The real enemy is ...

Le centriste

Stan Shannon wrote:

Anyone who disagrees with them is now a right wing extremist

I remember you calling people that did not agree with you "communists", "leftits", etc, even if they are not.

Mike Gaskey

Oakman wrote:

I found myself thinking that you could have written it. A few cosmetic changes of left-wing for right-wing and union workers for veterans and you could have happily signed your name to it.

gee, Stan running a governmental agency now? pretty fucking sad when some loon in DHS, well: the head loon, is this paranoid.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

Mike Gaskey

Le Centriste wrote:

I remember you calling people that did not agree with you "communists", "leftits", etc, even if they are not.

realize that Stan isn't running a governmental agency that can act on paranoid delusions.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

Le centriste

That is a good thing :)

Oakman

Mike Gaskey wrote:

gee, Stan running a governmental agency now? pretty f***ing sad when some loon in DHS, well: the head loon, is this paranoid.

Exactly what I was thinking. This indeed is beginning to look like chains you can believe in. The document itself makes my blood boil. The idea that that frog-eyed bitch would dare to suggest that all returning veterans be watched by their local police is absolutely infuriating and disgusting. It appears that she's the kind of fat-assed liberal chick who squeals like a stuck pig when she sees a weapon and thinks that warriors are all Neaderthals who should be kept in concentration camps, or executed out right.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

wolfbinary

Different time same issue. It happened with the wire tapping with Bush2, mcarthy antiAmerican hearings, etc. Anytime some portion, person or otherwise thinks they're being persecuted unjustifiably an extremist group is bound to form. I'm not excusing this, but this just isn't anything new or local to this administration alone. Left, right, up, down it doesn't really matter government agencies look at groups and associations for connections and sources of problems in society. The real problem they seem to have is finding the Ted Kaczynskis of the country. That would have gone on until he died had it not been for his family turning him in. I suppose this goes in cycles too. 9/11 happened and everyone got all scared of muslims and planes and so airline security was increased. Although still ineffective and useless. School shootings made paranoid parents and school staff hold mach school shooting drills, install metal detectors, and harass students based on computer associations. Yet we still have them.

Oakman

Le Centriste wrote:

That is a good thing

I think there's widespread agreement on that.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Oakman

wolfbinary wrote:

I'm not excusing this, but this just isn't anything new or local to this administration alone.

Can you imagine the screams of outrage that would have been all over the media and the halls of Congress if Bush, Cheney, and skeleton-head had put out a 9 page document targeting all liberal groups as worth watching, especially Union members? Denis Kuchinich would have immediately introduced three more bills of impeachment. The level of paranoia shown in that document is far beyond anything generated by the Bush administration. You have to look to something like the Unabomber's manifesto, or some of Stan's rants, to equal the paranoia evidenced by Homeland Security.

wolfbinary wrote:

so airline security was increased. Although still ineffective and useless.

How many planes have been hijacked since 9/11?

wolfbinary wrote:

School shootings made paranoid parents and school staff hold mach school shooting drills, install metal detectors, and harass students based on computer associations. Yet we still have them.

Have there been grammar/high-school shooting that have happened inside of a school (as opposed to the school yard) with metal detectors and other security precautions?

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

oilFactotum

I can only laugh! You have been an avid suppporter of every expansion of the surveillance state during the Bush years. Now, suddenly government spying concerns you. You reap what you sow. When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature. [^]

oilFactotum

Oakman wrote:

Can you imagine ...

*yawn*, don't have to. Left Wing Extremism[^]

Oakman wrote:

The level of paranoia shown in that document is far beyond anything generated by the Bush administration

Hardly. The report was begun under the Bush administration.

wolfbinary

I wasn't referring to plane high jacking specifically, but it didn't keep the shoe bomber from being stupid or my boss at the time from having a switch blade go through carry on in metal detectors. That was where I was going with that. The machines don't work that well when you have lotion, shampoo, conditioner and other things like that setting off false alarms so often that TSA doesn't know what's going on or anyone else. At the schools with the metal detectors, etc it was students informing on students that got the guns removed. Some people in Texas want guns to be able to be carried on campus, I think. Do you add more guns to the mix. I know there was some calling for teachers to be allowed to carry guns. Now you create a potential for teachers to do shootings? If its guns today, could be bombs tomorrow and then of course we'd need explosives detection. I was also speaking of them as a whole. Are guns anymore prevalent today in homes than 50 years ago or is it just getting more media coverage? I guess for me its a question of at what point do security measures cost more than they benefit and I don't necessarily mean financial cost.

