I haven't been paying attention, and now I'm really really pizzed at Obama!

[struggle4progress]

What the hell! There's a secret FISA court that regularly rubber-stamps warrant requests! It's been around since 1978, but I just learned about it cuz I haven't been paying attention. So I'm screaming with rage: FUCK YOU OBAMA!

Holy shizz! The gummint doesn't need a warrant to get your phone records! It's been that way at least since 1979, but I just learned about it cuz I haven't been paying attention. So I'm frothing at the mouth: FUCK YOU OBAMA!

OMG! The fuckin gestapo don't need a warrant to get copies of your emails that are over six months old, either! It's been that way since 1986, but I just learned about it cuz I haven't been paying attention. So I'm livid and I'm jumping up and down: FUCK YOU OBAMA!



Ya sorta oughta pay attention, folk

[Skittles]

1. you have it backwards

the people who HAVEN'T been paying attention are the ones who are NOT PISSED

[freshwest]

2. I can see just how pizzed you are!

Since Hawaii ain't really Amurikan...

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

3. yikes, you are very miss-informed/ignorant

no wonder you don't understand what is going on.

keep reading...

[Blue_Roses]

4. Nah...

Some require the hysterics and drama to thrive.After being here at DU for 10+ years, it gets quite comical, especially when they pick up on news that has been debated, debunked, and destroyed (supposedly).

Yeah, nothing like a "new bombshell" story to get the juices flowing.

[Fumesucker]

5. Running short of ammo, eh?

I'd be ashamed to put up something that pathetic.

[Coyotl]

6. I don't always blame Obama

[freshwest]

11. Here's another take on that popular meme:

[Coyotl]

13. ROFLMAO

[CakeGrrl]

44. ...

Scarily enough, that might be true in some cases.

[freshwest]

46. That's nothing! Check a kennedy's video on this thread. OMG!

That was the look on my face during the Nixon, Reagan and Bush eras. Decades of tears. It did affect my sex life, too. Well, kinda, er, well, not so much.

But I blame them for every single thing and no one can tell me I'm wrong! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

[Jamaal510]

7. At first

I thought your thread had "pizza" in the title!

[struggle4progress]

8. Imma pizza atta Obama!

[Calista241]

9. NSA bullshit.

Just because Obama is President, doesn't mean this surveillance shit doesn't piss me off.

[DevonRex]

10. Pretty much it. What's happening now is the improvement over what Bush did.

Don't people remember that? And just look up SIGINT, Echelon, Shamrock, Minaret. Five Eyes, these things


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Menwith-hill-radome.jpg



http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cattle_by_GCHQ_radio_station_-_geograph.org.uk_-_412255.jpg

[freshwest]

12. Yes, I posted some of those years ago. Along with this clip.

Grew up seeing those satellites, too. We've always known.

[DevonRex]

14. LOL! I told somebody today they'd been implanted

With a Thought Implant at birth.
http://election.democraticunderground.com/10022979321#post11

[freshwest]

19. See, it's true! There is only way to stop it:

Actually, I have a lot of stuff on this, videos too. Some have really cool music!!!

[freshwest]

20. Uh, oh. Bad news:

Tin Foil Hats Actually Make it Easier for the Government to Track Your Thoughts

Matt Soniak Sep 28 2012,

Or so says "physics."

Let's say some malevolent group -- the government, powerful corporations, extraterrestrials -- really is trying to read and/or control your thoughts with radio waves. Would the preferred headgear of the paranoid, a foil helmet, really keep The Man and alien overlords out of our brains?

***!!!

...In 2005, a group of MIT students, prodded by "a desire to play with some expensive equipment," tested the effectiveness of foil helmets at blocking various radio frequencies. Using two layers of Reynolds aluminum foil, they constructed three helmet designs, dubbed the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion, and then looked at the strength of the transmissions between a radio-frequency signal generator and a receiver antenna placed on various parts of their subjects' bare and helmet-covered heads.

The helmets shielded their wearers from radio waves over most of the tested spectrum (YouTube user Mrfixitrick likewise demonstrates the blocking power of his foil toque against his wireless modem) but, surprisingly, amplified certain frequencies: those in the 2.6 Ghz ( allocated for mobile communications and broadcast satellites) and 1.2 Ghz (allocated for aeronautical radionavigation and space-to-Earth and space-to-space satellites) bands.

