Tuesday, August 11, 2009

"...intimidation by surveillance..."





"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded."


- Vance Packard, American journalist, social critic and author.


Read this article. Is this an attempt at intimidation by surveillance? An attempt to stifle dissent from White House policies? If not, what was this all about?
Related reading here.

7 comments:

Stewart said...

We are definitely moving in the direction of a total surveillance state. If this isn't peparation for a New World Order and the Antichrist, what is it? Witness the anger over Obama's health-care plan which is erupting across the country. Many people are beginning to sense that this country is moving in the wrong direction.

Paul Anthony Melanson said...

It is intimidation. Look at what Obama said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday. At the town hall, the president said he seeks a rational debate and took a poke at critics who he said were trying to "scare the heck out of folks." He said there should be a vigorous debate over health care, but "with each other, not over each other."

"Where we disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that don't bear any resemblance to anything that's actually being proposed," Obama said.

He accused critics of creating a "bogeymen."

"Spread the facts. Let's get this done," Obama implored the crowd.

Obama has so much contempt for those of us who have real concerns over his Health Plan that he dismisses us as emotional fringe types who are creating "bogeymen." But as William Donohue, Ph.D, President of the Catholic League, has said: "There is language in this section of the bill (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) that implies that the federal government may become involved in euthanasia...We need to know exactly what is meant by the following: 'An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available...' We also need to know exactly what is meant by 'The Secretary shall publish in the Federal Register proposed quality measures on end of life care and advanced care planning...' The public has a right to know exactly what is meant by terms like 'end-of-life services' and 'quality measures.' Now is the time to settle this issue."

But apparently Obama disagrees. Apparently he feels that anyone who even questions his plan is trying to "scare the heck out of folks." Who is really guilty of creating "bogeymen"?

Ellen Wironken said...

This is not the first time Obama has tried to demonize those who disagree with him. He seems to have a real hostility toward orthodox Christians: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.."

How is that for creating "bogeymen"? Or how about when Obama said that those of us who oppose homosexuality (because of our religious convictions) were clinging to "worn out arguments"?

Obama has consistently tried to demonize those who disagree with him - especially orthodox Christians. There is no denying this. He wants to put us into a ghetto.

Anonymous said...

"...somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it."

- Camille Paglia

John Ansley said...

How does Obama feel about health care for the elderly and terminally-ill?

Read for yourself:

Obama Says Grandmother’s Hip Replacement Raises Cost Questions

By Hans Nichols

April 29 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said his grandmother’s hip-replacement surgery during the final weeks of her life made him wonder whether expensive procedures for the terminally ill reflect a “sustainable model” for health care.

The president’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, had a hip replaced after she was diagnosed with cancer, Obama said in an interview with the New York Times magazine that was published today. Dunham, who lived in Honolulu, died at the age of 86 on Nov. 2, 2008, two days before her grandson’s election victory.

“I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost,” Obama said in the interview. “I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother.”

Obama said “you just get into some very difficult moral issues” when considering whether “to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill.

“That’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues,” he said in the April 14 interview. “The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”

Obama promised during his presidential campaign that a health-care overhaul would be a top priority, and he said at a Missouri town hall meeting today that he hopes Congress will pass health-care legislation this year.

The issue has been divisive, and finding an answer that will keep costs down while extending coverage to the estimated 46 million Americans without health insurance has eluded past presidents.

‘Ruthless Pragmatism’

Obama also said his economic advisers aren’t constrained by ideology or connections to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. “What I’ve been constantly searching for is a ruthless pragmatism when it comes to economic policy,” he said, in the interview.

Obama also pointed to Canada as an example of a country that has effectively regulated commercial and investment banking without requiring legal separation of those activities.

“When it comes to something like investment banking versus commercial banking, the experience in a country like Canada would indicate that good, strong regulation that focuses less on the legal form of the institution and more on the functions that they’re carrying out is probably the right approach to take,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net

Ted Loiseau said...

More on internment camps which are being readied:

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20090609.htm

Anonymous said...

http://www.flixya.com/video/548020/FEMA_Concentration_Camp_(Beech_Grove)

Site Meter