Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Check Who's Sleeping Next To You

The NSA data collection story has created some strange bedfellows, as the HuffPo notes.  Expressing opposition to the NSA's efforts are:
Glenn Beck, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, The Huffington Post Media Group president and Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington, Al Gore, and Van Jones.
Not to mention Sen. Rand "Aqua Buddha" Paul.  Of course, the motivations are different between, say, Michael Moore and Rush Limpballs, but it's a mixed group.  Here's a half-nut that blind squirrel Joe "Joke Line" Klein is nibbling on:
"Those who see the federal government as a vast corporate conspiracy or a criminal enterprise — in other words, paranoids of the left and right — are concerned about this. More moderate sorts should also have cause for concern — especially if a rogue government, like Nixon’s, were in power.  {snip}

Far too many people get their notions of what our government is all about from Hollywood; the paranoid thriller is a wonderful form of entertainment, but it’s a fantasy. The idea that our government is some sort of conspiracy, that it’s a somehow foreign body intent on robbing us of our freedoms, is corrosive and dangerous to our democracy."
Welll...there's far, far more clinical paranoia on the far right -- it's part of their DNA -- and the "left" has been consistent on surveillance issues from the Bush/Cheney Assministration to the current one.  Can't say that about wing nuts like Beck and Limpballs, who use "civil liberties" very selectively.  And you can't honestly imply here that this is a case of "both sides do it."

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