Saturday, December 17, 2005

Saturday morning sunny-side-up

Ugh, slept 11 hours. Long week. The Wallace just made his tired Gromit some coffee and yummy oatmeal, so i have strength to blog (and do pushups. Ridor is shaming me with his commitment to, ah, physical change.

Watching CNN. Am happy to see the President getting totally hammered. His spying program is not going over well with the nation. Why? Because we do expect a freedom of privacy, and we don't want to be in prisons in exchange for the kind of protection George Bush can give us. This is the man who failed his country in two major disasters; look at the recent findings of the nonpartisan 9/11 committee, look at the suffering of the suddenly impoverished and destitute citizens in Louisiana and Mississippi. What cover can he give us? He's not JFK. He's no gunslinger, may it do ya fine, if I can borrow Stephen King's expression. He been relying on the strength of others, and much of that has been tapped and peeled away, or being poked at by Fitzgerald the Hardcase. He's asking people to trust far too much, even with his painted-clown-face version of Christianity and his pictures behind cardboard flight suits. Should it have happened long ago: yes.

But all cardboard crumbles. May it do ya fine.

Update: fuck! The president said Senate authorized his spying, senate fighting back saying none of them knew! Feingold ripping Pres a new one on CNN now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ridor exercising??? When did that happen?

LD

kender said...

So, about this "spying" program. Does the U.S. government, which is charged with protecting its' citizens, (one of the few actual tasks delegated to it by our founding documents), have the right to monitor those that it believes may be a threat to the country?

JRS said...

Hi Kender, thanks for your response. The US does have the legal right to monitor those it believes may be a threat to the country. It even has a 72 hour window in which they may monitor people without getting a legal warrant with which to do so in order to establish probable cause. However the President CANNOT just go ahead and order people to spy. His orders must be approved. This is for many reasons, but I'll give you two simple ones. First, what if the president goes crazy? Not Bush, but any president. If nobody is checking what he is doing, a crazy person could do serious damage to the country with unchecked power. Secondly, the President is not a military expert. I am not sure what Bush's field of expertise is, but he can and should consult with other primary members of the administration before doing such things. Especially when we have a bipartisan government where Republicans and Democrats both believe each other are evil. I wouldn't give anyone such unchecked power.