{"id":632,"date":"2006-08-06T23:04:17","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T03:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/08\/06\/screaming-at-people-about-whats-going-on\/"},"modified":"2006-08-06T23:31:14","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T03:31:14","slug":"screaming-at-people-about-whats-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/06\/screaming-at-people-about-whats-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Screaming at people about what&#8217;s going on&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a quick list of things that the U.S. are doing that are making me righteously angry (a subset of the full list of things that are making me righteously angry):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedenverchannel.com\/news\/9559707\/detail.html\">An utterly forseeable consequence.<\/a> It doesn&#8217;t take a tremendous amount of insight to grasp that an organizational hierarchy will develop a need to justify itself, and its budget. It&#8217;s not a great big step from there to the point where members of the hierarchy need to show a measurable positive value. Mix that requirement with this administration&#8217;s penchant for security theatre, and you get lots and lots of innocent people being flagged as risks. (And that&#8217;s without even getting into the whole question of the way the system is setup entirely so that members of the system have no incentive to clear anyone and a powerful incentive to mark anyone as a risk.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.econoculture.com\/m\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;task=view&#038;id=307&#038;Itemid=45\">America is at war with Canadian musicians.<\/a> &#8230;and the musicians don&#8217;t take it seriously? At least that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m getting out of the article. Now, of course, these guys were technically entering to work illegally, but doesn&#8217;t invoking terrorism in this situation seem pretty out of proportion? Remind me to tell you about my experiences at the border with Mr. Karl sometime.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/mld\/twincities\/news\/state\/minnesota\/15117272.htm\">Zombies booked for carrying fake WMDs.<\/a> Was I just saying something about disproportionate response? Well, apparently that extends right into the realm of the ludicrous. If you can read the police inspector&#8217;s statement about the backpacks&#8211;&#8220;why would you have those (bags) if not to intimidate people?&#8221;&#8211;and not get some serious police state chills, you haven&#8217;t been paying attention to history.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lawprofessors.typepad.com\/law_librarian_blog\/2006\/07\/aba_bushs_signi.html\">The American Bar Association thinks &#8216;signing statements&#8217; are illegal.<\/a> You might think those guys would know something about the law. I wonder if they can revoke the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2004\/11\/10\/new_ag_nominee_white.html\">Torturer General<\/a>&#8216;s qualifications at the bar.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of Alberto, did you hear <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/afp\/20060803\/wl_afp\/usattacksjustice_060802230536;_ylt=ArCXT.Xe_B8LAor3b3yYsYCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-\">his latest brilliant statement<\/a>? Apparently it&#8217;s perfectly legal for the government to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20060728\/ap_on_go_pr_wh\/detainee_rights\">hold prisoners indefinitely without trial<\/a>, hope of a trial, or even any charges being laid. I hate to keep saying this, but isn&#8217;t the text of the sixth amendment to the U.S. Constitution &#8220;In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial&#8230;&#8221;? That&#8217;s pretty clear, isn&#8217;t it?<\/li>\n<li>Of course, the law doesn&#8217;t really matter, since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theonion.com\/content\/node\/51140\">Bush can just grant himself permission to grant himself more power.<\/a> I love The Onion something, but I really, really wish the world wasn&#8217;t in a state where this was funny.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-signal.com\/?module=displaystory&#038;story_id=31818&#038;format=html\">If you had any doubt that Cheney was doing illegal no-bid stuff on behalf of KBR, you can officially kill it.<\/a> Oh, and for an excellent flavour bonus, when choking this down, the Army Corps of Engineers appears to have been quite cooperative in the cover-up. Any bets on whether or not Fox News will carry the story?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/robert-j-elisberg\/republicans-in-congress-c_b_26248.html\">Republicans unashamedly use the needs of the poor to gouge out extra money for the rich.<\/a> And people still say with a straight face that America is a classless society.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Just a quick list of things that the U.S. are doing that are making me righteously angry (a subset of the full list of things that are making me righteously angry): An utterly forseeable consequence. It doesn&#8217;t take a tremendous amount of insight to grasp that an organizational hierarchy will develop a need to justify itself, and its budget. It&#8217;s&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/06\/screaming-at-people-about-whats-going-on\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-head-explodes","category-political","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-ac","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}