Food, Teeth, Ice, Chopsticks And Cheesy Perfume
May 12, 2006
OD’d On Politics? How About A Bit On Sex And Money?
May 12, 2006
We are tired of politics, so we decided to post something about sex and money. Actually, we're reposting a piece because of a conversation we just shared with a very smart friend (no, not Isabella Rosellini). Think of it as a Christmas present 7 months early.
Nowadays, it's 'show me the money.' It used to be, show me what you did with the money, but that became an exercise in moral relativism.
Too many people understood that what you did with money really spoke to who you really are. Money itself, is not a bad thing. That is the easy part. The pursuit of money is not so easy to define, because in reality, it is what you do with the money that defines the pursuit of money. In healthy self expression, money is no more than a tool. How we decide to spend that money on ourselves and on behalf of our community, determines whether or not that 'spiritual' side of us, that part of us which transcends our primal and basal needs, will determine our identity. If we decide to use our money as a way to express our higher selves, money can reflect the best of us. If we use money as an expression of our greedy and shallow needs, well, money will only reflect selfish and self centered ideals. Read the rest of this entry »
Rightwing Reality
May 12, 2006
Rightwing Nuthouse has a terrific post, Hysterical Drama Queens Of The Left, that dovetails nicely with own post highlighting liberal hypocrisy.
Rick quotes CNN's Jack Cafferty's unbalanced remarks:
Cafferty: We all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, cause he might be all that stands between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He’s vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records, and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.
Shortly after 9/11, AT7T, Verizon, and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the War on Terror, President Bush says. Why don’t you go find Osama bin Laden, and seal the country’s borders, and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?
Rick goes on to say that
In another age, another time when such drivel would have led to the newscaster’s immediate dismissal (or earned him a trip to the sanatorium so that he could dry out properly) Cafferty would suffer the consequences of his on-air breakdown. Instead, he is lionized, feted, elevated to sainthood all because his outburst reflects exactly what they have been saying on conspiracy laden websites for years; that George Bush is hell bent on turning this country into a dictatorship, that 9/11 was part of the plot to make him king, and that there are top secret government concentration camps that are already built and just waiting to be filled up with all the courageous liberals who “speak truth to power.”
Nice company you’re keeping there, Jack.
In a short paragraph, Rick Moran pretty much sums up the political climate- and in doing so, sheds what may be a bit of light into the hidden future. The American people will not stand for the kind of politics that have become 'business as usual.'
As we have noted in Phones, Dems And Credibility, the government already knows your phone number and address. The Library of Congress has a secret stash of phone books.
For those you having phone sex on your 'nights and weekends free' cellphone, your neighbor is more likely to be listening than the guy at the NSA. He's looking out for terrorists, while you're…feeling insulted.
“Really, get a life.”
May 12, 2006
Alexandra has a bang up roundup of links, ideas and thoughts on the NSA story.
Rehash Of An Old Story is a keeper- because what she looks at is a non negotiable look at reality.
"There is nothing there that we do not already know. Americans are in agreement. Really, get a life."
Go ahead, try and argue with that.
Remember this? Wiretap Outage- Laughable Hypocrisy!
In the early 1990’s, the President and Hillary Clinton violated the privacy rights of their perceived political enemies by wrongly accessing and misusing (emp- SC&A) the FBI files of the Reagan and first Bush Administration staffers, among others.
Over 900 files were illegally gathered. This scandal became known as “Filegate". In an effort to discredit the women who charged President Clinton with sexual misconduct, personal files and papers were illegally obtained and released. The courts found, under the Privacy Act, that privacy of Linda Tripp and Kathleen Willey had been violated.
When faced with discovery, the Clinton-Gore White House further compounded their legal troubles by launnching a cover-up and and failing to turn over documents as required by subpoena. (Learn more about White House E-mail Scandal)
To be clear, Filegate was about some 350 to 900 files of American citizens considered political enemies, that somehow ended up in the Clinton White House.
We don't recall similar outrage- and that should have been the order of the day, given the then White House prediliction to use private investigators to engage in 'dirty tricks' and intimidation. Certainly, the White House did not keep both houses of Congress informed that FBI files of the 'enemies' list were being sent to Mrs Clinton. Outrage? By whom? The same people that gave the Clinton White House a free pass when they violated the rights of political enemies? Those American citizens weren't terror suspects…
Hypocrisy it seems, has few limits.
Phones, Dems And Credibility
May 12, 2006
From USA Today:
The NSA apparently has not collected the actual content of the phone conversations, just the numbers dialed. That distinction is key in determining whether the program violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures. The U.S. Supreme Court has drawn a legal line between collecting phone numbers and routing information, and obtaining the content of phone calls. In a ruling in 1979, the court said in Smith v. Maryland that a phone company's installation, at police request, of a device to record numbers dialed at a home did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
"We doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial," Justice Harry Blackmun wrote. He noted the court had said "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." Read the rest of this entry »
