in their files that came out after they were sued, but they didn't warn those workers. When it all came out, they were hit with millions of dollars in damages, and went bankrupt. You don't see much asbestos around any more.
The tobacco industry is unfortunately so wealthy and politically powerful that they're almost (but not quite) untouchable. They got hit with millions of dollars in damages. The public health people who took them on were pretty smart, and they got money to pay for anti-tobacco education, publicity campaigns, etc. In a big court case, huge amounts of documents get subpoenaed, but the defendants insist on making them confidential as one of the conditions for settling (see the IBM antitrust case). This time, the public health people insisted on making the documents public, and put them in a great database, which revealed their devious methods, and exposed the people we trusted who betrayed us (search Google for "tobacco documents").
Unfortunately, the corporate executives didn't go to jail, even though they killed more people (400,000/year from cigarettes) than Osama bin Laden ever will.
Given the sentiments you expressed, you would probably enjoy reading Ted Rall http://www.gocomics.com/rallcom/, although you probably do already. He was warning us from the very first about Obama.
McCain has been in favor of it all along, and is kind of stuck. If he votes for it, he keeps in with the Republican party but loses credibility with the conservatives and "tough on crime" folks. If he votes against it, he gets the conservative and "tough on crime" support, but loses some Republicans. No matter what he does, it's approximately a wash.
If Obama votes for it, he loses in pretty much every way. Republican voters still won't support him over McCain. But if he votes against it, he'll get some credibility with the hard anti-crime, rule-of-law folks. He'll pick up some conservatives, possibly (no guarantees, but it could happen) even the few conservatives remaining in the Republican party.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So, to get back at him, you're going to "vote republican across the board".
Son, you need to think it through. You've got a good heart but you're head is spinning a little too fast. I say this from love.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Brewster's Millions "None of the Above" option when you really need it?
Awesome!
So let the bill be vetoed, why is passing a bad law better than having a better law vetoed. Can someone explain why we need this law anyway. Let's be honest here, the terrorist threat to America is the biggest hype job ever pulled on the American people. I mean we have had 2 major terrorist attempts on American soil (on the same building even) from foreign nationals in what, our entire histoy. Their is enough questionable information regarding 9/11 that I don't think we will ever truely know what happened or who was involved.
But that day was also the day the 4th went from a celebration to a time of mourning.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
But they actually wanted Bush. Whether they were misinformed, stupid, or downright insane is not the point. Assuming that the Nader voters ranked Nader first, Gore second, and Bush last, by voting for their first choice, they actually wound up with their least preferred candidate in power.
No. Right now, the Democrats have a small majority in the House and a single-vote majority in the Senate. An Obama victory would bring Democratic gains in both houses. In fact, even those who believe McCain will win invariably admit that the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will grow larger.
Plus, Bush has done so much to tilt the balance of powers in favor of the executive branch, that it would be fairly easy for a President Obama and Democratic Congress to overturn this FISA law.
And, (this is important, so pay attention), this FISA bill only gives civil immunity to the telecoms. They could still be charged with a civil rights violation by an Obama Administration Department of Justice. In fact, everything Obama wrote about Constitutional Law while at the UofC (we were there at the same time) indicates that his view of privacy is very strong, and that he'd be willing to use the DOJ for this purpose (which happens to be the purpose for which it was intended).
IF this FISA bill passes with the immunity intact I will be disappointed, but it's not going to make me suddenly believe that a John McCain administration could be anything but a bigger disaster than Bush. Remember, all the same neocon extremists that have been whispering in George Bush's ear will be shouting in John McCain's ear (the good one). And because of McCain's imagined "tough-guy" image and hot temper, he'll be very vulnerable to the cowboy-culture suggestions that the neocons have used so successfully to manipulate weak leaders like Bush and McCain.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why not prosecute the government for illegally getting the information in the first place?
Prosecute the government? Who is going to prosecute the executive branch for violating a federal law? The Justice Dept, that's who, except they're part of the executive branch, and have already said they don't think the President broke any law*. So prosecution is right out.
