Budget Spying

Two items dominate American news coverage today, appropriately. First is the latest Junta budget. As you would expect, it proposes continued and deep largesse to the wealthy, and equally deep cuts to programs to the poor. And yes, the people putting these priorities forward claim to be deeply religious Christians. Go figure.

Now, please don't get me wrong - I don't want thousands of angry letters on this. I'm not here to judge Christianity or Christians. Some of my best friends are, you know. But we can judge people's actions in part by judging their words. The Christian Bible, like it or not, says nothing explicitly about abortion or gay marriage, but says plenty about poverty. As in, please don't increase the affliction of the afflicted. Decrease it.

So when politicians run on their religiosity while at the same time governing on opposite values, you have to question it, don't you?

The budget also constructs the elimination of Social security as if that fight had not been pathetically lost (once again - why act to impoverish seniors?). That's not just window dressing, though. While the political fight was a loser, that's not to say that the Junta can't still impose their will. Remember, to them democracy is only valid when they can manipulate it. Once the population realizes how it's being screwed, the secrecy police come out and suddenly everything is an Executive Brach Secret. So if they can pass their universally reviled Social Security elimination plan without anybody knowing until it's too late, that's just what they'll do.

Just like with the illegal wiretapping of Americans, the second story today. Yesterday, Attorney General Gonzo defended the practice in the Senate, saying, in effect, "screw you, we do what we want."

And surely they do.

A couple of interesting things about Gonzo's testimony - where he wasn't sworn in, by the way. First, he continually referred to: "this program" or "the program the president has confirmed." What the hell else are these fascists up to? Is there anything that's over the line for them? Is there any limit to their violation of the constitution and the oaths they've taken to uphold it?
The other oddity - well, not odd for these guys, okay - was the reason Gonzo gave for not doing more domestic surveillance without warrants:

Gonzales also suggested in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee
that the administration had considered a broader effort that would include
purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail but abandoned the idea in part due to
fears of the negative public reaction.

"Think about the reaction, the public reaction that has arisen in some
quarters about this program," Gonzales told Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.). "If the
president had authorized domestic surveillance as well, even though we're
talking about al Qaeda-to-al Qaeda, I think the reaction would have been twice
as great. And so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to
draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy
interests of Americans."

Yeah, we don't do crimes when the political consequences are too big. We only do crimes that we think we can get away with. Really, for all the critics who have been saying for so long that the only thing that drives White House policy is the politics of retaining power, how much more evidence do you need?

And that's an interesting thought - "and so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy interests of Americans." So protection of privact interests are up to Gonzo and Georgie?

They don't come from any "inalienable rights" granted in some constitutional thingy, they are, in fact, up to how much a corrupt Attorney General and his Executive decide to grant the masses? "Let them have their little phone calls, Gonzo. We can always detain them indefinitely with no charges and no lawyers, and torture the living crap out of them any time we want. After all, we're Americans!"

I can't wait until the Democrats take back Congress this year and we can start all the prosecutions and impeachments.