The federal government can invade every aspect of my life as long as they keep me safe from those drug-running Mexicans.
WaPo reported Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security is building a database that tracks every every American citizen’s border crossings and catalogs the data for as long as 15 years, with little to no privacy measures in place to prevent abuse.
The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.
When Wolf Blitzer asks CNN’s Resident Xenophobe, Lou Dobbs, for his opinion, the pseudo-intellectual said this story is troublesome not because of the invasion of privacy issues it raises, but rater because those damn illegals are still sneaking into the country with their horrific (i.e. non-existent) diseases and contraband.
“The State Department has been tracking what’s happening with our passports for years and years and years. There seems to be some dust-up here. The real story to me is that all of this concern about tracking citizens going about their lawful activities entering and exiting this country, while they have done nothing at the DHS to shut down the flow of illegals aliens across our borders, potential terrorists, and still Mexico, for example, is the primary source for methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and marijuana into this country… and it’s not being stopped!!!”
Is there no issue out there that this hack won’t exploit in order to bash illegal immigrants?
The State Department certainly hasn’t been tracking border crossings “for years and years and years,” and keeping that information in a central computer for 15 years with no oversight provisions.
The fact that we’re becoming a bona fide surveillance state doesn’t bother Lou Dobbs. All he cares about is twisting a story in order to rail against his favorite target. He’s always sure to slip in his talking points, too, even if they’re bogus.
“You know, I have heard a lot of reasons over the years as to why George W. Bush should be impeached. For them to leave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in this state, its leadership in this sorry condition and to have no capacity apparently or will to protect the American consumer - that is alone, to me, sufficient reason to impeach a President who has made this agency possible, and has ripped its guts out in its ability to protect the American consumer. It’s insane what is going on here.”
If your only source of news is cable during prime time, you might be among those who believe that the U.S. government and American society are groaning under the weight of undocumented immigrants. You might believe that there is a terrifying crime wave attributable to illegal immigration. You might believe that undocumented immigrants feast on a cornucopia of social services, while avoiding paying taxes. You might also believe that they are voting illegally in large numbers, and that they bring with them all sorts of diseases. You might also believe that there are secret plans afoot to give away American sovereignty, as the United States joins with Canada and Mexico in a North American Union similar to the European Union. You might even believe that there is an enormous “NAFTA Superhighway,” running all the way from Mexico City to Toronto, in the works as we speak.
All of these ideas are false, but you might believe them if you watch prime-time cable news. We at the Media Matters Action Network have documented the spread of this kind of misinformation in our latest report, Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News, which focuses on the three cable hosts most responsible for spreading misinformation and fostering fear and anger about undocumented immigrants: Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck. Read on…
If you want to talk about who’s “out of touch” with regular Americans, look no further than the Village Idiots that comprise the super-majority of our political press corps. Foremost among them is Lou Dobbs, who last night got punk’d by his own admittedly-”adjusted” poll.
It’s pretty funny that Dobbs doesn’t realize that he’s the one whose been stoking his viewers’ anger and bitterness for the past 5 years with his anti-immigrant diatribes. There is nothing wrong with being “bitter and angry” about where America is at today. I would argue that you’re not paying much attention if you’re not.
By the way, the current tally now stands at:
I wonder if the media regrets having picked this fight, if only because it shows how “out of touch” they are with “small town America” from their cushy DC and NY studios.
Maybe because I’m a “San Francisco elite,” when I heard what Barack Obama said at a Marin County fundraiser about the difficulties inherent in reaching out to small town voters, I said, “And…?” Obviously, context is everything, and perhaps it was not as artfully phrased as it might have been. Are voters so fragile that having someone point out that there is antipathy and bitterness in many economically impoverished areas that makes it hard to connect to voters and encourage them to vote for you is somehow an elitist attitude? Are we so immature that we need candidates to pat us on our heads and say, “It’s okay, little voter, there, there…don’t let me bother your pretty little head with reality”? Really, which is more condescending?
Friday afternoon data dump. What came out of the White House this Friday? Bush sanctioned torture.
That’s right. While Kitty Pilgrim clutched her pearls for a full hour at the thought of poor voters in rural Pennsylvania being thought of as being bitter and distrustful of others because of their disaffection, she (and all the other talking heads and news shows) IGNORED the fact that our president has admitted that he committed a war crime. A crime for which other heads of state have found themselves in front of a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, but merited not even a yawn out of our media. Read what is less important to CNN than Barack Obama’s characterization (NSFW).
Talk about disaffection. At this point, I am of the belief that we need to put the heads of these media companies on trial as well for their complicity. Take the AOL Hot Seat below the fold:
This — Nord, is she as imbecilic as she appears to be as absolutely insensitive to American consumers, as absolutely lacking the judgment to run a federal agency designed and created to protect the American consumer? I mean this woman is beyond belief. [..]
How many of these recalls did her agency initiate? I wonder if she would like to answer that question. I wonder if she would like to explain how in the world she could say this is not a trade issue when she is sitting there testifying before Congress saying that this country is simply swamped with those giant containers filled with all sorts of things, but in this case, toys that are not being inspected.
Welcome to BushWorld, Lou. Where have you been for the last eight years?
Lou Dobbs is outraged, outraged, I tell you!, at yet another example of lip service by the Bush Administration of caring about national security while doing something entirely opposite. No offense, Lou, but get in line.
