I've been political since 1968, when I was in junior high school. To me, so many things are political. What type of food you eat. How you react to an aggressive driver on the freeway. Your attitudes towards authority. Your attitude towards the majority. The words you use to describe minorities. In the 1970s, Congress put its foot down and insisted that J. Edgar Hoover could not intrude into Americans' lives with impunity. But civil liberties have suffered setbacks in recent years, particularly after 9/11, when they became so terribly inconvenient. The Patriot Act said that the information that the government could collect on ordinary Americans had to be relevant to terrorism or a crime, but in recent years, a secret court has ruled that the term relevant covered everything that was both relevant and irrelevant. Hey, we're getting into 1984 territory here. Defenders of these laws say, "Hey, what could go wrong?" So many things could go wrong. All it takes to create a nightmare for an ordinary American citizen is one person. One NSA employee who has an obsession with an ex-girlfriend, or a neighbor that he dislikes, or a family that he finds interesting. All it takes is one lax supervisor. There is no way to sue for violations of privacy. There is no way to know that your email is being read, or your phone calls being monitored, or your whereabouts being tracked. And according to recent press reports, over 500,000 private contractor employees have access to Prism and Pinwale information. I was so incensed that I wrote a novel about what such a violation would look like. It's called What Happens to Us, and it's available on amazon. It's merely an expression of my outrage at what's been done to us, and all in the name of making us safer. I voted for Obama, but I'm terribly disappointed in him. I suspect that when he took office, the intelligence services put a full-court press on him, misleading him into thinking that if we didn't rob the country of all privacy, there would be other 9/11s and his administration would suffer. There are so many ways to snow a president, as we've learned from history. I follow politics quite closely, and as a former journalist, I know how to read the media. I'm glad that this forum exists, that people are so involved in the political process. Get mad. Vote. Be informed. That's the only way to make this country better.
Hello David, welcome to the forum. I'm confident you'll find many topics of interest here. I look forward to your postings.
Nice introduction. Welcome David. Please do tell us about our liberal media!!! I am open to different medias but I still feel fox is the best. Many would disagree with me! We do have a forum for media and commentaries. Enjoy debating here. Jiyuu
Welcome! The voting process is a joke. Every 3/4 years you go and tick next to the corporate/statist hack you despise the least out of those which have been vetted. Join some grassroots organizations, spread the word, etc.
I don't vote for the person I despise the least. When politicians disappoint me, as Obama certainly has re. surveillance and Guantanamo Bay, I consider it one more in a long list of disappointments that we have in life with people. My sister has disappointed me, but there are still many good things about her. My childhood friends have disappointed me, but I still love them. Disappointment is part of life, but so is admiration and pride. I am disappointed with Eliot Spitzer, but I'm also proud and admiring of him.
Hello and welcome. It is surprising how many people don't realize how much politics actually impacts their day to day lives. I'm sure you'll have a lot to add to many of the topics here.
Jiyuu-Freedom, re. Fox: How can one take Fox seriously when it lobbied so heavily on behalf of the Patriot Act and curtailment of civil liberties during the Bush administration, and yet when it comes to Edward Snowden's revelations about Obama's NSA, they do a complete about-face? In the first instance, they betrayed their libertarian viewers, and in the second, they reveal that their opposition is to a party, and that the issues don't matter?
