Random Thoughts

I might be willing to sign on to surveillance if the playing field were equal, if it applied to everyone. Let everyone be surveilled 24/7 and let his activities be published on line for any person to see. If I could see government officials at work with 100% transparency, I would let them watch me do what I do. I have a lot less to hide than they do, and this might be a fair trade. The only trouble is that the populace is so stupid that it would watch Paris Hilton floss before it would keep an eye on the state, so the government would still screw us.

I am the first to admit that my character is a little dodgy, and even I can’t see how so many federal officials don’t resign in protest over the way the Bush regime conducts the government. They ought to be resigning in droves, but it appears that the regime has found thousands of unprincipled hacks to fill all the patronage positions in its gift. Where do you find such a reliable pool of hackitude unsullied by principle? The College Republicans, no doubt.

I hear that some neocons advocate invading and occupying Iran. Perhaps they meant to invade Iran in the first place but a typo led to an invasion of Iraq instead. Or they want a chance to show that they can do an invasion and occupation right, that the Iraq debacle was an aberration or that they have learned from their mistakes in Iraq. I suppose that an invasion of Iran might be pulled off with a few thousand troops and that, provided the people greet us with candy and flowers, the occupation would pay for itself with oil revenue. Note to the air force: don’t bomb the candy and flower warehouses this time. Surely, the Iranians are yearning to breathe free and to cast off the yoke of their democratically elected government. And they love Americans and would surely see us as liberators, not like those silly Iraqis. As long as we have an extra army and an extra trillion bucks lying around doing nothing, what are we waiting for?

Now that the US has set the precedent of pre-emptive war, would Iran or Syria be within its rights to attack the US now rather than wait for the threatened military strikes by the US?

Now that the President has the authority to imprison or kill anyone he likes at any time without any process or checks, can he delegate that authority by issuing “licenses to kill”? Can these be outsourced to private contractors? A lot of people would write pretty hefty checks for campaign contributions if they thought they could get such a license. I reckon a lot of ex-wives would be found to have ties to al Qaeda.