Aha! So that's what you meant! Apparently I misunderstood you. So you want all those things, the mass demonstrations, boycotts, the big puppets, without any threat of violence. Okay, glad we got that straight.

And with your kind of persuasion and rhetoric behind it, how could it fail!?!

Just change your name to Ghandi, but skip the loincloth. Try a leather vest and chaps, instead.

Yes, the Constitution IS optional. What are you going to do about it? Elect more Blue Dogs like last time? Well, that sounds like a plan, doesn't it? Go right ahead. Yes, the Rule of Law DOES apply only to the Little People, and then only to some of them based on race and gender. What are you going to do about it? Elect more pseudo-Progressives and Blue Dogs? Go right ahead. They're begging you to.

Yes, the Presidency has been turned into a competitve monarchy, and yes it can operate very effectively as an Autocracy. What are you going to do about it? Call and fax and write stern letters? Elect more Blue Dogs? Please! By all means! Have at it!

They see their job as protecting and defending The Government, not the Constitution. And they think they're doing a pretty good job. Too bad radical extremists don't appreciate the job they're doing.

Your job, in fact the job of all ordinary Americans, is to keep on consuming the economic, political, and social products they believe you deserve. -- Ché Pasa

If you want to believe that the NSA has millions of employees listening to trillions of phone calls, be my guest.

I don't want to believe that, nor do I believe that. Despite the shifting of terms, strawman arguments, and contradictions in your many posts, your claims still remain inaccurate.

I didn't say anything that wasn't factually correct.

You have posted many false, contradictory, and at times downright inane claims. Your analogies and references to environmental groups and public corporations have been particularly bizarre:

This isn't spying, wiretapping, or any other actual listening to someone. No, this looking for patterns in a bunch of numbers. Like the IRS does. Like nearly every service organization does, including the Sierra Club

...BUT, actual wiretapping, listening to US phones in the US still requires a warrant, yes?...Americans can be listened to without a warrant IF they are heard overseas. But not if the tap is in the US...It is now and always has been illegal to have a wiretap on a US phone without a warrant.

...What you are describing above [listening in on Americans without a warrant] is data-mining, something done by corporations everywhere for marketing purposes." -- Shooter 242

Neither the Sierra Club nor Amazon.com have acquired new and expanded powers to spy, and wire taps are not synonymous with data-mining. With the new FISA regime, now every call or email coming in to or out of the U.S. can be tapped by the government without a warrant or cause.

"I'm off to the store for aquavit and tomato juice. Anything I can pick up for you guys?" -- Paul Daniel Ash

I'll have whatever Shooter has been drinking...

Have a great weekend, everyone.

More hyperbole from another comfortable coward who is not interested in real change.

That's why I always buy my boxers two sizes too big. More comfortable that way!

But yes, adnoto, I would say that is a fair, if not complimentary description of me. And I'm one of the better ones!

Where will you find the kind of stalwart comrades who will live up to your standards? Like steel, they will be forged by fire and constant blows!

Will I have to buy smaller underwear? You're not looking for a Boxer rebellion, are you? Cause that chafes, baby, how it chafes.

It's been excerpted at TPM (he may be this week's guest in the cafe) and a chapter has been on Common Dreams.

The book sounds like a realistic call-to-arm, with emphasis on the less-partisan areas of common interest ... the environment, jobs, wages, schools, etc., organizing on an "act locally" basis.

I've seen his byline and read several articles by him over the years at "In These Times" and, since he seems to agree with ME, my impression has been favorable.

We'll never be good enough for adnoto. He is on the frontlines of the keyboard revolution.

We are too "comfortable." Still, we lack the most comfortable security blanket of them all: righteous indignation at everyone else's lack of ideological and moral purity.

I will not be worthy until I personally see to it that Bush is successfully impeached. Somehow. Or at least in my imagination, if not for everyone else's shortcomings.

because of the awful, racist ad that's so horrible for so many reasons, I just can't figure out why Salon would even have a link to a site that would carry it, much less lustre it next to Glenn's postings window. "The Secret why Japanese Women Stay Skinny"

What the hell was that?

If everybody on this blog owns up to everything they could be in a category of interest for, I'm sure there's enough to get a warrant on you under the new law. Sorry nobody told you, see you in the Navy brig.

Oh brother. Every database in the country can be abused. Here's where that logic leads... when we have govt sponsored health care, there will be data bases of every American's physical condition. Should the possibility of an HIV list stop govt. sponsored health care? By your lights yes, because it can lead to govt. abuse.

As much as some people would like, we can't go back to life as it was in the eighteenth century. Our information is floating around everywhere, and blinding ourselves to it, makes the one eyed man king. Just like the idiots that leaked the Swift banking arrangement forever destroying a legal way to track money flows.

Don't like our current arrangement? Go to the telecoms and tell them that cell phones should be banned and fiber optics shut down. Otherwise, we learn to use technology to our advantage, or we become luddites. That's really what you're looking for isn't it? For Government to do exactly what YOU say it should and no more? If you think you can trust govt. not to have an HIV list, then you should be able to trust them to use data-mining judiciously.

As far as I'm concerned, any thing that crosses the border is open for inspection.