God, I Hate Bigots With Rights

Pastor Terry Jones, the pastor and shepherd of the small flock of The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL, has been caught, yet again, making an effort to burn the Quran.  Exactly 2,998 Qurans, to be exact.  I am not sure if he thinks this number is somehow Divine or if the good reverend just can't count for beans.  In either case, he is a complete moron.  As I graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, fortunately a long time before Jones arrived in town, I feel a certain embarrassment at what he says, thinks and does.  It is personal to me in a way.

Let there be no doubt, I strenuously object and otherwise abhor what this nutball thinks and says of another religious group.  Unfortunately, I defend his Right to say what he wants, think what he wants and engage in acts that express that thinking.  I have to go back to the school-age rhyme that starts "sticks and stones..."  Contrary to what we see in the movies, we don't get to smack a guy in the mouth for saying something objectionable.  I will make one personal exception to that, insult my sainted mother and I'll break your jaw.  Call it a claim of personal privilege.

Jack asses like Pastor Jones are one of the many prices we pay to live in a free society.  He is the exception that gives the normal people the Right to be normal.   The expression of his obvious hatred of Muslims, by burning their Holy Book, does have limitations, however. 

At the time he was arrested in Polk County, FL, with 2,998, kerosene-soaked, Qurans, Pastor Jones was on his way to burn them at a location where he had previously been denied a permit to do so.  I am not absolutely sure what the rationale for the denial was, but I can think of one, public safety.  I cannot burn waste paper in my back yard without a permit and the county will not issue me one.  My relatively modest amount of flammable trash would not compare with the fire created by almost 3,000 kerosene-soaked Holy Books.  I would object to the pollution caused by such a burning, and this is based on their paper content, not their designation as Holy.

The above scenario represents a subterfuge to prevent this man from making a statement.  I shall leave it to the lawyers to argue over which value prevails; that is why we have Courts and lawyers.  My preferred way to deal with it is to just brand him the nut job he is and ignore him.  If he held a massive Quran burning and nobody came, nobody wrote about it and the Muslim World embraced his Right to do this stupid and pointless thing, he would eventually just go away.  This man wants to shout at the top of his lungs a position I would spend a lifetime opposing, but I will defend his Right to do it, within limits.  I just wish the Muslim World could see the point.

I do not see Muslims doing nothing and my fellow Liberals will, no doubt, engage in their Right to protest.  In this case and others, I like what my parents taught me, "If you just ignore him, he'll go away."

TEA PARTY Sounds So Much Nicer than Mob of Racist Homophobes

Recently the Tea Party held a political event on the grounds of the Arizona State Capitol.  A reporter came to the event to document the speeches being given, but he was recognized as an individual that might not see it exactly the way the Tea Partiers would have liked it reported.

Their reaction was at first, to just try to make it difficult for him.  They somehow came to the conclusion that the State Capitol grounds had somehow become private property when they got a permit to gather; it had not.  They also apparently thought that they got to approve, authorize and accept who was going to be there and that they could limit access; they could not.  All of these erroneous thoughts left them with the idea that they could make the man leave; and they could not.  There was no legal justification for these Tea Party Members to prevent a new media person, or just a citizen on public property, from video-taping their speeches, and yet they thought they could.  I would identify the problem as being related to the fact that these people were Neanderthal morons so often times associated with the Tea Party.
 

In this case, they were clearly “biker-types.”  These individuals had long, unkempt grey beards, long grey head hair, jean or leather jackets with numerous motorcycle “club” patches on them.   They used words like “Motherf**ker” this and “Motherf**ker” that.  This language was more indicative of the complete lack of sophistication the people had.  They also lacked anything resembling “class.”  OK, they had class, but it was all low class.  These Tea Party members had all the class one would expect of a wanna-be motorcycle gang; big soft bellies, on both the men and women; hugely sagging breasts suggestive of softballs in sweat socks; too much make up, ratty grey hair.   Oh ya, they were classy folks alright, and the acted exactly consistent with their appearance.
 

They engaged in the usual tactics of the school-yard bully.  They approached the man, first trying to block his view and spewing their tripe about it being private property.  These morons thought the State Capital Grounds could be private property, a blunder of monumental proportion, but these gentlemen, and ladies, had no interest in what was right or true, they wanted to do whatever they wanted to do.  What they wanted to do was make this man leave, and it became clear that they would use force if necessary, those Second Amendment remedies, but the reporter stood his ground.  Even the speaker tried to point out to the crowd that the reporter had Rights under the First Amendment, but this did not deter our group of troglodytes, no way.
 

The next action was to push the reporter with their rather large beer-infused bellies.  While doing so on video tape, they narrated how the reporter was pushing them, in spite of the video tape showed them belly bumping the reporter, in an effort to move the reporter out of the way.  I was reminded of a grade-school bully who would grab another weaker kid’s arm and start hitting him with his own arm, the whole time saying, “Why ya hittin’ yourself?”  Huh?  Why ya hittin’ yourself?  It was just pathetic on so many levels.  It was an embarrassment is what it was, and I was appalled.
 

This group clearly thinks they have all the rights to the First Amendment to the exclusion of all others.  When this reporter stated he had his First Amendment Rights, the crowd was reduced to calling him a “COMMIE,” because we all know that Communists don’t have Free Speech Rights in the United States, right?

This Tea Party group exhibited every hypocritical and abusive behavior for which they have become the brunt of jokes and for which they are reviled.  Hell they did elect Jan Brewer as their Governor.   They deserve to be the brunt of jokes with a Governor like that.  They have clearly found the least common denominator to represent them in Arizona, a fellow moron!

