Letters to the Editor
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Hold the Phone!
"But telecom executives did the only thing they could do--assist the government in whatever way possible. I doubt any of them even had a moment of doubt in complying with the government's request"--Michael Goldfarb...The Weekly Standard
I don't how many of them had "a moment of doubt" but isn't it common knowledge that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio turned down the NSA request?
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@ JKalos
OT. Do you have a suggested basic text for one interested in logic. It was a class I was determined to take but was talked out of it by a well meaning but obviously misguided faculty adviser. I feel I was robbed of a something. I'm now weeks away from law school graduation and feel that logic would have been invaluable before starting and am only now realizing it.
On Topic.
I just can't believe it's taken this long to stand up to the worst president of the last 100 years. Fear (of losing their job, being called soft on terror, etc.) must be the strongest motivator aside from crack addiction. Seems that both lead one to suck at the pipe of power.
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A day late but...
... I found the transcript for the PBS Newshour session hosted by Jim Lehrer between Caroline Fredrickson of the ACLU and Philip Bobbitt flacking for the maladministration.
My choice tidbits (along with link to the full transcript) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/yv9whl
(or click my sig).
There's more eedjitcy from the pathetic Bobbitt, but he does seem to have gotten his "talking points" memo with all the right 'buzzwords'....
Cheers,
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re: Where's Shooter242? Maybe his head exploded.
No such luck for you boyo. I've just returned from vacationing a week in Charleston, and a week in Myrtle Beach. Golf Heaven. I have, however looked in from time to time to see what foolishness is currently topical. Take today Spitzer for instance. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Heh.
Then there's the celebration of a "sure to fail" legislation. Oh yeah, that's progress. But I like this snippet best ....
In fact, while some private lawyers are assisting in the litigation, the groups leading the efforts, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, are nonprofit advocacy groups.
In business, (which class action suits most definitely are) this is called OPM. Other people's money. Once the non-profits have done the spadework of determining culpability, the for-profits will decide how much money can be made and whether it's worth pursuing. Why spend the resources when somebody else will do the hard work for you? Lord, what naive ninnies.
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Why on earth would you be surprised? -
Ron Paul voted Nay with the rest of the Republicans
I'm a little surprised. He's usually on the right side on such issues. The vote was unanimous among R votes as Glenn said (13 R's didn't vote).
-- Crust1
Ron Paul is a pandering, paltering fraud of the worst kind. His whole political career is personal pork and corporate friendly, anti-government, right-wing extremism and lunacy.
I realize he's very good at fooling some usually smart people. So were Reagan and Bush. But none of them fooled everyone.
Aphasics were never fooled by Reagan, I'd bet aphasics' reactions to Bush and Ron Paul would be the same as to Reagan or any Republicans, right wingers and sadly a few Democrats.
Oliver Sacks, the real life Doctor you've seen portrayed by Robin Williams in "Awakenings":
Reagan: "brain-damaged or has something to conceal"
In Oliver Sacks’ remarkable book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,” Dr. Sacks detailed the reactions of people with aphasia as they viewed a televised speech by President Ronald Reagan. While the multiple language and speech problems of aphasia can be caused by any disease or injury to the brain, the most common cause is stroke. Since this condition can often be masked and difficult to diagnose, Sacks found that some people with aphasia, when addressed “naturally,” could grasp some or most of the meaning of one’s words. Thus, he was compelled to utilize an unusual approach in his treatment. In order to satisfactorily confirm their condition as aphasia, Dr. Sacks stated that he had to go to “extraordinary lengths, as a neurologist, to speak and behave un-naturally, to remove all the extra-verbal clues-tone of voice, intonation, suggestive emphasis or inflection, as well as all visual cues (one’s gestures, one’s entirely unconscious, personal repertoire and posture).” Such de-personalizing of voice renders speech devoid of tone or color. It is this machine-like way of talking that will usually be unrecognizable to people with aphasia and quite possibly cause them to laugh at the incomprehensible sounds being uttered. The words mean nothing, it is the way they are spoken that matters. Through such unusual treatment, Sacks was able to truly demonstrate his patients’ aphasia. Quite unexpectedly, this peculiar method exposed a rather fascinating side-effect: political savvy. In the mid-eighties, Sacks studied the reaction of people with aphasia as they watched a televised speech by the former-actor-turned-president. Despite being unable to grasp the skillful politician’s words, the patients were convulsed in laughter.
“One cannot lie to an aphasiac,” Dr. Sacks noted. “He cannot grasp your words, and so cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps, he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, that total spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, all too easily.” So, why did those patients with aphasia cackle at Reagan’s speech? “It was the grimaces, the histrionics, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice which rang false for these wordless but immensely sensitive patients,” explained Sacks. Conversely, Sacks remarked on a woman with tonal agnosia who was also watching the address-stony-faced. Emily D., a former English teacher and poet, was deprived of any emotional reaction to the speech but was able to judge it in the opposite way the patients with aphasia did. Her response? “He does not speak good prose,” Emily D. told Sacks. “His word-use is improper. Either he is brain-damaged or he has something to conceal.”
“We normals,” concluded Dr. Sacks, “aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled. And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived.”
http://www.mickeyz.net/news/mickeyz/reagan_brain_damaged_or_has_something_to_conceal/