On Thursday, the Whitehouse defended its massive, ongoing collection of telephone records from American citizens by saying that they don't actually pay attention to what is said during your formerly-private phonecalls, and that invading the privacy of Americans is a valuable tool in the "War on Terror."
But since B. Hussein just announced that he's winding down the old "War on Terror" which involved (and continues to involve) radical Islamists blowing innocent people into halal-sized chunks, Hope n' Change is forced to assume that the Whitehouse must be using this valuable tool for a new and different "War on Terror."
Specifically, this Whitehouse is in terror of the American people in general, and conservatives in particular - and is actively using the IRS, the NSA, Homeland Security, and other federal agencies to clamp down hard on us. Not just through the collection of phone records, but through collection of your shopping habits, your travels, your online activities, and presumably the results of any recent colonoscopies.
Of course, all of your information will be handled in an absolutely confidential, non-political way, in much the same way that the IRS handles your personal data.
Still, just to be safe, it might be a good idea not to use inflammatory words like "patriot," "liberty," "constitution," or "freedom" when you're using the phone or Internet. You never know what mischief a couple of low-level "rogue agents" at the NSA might get into.
19 comments:
Oh, Effing WHAM!!!!!
Conversation w/ a friend on the phone years ago, when we only had land lines....
"Do you think they're monitoring the phone lines?"
"Well, the other night at beer club, the PRESIDENT told a joke that just BOMBED, kinda SHOT his wad on that one..."
click - soft click -
Yeah, no, I don't believe that at ALL...
No sh*t guys, I was there - feel free to repeat - on someone else's phone...
Then again, she might have been messing w/ me w/ the cradle switch (said not, who knows..)
@Pete(Detroit)- Yeah, it is sort of a WHAM! if I say so myself (modest grin).
As far as your phone conversation goes, I think I've read that the NSA has listening/recording algorithms now that detect keywords on monitored lines. Unfortunately, we already know that when the IRS instituted a keyword system, it included terms like "liberty" and "patriot."
Yeah, this last bit of news has me really worried. I thought this Administration was bad, but I also thought that they had overreached and were going to get smacked down hard.
It doesn't look that way anymore.
I visit other sites, and I have to say, the "But Bush!" defense is really, really starting to annoy.
Could one of you fine, upstanding citizens reaffirm a few things for me?
Barack Obama has been President since Inauguration Day 2009, right? Bush has been out of office nearly four-and-a-half years, right?
And the Leftists and the Media portrayed Bush as a gibbering idiot, and Barack Obama as the smartest guy ever to be in the White House, right?
So how does this dumb hick cowboy (the media's description, not mine) continue to stymie and block the smartest man ever?
It seems to me you can't have it both ways. Either Bush was a Sauron-esque, plans within plans genius running circles around the intellectually disinterested and socialist Obama, or he's an idiot (and Barack is more of one, since he can't fix anything).
So which is it, Lefties?
Sorry, but hearing about how Bush supposedly started all this, to as always mitigate Zero Dark Squirty, is really getting to me lately.
That there are not protests in the streets at this point tells me we may well have already lost.
We counted too much on the inherent goodness in Man, forgetting that people like Obama, Jarrett, Holder, and Napolitano only care about amassing power.
Sorry for being a downer today. I'll try to cheer up and post something more upbeat later.
Thanks for posting!
@Earl,
I have posited the very same query to some of my sycophant co-workers and the excuse now is that the Rethuglican congress is to blame. Won't let jug-ears have his way. Unless your query was rhetorical, then never mind.
I am sure that it doesn't mean shit to a tree, and won't induce any of The Won's sycophantic minions to remove their blinders, but when the NY Times says the administration has "lost all credibility" it does bring the slightest little shiver of schadenfreude to my jaded heart.
Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh. I think that "Anonymous" third down is a bit of spam, Stilt. As much as I respect anyone who avows to be anti-feminist, that is a flat-out ad for MBA.
@Pete: you keep dropping personal hints that is leading me to believe I may actually have known you socially.
