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</p>
<p>How is this (#49) not a rehashing of the OP, Dig?</p>
<p>That’s exactly what I wanted to get back to, the original question (versus going down the same path so many other threads have trod).</p>
<p>Oh stop. You once again spew the same phony premises and request response to rhetorical excess. And this is not “going down the same path so many other threads have trod?” If I wanted this, I could start reading CGM’s threads. I expect more of you.</p>
<p>Driver…I don’t see that you have answered the question, however same pathish it seems to you!</p>
<p>I’m curious. Can you answer this question honestly? FWIW, I won’t respond with a laundry list of rebuttals (can’t speak for the others tho).</p>
<p>I’ll be happy to answer Dig’s rephrased query when he makes it a serious one…instead of a “when did you stop beating your wife?” question.</p>
<p>digmedia:
I haven’t read this whole thread, but I’ve been asking the “conservatives” on here the same question for quite awhile. (With no interesting responses I might add.) I have to assume anyone who isn’t outraged by Bush is simply a FAKE conservative.</p>
<p>I liked the editorial in my paper today:</p>
<p>Government likes secrecy for itself, not for you</p>
<p>I think that sort of sums it up. <em>Fake conservatives.</em></p>
<p>I can’t speak for Dig, but here is my rephrased version.</p>
<p>Do you currently support all of President Bush’s policies? Is there anything that the administration could do that could cause you to waiver in your support? </p>
<p>This is why I likes zoos’s response. Clearly a conservative, he/she (I think she?) is able to look at the administration realistically and see both pros and cons.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I think this is a good exercise for liberals as well…to try to look with a different lens at “liberal ideas”.</p>
<p>Weenie: Don’t be a weenie. If you want to have a discussion of your editorial, post a link. Not just the header. But the header makes it so predictable…yes, the administration wants to know about your calls to the Afghani-Pakistani border. Damned intrusive, I must say.</p>
<p>AM: No, I don’t support all of PB’s policies, and there are things that really tick me off. But I support most of what he has done, and the alternative is unthinkable.</p>
<p>Hardknox, I called my Congressman and Senators today about the article in USA Today concerning the monitoring of tens of millions of phone calls in the US and the intention to eventually monitor every call in the USA. This is truely frightening.</p>
<p>Some will argue that it is only data gathering/data mining and not actually listening in on conversations and that if you are not doing anything wrong, why worry. Once phone calls are in a data base the government can develop algorithims identifying people calling political campaign headquarters, known political activists, government employees calling certain reporters, the call records of high profile lawyers, etc. And all this power would be in the hands of the Executive branch of the government. And once the data base is compiled don’t think for a moment that only a Republican President would be tempted to use it for political purposes.</p>
<p>Under this President our constitution is being put through a meat grinder. Yesterday the DoJ had to suspend its investigation of the possible illegal NSA actions related to the FISA courts because its investigators could not obtain the necessary security clearances. Talk about a catch-22!</p>
<p>driver - Since you’re interested (I’m so surprised!) here you go:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/OPINION04/605110340/1041/OPINION[/url]”>http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060511/OPINION04/605110340/1041/OPINION</a></p>
<p>And while I have your attention, I’m wondering: Exactly which policies of PB’s “really tick you off?”</p>
<p>oog:
Let’s see…the NSA has phone numbers with no names attached that it runs through computers to look for patterns, at which point, if alarming terrorist patterns are noted, it goes to the FISA court for warrants in order to obtain personal information. Compare that with the level of knowledge the IRS maintains about you and all of your connections, transactions, finances, etc., and the administrative law courts (read: star chambers) they can drag you through at will. You Chicken Littles are absolutely looney.</p>
<p>Weenie: That’s it??? A headline with another headline attached? Give me a break. Is there anything of substance that supports Henny-Penny? </p>
<p>As to your question, I’m ticked off that Bush hasn’t initiated a program to end voter fraud, I think the illegal immigration issue has been botched, and I want to see him veto some spending bills.</p>
<p>On the plus side, I’m pleased that the tax cuts appear to be on the verge of permanence, and that I will be able to continue taking “more than my fair share” of my own income.</p>
<p>“You Chicken Littles are absolutely looney.”</p>
<p>Hence, the point of this thread.</p>
<p>driver: </p>
<p>What are you talking about – “That’s it??? A headline with another headline attached?” I believe I stated that it was an editorial. Isn’t that what the link points to? Yeah it’s short - it’s a very conservative newspaper and that was all they could muster…</p>
