Reality or The Onion?

The Onion had a good commentary headline at least:

"My Fellow Americans, Look At Me: Do I Look Like A Corrupt, Vengeful Bully?"

New Jersey politics is a thing unto itself.

Consider: The previous governor was a former Goldman Sachs guy who's investment firm Global Crossing stole clients money to keep their bad EU investments afloat. This failed, and the clients lost millions. Nobody went to jail.

He got the job because the former governor was caught manning the glory holes of gas stations on the New Jersey Turnpike. Yes, you read that right. Hell, if I knew he was on the other end, I'd have stuck my dick in there just for bragging rights. But god knows what kind of weird STD you'd get from the Governor of New Jersey.

Well, it is a rather nice turnpike, as turnpikes go.

It's a shame, then, that the NSA collects metadata and not calls themselves, otherwise we could nail this guy.

Damn you, NSA, for half-assing it!

That's cute. You think that's all they're doing.

The sad thing is if they'd produce documents on stuff like this, I think they'd have no trouble selling any undecideds on their idiotic programs.

I agree we should be skeptical of the NSA, but burden of proof is on you.

What does the burden of proof have to do with skepticism?

"That's cute. You think that's all they're doing."

SteamPoweredKleenex seems to think he knows the NSA is up to vastly more than they let on -- monitoring actual contents of all transmissions -- but if he's going to make like he knows that for a fact or near-fact, it's up to him to show how he knows.

That said, I agree that we should still be skeptical of the NSA's claims; while SPK almost certainly can't prove what he assumes to be true, I won't reject the possibility altogether just because SPK can't prove what he says.

You're actually putting words in SPK's mouth. He didn't say anything about what they are doing. Futhermore, as is my point, burden of proof deals with establishing claims. It has nothing to do with skepticism, which is about doubting claims.

Well, you're right that I'm making an inference about what SPK said, in fact I'm making a number of them. I say they constitute a fair reading of SPK's meaning. In his original post he sure seemed to indicate that he believed there was an agency recording the content of phone calls, and then in his follow-up he sure seemed to indicate that anyone who doesn't think so is naive enough to merit a patronizing tone.

As for burden of proof and skepticism, they are both factors here. SPK needs to meet a burden of proof if he wants to push his beliefs about the NSA, whereas I would do well to remain skeptical of the NSA.

Well Bort, _someone_ came up with the SigInt on Governor Elliot Spitzer and General David Petraeus. In the former case, it was even acknowledged at the time that high profile political figures were surveilled as a matter of course. Both men were angling for the presidency, and both would have implemented massive changes. Now both are in the trash bin.

There's a reason nothing is done about this. The politicians are terrified of those heads on posts. Why are you in denial about this?

Here's a good video on Petraeus:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-deemed-petraeus-affair-part -criminal-intel-probe/story?id=17696177

Here are the Cliff's Notes on it:

1) A woman started being harassed and the FBI got involved.

2) After receiving a court order -- an actual warrant -- they went about tracing information. It ended up linking to Petraeus's biographer.

3) Once Petraeus's biographer turned over her computer for evidence, that led to Petraeus.

So no, it's hardly the Big Brother scene you make it out to be.

And then there's this:

"Both men were angling for the presidency, and both would have implemented massive changes. Now both are in the trash bin."

Explain how those massive changes would have gotten through Congress. Go ahead, I dare you.