One thing I can do without…
…is the patronizing attitude by assorted media whores towards those actually give a damn about freedom and the rule of law. Case in point: TIME Magazine. No sooner had the Democowards in Congress bent over for the new FISA law, did we get this slap in the face disguised as a pat on the head:
MASSIMO CALABRESIA compromise deal to extend the federal government’s domestic spying powers, passed by the House on Friday and expected to sail through the Senate next week, has drawn attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. The right is unhappy at concessions made to protect civil liberties; the left is furious that the Democrats allowed the domestic spying powers to be extended in any form. Much of the latter’s rage has been directed against Nancy Pelosi, the liberal House Speaker who was instrumental in negotiating the deal — attacking her on the internet and virtually shutting down her switchboard with complaints. One blogger called Pelosi “disturbingly disoriented” and said the deal she and her allies have cut will “eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, exempt their largest corporate contributors from the rule of law, and endorse the most radical aspects of the Bush lawbreaking regime.”
As usual, the boldface is my doing. Where to begin? Let’s start with the standard technique of the dishonest media whore: The Golden Mean Fallacy. “Gee whiz! Some Republicans don’t like the bill because it doesn’t mandate the use of castor oil on Keith Olbermann [or some other fascist-minded reason], and some Democrats don’t like it either because they are in league with Dirty Fucking Hippies, and DFHs are the embodiment of evil! So this must be a good bill because the fascists get EVERYTHING they want and the DFHs were told to piss off.”
This kind of horseshit might work for TIME, but not a reputable publication.
But wait -there’s more!
First of all, Pelosi wanted the issue off the table for the political campaign this fall. Despite anti-GOP sentiment in the country and record low popularity for President George W. Bush, Democrats still trail on national security and that could hurt them in Congress. Stonewalling the Administration and letting the surveillance powers expire could have cost the Democrats swing seats they won in 2006 as well as new ones they have a chance to steal from Republicans this November. “For any Republican-leaning district this would have been a huge issue,” says a top Pelosi aide, who estimates that as many as 10 competitive races could have been affected by it.
Off the table -just like impeachment is “off the table”. Nice going, Nancy Pelosi. Just when I thought you had debased your office to the point of no return, you debase it well beyond the point of no return. Before I waste time contacting my member of Congress, could you do me a favor Mrs. Pelosi? Could you draw up a list of all the other things that are “off the table”. I already know that ending the Iraq War, impeachment, and now the 4th Amendment to the Constitution have been removed. What else? I’d like to know before I waste money on postage when you’ve already decided that certain issues won’t get a hearing.
As political strategy it doesn’t make sense. A voter in a red district who favors wiretapping anyone government officials want to stalk is voting Republitard. Have the Democowards learned anything? It doesn’t matter if you give the Republitards nothing, some of what they want, most of what they want, everything they want, or more they could have ever hoped for (like this FISA bill), the GOP is going to call you a coward, a traitor and an accomplice to “terrorism” -an outrage, considering that only the charge of cowardice has any merit, though not for the reasons the GOP thinks.
Pelosi realized that conservative freshman Democrats like Nancy Boyda of Kansas and centrist Southern representatives were willing to squeeze the Administration for a compromise as long as she got one in the end. That made it possible for her to let the Protect America Act — which passed last August and granted full approval to the Adminstration’s expansive surveillance powers — expire in February, and set up her negotiating position through the spring.
This reporter is either 100% retarded or a shameless liar. The Blue Dogs aren’t willing to squeeze anything out of anyone, unless you mean getting on their knees and squeezing a hot, sticky load on their faces from the phone companies and the Republitards. The phone companies threw around some money, told these scumbags to jump and they said “How high” and “Can I have another facial -PLEASE?” By the way, what exactly is Pelosi’s “negotiating position”? “You can have everything you want -and then some” ?
This TIME article, like Pelosi’s stewardship of the House gets worse and worse:
Letting the PAA expire was a risk — the Administration pilloried Democrats for being soft on terrorism.
Democrats will be pilloried no matter what they do. If anything, caving in guarantees that the next whipping will be that much harder, since the weak and cowardly make ideal targets for bullies.
But Pelosi successfully parlayed it into specific improvements. For example, under Administration proposals, the telecoms would have received full retroactive immunity from lawsuits brought by civil libertarians alleging they violated the fourth amendment by complying with Administration requests to conduct wiretaps following 9/11. In negotiations with Pelosi’s office, the telecoms offered a compromise: Let a judge decide if the letters they received from the Administration asking for their help show that the government was really after terrorist suspects and not innocent Americans.
