Ok. I was gone for the weekend, but I really think some of these points bear responses.
Hah. So I was standing on the corner of Nobel and Lebon in La Jolla this weekend and suddenly this thread popped into my head. Go figure!
PunkFloyd the Flatulent wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Over the last 15 years, it's highest rate has been 49%. It's lowest has been 33%. It's sitting at 37% right now.
Every other war time president has raised taxes to pay for war. George Bush refuses to do this.
Which does not change the fact that we are no more or less "in debt" as a result of the Iraq war then we were before it. The fact that Bush has managed to pay for a war without needing to raise taxes (in fact while lowering them) without increasing our debt should be a credit to him, right? Strange that you don't see this...
Did you bother to read the article you linked? It's alarmist tripe:
First let's see what the program actually does:
Quote:
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
Pay really close attention. Note that the program only listens in without a warrant to
international communications. That's important. It also clearly states that domestic communications are still done via the normal warrant process. This is important because that's what the rules of FISA require. Domestic communications require a warrant. International ones (even ones in which one endpoint is inside the US)
do not require a warrant. There is nothing illegal about this program.
But let's read the various statements in the article about this "new program":
Quote:
President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying
and
Quote:
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad.
Huh... Wait. Doesn't that other part of the same article say that they're *not* doing this? You see the bait and switch right? See. On an international phone call one party can be "inside the United States". But it's not illegal to tap that without a warrant. Never has been. But the article implies that the rules for "domestic spying" should be followed. Actually, they simply say that they're doing this without following the rules for domestic spying, implying that somehow they should. If you don't read the article carefully, you'll miss that the rules for international wiretaps are different then domestic ones.
Note that in both of those paragraphs, they use the term "inside the Country/US" to say where the spying is happening, and then contrast that to the rules for "domestic spying" and then talk about how that's only supposed to be allowed for "international spying". Well, guess what? The program *is* international. The article writer knows this. But he also knows that he can word things in a way to make the reader believe that what's going on is a violation of the rules (FISA in this case), when in fact it isn't.
It's amazing to me how many people *still* believe this particular lie. That program was not and is not in violation of FISA. But clever wordsmithing by a few reporters combined with poor reading skills trumps reality every single time apparently...
Not even going to address the other points. Let me make a suggestion. Read those articles you linked
carefully. They don't actually say what you seem to think they do. In particular, the whole "negative savings rate" article directly counters your believed reasoning behind it. Seriously. Read. Don't assume and then skim for the bits that match what you've been told. Read the whole article with an open mind. You might be amazed how many sources of information don't actually say what you think they do.
Edited, Oct 15th 2007 1:45pm by gbaji
