[Kazan]

Disgusting neofascist garbage

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/21/fear_fear_fear/index.html

[Mefustae]

Mao Zedong once said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. It would see that in this case, political power grows out of the barrel of someone else's gun.

Edit: Just watched the ad in question... and a part of me just died. Seriously. I have lost all faith in humanity. Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever.

[Stealth]

Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever.

he did, right?  killing millions of jews and others was the right idea?

you disgust me.  go crawl back under a rock and die...

[Mefustae]

Don't get me wrong, i'm no anti-semite. I'm saying he was lazy. Kill them all, Jews, Christians, Americans, Russians, Whites, Blacks, everyone. Let's end this ****ing experiment and start over! Screw humanity!!

[Unknown Target]

Oh hush.

[FS2_playa613]

am I the only one who is completely and utterly NOT surprised by this?  All this "oh, we want to know everything everyone is thinking/saying electronically at all times, big brother/1984 style,  because we're concerned for your safety from terrorists" crap?  One gets the feeling of someone breathing down your neck at all times.  Privacy is/has turned into an obsolete word now. 

[Mefustae]

Oh hush.

*Snip*

Ooooh, you'll get yours. You and your little lolcat. Right after the Belgians get it, you're next.

am I the only one who is completely and utterly NOT surprised by this?  All this "oh, we want to know everything everyone is thinking/saying electronically at all times, big brother/1984 style,  because we're concerned for your safety from terrorists" crap?  One gets the feeling of someone breathing down your neck at all times.  Privacy is/has turned into an obsolete word now. 

While the Orwellian overtones are definitely scary, it's the Hollywood-style propaganda that really scares me. As a society, are we really becoming so easy to manipulate that they think something as blatant as this could (and possibly will) pay off?

[Kosh]

I don't know what's worse, the politicians exploiting a tradgedy and drumming up fear and paranoia for their own political advantage or the fact that most people are stupid enough to fall for it.



EDIT: Ha! Now they are being sued for copyright violation

The House Republicans should be sued for copyright infringement, for pilfering this Season 7 trailer for 24. The whole thing is identical in tone and style. As but one example: from the 24 ad:

[Inquisitor]

At the risk of also being labelled emo, the "Hitler thing" is disgusting regardless of context.

But caring what I think about things has never been a strong suit of the strong personalities here. Nor I suppose, should it be.

Just sad, though, that even makes for "funny" for anyone who professes to be human.

And yes, the OP subject is disgusting as well.

-edit-
I hate typos when I am being serious.

[Mefustae]

Christ, is nobody here a Bill Hicks fan?

[Kazan]

Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever.

he did, right?  killing millions of jews and others was the right idea?

you disgust me.  go crawl back under a rock and die...

I don't think you understand what he was actually trying to say.  Hitler, or more precisely Goebbels knew how to manipulate a population... exactly the same way the republicans are trying to manipulate a population now - they just didn't have as effective of a tool as TV to work with.

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

[Inquisitor]

Christ, is nobody here a Bill Hicks fan?

Apparently not.

[Mefustae]

Where the hell is Nuke when you need him? He'll back me up on this.

[Inquisitor]

In the same vein, caring is not my strong suit when it comes to people who think Hitler was "funny" in any way.

But I am a *****y little girl. My lot in life.

[Rictor]

This ad is why I love America. No one - not China, Russia or even Sub-Saharan Africa - makes despotism so entertaining. Oh sure, pretenders may try, but they take themselves far too seriously to ever conjure such hilarity. Only Romney's "Jihad" ad comes close.

[Flaser]

Welcome to the Freakshow by Ani DiFranco:

Life in the circus ain't easy
But the folks on the outside don't know
The tent goes up and the tent comes down
And all that they see is the show
And the ladies on the horses look so pretty
And the lions are lookin real mad
And some of the clowns are happy
And some of the clowns are sad

But underneath
There's another expression
That the makeup isn't making
Life under the big top
It's about freedom
It's about faking
There's an art to the laughter
There's a science
And there's a lot of love
And compliance

Welcome to the freakshow
Here we go...

We live to hear the slack-jawed gasping
We live under a halo of held breath
And when the children raise up a giant shield of laughter
It's like they're fending off death
And we can make something bigger
Then anyone of us alone
And then the clowns will take off their makeup
And the people will go home

But life on the outside ain't easy
No sequins, no elephants,
No parading around
Yeah, the tent goes up
And the tent comes down
And they're stuck in this ****ing town

You need a lot of love and compliance

Welcome to the freakshow
Here we go

[WMCoolmon]

You know what I find ironic?

Here we have a site that's making a statement against wiretapping and, I gather, big brother behavior of any kind.

And yet I can't view the article at all.

Why not?

When I first visited the site, it told me that I needed to enable javascript. When I enabled javascript, it cut off even more of my access and didn't even let me see the site layout, it just sent me to a black-and-white error page informing me that it couldn't set a cookie on my computer...because of my privacy settings.

Now, I don't know about anybody else here, but when a site demands that I give up my privacy in order to read about how wrong someone else is for infringing upon my privacy, well, their case is rather watered down for me. In principle I might agree, if I could actually view the article. But as near as I can tell, they aren't all that different from the US Gov. after all. If they had the same power, would they refrain from the same abuses that they claim to criticize? Or are they more interested in website stats and collecting information on their visitors to maximize their advertising/subscription profit?

[Kazan]

you're on of the "oh gnoes! the cookies are going to get me" people?

use firefox+ ad block.. end of story

[WMCoolmon]

My point is not that cookies are as bad as wiretapping. My point is that they're attempting to force cookies on users who view their site for no reason (I know I can write a webpage with a news article that doesn't need them, or javascript). That tells me that they're not the kind of people who says that the privacy of "little people" - whether it's web site visitors, or citizens - is key. They're not willing to prioritize that and take the small hit that they would if they got rid of cookies. And once that happens, once they give up protection of privacy on idealogical grounds and start rationalizing it, they're following the same procedure as the USGov.

Right now, they're just responsible to their employees and shareholders and business partners. Now, what if they were responsible for the security of everybody in the United States? How would they handle that? If they think that collecting cookies is the right thing to do for small-scale economic gain, I think there's a good chance they'd quickly change their mind on wiretapping once they faced the difficulties of being responsible for the safety of hundreds of millions of people.

EDIT: Or if you want to be cynical about it, when faced with the power to practically do whatever they want to those hundreds of millions of people and strongly influence billions more.

[karajorma]

What I want to know is how the **** is it a bipartisan bill if all the democrats refuse to pass it?