Apparently, our tax dollars are going to fund a Russian nuclear lab (why?) that is in turn, working with the Iranians. The subtext is that the Russians are helping the Iranians develop a nuclear weapons program, NIE Report be damned. However, it would be interesting to know why the US continues to fund nuclear technology development in Russia.
PILGRIM: The rationale for the Department of Energy program was to pay the salaries of Russian scientists who were left without incomes after the Cold War. The thinking was to keep them on the payroll so they wouldn’t peddle their nuclear expertise to rogue nations like Iran. [..]
DOBBS: This administration, everyone keeps talking about the legacy of this administration, well their legacy is mind-boggling, unbelievable, breathtaking, incompetence and stupidity. That is going to be the legacy of the Bush administration. Thank god that Congressman Dingell and Stupak are leading the way on this issue. I mean my — how in the heck can a secretary of the Department of Energy, Samuel Bodman, even get up in the morning and think he has done anything but waste some of God’s protoplasm if he can’t run that department better than he is.
Just days away from the South Carolina primary, Lou Dobbs warns about the dangers of electronic voting systems. Um, Lou? Where were you in 2004? 2000?
The reality is, because no one thinks — we’re focusing on this, the issue is that these machines are not reliable to the degree they should be and with a paper trail, verified paper system. There is — at least you’re protecting the integrity of the system so you have a recount. People must understand, you can’t have a recount without that.
Welcome to our world, Lou. Just shows you that the netroots have been ahead of the curve and it’s the MSM that must catch up. On a related note–not that it will assuage those who want to believe otherwise–NH’s Democratic primary recount has ended and they’ve found very few errors and the results remained basically the same.
Lou Dobbs looks at how the Fed’s stimulus plan ignores the larger deficits we face and is a little too little and a little too late.
The stimulus package that Ben Bernanke the Fed Chairman said that we should be buying those domestically-produced products, we’re in a world of hurt even in that area.
Well, exactly. Then Dobbs speaks to Robert Kuttner and Jeremy Siegel on exactly what that means to the middle class.
KUTTNER: The problem is, (the 3/4 point drop) won’t fix what’s broken. You’ve got all of these structural problems with bank balance sheets because the bank sponsored this orgy of speculative spending. And they’ve lost tens of billions of dollars. You know a balance sheet is a balance sheet. The idea that Citigroup can have something that’s off balance sheet. If you and I apply for a loan and we say to the creditor, well, some of my stuff is off balance sheets, I didn’t tell you that, we’d go to hail. This smack of Enron and the damage of all this stuff is going to cascade on the rest of the economy.
DOBBS: Robert Kuttner is referring to the collateralized debt obligations, more securitized debt, the misapplication of which Professor Siegel we have seen the ramifications for just about 30 years in this country. Why in the world aren’t the regulators in this marketplace, why aren’t they regulating these institutions? And why in the world is this government, in both political parties, permitting this kind of unadulterated, unfettered capitalism to rape this country?
SPIEGEL: Well, certainly we had too much lending, mostly against housing. And a case can be made, that Greenspan sat back without saying anything, saying, oh, the markets will take care of it. The world markets will take care of it and ignoring it. And there can be a case made on that.
DOBBS: Where are the free marketeers now? Where are those faith-based economists who said let Mr. Market smile and everything will be fine?
KUTTNER: Well, they look like damn fools, as they ought to. And we’ve some had foxes in chicken coops for third years often under republicans and sometimes democrats. We’ve had regulators who didn’t believe in protecting the consumer.
On Friday’s Countdown, the bronze went to Swift Boat Vet Ted Sampley for being an idiot with his racist hit-job on Barack Obama which earned him a letter from the General (and yes, this is the same louse who is jointly behind the swift-boating of John McCain that Keith reported on last night), the silver went to Lou Dobbs for his baseless assertion that half of the Culinary Workers Union’s members “are illegal aliens,” and the gold went to, of course, Bill O’Reilly for his hitting a new low after his being presented by a guest with the fact that he’s been wrong all along about his slandering of John Edwards for caring about the 200,000 homeless veterans that Billo has repeatedly denied even existed, when he had the gall to declare that John Edwards owes him an apology.
Keith Olbermann brings on VoteVet.org’s Jon Soltz to discuss Rep. John Murtha’s most recent statement that the “surge” is working, noting that most of the rest of the media has been eager to only focus on the first part of his statement, essentially ignoring the second half, where Murtha notes that while the military aspect has done what it needs to, the political aspect has not been successful. Based on this Wired report, I would question if military aspect can really be categorized as “successful,” especially considering that no politicians are ever given a chance to see anything but highly managed events within the Green Zone, and while troop casualties may be down, Iraqi casualties don’t get reported. However, for the purposes of this comparison, let’s give Murtha the benefit of the doubt and simply appreciate the context that Olbermann and Soltz attempt to provide to Murtha’s statement.
Now watch how Lou Dobbs handles the very same story:
Jesse Jackson published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times blasting the Democratic presidential candidates–with the exception of John Edwards–for ignoring African-American voters and issues of their community. Lou Dobbs brings on radio talk show hosts Joe Madison,
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For all the things to raise the specter of impeachment over, Lou Dobbs chooses poison tomatoes. Go figure.
If you want to talk about who’s “out of touch” with regular Americans, look no further than the Village Idiots that comprise the super-majority of our political press corps. Foremost among them is Lou Dobbs, who last night got punk’d by his own admittedly-”adjusted” poll.
