Bush authorized domestic spying before 9/11

Yep. Before 9/11. Not after. And it didn't stop the terrorists before 9/11,probably for the same reason that, according to the New York Times, it was ineffective at finding terrorists after 9/11 too.

Can we just quit pretending that we live in a free nation, and face up to reality? Or are we going to have to keep going through this bullcrapola year after year where we find out that one freedom after another that we thought we had, doesn't actually exist? Right now, the only "freedom" we have is whatever "freedom" our Dear Leader and His holy appointed regime want us to have, mostly because they know that it just plain isn't necessary to crack down on things like us bloggers babbling to ourselves in order for them to consolidate and maintain their power. We are talking about a regime that has unilaterally decided that it can do whatever it feels like doing, regardless of little things like "law" and the Constitution (viewed as "just a goddamned piece of paper by Dear Leader and his cronies), and any delusion that we have government of the people, by the people, for the people in the United States of America is just that: a delusion.

Of course, I realize I'm preaching to the choir. Dear Leader's minions realize that too, which is why I'm not hauled off to Gitmo and given a close up and personal view of waterboarding and "stress positions" and all the other tortures-that-aren't-tortures-because-dear-leader-sez-they-aren't-tortures that happen there. It's not as if any of us here are effective at anything other than telling each other things we already know. We aren't going to affect the views of the majority of the sheeple, who just want to go about their pathetic lives of masticating and fornicating and defecating and accumulating shiny baubles of no import without the necessity of hurting their heads with, like, that "thinking" stuff.

In a land of frightened and timid sheep, who want nothing more than a Great Shepherd to lead them somewhere, even if it's off the edge of a cliff, bold thought is ignored and dismissed as the rantings of deranged radical lunatics. In the end, there is nothing that you or I will do that will stop the slide of the United States of America into neo-fascism or pseudo-fascism. As with the tired and confused population of Germany in 1934, the tired and confused population of the United States will happily follow their Great Leader, whether this one or some future one, to their doom no matter what we try to do about it. Does that mean giving up? No. Even if the struggle against neo-fascism in America cannot be won, it is still a worthwhile struggle. If we can even just slow down the neo-fascists for long enough for the rest of the world to realize what is happening, if we can give the rest of the world even the briefest of respites in order to prepare for what is coming, that is enough to make it worthwhile. We may, in the end, be condemned to live in a neo-fascist regime, but that does not mean that the rest of the world should be so condemned also. And who knows, like the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, we might even take enough of the bastards down with us to make to make it worthwhile.

-- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin