FIGHTING BACK: My Experience with NSA, AT&T, and Verizon
Thu May 11, 2006 at 07:21:13 PM PDT
I'm outraged that the Bush Administration is
scrutinizing my phone records without a warrant and without probable cause.
It violates the Shared Storage Act, Section 2703(c). Another section of the same Act provides for a private right of action by phone customers.
In other words, if you have phone service, you don't have to wait for the Democrats to get off their butts; don't have to wait for another day of Snow-jobs and WHite-washes; don't have to wait for another round of Senator Spector's kabuki hearings. You can get on the phone (irony alert) with your service provider today, and demand action.
I started tonight. Follow me below the fold for my experience:
How Do I Love Thee, Richard Cohen? Let Me Count the Ways.
Tue May 09, 2006 at 09:30:27 PM PDT
Dear Mr. Cohen,
I'm sure you did not find Stephen Colbert's keynote address to the WH Correspondents' Dinner any funnier than President Bush did, for the simple reason that you were every bit as much in the crosshairs. I watched the video, and the press audience were amply amused by his first several digs at Bush. Then the first salvo was fired in their direction ("the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world"). From then on, it was mostly stunned silence as Colbert went right after DC press establishmentarians such as yourself: sycophantic, credulous stenographers who grope for the smelling salts any time some gauche, extra-Beltway Cassandra expresses naked anger or outrage over the state of our governance.
Katherine Harris: She's HOT--and you KNOW it.
Fri Apr 21, 2006 at 01:59:15 PM PDT
It's Funny Friday--
and time for a Cruella
Haiku-ing contest!
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Kat Harris (R-MILF)
perched upon a horse's ass...
anti-gravitas?
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Bush to unfurl 'plan-esque' New Orleans strategy?
Mon Jan 30, 2006 at 06:07:50 PM PDT
Conversations with Red People
Sun Mar 06, 2005 at 12:55:06 PM PDT
Trust fund 101
R: La, la-la, la-la, the Social Security trust fund doesn't exist!
D: Really? That's an interesting view. What's in the fund now?
R: Just worthless government IOUs!
D: What kind of government IOUs? Are they the kind you write on a napkin and tape to the refrigerator?
R: Uhh...actually, they're U.S. Treasury Bonds.
D: Those would be the Treasury Bonds that millions of Americans, including our President, rely on for their retirement?
R: Erm, well...
D: As I've said, an interesting view. How did those bonds get there?
'Twas the Fight Before Christmas: A Long Winter's RANT
Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 09:45:24 PM PDT
Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the Conservative Blowhard Bund have hauled out the pitchforks (yes, again) and are accusing the ACLU and the Secular Multicultural Left of Conspiring to Strip the Christianity out of Christmas and Generally Throwing a Wet Blanket on Holiday Cheer by substituting "Happy Holidays!" for "Merry Christmas!"
Red staters are encouraged to fight back by flinging the verboten phrase in the face of liberal Newspeak-ers, and by enthusiastically celebrating the Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name with copious overt religiosity.
Minority Leader Reid: Scalia for Chief Justice!
Mon Dec 06, 2004 at 09:41:12 PM PDT
OK, tell me again how we're supposed to be patient and understanding with Yet Another Mild-Mannered Red-State Minority Leader...who
supports Antonin Fucking Scalia for Chief Justice!
Partisans on both sides of the debate over judicial nominees voiced displeasure yesterday with incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid's comments indicating that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could make an acceptable nominee for chief justice.
In an interview Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," the Nevada Democrat said that although he often disagrees with Scalia, he could support him to be chief justice of the United States because he is "one smart guy."
Got that? He's one smart guy. Check. No need to look at actual jurisprudence, ideology, or any of that complicated stuff. Reid also says Clarence Thomas is an "embarassment" to the SC, and I agree with that. Of course, my main reason is that he's fused at the hip to the "smart guy" Reid wants to be our new overlord.
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE
Tue Nov 02, 2004 at 02:24:13 PM PDT
I've struggled with my emotions for all the many miles of this long, strange, surreal journey...bound up in the unrelenting tension between my unparalleled rage and my hope and admiration for John Kerry and a bright future. I wondered which one would dominate my actual voting experience.
The answer? Both! I had two widely disparate scripts looping in my head as I thanked the poll volunteers and walked away from the precinct; I'll just share them with you as they came to me.
November Surprise: Here it comes!
Sun Oct 31, 2004 at 10:47:19 PM PDT
Within the next 24 hours, I can almost guarantee you the news media will be saturated with breathless reports of Shock & Awe, version 11.2,
location Fallujah.
Last month, fearing casualty reports and world outrage over "collateral damage" (i.e., DEAD & MAIMED IRAQI CIVILIANS) they held back when they could've gone in much earlier. This has caused a lot of media types to assume that Bush/Rove would instead wait until after the election. Not so. By going in at the last possible moment, they enjoy all the jingo-kneejerk "benefits" (reminding voters we're "really at war", appearing proactive, etc.) while news of all the negatives/true costs will be safely delayed until after the vote.