I was heavily recruited by the NSA out of college, due primarily to some nascent technologies I focused on during my, erm, "formation". That was almost 30 years ago, and they were very candid in their attempts to woo me over. From those many interviews, the tech they had even then makes all of this "collecting" a trivial effort. I'm not surprised at all to hear they're doing it, and even less surprised the despot-in-waiting is abusing their abilities.
Thank God for the 22nd Amendment - though, it's part of the Constitution, and subject to being trampled on by this administration...
@Tricky: Amen to that! I was shocked; however, it may simply be their "pound of flesh" over the AP/Fox/Anyone with a steno pad, camera, or recorder slight they all took from the dumkopf-in-chief. Give them a little while for their heat dissipation systems to kick in,. and they'll once again be dangling by the lips from his ass like barnacles again.
Jimmie Milhouse Hussein and Heinrich Holder make the Sturmabteilung look like amatuers.
(disclaimer: I really, really, love Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder and would never be disloyal to the Dear Leader.)
Two people I’ve talked to so far have said, “What’s the big deal … I’ve got nothing to hide.” My reply is, “That’s why it’s a big deal; because we are be desensitized to the government collecting information about us to the point that the sheeple don’t care anymore!”
Will it be a big deal when government thugs break into your house and arrest you because you received a number of calls from someone who got calls from someone who also called someone who is engaged in terrorist activity? So what if they were wrong numbers … can you prove it? Innocent until proven guilty, you say? Really? Try that defense with the IRS (another government agency) where your constitutional rights completely disappear.
No, it’s a big deal made bigger by the fact that it is being perpetrated by the hypocrites who railed against it (rightly) when it was done to a much lesser degree by the opposition party.
Oh, and: patriot, liberty, constitution, and freedom. Come and get me.
What concerns me is the "disparate impact" mentality that is embedded in all liberals' DNA. They want equality of outcomes for all their special voting blocks. So your buying habits combined with your demographics (age, sex, etc.) combined with your income, combined with your political party affiliation combined with who knows what else, WILL be used against you when you need something life saving. You know, the stuff that used to cause resonable people to get jobs, save money, and buy insurance. The IRS scandal proves you can't trust the government to be fair and equitable as normal people understand the terms.
@Earl Allison- It is long, long past time for those on the Left to STFU about Bush. If Barry has been as powerless as they claim to make his own decisions or effect change, then he's clearly the most ineffective president in history. But we all know that isn't the case. Bush is just the Left's favorite scapegoat.
@WMD- It's amazing/depressing how many lefties claim that Obama was thwarted by "do nothing Republicans" in the first two years he was in office, apparently having no idea that Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Executive branches and Barry had no significant resistance to implementing his agenda. It just so happens that no part of that agenda was good for America.
@TrickyRicky- That's an interesting quote, to be sure - but I have so little respect for the NY Times that I almost wonder if it's an attempt to win back their own credibility so they can return to propping up Obama as soon as possible.
As I predicted in my earlier post, the "cooling system" has kicked in, the NYT editorial has been "toned down" from the original, and Barnacle NYT is seeking a comfortable position in which to re-attach itself to Øbama's buttock.
What a surprise, that even though the President is winding down the "war on terror", he's retaining the massive security apparatus that's been built up in its wake. And who can blame him? The redistributionists still control Congress; we've got the IRS actively attacking the diminishing number of true conservatives who resist, and a massive surveillance mechanism to keep tabs on everyone else. And to keep the low-information types in line, they'll remain clumsy enough to let an Tsarnaev family through the net every so often to cause havoc, which allows them to justify the continuing existence of the whole menagerie.
There was a bit of a surprise yesterday morning. When I woke up, it felt like the center-of-gravity of the planet was a little off. Low and behold, even the sycophants at the New York Times could not stomach the latest example of statist overreach:
"The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html
Of course, they nuance it by prefacing their dressing-down by limiting it to "this issue". But still, these are Obama's head cheerleaders talking. When the New York Times find that they can no longer spin for the most intelligent man ever to hold the office, what can possibly happen next?
Several times already today, I've heard liberals retort that "This all started under Bush!". And they're right.
To which I respond, "So now you agree with me that we're now in the middle of Bush's 4th term"?
John, I think Bush had a better grasp of economics, or at least better advisers....