Instead, someone could sue the government for violating their civil liberties, except since nobody knows whether or not the government actually spied on them, nobody has the standing to bring such a case against the government.
Thus the civil suits against the telecoms. The ultimate purpose of these suits, other than to redress their wrongs**, is to cause information on exactly what they did and who they tapped on behalf of the government to be revealed in discovery. Thus those who were spied on can know that this happened, and then have legal standing to sue the government. I don't the legal reason why the telecoms suits don't have the same standing issue, I just know that the suits against the government were blocked by the courts immediately due to standing, while the suits against the telecoms weren't.
So you see, the telecom suits are merely a stepping stone to reaching the real target, which is the federal government. This is also why telecom immunity is not about protecting the telecoms, but protecting the government itself. By preventing lawsuits, they're preventing the discovery that could reveal the government's hand. That's why telecom immunity is so reprehensible.
* Ludicrous on its face, since from the President's only words his program performed warantless wire tapping against parties in the U.S., which is unambiguously against the law. It's another case of the "It's not illegal because the President doesn't have to obey the laws" reasoning, which will never stand up in court, but the goal is not to have it tried in court.
** I can appreciate feeling pressured by the feds, but seriously, if they can't even be bothered to show a trumped up warrant, how can you justify cooperating with an obviously illegal act? Qwest didn't, and what terrible consequences befell them for daring to stand up to the government?
The enemies of Democracy are
Are you sure? Someone else in this thread has already posted a link to McCain's ACLU scorecard, and he's been vocally pro-wiretapping from the beginning.
I'm in complete agreement, my friend. I'm afraid that every few years we're going to have to take one (or more) of these rapacious corporations and slam them up against a wall a few times, just to show them that we (citizens, consumers) are in charge, not them.
In the next ten years, we're going to see the beginnings of warfare between corporate interests and the interests of the people. With the behavior of the RIAA, I'd say that the shooting war has already started.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness
This may be true. But forgiveness applied to someone who's in denial is called "enabling". It just encourages them to do it some more. The first step to forgiveness is a confession. When the telcoms publicly tell us exactly what they have done that may have violated the law or the privacy of the people whose communications they handle, once they are willing to stand up and accept responsibility for their own actions, then we can discuss forgiveness.
At the expense of the people who feel he won't be "tough on crime."
Nothing except the law that he's about to vote for, which will make it so that his AG can't even bring that cases to court.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Any party that gets 5% of the vote gets federal funding and is likely to be in the debates.
BS. Ron Paul got higher than 5% and his existence was barely acknowledged.
That isn't going to stop me from voting for a third party this time around, but I'm not kidding myself about what my vote will change.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If you want to understand a shooting war, consider the war between ITT (vis a vis Pinochet) and Chile, when Allende nationalized their copper mines. Or consider the war between ITT and the US, during WWII, when ITT was making the German bombers, and the US bombed the German planes.
Or consider the war between the World Bank and Zaire, when Mobutu fled to France with all those IMF loans, Kabila declined to make payments on Mobutu's stolen funds, and within *3 months* there was a mobilized army led by the son of the IMF's representative to Zaire, which kept a shooting war going until *3 months* after Kabila said "okay, we'll start paying on Mobutu's money."
Note, too, that in both the case of Allende and Kabila, they were murdered, probably just to show the people that the corporations, not the citizens, are in charge.
Corporations are all too ready to commit murder and mass murder to claim power. Think before you act.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Actually, this guy sounds as crooked as Bob Barr. I suggest he should vote libertarian after all. I, on the other hand, am a libertarian supporter -- but I cannot support Bob Barr.
I will probably write in a name, just to be able to say, "yes, I voted, and no, my vote doesn't count for anything."
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Frankly, with all the rancor on both sides, this country needs a little forgiveness if we're going to heal some of the hatred between the Right and Left.
We don't want the Right and Left to get along, because then we'll end up with an even worse "both parties are the same" problem.
