Letters to the Editor
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Thank you Jordan
Thank you Jordan for nailing Elephantman so succinctly. That is the difference between real patriots, and phonies like him. Real patriots don't give up their values just because they are frightened. Cowards like Elephantman do that.
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Swallowed hard and voted for Stabenow in 2006, because MI Repubs are FAR worse.
She voted for the bankruptcy bill - a Senator from Michigan! - selling out her constituents for the corporations.
Now she is selling out her constitution as well as her constituents.
Enough! More than enough!
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No Rule of Law, No Peace
I cannot add much more, other than to the letter count, to the excellent comments and refutations of the usruption of the Constitituion made by the neocons.
Thank you Glenn, for keeping it real, and your nearly single-handed (along with Dodd and Fiengold), efforts to hold on to what matters, not what is profitable.
I don't see this changing much with either of the two remaing Dem candidates now.
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Clinton votes "not present."
After all the taunting of Obama for his "present" votes in the Illinois legislature, Clinton doesn't show up.
Thanks Obama, for voting for democracy.
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Storing things online
The senate bill, together with some passages from the Patriot Act, make a pretty strong case that anyone who stores, or allows storage of, any of their documents, financial records, or photos online, or who transacts business online, may be subject to surveillance and companies that cooperate will be forbidden to tell you about it.
That makes for a pretty compelling scenario for a whisper campaign about the dangers of using online storage, some online office software, in fact, the whole businesses of Web 2.0, cloud computing, or semantic web processing, not to mention trading images and video. Were such a viral dissemination to go on, some very big guys who are currently helping to eavesdrop, or who could under the new bill, could get seriously hurt. Because the companies who have heavily invested in cloud computing could lose those investments if nobody trusts them to respect privacy.
Store your term paper online?
Want the NSA to read it?
And then search your place?
Steven Bradbury can make it so.
And you know what kind of logic he has.
How do you know he hasn't already?
Nothing to worry about if you do nothing wrong.
This is what's called the meaning of immunity.
Immunity,immunity,imnunity,imounity,impunity.
Some Telecoms Are Sifting Information.
About the lives of others. -
OK Elephantman, I'll play...
If I lived in one of the places that many of you are from (New York City, the port of Long Beach, Washington, D.C., Chicago, London, etc.) I'd be one helluva lot more concerned about being blown up on a train, or an airliner, or in an office building, than I am concerned about any violation of my own (or anyone else's) genuine privacy. Following 9/11, I am aware of almost 3,000 people whose civil rights got pretty severely 'violated' that day. And hundreds more in London, Madrid and Bali. And thousands more in Beirut, Gaza and Iraq.
Ok. Well, lets examine this for a minute.
Exactly how many American citizens died do to foreign sponsored terrorist attacks on American soil before 9/11/2001. Uh, well, we have the first bombing of the World Trade Center. How many died? 6.
Well, how many died in the attack on 9/11/2001? According to Wikipedia, 2,750 death certificates were issued for people that 'died' in the towers or as a result of working in the toxic dust that covered the site. (I use died in quotes because they only identified 1,614 bodies through physical remains. It would be great cover to 'disappear' yourself.)
Well, how many since then? How many American citizens have died directly as the result of foreign sponsored terrorism since 9/11/2001? Gosh. None that I'm aware of.
Oh, Bush has been a success at keeping us safe then, right?
Well, before the first bombing in the WTC and keeping the bounds of foreign sponsored terrorism events, how many died before February 26th, 1993? How many? None that I can remember right now. Gee, by the 'Bush is a great president, let's give up all of our rights because he's keeping us safe'! Well then we should have given them to William Jefferson Clinton too (heck of a job Bill except for that one time), well and George Herbert Walker Bush (another 'keeping us safe' success story. Jimmy Carter? Richard Nixon? Gerald Ford?
Do you see where I'm going with this?
Do you feel even a little bit foolish for what you said?
To an ignorant man, a simple kitchen match seems like magic.
Bush doesn't deserve any credit for keeping us safe. Ask the war dead if you can if they fell safe. To lionize Bush for something that has happened so rarely would be like having a ticker tape parade for the man that predicts that the sun will come up in the east, and it then it does...
You go ahead and trust a convicted drunk driver, charlatan opportunist and pathological liar with your life and rights. I'd prefer not to, thanks.
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Actually, I don't go around concerned every day about being blown up by a terrorist. And I NEVER, EVER, worry about President Bush or Vice President Cheney "violating" my "civil rights."
As for the phrase "genuine privacy"; I relate that to things like the anti-administration New York Times, or Salon(!) being free to investigate, plan and publish stories expressing and opposing viewpoints. Unlike, say, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba or North Korea.
I distinguish "genuine privacy concerns" from "frivolous privacy concerns" like the notion that my calls might be among the trillions of calls being data-mined for information.
Again, when I am doing something like passing through the nauseating and humiliating process of an airport security check, I never once think of blaming Dcik Cheney. I think of Richard Reid and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. I prefer to think of them in a very cold, dark, damp place. And hopefully being treated in a far worse manner, by more serious interrogators, than the frathouse/bozo/reservist enlisted personnel at Abu Grhaib.
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Ooooppppss...
Well, how many since then? How many American citizens have died directly as the result of foreign sponsored terrorism since 9/11/2001? Gosh. None that I'm aware of.
should have read:
Well, how many since then? How many American citizens have died directly as the result of foreign sponsored terrorism on American soil (meaning here) since 9/11/2001? Gosh. None that I'm aware of.