I continue to maintain that the intent of the 4th amendment is to protect the population of the USA from the inconvience of random searches, except at borders becasue at borders everyone is a suspected smuggler, because that is what Thomas Jefferson tells me every time we play Hookem.
Therefore the collection of meta data is certainly a legitimate government function. The reading of our emails is with out a warrant or for that matter even with a warrant is clearly impolite behavior. It should be frowned upon by any well meaning citizen. But there is an upside to government employees of the national security state reading our emails and intercepting our telephone calls. They might actually figure out that a huge percent of the US population considers members of the military industrial complex A--holes. No they are not A--holes because they snoop on our emails that are A--holes because in the best of times they spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trying to solve problems that are either make believe or would be make believe were it not for the stupidity of US foriegn policy which then diverts huge amounts of resources away from solving problems that actually do exist and need to be urgently solves and in the worst of times they invade foreign countries causing tens of thousands of needless deaths for the net benifit of a few intrest groups.
The members of the military industrial complex clearly lack the intellegence to read juancole.com and if they were to accidently do so would not have the sense to learn from it.
There is no other way they can learn what a waste of humanity they are with out reading our emails.
I have been really annoyed with affluent people who oppose policies ONLY because they might lose some money as the result of the policies. But today I realized something that made me think that I should not be surprised by such opposition.
I grew up in a blue collar family that was neither affluent or poor. It taught me that being in the middle is nothing to be afraid of. But I think that I now realize if someone grew up in an affluent family they might be terrified of needng to downsize. That could mean that they would have to chose bwtween their winter vacation in Vail or the stable fees for their horse.
A middle class or poor person would not have much symphathy for such a dilema but I can imagine that to an affluent person who has always been affluent such a situation could be as troubling for them as when us normal people have to chose which of our children is going to have to give up piano or karate lessons becasue there is not enough money for both. Or, which child will get new shoes this month because there is not enough money for two new pair of shoes.
I would like to suggest a three pronged approach to convincing the affluent and rich to be more civic minded with their money. Some of the wealthy need to be reassured that having less money will not be as painful as they imagine it to be. Some of the wealthy need to mocked and ridiculed by their peers so that they are shamed by their behavior. Then in particularly stubborn cases the wealthy need to get a personally guided tour of the back rooms of a butcher shop to see how hamburger is really made. What is that machine called again? A wolfer?
Decades have been used to build up a myth that the Israeli military is not an extention of the US military. When I see dribble that the Israeli military might go it alone I know that PURE 100% UNDILUTED EVIL has gone in to creating a situation in which the US President could be publically negotiating with a country in the mid east region and the Israelis can do anything and everything to undercut these negotiations with the story being that the Israelis have the capablity to act independently of the USA.
God I am such an idiot to think that anyone born and raised in the USA could figure this out or if they did accidently figure it out would really care or if they did figure it out and care would be in a position that they could do anything about it.
@Bjorn Lundgren,
I have heard that in Sweden all legal gambling casinos are government owned. To your knowledge is this (still)true?
Gambling brings in a good chunk of change. I know that it is not "progressive". The poor certianly gamble a higher percentage of their income than the rich. But in the USA you let the super rich in Nevada and Atlantic City get away with large chunks of money that should be harnessed for more deserving causes. I have no problem with casinos on Indian reservations as the indian tribes are in a sense government entities, either independent nations or "departments" of the federal government depending on whether one correctly or incorrectly understands history.
I do not know exactly how much money is raked in by the casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City but I bet it could make a pretty good dent in to paying for......... well what I mean to say is perhaps the DOD should get all the profits from the Nevada casinos and not a cent more.
Something that I forgot to point out in the above reccomendation is that if a legislature passes a law they have several layers of law enforcement to enforce that law.
So if there is something going on in an area that is against the law and if the local city police are not doing anything to stop the illegal activity there is a chance that county, or state, or federal police will.
Mark, your post I think strengthens the case to be made for officially recongnizing the case for jury nullification. Why do legislatures pass laws? Do they do it for the hell of it? I would suggest that in many cases laws are passed because a great many people think that certian conduct is reprehensible and should be prohibited and therefore punished when someone does not follow this prohibition.
