Politico reported yesterday that GOP leaders argue that extending the PATRIOT Act is especially important because the killing of Osama bin Laden might inspire retaliatory terrorist attacks against Americans.
Call me cynical, but had Bin Laden not yet been killed or captured, I’m sure that these same GOP leaders would argue that extending the PATRIOT Act is especially important because Osama bin Laden remains on the loose.
Thus the unique danger of declaring war on “terror”: the enemy – being a method rather than an identifiable group of people – is impossible to eradicate completely. And so the power-hungry in coalition with the paranoid have available an inexhaustible supply of superficially plausible excuses for keeping citizens in a perpetual state of fear, war, surveillance, and suppression.
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File this under the “audacity of duh!”
Don,
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that you doubt the sincerity of such esteemed politicians!
Regards,
Ken
Power and control. That is all the “leaders” of both parties are interested in. That and money.
Yep. They are stationary bandits, whose predatory reign and reach are enhanced by the pathetic fact that at least 99 out of every 100 people romanticize these bandits and their banditry.
And they’re building a growing to majority electorate that is paid through transfer payments by these “leaders”. It’s no wonder the general public continues to elect them.
Indeed. So save for a major financial collapse, it’s hard to see how the system will change.
when the productive members finally do rebel it will be by ‘not cooperating’ any longer.
As long as those of us who are productive still feel like we have something to lose that won’t happen, not yet, but we’re getting there fast.
99 out of 100 romanticize them? Tolerate, maybe, but most people I know look at the whole enterprise as a sort of necessary evil. In other words, they like their roads and government bread.
“Government” is as imaginary an idea as a corporation. In the end it is just individuals telling others what to do, and modern governments behave in the same way as ancient religions. Today, people pray to government to save them from misfortune, to smite their enemies, and to shower them with blessings. A few hundred years ago they prayed to an equally imaginary bearded man in the sky.
*Like* — except for the bearded man in the sky shot — my supreme being isn’t bearded
It’s dispiriting watching people attempt to re-ensurf themselves.
re-enserf
inserf?
enserf?
unserf?
insurf?
resurf?
uninsurf?
uninserf?
reserface?
re-serf?
reserfation?
Ok, enough of that….
As Frankie V wrote,
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
And adorning taxpayer funded landmarks with their names.
Ugh. That’s particularly nauseating.
Yeah, but Sheets Byrd was a Dimocrap, so it’s OK that he was a Kleagle, and Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan.
It’s perfectly fitting that there be a Robert C Byrd Center for Racial Justice, and that it house offices for both the Klan and the NAACP. After all, they’re just opposite sides of the same race-baiting, Statist coin.
uh, that’s Grand Kleagle, Brotio.
So typical of you right-wing, Beck-loving, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, tea-baggers to show no respect for the achievements of fine, upstanding white supremacists in the jackass party.
Ahahahahanahahahahabahahaha…….
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705363940/Utahs-15-billion-cyber-security-center-under-way.html
Holey moley! $1.5 Billion!?!?! That is more than the cost of the Cowboys new stadium.
Also, why do they need 1 million square feet of space for 200 employees going forward?
Must be a DOD contract. Those things are always ridiculously fat.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. WALT KELLY.
Deseret means honeybee in Mormonian. What good might have come from Utah and before that from Nauvoo IL if Joseph Smith hadn’t been massacred by a painted mob in Nauvoo IL.
Lots of war propaganda, that religious freedom truly is. YODA
Let’s start turning the tide by disbanding TSA.
Won’t happen. One bomb gets through and it’ll be TSA x10 next time around.
They let would be murderers through all the time. It’s just that lately all them have been really incompetent. Passengers now have no sense of humor when bearded guys yell God is great and rush the cockpit door,
And who will then have the authority to molest nuns and five year olds in the ongoing effort to catch middle-eastern, radicalized malkes between the ages of 20 and 40?
Great point Don.
Those that have power, will try to stay in power by coming up with just about any explanation that helps them stay in power.
Will they ever stop trying to get and keep power? If not, we will always have to point out their stupid explanations so that they can’t get too much power.
It’s a real part time job keep up with these f*!&#%s.
I just read a report that the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled a citizen is not allowed to resist entry into his home – even an illegal entry! – by the police. Your letter, coupled with that report, makes this Friday the 13th seem particularly disheartening.
There’s an old Latin expression about the judge being “the mouthpiece” of the law.. apparently, the subtext is they just make it up as they go along… after a while, you realize the bar association is corrupt enterprise, and justice is anything that enhances the power, prestige and wealth of lawyers.
But don’t worry, the Fourth Amendment is already dead courtesy of Kelo…
“inexhaustible supply of superficially plausible excuses for keeping citizens in a perpetual state of fear, war, surveillance, and suppression”
Secession, non-American militarism, domestic economic restructuring and/or success, domestic and/or foreign communists, economically successful foreigners, domestic and/or foreign anti-U.S. terrorists and so on and on.
Not to mention, the ever expanding definition of what constitutes ‘terror’.
America: Land of the regulated and home of the terrified.
The huge libertarian conflict here is 1) Bin Laden apparently was killed using intelligence from rendition, quasi-illegal detention (Guantanamo), and waterboarding, and 2) libertarians, and everyone else, should be extremely wary of a hyperactive and hyper-intrusive state using those same methods on citizen pan am.
There is no “quasi-illegal”, there’s only “illegal” or “legal”. Its sort of like being “quasi-pregnant”.
Not if you understand that bin Laden wasn’t killed at all, that this is nothing but disinformation propaganda concocted by the U.S. regime.
And that the only purpose of torture by that regime is to extract false confessions so that the regime can pretend to have found evidence of Islamic “terrorism” which was actually done by the regime itself to create an excuse to invade and occupy certain foreign countries.
I’ve not heard of one innocent red-blooded American affected by the Patriot Act. What have you got to hide?
War is the health of the state.
True enough. I’ve never liked the term “War on Terror” for the reason noted but also, I’m not in “terror”. Are you ?
Yes, I fear the IRS.
You will be when the all-powerful government decides you are, serf.
I agree, It seems like they are putting the US in a perpetual state of fear towards terrorism, spending all this money on investigating and spying they could spend it on something else. This is like the GOP leaders want every one to stay on edge for a terrorist attack but acts of terrorism are constant and will always be around.
The state needs a scary enemy to demand constant sacrifices from the population and to grow its power. Would that it were only the GOP. Note that Barry, who railed against the Patriot Act as candidate, accepted it in full and without changes as his first act as president elect. Did anyone really expect anything else from this power-hungry troll? Naive little fools.