I am absolutely appalled at what I have seen the last couple of days….
For one we have Google, wikipedia and others participating in an online protest over SOPA legislation. We also have Los Angeles passing a condom mandate, and let me tell ya porners are all up in arms, threatening to leave L.A. ( They won’t because nobody else would have them) They are also threatening to photograph the inspectors and even the drooling imbeciles on ADT are talking about how can this happen in a Democracy…hello you morons we live in a Republic NOT a Democracy. Yes everyone is all up in arms about something.
Here’s my question. Where was all this uproar when G W Bush and Congress enacted ad signed into law the abhorrent “Patriot Act”? Where were they when Obama and the Congress made the NDAA 2012 law? These people usurped 200 year old constitutionally protected rights, they shit on the very document they swore an oath to uphold and where was all the outcry about that?
Fortunately I probably won’t live long enough to have to deal with the real repercussions of this. I hope I live long enough to see an overthrow of the tyranny that is taking hold in Washington DC but I am not holding my breath.
And what will you people do in 2012? I know what you will do, you will restaff Washington DC with the same criminal scumbags that got us into this mess, same as you have done every election. Then you will bitch and moan that it’s the other parties fault that it will be more difficult for you to steal porn now.
Then you will kneel and lick the boot of your oppressors.
5 Responses
I think are country has become a nation of people that sit back and say bad thing can not happen because other people will step in and not allow that to happen. They can not take away our freedom because someone will stop them but I will not be the one. The common excuse used in porn industry if you ignore this issues they will go away. How is that excuse working for porn industry, by the way??? Not working well, all because those issues continue to get worse and they do not fade away. It’s not just the porn industry that ignores important issues so does the US goverment. We the people think we’ll ingornore what there doing while our freedoms get trashed. The spend our hard earned tax money recklessly saying it’s all for best because we do not scream stop. We must protect our freedom and become involved and see these things we hold most dear … DISAPPEAR!.
Nation of Morons? Not really. More like a Nation of people too busy to give a crap, unless it hurts them specifically. Or perhaps better, One Nation Under Limbaugh.
Dittohead, indeed!
Seriously, the Patriot Act and NDAA both are played with the same bend to them: Get the terrorists. Those that discuss the implications outside of terrorism are often written off as quacks, or as “terrorist simps”. To question those laws is to be somewhat or even completely unpatriotic. It’s a no win situation for those who would consider the implications.
However, I don’t buy the scare mongering side of things too much. Your rights are not usurped, the constitution didn’t disappear. At best, these acts put up a small fence around your rights, and make it slightly harder to get to them. More importantly, it makes it very hard for those who should not have those rights to claim them. It’s not a great situation, but there are few other choices that can work to counter terrorism, without significantly impacting the American way of life.
Can you imagine having to apply for a Visa for air or train travel inside or outside of the US? That is the alternative. Can you imagine having every visitor to the US be forced to apply for a visa, to be given a electronic tracking ankle device, and being forced to call in and contact authorities every 12 hours to report their location? All of those things could be done without breaking the constitution. Can you imagine where being in a car from out of town is “probable cause” for a police stop? It’s not outside the realm of the constitution.
You have to play one against the other. Doing nothing is unacceptable.
For SOPA (and similar attempts to deal with piracy) the same situation applies: The government realizes that they cannot continue to do nothing. The internet is lawless, out of control, and so far out of their reach in any timely manner. So much crime against Americans is committed online now, mostly centered on fraud from fake sales to identity theft. They understand that they need to take steps to regulate, before it becomes too late.
The internet blackouts are a straight response from those who make their living off of taking or using other people’s content without permission, those who “grift” content for their sites. They feel the pressure. The public joins and supports them, because the public (morons that they can be) wants the same free lunch. Nobody is thinking past the ends of their noses, nobody is seeing the whole mess swirling around the bowl heading down the drain. They are there for the free lunch now.
Do you remember the great phrase used by many in the internet business? “Greed is good”. It’s also short term, which is what the blackouts are all about.
Yesterday, the internet changed forever. Those who blacked out and those that support them just haven’t realized yet that they signed their own death warrants.
You get the government you deserve.
I understand about not buying in to the scaremongering too much–but I mean, the stories coming from former Guantanamo inmates now (see, e.g., Boumediene), about completely INNOCENT people being imprisoned, people who had absolutely nothing to do with any terroist organization but just had a name similar to someone the military was looking for, and who were then held with no specific charge and no trial for YEARS (7 years in the case of Boumediene)… That really SHOULD terrify you. The government’s current position is that it can do this to American citizens as well. It can do this to YOU. You are nabbed, you disappear for years, you never get to see a lawyer, you are never tried, you are interrogated and tortured, your family has no idea what happened to you. And even if they do know, the only thing they can do is file a habeas petition–and that process will take years. Here’s why–they have no idea where you are being held. So they file the habeas petition where they *think* you were nabbed. Oh, but once it gets to the Supreme Court (and it will!), the government presses its argument that you are being held in some other state, in South Carolina say, and thus the petition has to be filed all over in South Carolina for jurisdictional reasons. 4 years later you *might* get a day in court–if you’re lucky.
Think that’s far fetched? That’s ALREADY happened to an American citizen (see the Padilla case). After the case got up to the Supreme Court for the SECOND time, the government said–“Okay, fine, we’ll let him go.” Thus mooting the case and avoiding review. Then he was criminally prosecuted for things that had NO resemblance at all to that for which he was supposedly designated an enemy combatant in the first place.
There is no reason to suspend the Constitution for these ends. Even Justice Scalia agrees with that. Just have a trial. If you have enough evidence that an American has committed TREASON, then give him a TRIAL and prosecute the fucker. You can interrogate him all you want, fake-promise him a lighter sentence all you want, after the fact. But lets not do EXACTLY what we criticize other countries for–making people disappear and depriving them of those very same rights supposedly guaranteed to them by the paramount law of the land.
Regarding SOPA, there is no doubt that it’s unconstitutional–it’s the same stupid thing, there’s a problem, so lets just give the government the unreviewable power to suspend the Constitution and shut down websites BEFORE any judicial proceeding is had. However, we need to do SOMETHING like SOPA in order to better protect copyright laws. Simple as that.
I just continue to cling to the belief that we can achieve both of these ends–protect the nation and protect copyrights–without treating the Constitution like it was optional.
@SlavojLiraut – That stuff does terrify me, as it should anyone who sees the large picture of what is going on. Unfortunately, Google, Wikipedia, Reporters Without Borders, and the others are nowhere to be seen when it comes to such issues. And that’s the problem in a nutshell, everyone, people and corporations, are only out for themselves. And that includes people like you and me.
As much as I disagree with many of the real issues at hand, I’m not going to inconvenience myself over it because there is nothing I could do about it even if I wanted to. Instead I voted with my feet and left, where they can still find me if they wanted to but there is no reason they would want me, as I stopped hanging out with my Hezbollah buddies a years ago. 😉