So no one should say that it is a bad thing when the police discover that someone is conducting an illegal activity. People who do not believe that a law passed by a legislature is valid whether they members of the Man Boy Love Association, or the Marijuanna Growers Conference, or the Ponzi Club of the Month, should not be able to thumb their nose at the legislature with impunity. Yet since history clearly shows that even in the best of times legislatures are often wrong, and in the worst of times are nothing more than a continuing criminal enterprise, legislatures should not be defacto dictators either. If a group of Spainish immingrants want to hold a bullfight in your area dedicated to Fransico Franco and another group of Spainish immigrants want to hold a bullfight dedicated to Ceaser Chavez the police should arrest the organizers of each bullfight. Then a speedy trial should occur and the juries of each trial should get to hear from both lawyers explaining why laws against bull murder in an arena should or should not be against the law.
It could be that simple. It could also be a bit more complicated. The police too should be able to say it goes against my conscience to put on in jail for murdering a bull in an arena, something that has been done for hundreds of years when McDonalds will sell five million hamburgers today. The police in the neighboring jursidiction may be vegitarians who will break up the bull fight with relish.
It could be that simple and that clean. But not for sure. Because the the local prosecuting office should also say I have real crimes to prosecute, murders, meth labs, drunken driving, disorderly conduct, ponzi schemes, insider trading the life of a bull is not significant enough for this office to bother with even if it being tortured to death, unless of course we are talking about pit bulls. Where as another prosecuters office may wish to turn bull fighters in to Prosecuteo.
Most of the world believes that if people have the authority to disregard the edicts of a legislature chaos would result. That is because that is what the legislatures have required that the educational system teach people. I think that we need to move beyond such nonsense. A law should be the legal foundation providing police the authority to disrupt or deny someone thier freedom is should not be seen as a requirement. Such power in the hands of people can certianly be misused. I would certianly not deny that.
How few children have to die in a distant country"s civil war before the leaders of the USA, who ever thez are, decide they should not stick thier nose in where it does not belong?
I continue to maintain that the intent of the 4th amendment is to protect the population of the USA from the inconvience of random searches, except at borders becasue at borders everyone is a suspected smuggler, because that is what Thomas Jefferson tells me every time we play Hookem.
Therefore the collection of meta data is certainly a legitimate government function. The reading of our emails is with out a warrant or for that matter even with a warrant is clearly impolite behavior. It should be frowned upon by any well meaning citizen. But there is an upside to government employees of the national security state reading our emails and intercepting our telephone calls. They might actually figure out that a huge percent of the US population considers members of the military industrial complex A--holes. No they are not A--holes because they snoop on our emails that are A--holes because in the best of times they spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trying to solve problems that are either make believe or would be make believe were it not for the stupidity of US foriegn policy which then diverts huge amounts of resources away from solving problems that actually do exist and need to be urgently solves and in the worst of times they invade foreign countries causing tens of thousands of needless deaths for the net benifit of a few intrest groups.
The members of the military industrial complex clearly lack the intellegence to read juancole.com and if they were to accidently do so would not have the sense to learn from it.
There is no other way they can learn what a waste of humanity they are with out reading our emails.
I have been really annoyed with affluent people who oppose policies ONLY because they might lose some money as the result of the policies. But today I realized something that made me think that I should not be surprised by such opposition.
I grew up in a blue collar family that was neither affluent or poor. It taught me that being in the middle is nothing to be afraid of. But I think that I now realize if someone grew up in an affluent family they might be terrified of needng to downsize. That could mean that they would have to chose bwtween their winter vacation in Vail or the stable fees for their horse.
A middle class or poor person would not have much symphathy for such a dilema but I can imagine that to an affluent person who has always been affluent such a situation could be as troubling for them as when us normal people have to chose which of our children is going to have to give up piano or karate lessons becasue there is not enough money for both. Or, which child will get new shoes this month because there is not enough money for two new pair of shoes.
I would like to suggest a three pronged approach to convincing the affluent and rich to be more civic minded with their money. Some of the wealthy need to be reassured that having less money will not be as painful as they imagine it to be. Some of the wealthy need to mocked and ridiculed by their peers so that they are shamed by their behavior. Then in particularly stubborn cases the wealthy need to get a personally guided tour of the back rooms of a butcher shop to see how hamburger is really made. What is that machine called again? A wolfer?