While the MIT guys' tongue-in-cheek conclusion -- "the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC" -- maybe goes a few steps too far, their study at least shows that foil helmets fail at, and even counteract, their intended purpose. That, or the students are aliens who fabricated these results in an effort to get you to take your perfectly functional helmet off.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/tin-foil-hats-actually-make-it-easier-for-the-government-to-track-your-thoughts/262998/

***You really should go to what I snipped out here, but I had to cut it to 4 paragraphs.***

We are screwn...

[Calista241]

15. Pictures of radar.

How are a bunch of pictures of radars pertinent to this discussion? I don't see how monitoring air traffic is in any way similar to the NSA seizing data from phone and Internet companies.

Why would they need to build equipment like this anyway?? A court order is easier to justify, infinitely more concealable, and easy to throw up your hands and claim you didn't know about it if it was discovered. A giant dome or dish visible to everyone within 10 miles and that cost millions of dollars is harder to deal with.

[DevonRex]

17. OMG LOL. I even gave you words and links. JFC. Should I read it aloud to you?

Dear lord. [URL=http://www.sherv.net/emoticons.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[freshwest]

23. Echelon has been recording this stuff for half a century. Why haven't they come to get me yet?

As to the other question. These big fat spheres have been hiding in plain sight all across the Anglosphere. I've also... well, let's not go there, haha.

[DevonRex]

25. They like your stories

and your voice. So soothing. That's what I, um, assume anyway.

[freshwest]

26. Well, it's possible I have the goods on 'em, you know. Mum's the word...

[DevonRex]

32. That's the way to do it!!!

You made me proud.

[JDPriestly]

31. This program permits a sitting president to obtain information

about the contacts of political opponents.

Think of Eliot Spitzer. Think of John Edwards. Think of Anthony Wiener. Think of Ensign. Think of Sanders. There are so many people whose most intimate secrets suddenly became public knowledge. Not all of them were outed due to this program, but one or more of them may have been outed due to this or some similar capacity to study internet and telephone records.

I give these names as examples not because I really think that they were outed through this or a similar program but because their secrets are among those that could easily be discovered and disclosed through this or a similar program. And that means that your personal life could also be scrutinized. Should you have political aspirations or wish to serve, this kind of program, as the whistleblower explained, could enable your political opponents to reach back into your past and find some embarrassing fact about you and use it to control you.

That is why this kind of program must be ended.

[struggle4progress]

37. Spitzer's fall was predictable: after he had taken on some banks, he used an account at one of them

to pay for his extracurricular activities with prostitutes; the bank figured out what was going on; the bank's lawyers looked it over carefully to see if they could blow him out of the water with it somehow; finally the bank told the Feds something like, "Omigolligosh, we don't know for sure, but we think this string of transactions might be structured to avoid certain currency reporting requirements," which forced the Feds to look into it; the Feds, of course, found the currency reporting violation was non-existent, but that opened a path for pushing the whole story into the news, with plausible deniability from the bank

Edward's fall was his own fault too. I expect some of his campaign staff probably figured it out before anybody else did and weren't about to go down in flames with him. Of course, one of Bush's US Attorney's George EB Holding subsequently saw the Edwards fiasco as his own ticket to Congress, so pursued Edwards further for political reasons

[DirkGently]

16. No. There's a secret ruling on how PRISM was unconstitutional.

The administration has been fighting to keep the ruling on its unconstitutional circumvention of the law secret.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/justice-department-prism_n_3405101.html

But now that the issue has been raised, it's suddenly decided to start giving out some details of how it's supposedly corrected the secret spying program so that it no longer violates the Constitution.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/doj-tells-court-its-reconsidering-secrecy-surrounding-patriot-acts-spying

So actually, yes, we're all pay attention to things now. Things no one wanted to tell us.

[uponit7771]

18. WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Patriot Act authorized bake sales not data collection /sarcasm < this is needed

[JI7]

21. and if anyone brings up Congress as a way to try to change the law

FUCK YOU

because i really don't care about the issue itself but i love to get off on Obama hate along with the cheers from the same crowd.

