Friday, May 12, 2006

More Friday rants (NSA phone call database?)

“Well, I’ve done nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide, doesn’t bother me.” You freakin’ idiots.

After we find out about the program of listening to domestic phone calls without court orders, because it’s a time of war and congress authorized him to do whatever necessary, so it’s not against the law because the president is the law. After finding that the leaks of classified information were not leaks, because as president he is authorized to declassify something (well, the bad guys leaked, our guys had permission). After finding out that he issued over 750 ‘letters’ and felt that he could ignore laws that congress passed because he had the right to. Now we find that records of every phone call made for the past few years are being analyzed to find ‘patterns’. Don’t worry, no information or recordings are kept. But you can take a phone number and find out who’s it is, and reach back and find a recording somewhere I’m sure. After all, if they did find a ‘pattern’ and wanted to do more investigation they would have to be able to figure out who was making and receiving the phone calls, wouldn’t they?

After all that crap of breaking no laws (because he is above the law). Like the statement ‘we do not torture’, then finding out the official US government definition of torture is different than the definition the rest of the world uses. And the terrorists the CIA keep in Cuba and ‘unknown European prisons’, they are beyond the reach of US law so the president is free to do any darn thing to them he wants to.

What’s next? I have some suggestions:
1. The police are currently installing video cameras around most large cities. New York has a bunch, and Vegas plans to put up 5000 over the next few years. How about a camera over the front door of every house and office building? Face recognition software could look for the face of known Al Quida figures, so we would be proactive.
2. Why not take the next step and put cameras inside of every house? That way if a terrorist climbed through a window we could still see him. Plus you could catch burglars too.
3. Make sure there is a camera in the bedrooms, so we can look out for any illegal acts there as well.
4. Do away with envelopes for letters and just use postcards. That way each could be easily read; we would hire more police to do this so we could be safer. Plus those terrorists couldn’t send a letter bomb or anthrax either.
5. Oh, what the heck, let’s have the police search every house randomly looking for terrorist links. Let them go through all the papers and documents and pictures and make notes and recordings of what they find. Who knows, they might catch a few tax cheats too.
6. With the enlarged police force this would require we might as well establish checkpoints on every corner to photograph people, look at your ‘papers’, and keep track of movements. Patterns could be analyzed by the new NSA’s super duper computers to look for terrorist links. Let the checkpoints stop all cars as well, and remember to check the trunks, who knows where a terrorist might be hiding. This also might catch all of those illegal aliens as well (oh, right, congress says they are OK, sorry, never mind about that last part)

So, I’m not doing anything wrong, why should I worry?

Because it’s my country, I never gave up my rights so that you could feel a little safer. How many years of no airport checkpoints did we have with no problems, and don’t the analysts say that even the checkpoints we have now would not have stopped the 9-11 hijackers? I though the constitution gave us freedoms, not power to the president to do any damn thing he wants to the rest of us, in the name of protection.

I think there is more that enough for congress to start an impeachment proceeding. After call, that is just the process to determine if anything wrong has been done – and it sounds like plenty has been done to me. Sounds more like a dictatorship, or a king, doing anything he wants because he is above the rest. No thanks, I don’t want to live that way. It’s about time for something to happen. I just feel so powerless, not able to do anything but rant. Letters to my congressmen? The Republicans that support this lunacy? Hah.

And I just had to update the Iraqi casualty count to 2436? That is equally disgusting. Invading a country for what reason? How many more deaths before we reach the World Trade Center casualty count? And what did we get for that invasion, besides death and hatred and trillions of dollars of debt our kids will have to pay? Oh, right, cancel my Social Security, I will be paying for it too. And let congress pass those darn tax cuts, can't have the rich paying for any of this stuff. Too important for the economy.

OK, I came up with 6. Anybody care to add more?
Ooo - just thought of another:
7. Put little thought sensors in our brains, with a micro computer and transmitter so our thoughts can be sent to the NSA computers, and they can analyze patterns to see if there is anything terroristy. The average American should not have to worry, after all if you aren't thinking anything illegal you have nothing to worry about. And trust us, we will not do anything with this data.

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