Thursday Open Thread [7.11.13]

Remember, the PDD Summer Happy Hour is tonight.

Rare footage of FDR in a wheelchair has been found. I am still amazed at how the President and the press concealed that President Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down. I mean, this man was hated by the rich elite, the big business, and the Republican Party of his time, much like President Obama is hated today. Some of these rich elite ran and owned newspapers back then, like Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and the New York Post today. Is there any doubt that if Rupert Murdoch was around in 1932 there would have been a smear campaign against FDR during the campaign, with pictures of Roosevelt’s infirmity plastered all over his tabloids?

A new poll from Quinnipiac shows a massive shift of public attitude on the war on terror and how it affects our civil liberties. Among those polled, 45% say the government’s anti-terrorism efforts go too far restricting civil liberties, a reversal from a January 10, 2010, survey by the independent Quinnipiac University when voters said 63 – 25 percent that such activities didn’t go far enough to adequately protect the country. Now 40% say they don’t go far enough.

Among younger votes, the numbers are far more striking. By 58 to 33 percent, voters under the age of 30 believe War on Terror measures have gone too far in restricting civil liberties. For voters between 30 and 45 years old, the numbers are 52 to 33 percent. The irony is not lost on me that the two generations that are more predisposed to throw away our civil liberties in fear are the Baby Boomer generation and the so called Greatest Generation of World War II. In their younger days, the later saved this country from depression and war, and the former marched for civil rights and in opposition to the Vietnam War. In their older days, well, let’s just say some of them have forgotten the bravery of their youth.

And I say that knowing full well I am a hypocrite. Why do I say that? Well, because of my reaction to Edward Snowden. I both view him as a patriotic whistleblower, and as a traitor. He is brave, and a coward. He is a patriotic whistleblower when it comes to revealing the extent of the surveillance taking place under the Patriot Act and through the FISA Court here in the United States. Where he runs afoul in my eyes, is revealing details of our foreign intelligence operations. You know, I want the CIA to spy on foreign governments and nations so that the US, and hence the President, have accurate information in making life or death foreign policy decisions. And I do not like, at all, Snowden’s escape to basically all of the foreign adversaries of the United States, save for Iran and North Korea. If he is a patriotic whistleblower, he should have stayed and faced the music. And he would had massive public opinion on his side. In this poll, voters say 55 – 34 percent that Edward Snowden is a whistle-blower.