<p>You aren’t a tad disappointed in the Katrina response and current state of affairs there? You aren’t a little disappointed that they never found the weapons of mass destruction? You aren’t a tad upset with the huge growth in government size and spending under Bush? Are you just a little concerned about port security? How about veterans’ benefits? Does the handling of the Iraq war and it’s aftermath work for you? What about the poor getting poorer and the rich getting even incredibly richer while our kids face a debt they’ll never be able to pay? Happy with the endless, embarrassing corruption? Does alienating virtually the entire rest of the world bode well for you? Do you think a government operating in total (well, they wish) secrecy is what the founders had in mind? How about the tremendous growth in the uninsured? Are you for or against torture? For or against locking people up indefinitely with no charges? Terry Schiavo - was that a proud moment for the team? Social security reform - another proud moment? Don’t you wonder just a little bit about the Cheney Energy Task Force?</p>
<p>Oh why do I bother indeed? There will always be a few conservative Republicans just too stuborn or embarrassed to admit they made a mistake (although that number does shrink by the day).</p>
<p>But weren’t we told that our records weren’t being looked at, that only those with terrorist ties were being monitored, that it was only international calls?</p>
<p>gosh, gee, golly, were we fibbed to once again</p>
<p>7 degrees of separation…if I talk to a tour planner who talks to a restaurant owner who talks to his friend who talks to an Iraqi…</p>
<p>So billions of calls are tracked to find patterns, and they told us they weren’t doung that, then we find the are doing that and we are supposed to trust it is ONLY being used to track “terrorist”</p>
<p>when they track peace groups, and we have a HUD director who says he cancelled a contract because the recipient of the contract dislkes the president, and then says, well, it was a made up story, and says, well, it was sort of true, and his people are flaying around saying mistatements and flip flopping, and this is one of Bush’s people, and we look at the rest of Bush’s people, well, gee, what does it take</p>
<p>and the average amount the tax cut will help the average american is $20…who hoo, a third of a gallon of gas for me!!!</p>
<p>Let’s get some facts straight here…</p>
<p>First, Bush’s unwarranted wiretaps are in fact, illegal. Don’t take my word for it, take the American Bar Association’s
<a href=“http://www.abanews.org/docs/domsurvrecommendationfinal.pdf[/url]”>http://www.abanews.org/docs/domsurvrecommendationfinal.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/[/url]”>http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/</a></p>
<p>Second, what’s even more outrageous is that he insists on continuing to use such illegal wiretaps in the name of “national security”, and Bush isn’t the first president to invoke that phrase</p>
<p>The article in the USA Today:</p>
<p>"The agency in charge of a domestic spying program has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, including calls made within the United States, USA Today reported on Thursday.
…
The NSA has “access to records of billions of domestic calls,” USA Today said. Although customers’ names and addresses are not being handed over, “the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information,” it said.</p>
<p>Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and was nominated by Bush on Monday as director of the CIA, would have overseen the call-tracking program, the paper said."</p>
<p>shouldnt surprise anyone…but the scary part is some Republicans are blinded by their fanaticism to the point where they ignore plain facts. Now thats just scary.</p>
<p>“Compare that with the level of knowledge the IRS maintains about you and all of your connections, transactions, finances, etc., and the administrative law courts (read: star chambers) they can drag you through at will. You Chicken Littles are absolutely looney.”</p>
<p>When you give personally identifiable information to the IRS and credit companies, and so forth…you sign a contract that acknowledges your prior knowledge of the terms. What the president did, and still does, is secretly, illegally intrude on hundreds of millions of peoples privacy.</p>
<p>Honestly, I cant understand how people are STILL defending Bush about this…amazing.</p>
<p>quote - The NSA says they’re not listening to converations, they collecting phone records of who called who. And they’ve got the phone records of 10s of millions of Americans. If they’re not doing anything wrong, why is the NSA bothering to log all their phone calls? I don’t think it matters to them if you’re doing anything wrong. As the article said, they want do have the phone records of every American.</p>
<p>referring back to my previous post…and i quote: Taking information about me without my consent is just like stealing. They don’t need the information and aren’t entitled to it just because they ‘say so’.</p>
<p>The last straw for Bush, for me anyways, was when I learned about the pre-war Iraq fiasco…just completely FUBAR’d.</p>
<p>The last straw??? Probably if we find out he got some presidential knee pads for a young intern (and we won’t even need a DNA’d blue dress to convince us – not that that was even enuf for BJC supporters.)</p>
<p>I don’t think anything would prevent the wool from being pulled over their eyes…</p>