I Know This Is Obvious To Many Here, But...

[WillyT]

This NSA (add your own alphabet soup) "monitoring"... has been a Right-wing/Conservative wet-dream as long as I've been paying attention to politics (1963).

And THAT my friends... is why I'm more wary of my government that I am of the terrorists.



P.S. Since we are now giving away swaths of our Bill of Rights... have the terrorists won ???

[upaloopa]

1. if you look at the NSA food fights on DU I'd say they won

Who else can turn one Dem against another like that. Just say BOO! and we create a knee jerk reaction taking away privacy rights and half the people are glad we did.

[WillyT]

2. Yep...

[G_j]

3. even those who think we need NSA surveillance

should recognize the importance of this window of opportunity to investigate abuse and seek transparency and accountability.
I doubt the chance will come again. We should ALL be together at least on that point.

[Hydra]

4. It's all right wing crap

And I oppose RW crap regardless of who it comes from or how it's packaged.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. Just look at the PNAC. US leadership for the world, requiring a "Pearl Harbor"-like event.

Bush ignores "Bin Laden determined to strike in the US". Bin Laden, an ex-CIA operative. W's daddy HW must have known or known about Osama. Bush family = Bin Laden family friends. Then, 9/11 and "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists." Then "patriot act" and the rest of the $1 trillion a year surveillance state, smashing protest and journalism and who knows what next.

If I =wanted= to install a power grab + endless cash cow, this is exactly how I'd do it. In increments so the frog in the increasingly hot pot doesn't complain. Gets used to it in chunks until it's completely in place. That's called normalization. Just like $4.00 a gallon gasoline.


The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

[WillyT]

6. Wow... I Had Forgotten That One...

[PowerToThePeople]

7. I quoted that exact same line earlier today.

We still live in the PNAC reality today.