The problem right now is that the stuff they disagree over - the stuff that wins elections - is mostly a distraction from the real issues.
The parties hating each other is great - it keeps our broken system somewhat in check. The problem is that the parties aren't really Right/Left. They don't win elections based on philosophy and intelligent debate, but on emotions and reactionary sound clips.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Ron Paul is about as close to a libertarian as you can get, and at some times has been.
However, the major media affirmed, about 2 elections ago, that they would never again give the Libertarian party or any of their candidates coverage, even if they won the presidential election. That was in the words of a network representative (I'm thinking NBC), in explanation of why they were not covering the Libertarians, at a time when inexplicably no media was giving Libertarians coverage.
So the Ron Paul comment is right on target. He had the most support of all the candidates, both cash and personal -- and yet was excluded from the debates. He also had votes in New Hampshire which registered zero votes for him, and he had control of the Nevada Caucus, which was shut down rather than allow him to have support going into the Republican convention.
This is called election fraud. It goes hand in hand with the media fraud. In addition, the denial of Ron Paul in the debates made the Fox News Fair'n'Balanced(tm) debates into a primetime multi-hour infomercial. In other words, it was a major illegal campaign donation to all those who were given coverage. Of course, even calling it the debates also violates truth in advertising laws, but this can only go so far.
I should note, that in line with this I fully expect Obama will not win, even if he gets 96% of the votes.
Combine this with the abdication of legislative power to the president, and the abdication of constitutional interpretation to the president, and basically what we are seeing is that though most of the world is moving away from dictatorships, the US is becoming a secret-police, torturing, constitutionless dictatorship.
That said, it isn't worth fighting against. Rather, other countries are moving away from it because such countries destroy themselves. They simultaneously make deadly enemies, and destroy their economy, so that an enemy army can invade and destroy what's left.
So rather than fighting against it, it's more worthwhile to simply flee to a country that is a *land of the free* and *home of the brave*. The US has been there, done that, and don't look like it's even lookin' back. For what it's worth, it is my opinion that the handwriting is on the wall that we're becoming the world's next Iraq. To quote the evangelists, our 400 years of biblical testing are done, and we probably are found way wanting.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You'll notice that none of the people who are angry at Obama over this scrap are trying to get McCain to change his position. For most of those people, it's because they support Obama. They don't consider their vote for him to be a waste, but they consider this move to be a bad decision. "If you vote for someone you don't really want to see in charge then you're screwing up the system." Well, these people want to see Obama in charge, and so they want him to hear what they think. Except for the real hypocrites here, of course: the McCain supporters, who look for any way to paint Obama as not being true to his message, while McCain has been flip-flopping so much in the past three months that he could almost try out for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.
So what are they doing now? They're doing kinda what you're supposed to be doing in a Democratic society. Rather than sitting around whining about the evils of the two parties, they mounting a strong campaign to let their selected nominee know that he is not representing their interests with this decision and are trying to get him to see the light. You know, they're participating in government. Rather than just putting in a vote for some libertarian candidate and saying, "Well, my guy didn't win, so you can't blame me," they're actually trying to change the landscape. That's what activists do, y'know - they're active.
To keep spouting this adolescent "lesser of two evils" crap is getting tiresome. In this election, there is A LOT OF FUCKING DIFFERENCE between the two candidates. There is a lot of difference in the way they want to run the war, there is a lot of difference in the way they want to run domestic issues. I apologize that Americans are still a bunch of sheep who can't get John Wayne or Eric Cartman or whoever your perfect candidate is supposed to be elected to the White House, but in this election, a vote for Obama against a vote for McCain is seriously going to mean something, and I'm sorry that the 25%-less-of-a-tool candidate that the DNC is running still isn't enough for your tastes.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
It sets a precedent.
If an entity can do something illegal because it happens to coincide with some would-be dictator's agenda, that's one less thing stopping other entities from breaking laws in order to get favours from future would-be dictators.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Two major terrorist attempts THAT YOU KNOW OF.
