What? The Huffington Post? But I thought they were supposed to be the good guys. They're good as long as you cow tow to their Spanish Inquisition tactics when you have something to say about one of their articles. I suppose at this point you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about?
It all started this morning when I got up and checked the front page of the Huffington Post to see that Newt Gingrich may not have the money to actually run for President (Wow Newt- way to show you have fiscal management skills). In addition to this interesting headline was another one directly involving my congressional critter, Darrell Issa. Those of you who know me better know I have a plethora of pet names for him, including Darrell Issa-hole and Darrell the Douche. However, now the company he founded and is still on the board of directors apparently hasn't been paying the tariffs on the products they are having manufactured in China. Of course I, never at a loss for the written word, wrote the following comment:
"As one of Sir Douche-a-lot's constituents, I can't tell you how corrupt this guy is. In addition, he outsourced thousands of jobs in his district to China. Furthermore, if you go to the web page, it will claim that the products are made in the U.S.A!!! Why would anyone vote for this guy?"
Unfortunately, my comment never got published (which has become a daily occurrence for me- at least one or several of my comments will not be published with no explanation). However, with this one I pressed it up. I wrote them a note asking for the explanation why it was denied. I received a response from Stephanie H., User Support Specialist, Huffington Publications. This was Stephanie's reply:
"This particular comment is unacceptable because you use the pejorative nickname of 'Sir Douche-a-Lot' to refer to Rep. Issa. This name calling is unacceptable and does not contribute to the dialog. If you were to resubmit it with his name or anything other than insulting name calling, the comment would likely be approved."
Now I could understand if I used profanity and even if I name called another reader, but referring to a public figure in a satirical way? Really? What gets me most about this is that the Huffington Post makes money off of First Amendment rights and yet denies those same rights to other people!! In addition, if I were someone like Bill Maher or Jon Stewart and used this name, they would have printed it. This is selective censorship coming from a company that calls itself a "communications" company. In my book this makes them not very much different from Fox News.
And if you look at my comment I call Darrell Issa corrupt. But they aren't upset about that name, but rather the name Sir Douche-a-lot! That's like going to a movie and seeing a woman get killed and being upset because you saw her breast. Seriously? I was starting to think that the Huffington Post was a credible news organization after being fairly skeptical about it for a year or so now. Now I find this!
A credible news organization would realize that the point of the comment was very important- namely that this guy is no good and doesn't really give two hoots about his district, constituents or even the integrity of the position he holds. I hope that everyone will keep that in mind before linking to any of their stories. Arianna, is this what AOL has done to you?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Reflections on Safety vs. Freedom
I have long maintained that democracy died in America on January 20, 2001- the day George W. Bush assumed the office of President of the United States of America, even though the people had voted in Al Gore as President. 9/11 gave Bush the excuse he needed to begin destroying the Constitution. Aided by the traitorous media outlet known as Fox News, a propaganda spin capitalizing on the fears of an undereducated and self absorbed population the Patriot Act was passed as a knee jerk reaction to keep you and me "safe." Since then the erosion of the power of individual human beings in our "free" society has continued to be hacked away by Orwellian type crises after crisis. Yet how much danger were we really ever in and how necessary are all these precautions?
I don't mean to minimize the tragedy of 9/11. Somewhere around 3,000 innocent Americans died that day (that we know of) and to my knowledge, it is the worst terrorist attack in history. However, I would like to put 3,000 lives in perspective here: those lives constituted less than 1/2 or 1% of New York City's entire population. As for the entire population of the U.S., that amount wouldn't even be enough to register as a negligible amount. Most terrorist attacks take out, at most, a few dozen people. Our chances of getting killed in a car crash are astronomically greater.
Now according to the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) Bureau of Transportation Statistics in 2010 over 600 million passengers flew on airplanes. While this is a raw number of bodies in seats on any given flight (and realize that some people are on more than one flight and travel more than once per year) if we divide that number by 365 days, we get 1,724,705 people flying per day. A pure raw guess on my part would be that roughly 1/3 of those people would be double counted, so with my adjustment I would say that the actual number would be closer to 1,149,803 individuals flying on any given day in the U.S. who are subjected to the abuse of power that our government is perpetrating on us in the name of "safety."
Michigan has passed a law saying that a person's smart phone can be seized during a routine traffic stop so that all of their locations during the past year can be reviewed and that information used against them in a court of law. And today I read that the sheriff in Crown Point Indiana has said that if they need to conduct random house searches without a warrant, they will.
At what point to do we recognize that we are throwing away our precious freedom for a miniscule threat? This is akin to trying to earn one's income by playing the lottery every week. Or tearing down the house in order to kill a spider.
Things get even more macabre when we look at the private security corporations that have all but replaced our military. Private mercenary armies stockpiled with enough munitions to kill every man woman and child in the state of New York and who have no allegiance to our country. We've paid these companies the equivalent of the GDP of some small countries which gives them more power. When they go into a place and wage their own terrorist attacks, they take out tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people. Should they decide to turn on us then what? As our government facilitates these people, they grow more powerful. They become a military arm for the corporations. Should they want to stage a coup, they could do it and we wouldn't even know. Maybe they already have.
I don't mean to minimize the tragedy of 9/11. Somewhere around 3,000 innocent Americans died that day (that we know of) and to my knowledge, it is the worst terrorist attack in history. However, I would like to put 3,000 lives in perspective here: those lives constituted less than 1/2 or 1% of New York City's entire population. As for the entire population of the U.S., that amount wouldn't even be enough to register as a negligible amount. Most terrorist attacks take out, at most, a few dozen people. Our chances of getting killed in a car crash are astronomically greater.
Now according to the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) Bureau of Transportation Statistics in 2010 over 600 million passengers flew on airplanes. While this is a raw number of bodies in seats on any given flight (and realize that some people are on more than one flight and travel more than once per year) if we divide that number by 365 days, we get 1,724,705 people flying per day. A pure raw guess on my part would be that roughly 1/3 of those people would be double counted, so with my adjustment I would say that the actual number would be closer to 1,149,803 individuals flying on any given day in the U.S. who are subjected to the abuse of power that our government is perpetrating on us in the name of "safety."
Michigan has passed a law saying that a person's smart phone can be seized during a routine traffic stop so that all of their locations during the past year can be reviewed and that information used against them in a court of law. And today I read that the sheriff in Crown Point Indiana has said that if they need to conduct random house searches without a warrant, they will.
At what point to do we recognize that we are throwing away our precious freedom for a miniscule threat? This is akin to trying to earn one's income by playing the lottery every week. Or tearing down the house in order to kill a spider.
Things get even more macabre when we look at the private security corporations that have all but replaced our military. Private mercenary armies stockpiled with enough munitions to kill every man woman and child in the state of New York and who have no allegiance to our country. We've paid these companies the equivalent of the GDP of some small countries which gives them more power. When they go into a place and wage their own terrorist attacks, they take out tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people. Should they decide to turn on us then what? As our government facilitates these people, they grow more powerful. They become a military arm for the corporations. Should they want to stage a coup, they could do it and we wouldn't even know. Maybe they already have.
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