Ilion

Le Centriste wrote:

I remember you calling people that did not agree with you "communists", "leftits", etc, even if they are not.

Perhaps you out to have your recollector looked into.

Ilion

Oakman wrote:

I think there's widespread agreement on that.

Perhaps. But surely no more widespread than the similar agreement as applies to you.

Oakman

oilFactotum wrote:

*yawn*, don't have to. Left Wing Extremism[^]

I'm afraid you do. That document deals only with the history of avowed left-wing terrorist groups. While interesting, detailing what the Black Liberation Front was doing in 1975 is hardly comparable with declaring all returning veterans to be potential terrorists worthy of surveillance. Oily, you really need to read the documents you cite before posting links to them. Otherwise, you get embarrassed.

oilFactotum wrote:

The report was begun under the Bush administration.

Provide proof or retract, please. I could find nothing that indicated that the report was instigated at the request of the outgoing administration.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Mike Gaskey

wolfbinary wrote:

Are guns anymore prevalent today in homes than 50 years ago or is it just getting more media coverage?

yes. 40 years ago I wouldn't have a gun in my home, irrational fear of kids (and an insane wife) getting their hands on same. today I have several, locked / loaded and within reach.

Mike - typical white guy. The USA does have universal healthcare, but you have to pay for it. D'oh. Thomas Mann - "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.

Oakman

wolfbinary wrote:

I wasn't referring to plane high jacking specifically,

I thought that was the point of the airport security you said was a waste of time. :confused: As to the exceptions you cite, I agree, the system isn't perfect. But, so far, it has not been circumvented by terrorists. I'm sure that some folks think that Osama has turned over a new leaf and is advising his minions to be lovers not assasins. I'm not one of them, and I don't think you are either.

wolfbinary wrote:

At the schools with the metal detectors, etc it was students informing on students that got the guns removed

In every case? There's never been a student caught bringing a weapon in because of the detectors? I find that hard to believe.

wolfbinary wrote:

I know there was some calling for teachers to be allowed to carry guns.

I lived in Englewood, New Jersey for awhile. Had I been forced to teach above the primary school level in that school system, I would have carried a weapon - laws, or no laws. (Stan disaproves of this attitude. He prefers his citizens to be sheeple.) On the other hand, I taught for awhile at New England College in Henniker, NH. It never occurred to me to bring a weapon on campus. Except, of course, the stick I used to beat the coeds away when they became too persistent.

wolfbinary wrote:

Are guns anymore prevalent today in homes than 50 years ago or is it just getting more media coverage?

Not in the South as far as I can tell and, I would venture to guess, not in the non-urban middle west. It's the nice, upstanding, suburbanites on the East and West coast who vote Democratic and think gun control is A Really Good Thing - for everyone else, who have guns now. Of course, taking a class in gun-handling would never cross their minds - that's for nuts like me.

wolfbinary wrote:

I guess for me its a question of at what point do security measures cost more than they benefit and I don't necessarily mean financial cost.

Security vs. freedom is the age old tension in any civilization. I side with Patrick Henry on the issue.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Oakman

Ilíon wrote:

But surely no more widespread than the similar agreement as applies to you

Sure, Troy. Both of your heads agree, I'm sure. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

oilFactotum

Oakman wrote:

I'm afraid you do.

No, I don't.

Oakman wrote:

That document deals only with the history of avowed left-wing terrorist groups.

false. Do read the report(Including the title:The Current threat) before you embarrass yourself further.

Oakman wrote:

could find nothing

Then you obviously didn't try.

Oakman

oilFactotum wrote:

Do read the report(Including the title:The Current threat) before you embarrass yourself further.

I did. Which makes one of us.

oilFactotum wrote:

Then you obviously didn't try.

My guess is this means you did and your search was as fruitless as mine. Why don't you just admit it when you make a mistake?

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface

Rob Graham

"You did it first" - what a terrific defense of the hypocrisy shown by the left in seizing the surveillance powers they once railed against with more gusto than ever shown by the right... You should be very proud of yourselves.