Emmentaler, I've often thought that if we did not know each other bitd, we well could have, and people we knew DID...
@Pete(Detroit), I have to disagree. The only major difference between Bush and Obama economically was the tax cuts. Beyond that, they only differed in scale. Bush implimented multiple "stimulus" plans to revive the economy several times. Bush never resisted the expansion of the government sector.
My point is that if someone hates Bush for his economic and security policies, then they should really hate Obama, which has taken the worst of the Bush policies and put them on steroids. They only reason they don't has to be either abject ignorance, or blind ideological obedience.
@Emmentaler- The "anti-feminist" post from Anonymous has been nuked. Even if it wasn't intended as spam, it had nothing to do with today's cartoon and commentary and so was inappropriate.
Interesting to hear more of your backstory, and your inside scoop on the NSA. I actually think the collection of phone records is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. My assumption is that the government knows pretty much everything about everybody at this point, and our personal privacy was already an illusion.
So the big question is: what will the information be used for? Using data-mining to fight terror actually makes sense - but the many abuses of power shown by the Obama administration makes it frightening because of the potential (make that likelihood) of political abuse.
@Anonymous- I'm pretty sure you fooled the authorities with your disclaimer (grin).
@Chuck- The "nothing to hide" argument is BS (as you've pointed out). Will your friends still have "nothing to hide" when they learn that conservatives are being denied medical care? Or that people who are active in their churches are deemed security risks?
When virtues are treated like crimes (as is the policy with this administration), does anyone really have "nothing to hide?"
@Earl- Exactly right. Having access to all this data is going to be irresistible to those who feel like social engineering is a national security priority.
Need proof? How about going back to September 12 of last year (while the mission in Benghazi was still smoldering) and Michelle Obama declared that obesity was "absolutely the greatest threat to national security." I doubt that Ambassador Stevens would agree.
@Emmentaler- The NY Times is backing down already? Man, that pig didn't fly long...
@John the Econ- Much of this did start under Bush, and the libs screamed bloody murder about it. I remember librarians declaring that they would burn book checkout records before they would let the government find out who was reading "The Anarchist's Cookbook."
But when B. Hussein took office, the Left shut up like a clam, delighted that their leader had so much power, and so much willingness to abuse it.
And where, by the way, is there any evidence that Bush singled out liberal groups for government abuse?
@Pete(Detroit)- It's a small world (and getting smaller)- and yet nobody ever remembers seeing Obama at Columbia University. Which might seem a little off topic, but as long as we're talking about personal data, isn't it odd that the president has all of his hermetically sealed?
@John the Econ- No question that Big Government only got bigger under Bush. I sometimes thought that it was simply his way of buying support for the War on Terror from the Dems, but on reflection he never seemed like a true small government conservative.
That being said, I live in the Dallas area and keep hoping I'll have an opportunity to shake the man's hand someday. He made mistakes, but I believe he's a very good man. I do not believe that of Barry Soetoro.
Kinda reminds me of George Carlin saying that back in the day (50's? 60's?), instead of saying "Hello", they used to answer the phone with "F*ck Hoover!".
And back in the paleolithic days of email, at one point in time there was an optional feature in some email clients to randomly insert some hot keywords at the end of your message on the assumption that this would trigger the gubmint programs that scanned for them.
Well this is one American patriot who highly values the liberty and freedom that the constitution of the United States of America affords me as a legal citizen!
There with that simple statement I have probably set myself in the sights of those who truly fear free men. I wonder how long it will be before I hear the "knock" on the door?
As I mentioned a week ago, I'm reading a book covering the Nuremburg trials, and it contains a raft of info about Hitler's plans AND his mindset.
On August 15, 1940, Hitler ordered the attack on Britain with 2,600 assorted aircraft. This went on for months. The nazis lost 2,500 aircraft during this time plus a huge number of elite airmen. Nevertheless, just like Obama, being the psycho that he was, even in the face of advisors saying that the invasion was not possible at the time, he STILL pretty much decided to push straight ahead, regardless of the huge loss of life and everything else.
I see a US president willing to tear down whatever it takes to get his way.
Uncanny. History sure does repeat.
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