I suspect that growing up affluent and white in North Carolina might have something to do with it though.
Decades have been used to build up a myth that the Israeli military is not an extention of the US military. When I see dribble that the Israeli military might go it alone I know that PURE 100% UNDILUTED EVIL has gone in to creating a situation in which the US President could be publically negotiating with a country in the mid east region and the Israelis can do anything and everything to undercut these negotiations with the story being that the Israelis have the capablity to act independently of the USA.
God I am such an idiot to think that anyone born and raised in the USA could figure this out or if they did accidently figure it out would really care or if they did figure it out and care would be in a position that they could do anything about it.
@Bjorn Lundgren,
I have heard that in Sweden all legal gambling casinos are government owned. To your knowledge is this (still)true?
Gambling brings in a good chunk of change. I know that it is not "progressive". The poor certianly gamble a higher percentage of their income than the rich. But in the USA you let the super rich in Nevada and Atlantic City get away with large chunks of money that should be harnessed for more deserving causes. I have no problem with casinos on Indian reservations as the indian tribes are in a sense government entities, either independent nations or "departments" of the federal government depending on whether one correctly or incorrectly understands history.
I do not know exactly how much money is raked in by the casinos in Nevada and Atlantic City but I bet it could make a pretty good dent in to paying for......... well what I mean to say is perhaps the DOD should get all the profits from the Nevada casinos and not a cent more.
There was not one sentence about this reported in the major daily newspaper for this metropolitan area. Not even a small paragraph ona back page.
Something that I forgot to point out in the above reccomendation is that if a legislature passes a law they have several layers of law enforcement to enforce that law.
So if there is something going on in an area that is against the law and if the local city police are not doing anything to stop the illegal activity there is a chance that county, or state, or federal police will.
Mark, your post I think strengthens the case to be made for officially recongnizing the case for jury nullification. Why do legislatures pass laws? Do they do it for the hell of it? I would suggest that in many cases laws are passed because a great many people think that certian conduct is reprehensible and should be prohibited and therefore punished when someone does not follow this prohibition.
So no one should say that it is a bad thing when the police discover that someone is conducting an illegal activity. People who do not believe that a law passed by a legislature is valid whether they members of the Man Boy Love Association, or the Marijuanna Growers Conference, or the Ponzi Club of the Month, should not be able to thumb their nose at the legislature with impunity. Yet since history clearly shows that even in the best of times legislatures are often wrong, and in the worst of times are nothing more than a continuing criminal enterprise, legislatures should not be defacto dictators either. If a group of Spainish immingrants want to hold a bullfight in your area dedicated to Fransico Franco and another group of Spainish immigrants want to hold a bullfight dedicated to Ceaser Chavez the police should arrest the organizers of each bullfight. Then a speedy trial should occur and the juries of each trial should get to hear from both lawyers explaining why laws against bull murder in an arena should or should not be against the law.
It could be that simple. It could also be a bit more complicated. The police too should be able to say it goes against my conscience to put on in jail for murdering a bull in an arena, something that has been done for hundreds of years when McDonalds will sell five million hamburgers today. The police in the neighboring jursidiction may be vegitarians who will break up the bull fight with relish.
It could be that simple and that clean. But not for sure. Because the the local prosecuting office should also say I have real crimes to prosecute, murders, meth labs, drunken driving, disorderly conduct, ponzi schemes, insider trading the life of a bull is not significant enough for this office to bother with even if it being tortured to death, unless of course we are talking about pit bulls. Where as another prosecuters office may wish to turn bull fighters in to Prosecuteo.
Most of the world believes that if people have the authority to disregard the edicts of a legislature chaos would result. That is because that is what the legislatures have required that the educational system teach people. I think that we need to move beyond such nonsense. A law should be the legal foundation providing police the authority to disrupt or deny someone thier freedom is should not be seen as a requirement. Such power in the hands of people can certianly be misused. I would certianly not deny that.
How few children have to die in a distant country"s civil war before the leaders of the USA, who ever thez are, decide they should not stick thier nose in where it does not belong?