Moron the NSA

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NSA
So let me see if I have this right. The president authorizes the NSA and maybe his two slutty daughters to listen in to whatever phone conversations they please, provided they can pretend they thought one of the people talking was in Canada. This goes on all throughout this made up illegal war of his (what? uh, oops? did you hear me? RIDICULOUSLY ILLEGAL war) and then someone reveals that he's bypassed the secret court set up for just such spying by introducing his own double-secret spying.

So the Department of Justice is called in. They're on the case. The Department of Justice is now investigating... what wascally little wabbit leaked the double secret.

Not investigating the secret court -- which has been operating, in secret, for decades. Not investigating the secret decision to secretly bypass the secret court. (For the record, official rationale is that wiretapping citizens' phone calls, though admittedly unconstitutional, was implicitly okayed when Congress authorized "war powers." I don't know about you, but to me that's a mighty leap.)

If we're wondering how governments work, let's look at the reason the Department of Justice -- of all the Departments -- would choose to investigate this legal morass from the outside in.

Indulge a digression.

Know who I voted for in the Democratic primaries in 2004? Not young idealist lawyer John Edwards. Not the effete, well-to-do John Kerry; Kerry makes Mike Dunleavy, Jr. look like the Trojan Man.

Not Dean. Not Wesley, Dick, or Arthur C. Clark.

And not because I wanted this guy in the White House; I didn't.

I voted for Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Yes, to send a message; and, policy-wise, for a number of reasons. Chief among them: he advocates the creation of a Department of Peace.

Silly idea? That's right. Useless, hackneyed, completely without hope of fruition?

Precisely.

Just to get people thinking a little on exactly what it is that a goverment does.

Why do govenments, as we so clearly understand, support war, and not peace? Why would the DOJ ignore an admittedly unconstitutional practice in order to hunt down its whistle-blower? Why does everyone have the sense that Republicans and Democrats are actually so, so similar?

I want you to do a little actual thinking here. Instead of listening to me rant on, like you're so fond of, and telling yourself you're thinking just by reading my opinions and News of the Weird crib sheets.

So this is an email-style scrolldown situation. Sit there, at your stupid corporate desk, pretending to work. Lean back in your ergonomically correct chair, and take a moment to consider:

There are (I learned in a real estate course) two kinds of people: natural people and legal people. Know the difference?

A natural person is, naturally, a person.

A legal person is a corporation.

Much like the one you work for. Legally: a person.

Now, if a corporation can be a person -- with all the rights of a person, and presumably many strengths and flaws comparable to those found in humans -- then the analagy (remember, not a made-up one, but one that's all over our laws, economy, culture, et cetera) could be extended to other, similar bodies.

Like a government.

A government can be thought of -- should be, I would argue -- as a living, breathing organism with loves and fears and very specific motives.

Before the big question, a corrollary question. What is "the American dream?"

I'm not interested in nailing down the precise definition here and now, but let's agree on something like "moving up." Or, more cogently, giving your kids opportunities you didn't have, no matter the percieved obstacles to that improvement.

Okay. So bear that in mind.

Now, here comes the big question. Think about it before scrolling.

Ready?

What is a government's primary objective?
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A government's primary objective is the same as any natural or legal person: to stay alive.

Therefore, a government's primary objective is, at all costs, to maintain the status quo.

Erego, the American government will do anything it can to stamp out the American dream.

...Sweet dreams, Pumpernickel.

MR

QWTOFDY
"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."
-John F. Kennedy