I should add that my family needed to gain political asylum to get ** to** this country, so that may cloud my judgement slightly. With all the people who risk death daily to get to this country, it is just hard to imagine a set of circumstances that would lead one to need claim political asylum to get out.
Anyone who isn’t afraid of this program should go to this page and see the official Homeland Security logo they have: An animated eye looking through a keyhole!
Now excuse me while I go and put some clothes on.
Well that’s it. Color me officially frightened. And more regretful than ever of voting for Dubya. Shoulda gone with my instincts and voted Libertarian.
And people scoffed at me endlessly when I labeled him the scariest guy I could imagine actually becoming President.
While vindication for one’s scorned views is pleasant, in this case it is certainly a double-edged sword.
Be careful with what you say. You are being watched.
Seven, you can watch the first 23 people in this thread, but I get dibs on the next 23.
And sailor, your on the top of my list.
I guess there were too many complaints about the first logo, the one of Ashcroft wiping his dog’s ass with the Constitution.
I’m going to play the devil’s advocate for a brief moment. After all, is this program really that bad? Let’s say everyone involved in citizen corps does their part as “planned”, what makes the new initiative so bad?
Ok… for starters, aren’t all Americans subjected to equal treatment? Does this new initiative maintain the status quo? I think not. Can we say racial profiling?
By supporting citizen corp’s inititiative are we on the slippery slope to totolitarianism and the return of Mccarthism?
Land of the free and home of the brave… Since when does bravery include peaking through your neighbor’s window and postal men monitoring your mail and private life… How about the midnight curfew - an American Ghetto. This isn’t the America that I’ve grown to love. This is ludicrous. I think this initiative is furthering the agitation of a sore foot.
I think the more informal means of increased vigilence is the best solution… If you see what common sense tells you is “suspicous activity” call the police! Common sense to one person is uncommon sense to another. A formalised system of snitches is only going to increase paranoi and a collective sense of abused civil liberties. Americans won’t let this fly. Will we? Slippery Slope.
If citizin corps is the best solution for our national secrity crisis …we are in trouble.
God, parts of this are such a good idea, while other parts look like footnotes to Mien Kampf. I see nothing but good things in an official volunteer corps that helps alleviate the burden on the local police force by directing traffic during a parade, or going door-to-door alerting folks not to touch the downed power lines after the big storm.
But by connecting this with the above-mentioned suspicious purposes and motivations, it spoils the pot.
For what it’s worth, this has been cooking for some time. John McCain was one of the original supporters, and he suggested, of all things, to create a uniform for volunteers that would be very military in appearance. :eek: Great idea there, John. Can we call it the Supportive Services, and put the initials in big black letters on the sleeve as well?
All hail president Bush, president for life, savior of america!
… I’m waiting for your hails, citizen-protectors… Don’t make me report you.
i voted in missouri in the presidential election, and let me tell you, right now i’m really wishing i voted for ashcroft for senator…then he wouldn’t be attorney general! the people of missouri showed good sense when they voted for carnahan over ashcroft and what do we get? a scary ass attorney general to exacerbate the problems the white house creates, as well as creating some of his own!
Has anyone seen anything form the ACLU and their ilk? Some aspects of this may be OK, others just way over the line into totalitarianism.
At thirty-three years old, I finally started reading 1984 for the first time the other day. Excellent book…as fiction.
Now that it’s becoming a reality, I’m getting very frightened.
Any Aussie dopers want to adopt me? Please?
Another reasonI am a fan of Babylon 5 is that its creator and writer, J. Michael Straczinski, was prophetic in showing how Earth, in fighting the Shadows, becomes a dictatorship, which is first when station personeel join a keeping-an-eye-on-subversives-and-aliens group called the Nightwatch. So much of the dialogue now seems so eerily prescient
And Bester, the sinister head of Psicorps, the fascist telepath police group, has much in common with Ashcroft.
FYI, the Season 1 DVD box set comes out in November.
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Funny, though. Go to the bottom of the official website–they have a privacy policy
Y’know, Unkie Sam, there’s such a thing as too much irony.
And while I’m regretful of voting for, and disappointed with, Bush, I’m still scoffing at that statement, Stoid. I mean, hell, Dubya’s no Franklin Roosevelt. Or Richard Nixon. Yet. Things could easily be much worse.
Here’s my first tip. Since the hot line isn’t operating yet, I’ll post it here.
I want to report some suspicious activity on the part of my neighbor at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I’m not quite sure what goes on over there, but they leave all the lights on every night, and there seem to be people coming and going at all hours. Some of them even carry guns. Sometimes even helicopters fly in and out of there. The noise is driving me nuts.
What’s more, I hear that one of the guys my neighbor spends a lot of time with used to work for some oil-field services outfit, and supposedly looked the other way while some clever accountants cookeed the books. Anyway, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I think. Somebody oughta check these guys out.
I don’t think that the Globe & Mail can be characterized as a particularly alarmist publication, and they seem to concur:
Well, I think this is an excellent idea! We can afford to let some our less important rights fall to the wayside, if it helps maintain our way of life and high standard of living. By way of comparison, look at Canada. What’s the housing situation up there? The job market? Any openings up there for an experienced, college-educated machinist? And how’s their national security? Why, I bet there’re all sorts of ways to cross the border unobserved! I’m sure our Canadian dopers know all sorts of way to get into the Great White North without our Glorious Leaders finding out, and if any of them e-mail me with details, I will personaly see to it that these routes are shut down, tout suite.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are a bunch of… suitcases filled with… old clothes that I want to donate to Goodwill. Yes, that’s it. I’m just loading up my car with suitcases for Goodwill. The Goodwill that’s just… north… of where I live. Nothing suspicious here. God Bless America!
Maybe we should pull a Huey Freeman and report an American who funded Osama bin Laden and helped start his army…Ronald Reagan!
BTW, here’s a follow-up commentary, this time from a right-wing website.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28308
Well, Dubya has done at least one amazing thing–bring the left-wing AND right-wing internet kooks together!