Tea Party sounds so much nicer than hypocritical, moron, racist, homophobes, but be afraid, be very afraid...They serve on juries, they drive, they breed and they vote!  How do you protect the country from moron citizens?

PERSONAL PRIVACY – I WAS WRONG….BUT, I TOLD YA SO !!

Yes, I admit it, I was wrong in my May 23, 2011, blog post regarding personal privacy and the threats to personal privacy.  I was wrong because I so incredibly underestimated what the government of the United States, and specifically the National Security Administration (NSA),  was and is doing to compromise the security and privacy of…of…well EVERYTHING !
 

The NSA has adopted a policy that everyone is suspect, until proven otherwise, and then, in all probability, that one time they prove otherwise applies only until the next time they suspect you.  They have adopted a policy of collecting everything and then they get to figure out who was naughty and who was nice, only Santa they ain’t.  This policy has likely created the largest dragnet of personal information of innocent people the world has ever known.

Thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden, we now know that the NSA has been collecting pretty much every communication between every United States citizen and anyone else on the planet inside or outside the United States.  This includes email, telephone calls, radio calls (okay, that was always pretty open anyway) and the United States Mail.  We now know, in fact, that the NSA has done its level best to compromise, by hook or crook, any kind of communication security in which we engage in this country and probably the world.
 

The NSA has worked to compromise the security of communications using requests, begging and pleading and finally, conniving, threats, coercion and force.  Every company and designer of security software has been asked to put a weakness in their encryption software or install a “back-door” that allows the NSA to circumvent the need for a password to de-encrypt an otherwise coded message.  Those that refused found themselves “under investigation” and their top-level executives threaten with prosecution and jail if they failed to comply.  Many companies just got “hacked” and the back-doors installed without their knowledge.

As more and more information becomes known, we find the NSA reeling.  Why?  Because they never thought they would ever get caught.  They never thought they would have to explain, to a previously unsuspecting citizenry, why they need to read our mail and listen to our phone calls.  They are having a huge hard time of it. 
 

It seems that when they have screwed up in the past, the so-called FISA Court, has admonished them.  What has been the result?  Greater secrecy!  The NSA is not about doing what the Courts tell it what it should be doing, it is about figuring out how to make things ever more secret; make it harder to get caught.  When the NSA and the government get caught with their hands in the information/intelligence cookie jar, they just add a few more layers secrecy so no one can figure out how they are violating the privacy of the people.  It is that simple. 
 

Nothing healthy grows in the dark.  The kind of growth you don’t want is what thrives in secret.  The NSA has become a mold on freedom and all it wants is more secrecy, more darkness so it can flourish at the expense of us all.
 

Edward Snowden will be forever reviled in the intelligence community.  As a result of what he has released, and what he continues to release, We The People, have figured out what our government is collecting on us, but this is not about Edward Snowden as much as it is about what the government is collecting on each one of We the People.

I do not understand why people are not standing on very tall soapboxes, screaming at the top of their lungs, to whoever will listen, that this is wrong.  We are being raped of our privacy and the NSA’s response to getting caught, in addition to trying to make it harder to catch them next time, is to tell us it is necessary and for our own good.  The government is engaged in the moral equivalent of combining “Trust Us” and “It is inevitable, just lay back and enjoy it.”
 

I know the response of most of my Conservative friends, “Well, I don’t care who knows what I am doing.  I am not doing anything wrong.  Let them look.”  As I have said before, that is fine, you are welcome to give up your Right to Privacy, but you are not entitled to give away mine.  Sit down right now, draft a letter to the NSA and give them the authorization to read every letter, email, text message, note and memo you write.  Give them the authority listen in on every conversation you have, tap your phones and hell, while you are at it; let them take a peek at your medical records.  Why would you care if they know you aren’t sick or maybe you are?  What difference does it make?

It is when you start to try to give away MY right to privacy that I take great exception.  Remember, some of the worst oppressions on the planet came at the hands of a majority against a minority.  Just ask African Americans (You remember, slavery?), Native Americans (does Wounded Knee ring a bell?  Reservations?  The Trail of Tears?).  The world is rife with examples of uncaring majorities allowing the rights of minorities to be compromised or eliminated altogether.  The Jews in Nazi Germany were just such a minority and now we hear that prolific cry, “Never Again.”  Where are those cries now, in light of the massive violation of our privacy at the hands of the government?
 

Since it is a Right (note the capital R) as defined by the Supreme Court as being guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I do not have to justify why I wish to invoke that Right.  It is my Right to do so, and I am not required to explain it to anyone.   Ask a Conservative to justify why he wants or needs to keep and bear arms, they will routinely tell you, “Because it is my Right.”  Oh and one of the justifications for why the government cannot require you to register your firearm(s) is because you have a Right to Privacy.
 

By the way, all you so-called “Constitutionalists,” the word “privacy” never once appears in the Constitution, but it comes from an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment by the Supreme Court.  Does that reviled term “judicial activism” work for you here, or would you argue that in the United States we have no Right to privacy and the government can act with impunity and disregard to anything related to personal privacy?  You better watch out because without a Right to Privacy, gun registration may not be far behind.  Is there anything at all that is just none of their business?  I am afraid the American People have a strange way of deciding what is and is not anyone’s business for themselves, but then there is that pesky majority rules, minority Rights argument.
 

This issue is becoming less and less about Edward Snowden and more about the abuses of power and technology in which the U.S. Government is engaged.  We are finding out that the Government views us as little children who have no idea what is in our best interests, but as good parents, our government thinks they can tell us.  This does not, in my opinion, square with government by the people, but most certainly fits within their definition of government of the people.