It's not factually wrong; it's just... selectively reflective of the truth.
The FISA bill allows warrantless wiretapping of international calls made by American citizens only under emergency protocols. It allows warrantless wiretapping of folks who aren't American citizens pretty much indiscriminately. That certainly does make the large-scale warrantless wiretapping of communications by American citizens which has allegedly occurred under Bush (we can't tell, of course, because the courts are being blocked from investigating the matter in the name of national security... which I certainly agree is bogus) thoroughly illegal on an ongoing basis.
I keep hoping Obama wins and uses the newly ill-gotten presidential powers of warrentless wiretapping to expose all kinds of naughty things that the Republicans are up to. Horribly wrong yet terribly amusing.
You haven't truly understood the implications of a precedent saying that companies can violate the law and Congress will retroactively make it OK.
There is no need to pass a bill saying that it is illegal in the future - it was already illegal. That is why there are lawsuits. And this bill doesn't keep any future Congress from passing a bill retroactively saying next time, "That was OK after all, but it is really not next time."
Now compare to passing no bill. If they pass no bill then the lawsuits go forward and the telecoms suffer in court for it. And the next time that a President asks the telecoms to do something they know they shouldn't, they will say, "Nuh uh, we remember what happened last time." And you know what? There is nothing the President can do to stop this from happening.
It is a simple matter of psychology that any parent of a 6 year old is painfully aware of. No matter how forcibly you say, "That was OK, but next time it is not" the real message delivered is, "That was OK." If you want the message delivered to be, "That was not OK" then you have to make it not OK now. Not next time.
Whether you're dealing with 60 year old CEOs or 6 year old boys, the psychology is the same. If they see that complaints get the rules retroactively changed, they will plan on that retroactive change. If they see that there are consequences for acting badly, they are likely to think twice next time.
There will always be security implications that will be pointed to. There will always be things the President can add to a bill to make it more palatable. CEOs understand this and will plan on it. Which increases the odds of future abuses.
If you want to avoid the future abuses, don't pass a law against it which nobody believes will be enforced. Instead punish existing abuses with the laws that already exist.
Assuming he doesn't already.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Carter pardoned Nixon before he was ever charged with any crimes.
That would be Ford you're thinking of.
Poppa Bush pardoned 6 people involved with Iran Contra, 1 conviction, 3 guilty pleas, and 2 pending cases.
To quote the US Constitution, the President shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States. It's not at all clear that he can pardon someone who has not been legally found to have committed an offense (that is, pled or been found guilty), someone for whom one can not specify their name and the precise offense they have committed. Yes, it's happened, and nobody cared enough to pursue the matter. Maybe we'll get that clarified after next January.
Or maybe Shrub could get them all individually indicted for every crime they might have committed. Wow, would that fill the news with stories about criminals in government. Then have them plead guilty. Which would monopolize the news again. And then pardon them, yet a third great news day about the crimes committed by or at the behest of government.
Of course, they'd have to trust Bush to carry through with his end of the pardon. Do you suppose they'd trust Bush significantly more than you or I would?
I work with the telecommunications industry. Most of them would be happier not releasing data or supporting eavesdropping. They've got enough work without chasing after stuff for government types or dealing with litigious types looking to attach their lawsuits to their capital funds and suck money out. If they need an amnesty, it's because they did what they thought was right for our country and then we changed our minds about what was right. If you're unhappy with the NSA, DOJ or the President, take it to them. The carriers are just trying to get along with everyone else. If you've got a beef with AT&T, etc., then address that problem directly.
"There is broad public knowledge that smoking is bad for you."
This is true today (in the west) but it was not true when I was growing up in the 60's and tobacoo companies were actively breeding plants for higher nicotine content. Even in the 80's tobacoo companies were still putting out "scientific research" showing smoking was harmless and non-addictive.
In other words tobacco companies hid the truth from people for decades and actively spread propoganda and misinformation to discredit any scientist who disputed them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.