Isn't it amusing to watch people who have called Obama-supporters 'worshippers'

[MADem]

175. He hasn't proven that such "massive surveillance" is actually happening.

He confounds the term "metadata" --- which is a fancy term for the information that used to appear, before the days of cellphones, before the days of computers and Skype, on every Americans' phone bill. These bills would run for page after short half page--a veritable book, they'd send you in the mail--I can remember bellowing stuff like "Who the hell called White Plains NY and talked for frigging thirty two minutes at nine o'clock at night?" when the bill was especially high. This was before the advent of nationwide calling plans where you get a flat bill, and none of that shit is listed anymore--he's conflating that information, which the phone company has always collected, with "listening in on everyone's conversations." Then he gives us a FISA warrant and misstates what's on it.

I've been a Democrat all my long life, and I know a bullshitter and an opportunist when I see one. His goal wasn't to reveal any great truths, his goal was self-aggrandizement. He miscalculated. Badly.

Sorry--I don't believe this guy ... if he's got something to say, he should back up his assertions. And he doesn't--he says he has all sorts of stuff, and his pal Greenwald of the CATO Institute says "Yeah, he has lots of stuff" but he's the guy who doesn't have the technical chops to explain what's going on here, either (another one who didn't get what metadata was).

He sure has gotten people to believe him without evidence, though...why, I wonder? Because he's "cuuuuuuuute" in an Emo-ish way, or something? No accounting for the tastes of the young folk!

Let's have him prove what he's saying before I set my hair on fire. I don't think he can, though. He can (and I believe, has already so done) screw us over by revealing specific espionage tactics, of the very same sort that PLA Unit 61398 has been using for over a decade, and that, I think, isn't 'on' as the saying goes. He's a stupid little man. He should have gone to the Paulbot's child, who is on the Senate Intel Oversight crew, and let it all hang out there--instead, he goes to two of the most repressive regimes in the world, that don't give a flying fig about that "human rights" and "government surveillance" you're going on about, and gives them tactical information that--face facts--they probably already know or suspected, but he sure gave them confirmation. He's an asshole.