KEY: Combine Osama + Fallujah!
Fri Oct 29, 2004 at 04:45:29 PM PDT
I think the best way to address this tape is to recall the other October Surprise that's in the works...the one they actually planned. That would be the
imminent assault on Fallujah. A couple days before the election, there's just enough time to tap into the jingoism and reinforce the "we're at WAR!" meme while controlling any horror stories, KIA, etc until afterward. Of course, the WH has nothing to do with the timing; it's all up to Allawi. (How convincing!)
The key is to link the two memes and allow the resurgence of bin Laden to highlight the folly of our continued crusade in Iraq. Start cranking out those LTTEs! Here's mine, just submitted to my hometown paper in MI:
BREAKING: GOP's evolutionary ancestors discovered!
Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 12:56:17 PM PDT
Scientists have discovered fossil evidence that finally sheds light on the greatest mystery of our time:
How in the hell did these rabid Bush supporters evolve? Now, at long last, we have the
answer:
Scientists have discovered a tiny species of ancient human that lived 18,000 years ago on an isolated island east of the Java Sea -- a prehistoric hunter in a "lost world" of giant lizards and miniature elephants.
These "little people" stood about three feet tall and had heads the size of grapefruit.
[...] "even though we have evidence of intelligence [in the new species], they were clearly subject to isolation and dwarfing."
[...] The small brain, however, "is a big surprise," Potts said, a major departure from the general evolutionary trend -- that the human brain grew over time.
Fallujah attack before election?
Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 12:25:40 PM PDT
Recent
reports indicate we're bulding up to a big push against Sunni "insurgents" in Fallujah and Ramadi. The main question is the timing of any such assault. The conventional wisdom was once that Bush would wait until after the election to avoid embarrassing casualty figures (on both US and Iraqi sides) and the reminder to the public that, hey, we're STILL fighting major battles in this war 18 months later! Combine that with the leaked plans to send
20,000+ more US troops, the
new $70 bn appropriation request, and persistent talk about a
D-R-A-F-T, and you've got the kind of political turkee the pResident doesn't like, served up ice cold in November.
[more below the fold]
Mallaby the Annoying Cohenesque Warhawk
Mon Oct 18, 2004 at 01:21:19 PM PDT
Sebastian Mallaby has just spewed his latest bit of
tortured warhawkery in the pages of the Washington Post. It's hard to excerpt, but here's a sampling:
Perhaps I am just paranoid? The nature of catastrophic risks is that you can't even begin to measure them. There's no pattern of past nuclear attacks from which to derive the chances of another one, so nobody can know what the right level of response is. In preferring not to go back to pre-Sept. 11 policies -- to the time when America was popular, but al Qaeda was plotting its attack -- I'm guessing that the danger of more and worse attacks is real. In preferring to continue the Iraq war, I'm guessing that it's worth crushing the terrorists in the Sunni Triangle, because otherwise they will come after us. And I am guessing, moreover, that the world's only superpower does actually have the means to face down the suicide bombers and stabilize Iraq, provided its determination does not waver.
He supported the war, got some "reproachful" e-mail, and decided to write a defensive Richard Cohen-style navel gazer that glibly parrots Bush's stump speech. At the end, he asks for yet more e-mail remonstrance. Perhaps some of you will oblige him; here's mine:
Mr Mallaby:
What so deeply frustrates me about your latest effort is that you--like almost all war supporters--INSIST upon conflating "terrorism" with "Iraq" as though the two memes were wholly interchangeable. Having warmed up on the duality of pre- and post-9/11 worldviews, you rush on to speak fervently of "the terrorists in the Sunni triangle" as if they'd always been lurking there as our principal enemy, waiting for the right moment to attack America. As this sign so eloquently puts it:
Liberal Schadenfreude
Sun Oct 10, 2004 at 01:27:08 PM PDT
I've been reading
arguments from Bush supporters about what could be called the
schadenfreude of Democrats and liberals. To hear some of you tell it, we're all just sitting around rooting for more soldiers to die and the economy to tank so Kerry can win. Apart from being deeply insulting, this assertion is highly hypocritical. It isn't
schadenfreude to hope that those who have made or advocated bad decisions will be forced to accept public (read: electoral) responsibility for the inevitable consequences of those decisions. This is the president's war, begun over our emphatic opposition. The American Left has not planted a single IED, nor has it issued a single stop-loss order. We were opposed to the inhumanity of Saddam Hussein back when many who now work for the White House were propping him up.
You Bush supporters often speak as though "trying to do the right thing" were enough; as if results were irrelevant. This comes straight from the fundie wing of your party, where it's all about what's in your soul; if you're right with the Lord then nothing else matters. When your wisdom is the Word of God, there's no need to check whether the numbers add up. If it feels Right, do it, and damn the details. Hence Bush's stunning lack of regard for reality and inconvenient facts which are the direct outgrowth of his actions. He and his surrogates will gladly bask in the reflected (or manufactured) glory of selected favorable statistics, taking credit for schools and soccer fields, posing with puppets like Ayad Allawi, or standing astride a carrier-deck with a Mission Accomplished banner. Along with the barrage of ever-evolving rationales and arm-twisting false dilemmas, these sparkly PR events help you sell the operation to an unconverted, secular center by offering them a veneer of rationality layered upon a rickety substrate of carefully chosen facts.
