JUDGE: PRES. BUSH'S WIRETAP PROGRAM VIOLATES CONSTITUTION & MUST STOP

[Spexxvet]

Like....?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Care to name any liberal who spews hatred like the conservatives I listed?

You said "aggressive, obnoxious, go-for-the-emotional-regardless-of-the-facts asshole". I can tell you who comes to mind first, but you won't like it. :-)

[wolf]

You mean like this?

or this?

this?

Or even these, but the examples are dated.

[Spexxvet]

So you would equate

Newt Gingrich recommended that Clinton Democrats be portrayed as "the enemy of normal Americans."

with

Jesse Jackson explicitly likened the proposals of the new majority to Nazism and apartheid -- "If this were Germany, we would call it fascism. If this were South Africa, we would call it racism"

Hmmm. Seems like Gingrich is attacking a group of people, where Jackson is attacking behavior.

This

right-wing talk host Michael Savage in July, and rightly so, when he told a gay caller to "get AIDS and die, you pig."

is comparable to

The liberal Nina Totenberg..."I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind," she said of Senator Jesse Helms in 1995, "because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will."

No even close.

The president "is not the orator that Hitler was," acknowledges leftist commentator Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch.org. "But comparisons of the Bush administration's fearmongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line."

Again, criticism of ideas and behavior, not an attack on a person.

Of course this complaint can be taken too far. Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, has been accusing Democrats of engaging in "political hate speech" when they call Bush a "liar" or a "miserable failure."

Waaaahhhh - remember what the republicans called Clinton.

Your third reference contained a bunch of anonymous quotes. They're really not attributable to a liberal. Karl Rove could easily have made those comments.

USA Today's Julianne Malveaux, whose leftist sympathies makes Karl Marx look like a right-wing kook, spat out this crudity about Justice Clarence Thomas, a fellow black: "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease."

That's racist, and it sounds like Limbaugh, et al.

Try this, it seems pretty even-handed.

[Spexxvet]

This phone tapping for no reason may be a good idea. It shouldn't be long before the government goes house to house, searching for firearms that might be used by terrorists.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Hmmm. Seems like Gingrich is attacking a group of people, where Jackson is attacking behavior.

Do you think Jackson's famous "Hymietown" quote was attacking "behavior"?

[Undertoad]

The current hatred-spewing comment from the left comes from Andrew Young, who in defending WalMart, said

...they ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood, ... But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores.

The diplomatic Mr. Young was Ambassador to the UN.

The current hatred-spewing comment from the right comes from George Allen, who at a recent campaign appearance, pointed to an Indian-looking gentleman who was filming him, working for the opposition, and said

This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. We're going to places all over Virginia, and he's having it on film and it's great to have you here and you show it to your opponent because he's never been there and probably will never come. [...] Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia outside of the beltway.

The "Macaca" reference was ill-defended once it was traced back to Allen's mother's roots, where the term is a deep ethnic slur. Personally I feel the "Welcome to America" comment is just as damning spoken to anyone brown.

Mr. Allen is a sitting Senator of the US and, prior to the comment, thought to be a possible candidate for the Presidency 2008.

[9th Engineer]

Where did you get the idea that the wiretapping program was indescriminant?? It targeted ONLY calls that met a specific criteria 1)One of the callers must be known to have ties with or be in collusion with Al-Queda operatives, and 2) One of the callers must be outside of the U.S. That's it. The image that people seem to have of the White House listening to you chat with grandma is uninformed bullshit.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

Where did you get the idea that the wiretapping program was indescriminant?? It targeted ONLY calls that met a specific criteria

According to....? The affidavit? The judge?

[Flint]

Originally Posted by 9th Engineer

The image that people seem to have of the White House listening to you chat with grandma is uninformed bullshit.

I don't think that is what concerns people. The concern is that when a behavior is tolerated, it is encouraged both to continue and to escalate...

[Ibby]

I don't care WHO it targeted if it wasn't signed off as legal by a judge.

I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again...
What makes a connection to Al-Qaieda?
If I buy a carpet from a middle-eastern rug salesman who's brother's best friend once prayed at the same mosque as a guy who once prayed at a different mosque that Bin Laden's cousin once prayed at... is that a valid connection? Could they then listen to my international call to my girlfriend who lives in the US?

[Undertoad]

Probably. You have to think as if your calls can be listened to, because if not the authorities local to you, every authority through which the call is routed is capable and has an interest in listening in.

The good news is that they have no interest in your chatter, in fact your chatter is terrible noise to them, because you're likely to talk about anything, which means your conversation is more likely to contain triggering keywords and phrases, without actually being useful.

[Ibby]

Actually the chatter is probably downright painful, as I lose all male dignity while talking to her and force myself to act cute cause she knows I'm not like that and finds it hilarious.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

Do you think Jackson's famous "Hymietown" quote was attacking "behavior"?

That sure was hate speech, IMHO. So on the Democrat side, there's Jesse Jackson. On the repubican side, ther's Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Savage, Liddy, et al, some of whom have been around for decades.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

triggering keywords and phrases

Things like: being critical of the US government, for instance. We should probably avoid saying anything bad about the US government, because they might be listening, and if they hear something they don't like, we know they can make us vanish, with no explanation provided to anybody, and ship us overseas to be tortured, etc.

So . . . that isn't likely to chill free speech or participative democracy?