Month: May 2006

Another post from John Stephenson of Stop the ACLU

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Hat tip: Pretend Pundit Via ACLU Website:

Responding to reports that phone companies are turning over private details about Americans’ telephone calls to the National Security Agency, the American Civil Liberties Union today launched a nationwide initiative to end illegal government spying.

ACLU affiliates in 20 states today filed complaints with Public Utility Commissions or sent letters to state Attorneys General and other officials demanding investigations into whether local telecommunications companies allowed the NSA to spy on their customers.

“We cannot sit by while the government and the phone companies collude in this massive, illegal and fundamentally unAmerican invasion of our privacy,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “And unfortunately, we cannot wait for Congress to act. The ACLU is mobilizing its members and supporters nationwide to demand investigations into this shocking breach of trust. And we are asking the FCC to use its authority to uncover the facts about how far the president’s illegal spying has gone. The American people want answers.”

True to form, Romero has twisted the facts of this case around to scare the unsuspecting liberal minded, apathetic imbecile who supports him and his anti-American organization. To this point, each and every legal scholar who has looked at the program has agreed that no laws have been broken.

Congressional leaders, including Dick “the dick with the turban” Durban have come out in favor of changing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to cover this type of operation. Each one has touted the benefits and necessities of this program for the national security of the United States and its people.

Democrats are approaching this from the oversight angle. That if the President was given authority to conduct this operation in just the same manner that it already has been, it would provide some oversight with teeth under which the President is less likely to abuse the power.

Republicans are approaching this from the standpoint that the President needs this program and having it written into FISA would provide him with the tools to conduct it.

I agree with both actually. No matter who is in power, it is always possible for power to be abused. But as both parties have recognized the need for the program and both have expressed the need for it to continue, what is the ACLU’s beef?

I’ll tell you what their beef is. They are the perpetual fly in the ointment. If they aren’t causing trouble over each and every thing the federal government does, they feel as though they aren’t doing anything at all. After all, if they agreed with the stance the government takes, their significance would be non-existent.

This is a fund raising campaign. If they make a big enough stink about this, the apathetic morons will give them more money. If by chance they prevail in any one of these many lawsuits that they are planning, then they can circumvent the legislative process and again, they make money off the government.

The ACLU is listed as a non-profit organization. They claim to be non-partisan. But it seems awfully odd that the only members of Congress that are members of the ACLU are Democrats and that the ACLU publicly opposes any proposal sponsored by Republicans. And it seems awfully odd that each time they win a case, they take a larger cut of the settlement than their clients.

The ACLU feeds of the weak minded. They rely on the apathetic uniformed morons who fill out the little form and send it in with their $25 each year to get their little card in the mail so that they can go around saying that they are “card carrying members of the ACLU”. If these people had half the intelligence that they claim to have, they would look into the dealings of the ACLU and come to the same conclusions that we have. That their actual goal is destruction of the United States as we know it.

President Bush and other administration officials have neither confirmed nor denied a USA Today report that the NSA is collecting the calling records of ordinary Americans in its effort to detect the plans of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations.

Bush has said the administration’s anti-terror surveillance programs are legal and constitutional.

The ACLU was planning to file actions with state utility commissions in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Other states were expected to be added later. Source

So the ACLU will sue these companies for helping our government to detect terrorists? All the while, the ACLU has a massive database of its own members, their financial information, and much more private details than the NSA could ever hope for.

Sign the Petition To Stop Taxpayer Funding of the ACLU.

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…pickin’ their nose and reviewing the Da Vinci Code… or sleeeping through the movie or whatever.

How does Dan Brown even get published? Are editors also becoming an ever more subliterate class?

I haven’t read the book or seen the movie, but not for the reasons the “usual suspects” seem to have. I have read two books by Dan Brown. One because it was recommended to me by a friend. (I’ll never take another recommendation by him at face value.) The second because I thought, “The guy can’t be THAT bad a writer–musta been an ‘off’ book.”

No, Dan Brown can’t write worth a damn. Stick figure sterotypes for characters. Basic “facts” on which his stories turned were square away wrong or just plain stupidly assbackwards. Descriptive narrative was sloppy. Dialogue predictable and still unnatural.

I just don’t get how this guy sells books. He misses out on writing truly “Suckitudinous Fiction” only by being a crappy writer who can’t even write a decent story, IMO.

If his characters were believable; if he got his basic facts right; if his narratives were interesting or even credible, then he’d at least be an average writer. But it’s like he doesn’t need to develop the chops to write well, cos he has an audience of folks who haven’t had much exposure to good storytelling.

I just figured that if he got the facts so screwed up in earlier book (Digital Fortress is a real hoot, for example–his ideas about computers are just plain stupid–and he claimed that they were soundly based in fact–I just figured he either didn’t know better or was trying to fake people out) he’d do no better in Da Vinci code.

Reviewers love him, because a.) they don’t care about his claims (repeated in both books I’ve read) that he bases his stories in fact, cos they’re usually too subliterate to know his “facts” are fakes and b.) reviewers are 90% shills for publishers.

I don’t have to read or see the DC to know it’s crap for two reasons:

1.) I’ve (unfortunately–I’ll never have that lost time back) read two other Dan Brown books and
2.) In the case of the Da Vinci Code, well, I’m not only a history buff, I’m more than semi-literate in the historical era and topics he based the story on. And if it grated on my nerves to have hom so screw up the “factual” basis for his other books, where I had just enough knowledge to know he was fulla shit, I’d probably be throwing things at the screen and making loud, derisive comments every time his characters said something stupid.

Fiction, in order to be good fiction, needs some reason for the reader/viewer to suspend disbelief. A credible story line with believable characters, dialog that makes sense, etc. If Digital Fortress and Deception Point lacked those and got published and pushed, how much better could The Da Vinci Code be? Or worse?

I’ll pass, thanks.

Mel at I’m Just a Girl has an interesting take on the naifs who are picketing the Dan Brown movie. *sigh* That’s right, folks: give the dummie free publicity.

Lil update: While reading a column by Orson Scott Card—a guy who does know how to write fiction, and darned well, too—I reas his review of The Eyre Affair, a light novel by Jasper Fforde about a detective named Thursday Next who lives in an alternate universe where literature is taken very seriously.

A very brief sample as quoted by Card in his review:

…when Thursday visits with her uncle, an inventor of fabulously bizarre machines, she asks him:

“Did the memory erasure device work, Uncle?”

“The what?”

“The memory erasure device. You were testing it when I last saw you.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, dear girl.”

*heh*

Well, that’s another book to go on my reading list. 🙂

Beating the air with this post over at Diane’s Stuff

[Another guest video. Take notes. The next test will come April 15, 2007. *heh*]

This week we’re fortunate enough to have a professional video produced by the folks at Americans for Fair Taxation. It gives a good overview of taxation in America, grassroots movements (and the FairTax initiative is definitely a grassroots issue!), and some good information about the FairTax and how it works. If you have a friend or family member who is not familiar with the FairTax, just have them watch this video. It’s less than 20 minutes long, and definitely worth your time!

The FairTax Blogburst is jointly produced by Terry of The Right Track Blog and Jonathan of Publius Rendezvous. If you would like to host the weekly postings on your blog, please e-mail Terry or Jonathan. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll.