Letters to the Editor
Cocktailhag
Published Letters: 483
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@ Blue Meme
[Read the article: The Lawless Surveillance State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would take your excellent point one step further; people are not only willfully ignorant, but they are encouraged to be by the right wing's assault on the very idea of truth.
Faced with political irrelevance and saddled with unpopular elitist dogma, the right wing adopted a two-prong strategy that has led us to this point.
First, re-brand cutthroat economic policies and police state practices to appeal to racists. "Law and Order" and "Welfare Queen" were quite successful lyrics in the song that charmed the south and middle America to the joys of upward wealth redistribution and illegal surveillance.
Next, attack the media for even the mildest criticism, decry its "elitist" liberalism, and demand equal time. Remember that Roger Ailes of Fox News devised Nixon's media strategy, and now his entire lineup constantly reminds their audiences that all other news is false and biased.
Honest journalists, facing withering assaults from the right, and maybe a letter or two from the left, feel compelled to give lies and truth equal billing, and hope that bewildered Americans can sort it out for themselves.
I have been deeply depressed at how many times I have heard from otherwise intelligent and decent people that "the truth must be somewhere in between."
Mission Accomplished.
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Poor little telecoms...
[Read the article: The Lawless Surveillance State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What is it about right wing authoritarians that they choose the most powerful elements in society, in this case telecom behemoths and black budget spy agencies, and get all weepy about their "rights" being endangered?
With their legions of lawyers and government-sanctioned monpolies, the telecoms hardly need to be excused from legal standards that date back to the Magna Carta, simply to scoop up more taxpayer money by establishing themselves as government spies.
Further, any government that wastes time and money spying on its citizens is clearly not doing its job; such massive, undifferentiated piles of personal data serve no purpose other than to remind citizens that they have no rights and therefore must, as Ari Fleischer revealingly put it, "watch what they say, and watch they do."
The rights of such powerful entities is not now and was not ever in danger, and the bill of rights was intended to limit the inherent tendencies to abuse this kind of power.
I would like to remind you, Shooter, that Bush was directly warned by our supposedly "blind" intelligence agencies that Sept. 11 was going to happen and he did absolutely nothing. Any fool could have read that Aug. 6 PDB and chosen, at a minimum, to beef up airport security. He did nothing.
What, other than blind hero worship, makes you think that he would do any more this time around? After all, Sept. 11 was the best thing ever, for him, anyway.
Vastly increasing the volume of data collected will never make us safer, particularly with the Keystone Kops in power, nor is it intended to.
It's simply fear-based another power grab, and you're a classic example of how effective it is.
Even though you would find a way to rationalize it away if Dick Cheney himself were listening on your extension in the next room, the only reason you haven't heard anything about eavesdropping is because the government has flatly defied courts, congress, and anyone else legally entitled to the information, and declared it none of your business.
I'm glad you like it that way.
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Aw, Shoot
[Read the article: The Lawless Surveillance State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since we're using nicknames now, do you mind if I call you Shoot?
If I were President that fateful summer, with control over the FAA, I would have quietly notified the various security agencies, handed down a few security enhancements, and perhaps foreshortened my vacation somewhat.
Condi Rice's tendency to, uh, stretch the truth aside, flying planes into buildings was not only predicted, but guarded against at the G8 meetings in Genoa. Your excuses for administration in this case are (!) easily refuted right wing talking points. I suggest you get out more.
The embarassing lack of cooperation with the Sept. 11 Commission from Bush et al can only be explained by the truth being worse. Stupidity or complicity, it doesn't matter. They fucked up and tried to cover it up. Period. This ain't rocket science.
Osama is still at large: the Bushies only victories have been against enemies at home. With this evident focus of their energies, does it take a lynch mob to think they might be hiding something?
I hope you're comparing me to one out of ignorance, not malice.
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@ Aycharaych
[Read the article: The Lawless Surveillance State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Weren't the events of 9-11-2001 a political act?"
We know they were, on the part of the perpetrators.
As for the response of the government, we apparently never will. This is what makes the relentlessly repeated argument of the 28 percenters, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear," so infuriatingly self-discrediting. Not to them, of course, but to anyone else who can fog a mirror.
The baffling willingness of the Bushies to make themselves look guilty by stonewalling the 911 commission, including the pathetic and reluctantly accepted "compromise" of finally allowing Bush to appear, but not under oath and with Cheney along, only fuels the worst suspicions of the most radical conspiracy theorists.
They are so obviously hiding something and took a lot of criticism in so doing, that one can only assume the worst.
Why do that?
We can only wonder.
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@ Arne Langsetmo
[Read the article: The Lawless Surveillance State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The eedjit in question has a new concept-of-the-day, which undoubtedly rolled off the righty ticker machine just recently.
Now we're all "playing judge, jury, and executioner," according to whatever wingnut he's channeling right now. He's like a toddler who's just learned a new word.
Wingnut, obsessing about due process of law.
It's enough to drive me to drink. More.