Where is the righteous indignation?

[TAHAWK]

 

Privacy?

 

This got some "play" when rolled out under Clinton, but seems to be "under the radar" (probably because it was rolled out under Clinton).

"http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.htm

 

"Kill" within ten words of "president" gets kicked out for "further analysis."

[DanKroh]

"I could be wrong, but I don't think the White House has a YouTube site, so I take the story to mean they are trolling public pages and collecting and archiving comments posted, as well as who posted them (and no telling what else).

 

No problem with that?"

 

Brent, from the article:

 

"The proposal issued Aug. 21 calls for a contractor to "crawl and archive" social-networking Web sites where the White House maintains an official presence on seven networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Slideshare."

 

So it would seem they do have an "official presence" on YouTube. Wasn't hard to find. Went to YouTube and searched on "white house". First result is "The White House (The Official Channel of the White House)".

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse?blend=1&ob=4

 

I got nothing out of that article that they are "trolling public pages" for comments.

[Beavah]

Yah, thanks for takin' the few minutes to read and get da facts straight, DanKroh. Would that some of our right & left wing commentators and news outlets take the time to do that. I just don't get it myself. Reporting used to be an honorable profession, and service to da public. Now it's just an entertainment venue playin' to the prejudices of segments of da population.

 

I reckon that President Obama's willingness to incorporate large aspects of Romney's and McCain's health care plans, his willingness to tick off da ACLU and gay rights groups by balancing security and moral issues with political ones are all reasonable signs. And while I disagree with some aspects of his plans in all areas, I'm glad that he's continuin' to pursue things like financial regulatory reform even though Congress and the banks seem to be hopin' it will all be forgotten as da bailouts fade in folks' memories.

 

Maybe he's not "moderate" to folks way out on the right, but I'm an old-school conservative and da neo-cons apparently consider me a communist.

 

Beavah

 

[CalicoPenn]

Let's not forget that the original indignation over the Patriot Act wasn't about every part of the act itself, but about how quickly this piece of legislation sailed through Congress in the emotional weeks after 911.

 

Not everything in the act has been widely criticized - only parts of the act have been widely criticized (yes, I know "widely" may be a weasel word but the truth is that in a country as large and diverse as ours, if a bill was passed that simply said "the Earth orbits the Sun", someone would criticize it).

 

What has been widely criticized has gotten the most press (library records ring a bell?).

 

The controversy over wire taps wasn't over the issue of wire taps themselves, but of wire taps being done without warrants from the courts. This particular wire tap section may allow the FBI to tap phones and monitor computers likely to be used by a target, but it also requires that a warrant be obtained first with a specfic target of the warrant named.

 

I don't recall there being a lot of controversy over this particular provision so either the media is conflating this with warrantless wire taps, or whatever controversy there was is limited to a very small set of people and the media is overstating the case.

[Trevorum]

No matter, some folks just refuse to be righteous. Makes me indignant.

[vol_scouter]

The left is so predictable. Whereas, I and others conservatives have criticized Bush, the left will not dare to criticize Obama. He PROMISED you to get rid of the Patriot Act - not pieces of the act. He do not campaign on getting rid of parts but the whole thing. He wants to keep the whole act - he has not kept a promise that he has a lot of control over. Liberals never criticize other liberals. David Axelrod says that between 1-2 million people (as estimated by the USA Today's chart for Obama's inauguration) do not represent many people's beliefs and were right wing extremists. Now democrats are calling those folks racists. Maxine Waters wants all people that can be identified at last Saturday's rally to be questioned - where are the screams about McCarthyism?

 

Obama hired a firm to scan facebook for negative comments! For what purpose? Where is your indignation? Where is your disgust? What happened t freedom of speech? Cass Sunstein believes that free speech should be government controlled. Are you not concerned? Or did you not know as Charlie Gibson did not know about the ACORN scandals? The left prides itself on defending rights - why are they not defending freedom of speech?

 

The real reason for the loss of civility is that this boils down to a fight for the country - socialism versus capitalism. That is why so many people who have never protested anything are taking to the streets. This summer at the town hall meetings, the most of the signs for the left were printed and most for the right were home made. The accusations made by the left are wrong. These are the heart of the country and they do not want socialism/fascism/communism that the left is determined to achieve. The winds of change are blowing but I fear that it is a storm blowing in rather than a warm breeze as we are told. Liberals will not criticize a liberal because by their actions - the end justifies the means.

 

Like others from the south, I have been slandered and called names by so many "open minded" liberals just because of where I was born and live. Same thing as racism isn't it? I am judged for something that I cannot change - where I was borne. Seems like the pot calling the kettle black. Their appellations no longer have the effect that they want - I only get angry.

 

As to Joe Wilson, he spoke the truth as shown by the actions of the congress to change the bill to make it appear that illegals will be excluded. However, he should have not interrupted the joint session of congress (I assume that it was in session - if not, then there was not an issue). At the same time, he does not deserve to be singled out in the history of the house as the only one to be censured in such a manner. I remember the democrats as a whole being critical of Bush during the State of the Union - they were vocal and by this standard, should have been made to apologize or been reprimanded. I am not defending the incivility of Rep. Wilson but rather the hypocrisy of the democrats.