What you would rather not see--and would strongly prefer the nation not see--are the not-so-felicitous consequences: flag-draped coffins, maimed children, bereaved wives, tortured prisoners, and the rest of the ugly collateral detritus of your elective war. At best, when such things do obtrude upon the national consciousness despite your best efforts to suppress them, you offer us blame-shifting ("a few bad apples") and facile comparisons to those you've already condemned as evil. Suddenly you're consummate relativists: "You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet"--but it's all OK, you inform us, because Saddam was so much worse. He had rape rooms! He gassed his own people. And you're correct: he did. A lot y'all fucking cared, back when you were selling him weapons and sending Don Rumsfeld to shake his hand. You support equally repugnant "allies" now--the names change but the crimes stay the same.
BushCo's Duelfer report counterthrust
Fri Oct 08, 2004 at 12:01:49 AM PDT
Well, judging by the flurry of articles in Friday's WaPo, it's started. Faced with the stark appraisal that Saddam destroyed his WMD and that his capacity to produce WMD was diminishing through 2003, the Right is now eagerly seizing upon the notion that Saddam was successfully
eroding the sanctions and cutting deals for banned military materiel with the help of France, Russia, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, don't forget Poland, and, oh yeah, some
"US persons" and firms who mustn't be named just now.
It's unclear how hard they'll try to nail down the specifics for the domestic audience. For one thing, BushCo is clearly scared of further alienating allies (four of the named countries are Coalition members) in the current political climate, as if blind-siding them with the accusations and allegations in this report weren't sufficient to do just that.
It also isn't clear how well-supported the various allegations are--or, if true, how relevant they are to the issue of WMD. Josh Marshall says that much of the hoopla over oil vouchers where UN and foreign officials are concerned comes from our old friend Ahmed Chalabi, which shouldn't surprise anyone here. Also, the main WaPo article on illicit arms deals paints a picture involving conventional items such as engines for medium-range rockets, anti-aircraft radar, and machine tools.
dKos credited in new Frank Rich NYT column!
Thu Oct 07, 2004 at 06:40:00 PM PDT
The redoubtable Frank Rich has a
hard-hitting article on the Bush media implosion, with liberal parallels to the Nixon-Kennedy race. Good reading in any case, but it's worth noting that we here at dKos get a prominent mention:
But the liberal blog Daily Kos had the big picture right: on Sept. 30, "months of meticulous image manipulation" by the Bush-Cheney forces went "down the toilet in 90 minutes."
Which U.S. firms are traitors?
Thu Oct 07, 2004 at 03:14:52 PM PDT
BC04 now seem to be
hanging their hats on SH's alleged systematic corruption of the U.N. oil-for-food program. Coldblue Steele has already noted that
Cheney was floating the idea of lifting sacntions back in 2001. Reading that excellent diary reminded me of this passage in a
NYT/Reuters article discussing Saddam's list of entities who had accepted oil vouchers (bribes) in exchange for help in circumventing UN sanctions:
Several U.S. firms were on the list but their names were not released because of privacy laws.
Of course, all the foreigners are given explicit mention. Since the Bush campaign is pushing this meme now, I think it's highly relevant to ask just which "U.S. firms" were aiding and abetting our "sworn enemy" in his attempt to pursue his WMD objectives. I don't think Saddam was trading oil for Big Gulps from 7-11. Is it possible we'd find names like Halliburton on that list, just maybe? Any Bush-Cheney contributors?
Bush Iraq rationale now DOA
Wed Oct 06, 2004 at 05:54:47 PM PDT
I know we're tired of hashing and rehashing this issue, but I really think it's time for Kerry to drop the hammer on Bush's last point of retreat with respect to invading Iraq.
The new Duelfer report, described here, here, and here, doesn't just tell us there were no WMD stockpiles--that's old news to anyone who's been paying attention, although repetition is a good thing. The report states clearly--and the print media are picking it up--that
- Saddam had no WMD. He destroyed his stockpiles after GW I.
- Inspections and sanctions backed by credible force (the kind Kerry voted to give Bush in 2002) were devastatingly effective in eliminating existing WMD and suppressing further R&D.
- Saddam's capacity to produce WMD (aka WMD-related program activity) was waning steadily in the years leading up to the invasion.
In other words, Bush's own inspector tells us that Saddam was left with little more than the personal ambition to resume WMD programs after escaping the sanctions--and even that weak conclusion is based largely on inference. This blows the "gathering threat" BS out of the water, and gives the lie to Bush's glib freewheeling assertions about "more resolutions and inspections,
that wasn't gonna work!" At Friday's debate, Kerry should take time to squash this meme like a roach before flaying Bush alive on domestic issues.