The last bit assumes that John Ashcroft and Dubya’s other flunkies would be stupid enough to send an official memo to a major corporations that reads:
For the record, we’re not really looking for terrorists. We just want to dig up dirt on people we don’t like.
And of course, this “compromise” is nothing of the sort, unless the Democowards actually did get something, such as Dick Cheney’s solemn promise that he won’t use things he got from those wiretaps against Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer and the rest. It doesn’t take George Lucas’ imagination to think that maybe those wiretaps that began in February 2001 hit the jackpot, and the Democowards keep knuckling under out of fear that those e-mail pictures of this member of congress snorting lines of coke off the scrotum of that farm animal will be made public if the phone companies ever go through the legal wringer.
What’s more, somewhere in hell the Nuremberg defendants who ended up dangling on the gallows must be having a laugh. The notion that following orders is an excuse when it comes to breaking the law was rejected by the civilized world (a group of nations the United States used to belong to, but quit when the Crawford Caligula took over) at the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi, the “I vass just followink ortersss” defense is now going to be official U.S. policy.
Pelosi’s negotiators felt that was a significant concession.
Since when is giving up everything and getting nothing in return winning a concession of any kind, let alone a “significant” one?
The California district judge who will make the decision in such cases has been sympathetic to some of the civil libertarians’ claims. And an adverse decision can be appealed to the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Save this kind of bullshit for the stupid people, will ya? If any of that is true ( a judge being “sympathetic” to “some” of the claims is Hackese for “Drop dead, plaintiffs”), the telecom companies will appeal to the Supreme Court, which will throw out the lawsuits, and millions of people, whose freedoms were gang-raped by the White House, Congress, Courts and phone companies will be told to sit and suck on it.
The telecoms are casting it as a victory, and Pelosi’s aides acknowledge the telecoms are likely to win immunity in court.
Maybe that should give our TIME hack a smidgen of a clue. Oh I forgot, this person is an imbecile.
But they’re getting less than they would have in A Senate version of the bill, and they will hardly have a free ride once litigation and lobbying fees have been added up.
Let’s see, the Senate bill grants full immunity. So does the House bill. But the House bill might cost the phone companies a little more bribe money. Given the way the Democowards got on their knees so quickly, I’ll wager the bribes could have been paid out of Petty Cash. In a way, this might be useful as a sliding scale for immunity for other corporate crimes. For example, the next time a Halliburton employee gets gang-raped, or when Blackwater brigands commit murder, we can come up with a rough figure for how much they’ll have to pay in bribes to be given immunity.
But there’s still more. I swear there’s more concentrated stupidity in this one article than in a full hour of Tucker Carlson:
Pelosi also got other improvements, including a review of and report on Bush’s domestic surveillance program by the Justice Department inspector general
Put that together with 50 cents and you can get a copy of USA Today.
and a provision making clear that Congress does not give the President a free pass on complying with domestic surveillance laws during wartime. “This bill strengthens Congressional oversight,” Pelosi argues.
So a bill that gives the president unlimited power to wiretap people and immunity to private sector thugs who do it does not give him those powers? Pull my other leg while you’re at it.
And now we get to the good stuff:
Pelosi had another reason for backing the compromise: unlike some on the left, she actually believes domestic surveillance laws needs updating in light of the new terror threats. “We can’t go without a bill,” she said on the House floor Friday, “That’s simply just not an option.” Existing U.S. surveillance law, passed in 1978, needs to be improved, she believes, not just to protect Americans at home but to protect U.S. troops in the field. “Our troops in the field depend on timely and reliable intelligence,” she said.
Let me get this straight: If the phone companies have to defend themselves in court when they break the law, American troops will be in danger, right? The level of stupidity is jaw-dropping. American troops are in danger, Speaker Pelosi, because you lied when you said you would try to end the war and bring them home. As the record shows, the Congress has not done a god damned thing to stop the war, nor are they going to. Instead, you give the Sadist-In-Chief MORE money than he asks for, MORE police state powers than he asks for, and immunity from civil and criminal law for his thugs.
Pelosi’s centrist compromise doesn’t just help House Democrats in the fall. It also gives the party’s presumptive nominee for President, Barack Obama, a chance to move to the center on national security. “Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay,” Obama said in a statement Friday. “So I support the compromise.”
We’ll see just how well they do. If they win, it will be without my vote.