 

 

[Trevorum]

I am shocked - shocked, I say - at your righteous indignation. Who could have foretold such a thing?

[skeptic]

So, Vol; are you one of the doctors who will quit if health care changes finally occur? Part of the supposedly 40% or so, according to the "truth news station", Fox? Just curious.

[vol_scouter]

I am working only 3 days a month now because the government has made it so difficult to provide high quality care. I am a Fellow of my professional organization and have been named as one the best in my speciality for my area for > 10 years. I did not leave for any other reason. I am doing research since I also have a PhD in a technical field. If Obamacare passes, I will quit medicine for good because I do not wish to be forced to provide a lower level of care. I have already had pressure to discharge patients (medicare and medicaid) before it is medically wise to do so. So far, I have not succumb to the pressure but in the future I will be prevented from practicing if I do not do so. So medicine will lose a well trained and accomplished MD.

 

As usual, the left only wishes to change the issue. Obama is not doing as he promised - obviously no liberal is willing to criticize him.

[Beavah]

The real reason for the loss of civility is that this boils down to a fight for the country...These are the heart of the country and they do not want socialism/fascism/communism that the left is determined to achieve.

 

Yah, vol, did yeh really mean to write this in a public forum?

 

In case yeh forgot, fascism and communism are diametrically opposed, and both are different from socialism. So da notion that the left is tryin' to achieve all three is just nonsensical. So all this really says is "I hate these people for no articulate reason and I want to fight them."

 

That's not conservative. It's not in keepin' with da Scout Oath and Law. It ain't even American. It's just shameful. And therefore I'm sure it's not what you intended.

 

Honestly, I think a lot of this squalkin' is just because we older adults haven't gotten used to modern communications. Where before we had the calm, reasoned, articulate analysis of Walter Cronkite for an hour in the evening, now we can tune in da folks we agree with and who hype us up 24/7/365. We didn't grow up with this 24-hour-instant-spin stuff and internet flame wars and da like, so we haven't developed the same kind of skeptical filters on it that hopefully our grandkids will have. We still treat it like it's actually News rather than entertainment by da verbal version of professional wrestlers.

 

Bodes well for our future though. From what I see these days, by and large, the kids are more polite, courteous, and respectful than da folks my age. When can any of us remember that?

 

Beavah

 

[TAHAWK]

Hey, Beav, what about "statists" - supporters of more and more power in the state vs. more local governments or the individual? S,F and C all have that in common.

 

Not to mention the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

[GernBlansten]

Count me in for one who is thanking the all mighty that Obama is our president and has the God given wisdom to know better than anyone else, what provisions of the PATRIOT act we need and what ones we don't. He has kept us safer than Bush by 5 days and counting. Every day he keeps us safe, is a gift. Thank you Barry. And thank you God for giving us him.

[BrentAllen]

skeptic,

It is an Investors Business Daily poll, which found "45 percent of physicians questioned would consider shutting down their practices or retiring early if Congress approves the type of overhaul that the Democratic majority and the administration have in mind."

 

Interestingly, the poll also showed that "65 percent of doctors do not support the plan. That contradicts not only the White House, but the American Medical Association."

 

Finally, doctors must be pretty good at math:

"Also, 71 percent of doctors surveyed say they do not believe the government can cover 47 million more people at a lower cost while providing better health care."

[CalicoPenn]

"Obama hired a firm to scan facebook for negative comments! For what purpose? Where is your indignation? Where is your disgust? What happened t freedom of speech?"

 

The above is why there is increasing criticism of cable "news" outlets and why the tenor of discussion in the country is changing.

 

A story is published/broadcast that the White House has hired a firm to "crawl" through the White House sites on internet social networking sites on the internet like Facebook so that comments, which may be considered communications with the White House subject to laws requiring archives, are, in fact, archived, and some cable news outlet with their pundits twist the story to Obama has hired a firm to scan all of facebook for negative comments about Obama. The public, particularly those so inclined to be negative about the administration (and it doesn't matter who it is - the same things happened under Bush and Clinton)take the twist as gospel and factual news when in truth the factual kernal has been buried under what some would call misrepresentations and I would call a lie.

 

Part of it may be because many people don't understand the technology and what things mean. When running a search, Google runs a program that "crawls" through the internet looking for keywords that hopefully bring up what you're looking for. Wikipedia runs the same way - put a term in their internal search engine and a program runs that crawls through their internal database. An archive program can also be run to crawl through a single site (such as the White House site on Facebook) and identify what it has already archived and what it hasn't, so it doesn't continually archive everything it's archived before.

 

There is no substantiation to the claim that the White House is searching through Facebook to find negative comments - it's just a claim made by some pundits with an agenda based on a real news story that doesn't hold up when compared to the real news story which states that the administration is only going through the White House sites on the social networking sites..

 

Yet the freedom of speech is there for those pundits to make those scurrilous claims. The indignation should be directed at the pundits who took a factual news item and twisted it into something so unrecognizable as to be a blatant falsehood. The disgust should be directed at those that believed what the pundits claimed as gospel without applying any critical thinking skills to what they were told.

 

 

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Oh yeah, Investors Business Daily, they really do their homework, like when they said "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

 

IBD is essentially worthless.