Just As I Thought

Thursday morning and America’s getting worse

I just don’t understand what is happening these days to my country… and why people don’t notice. For instance:

  • The “Justice” Department has enacted a rule — 18 U.S.C. §2257 — that restricts websites from posting “sexually explicit” photos. It seems like they haven’t been paying attention all these years, and then John Ashcroft must have fired up a browser and realized what was out there, and Roberto Gonzalez finished the job. So to speak. Even funnier is their idea of explicit — for instance, you can’t have an image of a person with a hand down his pants, because that might indicate masturbation. And absolutely no cartoons of a sexual nature, because we all know what happened to Sponge Bob. The new regulations go into effect today, even though they were already declared unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Now do you see why the Bush administration is so intent on pushing through ultra right wing judges?
  • Another flag-burning amendment? Are you kidding? Why do right-wingers seem to wrap themselves in symbolism and rhetoric, but not understand that the true strength of American freedom lies in the exercise of our rights, not the symbols of them? Orrin Hatch says that burning the flag is “offensive conduct” that we ought to ban. Well, so is sending thousands of American kids to their deaths for a trumped up war, but they managed to get around that constitutional road block, so…
  • The Pentagon is creating a database of high school and college students so that the military can conduct recruiting — the database includes not only names and social security numbers, but grade point averages, ethnicity, and subjects studied. You know, these days the old ultra-right groups who claimed the government was overbearing and tracking us through our money seem more and more on the ball, don’t they?
  • As always, once they set their sights on a new target for conquest, the neo-Cons attack from all sides. Not content to place high-ranking Bush politicos as top management of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, they’ve now decided that the way to take over one of the last bastions of balanced broadcasting is by taking away it’s funding. What really irks me is the way they’ve just come right out and said it: they want it to be conservative. None of this tedious back and forth about “programming duplicated by commercial stations” like in the past, they just laid it on the line and told the truth. They want PBS to be a Bush administration mouthpiece like Fox or talk radio. For example: a Republican House aide recounted traveling through the South recently and hearing “six Christian radio stations and NPR. The contrast was obvious. There’s a real cultural dissonance there.” Through his eyes (or ears), the fact that NPR didn’t sound like six religious stations was a cause for concern! Scary. If they do manage to cut the funding by millions, I hope that George Soros will stand up and make a big pledge to replace that money. That’d show the bastards.

Tomorrow is Friday, and I’m sure there will be a slew of horror stories coming from various podiums… ’cause no one reads papers on Saturday. Except me.

5 comments

  • Well, that was a depressing litany.

    • So what’s going to happen to all the porn sites?

    • Yeah, it’s amazing about this whole flag-burning thing. How can people be so stupid? It’s all about freedom. Oh, the irony.

    • That database isn’t for recruiting, it will be for a targeted draft. They’ll (insert Palpatine voice) make it legal.

    • The whole NPR thing is appalling. I heard part of an interview on the NewsHour with the Conservative guy ranting about Public Broadcasting’s obvious liberal bias, basically ignoring the polls that said that a vast majority of Americans thought that NPR and PBS were balanced, and he went on to say that it was the Liberals attacking a ‘popular’ president. Again, they just ignore information they don’t like, such as the poll saying this president is not popular these days.

    Argh.

  • Well, how about these things that I left out:
    <ul><li>The ACLU says that the Bush administration’s response to September 11 has dangerously undermined science and national security.
    <li>Lobbying firms hire more, pay more, and charge more to influence government. “To the great growth industries of America such as health care and home building add one more: influence peddling.”</ul>

  • ..and my take-

    -As long as they stay away from ‘The Onion’ I’ll be o.k.

    -My grandfather once saw a guy executed in communist Russia, for burning a flag.

    Pentagon DataBase… uh, there’s been one since pretty much the beginning of U.S. Military. It’s just getting it’s usual overhaul.

    -I’d give a crap about NPR, except that it’s perfectly un-listenable (outside of the one hour per week they dedicate to “Car Talk”).
    And for PBS, does anyone remember when NOVA used to be an interesting show?

    -Lobbyists? Hey, they’re just following the precedence set by Clinton Gore. Not that they were the first administration to be levied by such, but they really took it to gross levels.

    -all one have to do is mention the letters “A.C.L.U.” and I loose interest just as fast as when one mentions “moral majority.” I prefer to concentrate on the rational.

    God I love being a moderate… enemies on BOTH sides and an easy sleep at night.

    .

  • People always have an attitude of “I don’t care as long as…” and then are invariably surprised to find that the line they drew has been quietly erased when they weren’t looking.
    Today it’s pornography. Tomorrow it will be the elimination of satire (like the Onion) and the eradication of any dissent — we’re already seeing that with the public broadcasting crackdown.
    All of this smacks of a heavy-handed regime that seeks to control the message, control the media, control morality, and thus control individual freedoms.

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