The Rummy Affair Of Old Biffy, Starring Don Surber
The Catullus of Chemical Valley, wielder of the #2 most informative blog in the world, sneezes forth another emerald:
Does the left care about protecting America?
Without reading ahead, can anyone guess what the answer might be?
The debate over FISA is silly but instructive as to how little some on the left care about national security. Maybe they figure that if terrorists start winning then the left can take over and really push a “1984”-style government upon the land.
That’s the dystopian novel of a world-gone-mad in which a future government refuses to spy on or torture its citizens.
(It’s often assigned in high school, along with the one by J.D. Salinger about the young guy in a rye field who keeps throwing kids off a cliff.)
It is really bad when a federal judge has to tell the ACLU that the proceedings of the secret FISA courts are just that: Secret.
It would be really, really bad if a federal judge had to tell the ACLU that the proceedings of the secret FISA courts are just that: Proceedings.
AP reported: “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in a rare public opinion, said the public has no right to view the documents because they deal with the clandestine workings of national security agencies.”
In other words, according to the AP, a FISA judge said that his secret court won’t release any of its secret court papers — which is a victory for liberty and against the forces of 1984-style totalitarianism (as personified by the American Civil Liberties Union). But hold on, there’s more:
FISA originally was passed by a Democratic Congress under a Democratic president as a reform to just allowing the CIA to do what it wished.
Don doesn’t realize that we’ve secretly replaced his regular coffee with “reasons it’s unacceptable for the White House to openly break the law by refusing to use the FISA courts.” Will it be rich and flavorful enough for Don?
The targets of our spies are not entitled to being tipped off.
Alas, our Pepys of the Pocatalico saw through the plan and secretly replaced our coffee with a pointless declarative sentence traumatized by a flailing grammatical error.
Oooh, we’ll be back, Surber! You got us this time, but we’ll be back!
Update: Surber continues with a relevant query:
How difficult is this concept? The courts review, the spies pursue.
Answer: That concept? Woo-whee. Boy howdy. Actually, you’d be surprised.
For instance, in visiting that Stop The ACLU page, which argues that Bush is not subject to court oversight and can spy on anyone he feels like, you can scroll down a bit, and see some of the people who…
Don Surber linked with Monday’s Best Posts
Maybe they figure that if terrorists start winning then the left can take over and really push a “1984?-style government upon the land.
The funny thing is, that statement is true. Not when applied to Democrats, but it is true.
What’s the Good Pastor been doing lately?
Thumbpuppet is killing me!
Swank? Oh, I don’t know. I’ll go look.
I don’t know what to say about this, but the phrase “black hole of stupid” keeps echoing in my mind.
I took a look at his commenters. Very typical. A “midwestern progressive” gave them a nice smackin’, though.
God damn it.
Maybe they figure that if terrorists start winning then the left can take over and really push a “1984?-style government upon the land.
Wherever a wingnut looks, he sees his reflection in the mirror.
And it scares the crap out of him, as it does the rest of us.
[deleted teh duplicate comments]
I just listened to a lunchtime radio program about the complete medical system train wreck coming when the boomers start developing alzheimer’s disease. Now I come back and read this unbelievable pile of totally and gleefully self imposed stupid. Why can’t Suber live somewhere that’s under an inch of ice and had it’s power knocked out? I’m starting to feel like it’s time to take all my savings and book a nice long luxury trip to the end of the universe.
Have to hold on to the small solice that today is indeed hump day….back to work.
“Maybe they figure that if terrorists start winning ”
Heh, indeed Surber, killin over 3000 people in less than an hour, in no way should be interpreted as a terrorist win. And Iraq? Fuggedaboutit.
If the terrorists start winning we’d find ourselves mired in a country without WMD’s while the 911 mastermind successfully eludes capture at the hands of our great Alcoholic Bush.
We can’t let that happen.
Lordy. I am mo’ dumber just for reading Surber than I be was yesterday.
You think you’re dumb now Marco?
Let’s watch the republican debate, and see just how dumb we can become.
Do they not know about Hersch’s “Family Jewels” piece, the Church Committee, COINTELPRO etc?
Do they REALLY want us to just leave the Intel agencies alone and trust that they’ll only break the law and their charter and violate the constitution in service of good, or the Right?
Do they genuinely NOT understand that without some legal controls, these agencies can, and ultimately WILL, act to harm THEM too?
It’s like they have functioning brains, but no imagination. Perhaps there is an evolutionary explanation for the incredible density of the stupid on the American right?
mikey
You mock, but I clearly remember 1984 being about a democratic, open society who’s only goal was to FORCE it’s citizens to be aware and educated about the inner workings of their government.
*shudder*
yes, tipping off our enemies IS bad. huh.
there’s something on the tip of my tongue here…what is it…so hard to remember, it was really big for a while.
it’s…no, that’s not it. shit.
oh, right, valerie plame.
head explodes.
mikey-
That is flirting with eugenics, I think.
I have to push that thought out of my mind daily.
Must not think of evolution as it relates to compassion and survival…
It’s often assigned in high school, along with the one by J.D. Salinger about the young guy in a rye field who keeps throwing kids off a cliff.
Ooh, I read that one! It’s all because the guy doesn’t cry at his mom’s funeral.