[morningfog]

22. Double plus good comrade.

[delrem]

24. Why you pizzed, bro? There hasn't been any change.

[Grassy Knoll]

27. Yeah, About that "fuck you Obama".......

Skinner, WTF? !!!

Posting While Drunk Must Be A new DU Thing.....

[freshwest]

45. Damned auto-correct! People can post from anywhere now!

[summer-hazz]

28. Oh s#it...

I thought I clicked on the "wanna laugh video"...
oops...oh wait. I did!

[mick063]

29. So how many brokers are in jail?

For stamping AAA on mortgage bundles that were known to be high risk? For automating the sales to the point that the buyers couldn't even accurately account for the inventory of mortgages bundled? For thanking God that new debter's "accountability" legislation has been passed in the last decade, just in the nick of time, to make these crimes even more heinous? For crashing the world economy into a new age of austerity?

Yea that's right. None. None in prison. Not on Obama's watch.

Meanwhile, our President appoints people into his cabinet from the Robber Baron pool.

Face it. Obama and his boy Holder suck.

This NSA thing isn't new drama. It is just another straw. Enough to put some folks over the top.

[JDPriestly]

30. Have you studied the Constitution?

The court that authorized the subpoenaing of pen registers made that decision before computers made this kind of colossal data base possible.

That decision needs review.

The kind of program being described chills every freedom we have. It is draconian and gives the executive the potential power to complete information about just about anyone. It is incompatible with freedom, and incompatible with democracy.

[Jesus Malverde]

34. Totally agree

Pen registers ≠ meta data.

[struggle4progress]

36. Dooley's dictum, sadly, remains true:

No matther whether th'constitution follows th'flag or not, th'supreme coort follows th'iliction returns

I don't like the FISA courts; I don't agree with warrantless telephone records collection; and I regard the idea that no warrant is needed, to obtain emails over 180 days old, as simply ridiculous

But the current SCOTUS is unlikely to chop any of these practices off at the knees -- and SCOTUS in practice determines what the Constitution means

The wonderful Warren Court is now only a distant memory: it was followed by the rather more conservative Burger court, then the dreadful Rehnquist court (which appointed Bush II to the Oval Office), and today's Roberts court -- consequences of the elections of Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II

So the only real current option is to modify these laws by Congressional action

[AverageJoe90]

33. Yep......Good. Fucking. Point.

Sorry, folks, but this shit really has been going on forever. Should we oppose it? FUCK YEAH. But let's not blame the incumbent for things that have been going on since before he even started his political career.....

[Number23]

35. In essence, you NAILED it

Someone posted a story from someone who's made a movie about Obama's Dirty Wars. Oooooh, sounds so scary.

IN THE DAMN ARTICLE, the author of the piece mentions that all of this pre-dates the president and this is in essence Congress carrying out the will of frightened Americans. In essence, AMERICANS did this to ourselves SEVERAL YEARS AGO, before the man was even elected.

And yet, as usual, this place is getting burned to the ground by the same folks who have screamed about every step the president has taken. Who have lead the charge at least FIVE TIMES NOW that he's going to cut Social Security. That he was siding with BP when the Gulf was in peril from the oil spill. That when the bankers in NY got the H1N1 vaccine before everyone else that this was proof, PROOF really!!, of the president's obsession with protecting Wall Street.

This forum has been proven wrong more times than George W Bush after a month long bender. So pardon me if I wait until the screaming stops and the adults take over before I draw my conclusions. That's what make me and others different from Freepers and whatever these people are around here that shit on everything this president does. The fact that Washington Post and the Guardian have both walked back their stories goes a long way for me. I am reading and learning more about this every day. And while I agree that some of this doesn't look good is going to leave a mark on the president and the AG, I support these men and am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt before I toss them to the wolves.

[freshwest]

43. Number 23, that's epic. Thanks.

[a kennedy]

38. or this video...."thanks Obama"

[struggle4progress]

39. +

[freshwest]

42. OMFG. That is hilarious. Definitely NSFW! n/t

[backscatter712]

40. Whether or not Obama started it, he's now President, he now needs to end this. n/t

[Mr Dixon]

41. Agreed

ROFL