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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Or just psychic?
Jake can say with mathematical certainty that the President of the United States, by crushing the testicles of one child, can save precisely 300,000,000 Americans. I'm suitably impressed. Clearly, Jake operates on an intellectual plane far surpassing ours. We should appreciate that he deigns to share with us mere plebeians such lofty wisdom.
and proof we (and by "we" I mean our leadership) don't have the courage of our convictions.
but but but ....the terrorists. We must crush children's testicles to save 300,000,000.
It's a strange juxtaposition isn't it.
The one strength we had above all others was the courage of our convictions, and now we have presidential candidates falling over each other to brag about how harsh they'll be to the "enemy".
It's all fantasy warporn. And, we're swirling in the vortex of bizarro world. I posed the question earlier, why aren't there mass resignations by the attorneys in this criminal administration.
The constitution means so little nowadays, I do get a little overly discouraged now and then.
Thought you were Karen.
Will you ever forgive me for not making sure who I was responding to?
As Glenn stated it didn't cover much new ground for people who've been following this closely (except that I now have even less of a desire to visit Las Vegas than I previously had, which was close to zero as it was, and that if I visit important buildings some person will be tracking my movements with a little black numbered square above my head). But I did come away with one fear that I remember having when this story first broke a year and a half ago, that I don't think has been adequeately covered or discussed, even in blogs.
Beyond the obvious and very serious worries about illegal surveillance, abuse of civil liberties and the use of such spying for political and other non-security purposes, one thing that struck and worries me a lot is that, with so much apparent reliance on these "grand sweeping" technology-based approaches to surveillance that are more drift net-like than targeted, these agencies are possibly going to end up doing a worse, not better job, of detecting and preventing future acts of terrorism. By casting so wide a net, and overrelying on electronic spying and advanced technology and algorithms, they risk falling into the trap of assuming that technology is advanced enough to actually do this sort of thing well, which I believe that it is not, and possibly never will be. And in the meantime, they run the risk of relying less and less on good old fashioned police-type work to detect and stop potential terrorists--i.e. the kind that could have prevented 9/11 and did likely prevent the millenium bombing.
In a sense, these program might not only be breaking the law and trampling on our civil liberties and privacy in a variety of ways, but they might also be making us less safe, not more. I no more trust the people behind these programs to use them lawfully and ethically, than I trust them to use them wisely and effectively. They don't exactly have the greatest track record in my opinion. At the highest levels, they're the same people who are responsible for 9/11, Iraq, Katrina, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture, deficits, etc. So why should we trust them on this? I see no reason to, and every reason not to--i.e. these two reasons I've cited.
Their ceiling extends above the people they are supposedly trying to protect with their aggression. That is, they would even sacrifice us if it meant that they would stay safe. Because that's really what this is all about isn't it? Making the world safe for them. But they fail to grasp that one cannot protected from oneself, because they are in reality their own worst enemies.
Hama rules don't work. You need something more than naked aggression to run a society. Good governance is more than selling the government lock, stock, and barrel to Christian fundamentalists and transnational corporations. It actually involves being able to distinguish reality from fantasy—something which the rabid right is constitutionally incapable of.
From over at
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/15/debate-torture/
(sorry, Glenn, more work for you there; a guy's work is never done)
We have this offering from "Jake007":
Torturing someone is not necessarily a sin — just as killing someone (self-defense, for instance) isn’t always a sin. The government is specifically authorized in Romans 13 to be God’s agent for His wrath. You people — you have no idea how to defend a nation.
Comment by Jake — May 16, 2007 @ 12:38 am
'Nuff said. Lesson over.
Cheers,
Trolling for trolls, eh? ;-)
I'm almost tempted to write him off as a very clever ironic sendup of trolls, kind of a Colbert of the Blogs. Or, perhaps more aptly, the Andy Kaufmann of Blogistan (who to this day I cannot tell whether he was kidding or not, despite having seen much of his SNL work and Man on the Moon). No one could possibly be this troglodytish and be willing to do so in full public display.
Incidentally, in case he's for real, he might want to check out Proverbs, and what it has to say about liars, idiots and fools--and what happens to them due to their folly.
"An intelligent person learns more from one rebuke than a fool learns from being beaten a hundred times." Proverbs 17:10
Or perhaps
"The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare him. The cords of his sin hold him firmly." Proverbs 5:22
Or maybe
"Wisdom has built her house. She has carved out her seven pillars." Proverbs 9:1 (There are seven articles in the constitution, incidentally)
Or maybe
"Where there is no wise guidance, the nation falls, But in the multitude of counselors there is victory." Proverbs 11:14
Or my favorite, famously quoted in an old film about evolution and truth-fearing fools:
"He who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind. The foolish shall be servant to the wise of heart." Proverbs 11:29
I see his decontextualized verse and raise him amply.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