“The targets of our spies are not entitled to being tipped off.”
All your base are belonging to us?
“Being tipped off is not something to which the targets of our spies are entitled.”
No, it doesn’t get any less dumb when it’s properly constructed.
J-
No, no, no, its because he has a secret man crush on his slovenly roomate and he broke that record that was for his sister.
That’s why he had to shoot Reagan, see?
“Entitling spies who are targeted by us to being tipped off is not something to which they should be entitled”
Oww….
Sure must suck living in a free society, eh, Donbo?
if terrorists start winning then the left can take over
You know, Don, the terrorists win if they spread terror. Their efforts have been aided by the rightwing pants-pissers since 2001.
The Libs!Libs!Libs!Libs! plan, according to Surber:
1) Let America get attacked.
2)
3) Profit.
Which is interesting, 9/11 and the Iraq War considered. Heh indoodly.
Who wants to bet that the Piggy-Who-Went-To-Market has never heard of COINTELPRO?
That’s why we have FISA: because J. Edgar Hoover used the FBI as a political weapon under the aegis of “national security”. FISA never has and never would stop the Feds and spies from doing their real job, it only tries to ensure that we don’t return to the bad old days when they thought their job was destroying the lives of their bosses’ domestic political opponents.
Sorry of the shocking lack of snark in this comment, but the fact that everyone seems to have forgotten why we have FISA in the first place really cheeses me off.
I’d like to see a Don Surber thumb-puppet in a happy-go-lucky musical version of The Trial.
Ah, mikey beat me to the COINTELPRO reference. I’ll shut up now.
Jesus. And you say this guy gets paid to spew out this gibberish. Real money, too, not fake grocery store money. That’s just depressing.
The courts review, the spies pursue.
Ah, but the servant waits, while the master baits.
It’s like they have functioning brains, but no imagination.
Yes, except for the functioning brains part.
But seriously – I think they really believe that their sucking-up to people in power will be rewarded, and that they won’t be spied on or disappeared when the police state gets really rolling. So it’s like they accept that the Holocaust happened, but not the Night of the Long Knives.
“Being tipped off is not something to which the targets of our spies are entitled.”
That is precisely the sort of foolishness up with which I will not put.
I’ll make a bold prediction. Come January of 2009, I predict that the RNC and their regurgitating mouthpieces in the media will have a Great Re-awakening with regards to personal liberties and the government’s ability to spy on their private lives. These apologist justifications only work when it’s their Party breaking the law at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Do they REALLY want us to just leave the Intel agencies alone and trust that they’ll only break the law and their charter and violate the constitution in service of good, or the Right?
Do they genuinely NOT understand that without some legal controls, these agencies can, and ultimately WILL, act to harm THEM too?
Simple answers to stunned-incredulous questions: Yes.
*That’s* how Surber’s work achieved the label “Second most informative blog in the world”. Most people who reach Thumbpuppet’s level of stupidity, paranoia, and surliness are no longer capable of holding a sentence in their plaque-riddled brains long enough to type up their ‘thoughts’ and hit the post button. Surber gives researchers the chance to probe and dissect the tiny, wormy mind of a true Twenty-Eight-Percenter from a safe, reasonably hygenic distance. Surber may be the virtual fruit fly that enables saner individuals to unravel the knotted and broken genetic code of the hardcore Reichtard personality; his very primitiveness allows researchers glimpses of the core DNA of wingnut talking-points psychology which are hopelessly tangled in the writings of his more sophisticated fellow travellers.
No, kingubu, don’t shut up.
Those who forget COINTELPRO are doomed to suffer through it again.
The techniques were adopted wholesale from wartime counterintelligence, and ranged from the trivial… to the degrading (sending anonymous poison-pen letters intended to break up marriages)
[Files away under “Excuses”]
Someone said FISA is borken?
Come January of 2009, I predict that the RNC and their regurgitating mouthpieces in the media will have a Great Re-awakening with regards to personal liberties and the government’s ability to spy on their private lives.
Just wait’ll you see the beating the Unitary Executive Theory takes.
This assumes, of course, that the Democrats completely fail in their campaign ambitions and win the election.
I’m afraid it’s my fault, folks. I praised him yesterday for not taking a rigidly right wing stance on the whole Jamie Leigh Jones tragedy, as he actually sided with the victim.
I’m afraid he must have been spnaked last night.
Do they REALLY want us to just leave the Intel agencies alone and trust that they’ll only break the law and their charter and violate the constitution in service of good,
Well, yeah. Except for those Intel agencies that are full of biased leftists who send their husbands off on junkets to drink mint tea, and make GWB look bad. Those they want to execute for treason, even when they don’t break any laws.
More eloquence from the poet laureate of the hill people. The thumb-puppet is quite attractive – in contrast to that surprised bush baby look.
And #2 in the rankings? What did Carnegie-Mellon use to process the results? A Commodore 64? Sweet Jesus on a bicycle…
Obviously the McArdle was great, but Surber is a whole ‘nother thing. It is like I had never tasted bacon until now. These posts make me feel like the first time, surprisingly like I’ve never felt before, but repeatedly. I say to you, Sir, well done!
My brain got so damaged by the first two sentences I won’t be able to go to work for an hour.