Open Thread — Outrage Meter

19 Comments

1. 

   Tehanu on January 7, 2006 at 11:12 am

   For me, it is the lack of stories that gets my pet goat.  Lack of impeachment stories.  Lack of media outrage on the power coup and dissolution of checks and balances.  Lack of anything substantive and truthful- not just giving equal time to unequal sides.

2. 

   shycat on January 7, 2006 at 11:41 am

   Ya mean this one?http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d158/shycat555/outragemeter.gif

   • 

     shycat on January 7, 2006 at 12:08 pm

     sorry i am TERRIBLE at this linkie thingie

3. 

   jimstaro on January 7, 2006 at 12:06 pm

   In The ‘Hell’ Would One Start!!!;c}

   OUTRAGEMeter
   
   “The truth is a noble cause”

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     shycat on January 7, 2006 at 12:21 pm

     Thanks Jim!

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       jimstaro on January 7, 2006 at 12:27 pm

       Your’s works it just takes you to another page.
       This one I got off a comment, awhile back, over at KOS and saved it, using it on occasion.
       I think Brother BOHICA, another Vietnam Vet, had used it there and it Rings True.
       You have the Right Direction of Thought in mind!!!

       • 

         shycat on January 7, 2006 at 12:33 pm

         That’s where i got it-from BOHICA post

4. 

   ask on January 7, 2006 at 12:38 pm

   CNN just reported as breaking news that DeLay has withdrawn from his post as House Majority Leader.

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     shycat on January 7, 2006 at 12:59 pm

     MAy DeLay reside in the ninth circle of hell surrounded by bugspray.

     • 

       stormkite on January 7, 2006 at 2:28 pm

       He’s immune to bugspray, having inhaled way too much of it.

       No, we need Tommy surrounded by happy, laughing, helpful, openminded, loving liberals.

       He’ll be hopelessly catatonic in… I dunno, we could run a pool, buck a guess, half to the winner and half to BT…

       I’m in for a buck at 12 seconds before he snaps for good.

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       sbj on January 7, 2006 at 2:52 pm

       My sense is that DeLay will return to alcohol and drink his way into oblivion.

5. 

   sbj on January 7, 2006 at 2:27 pm

   Any story or reporting or opinion writing that credits Bush with having any understanding of his own policies, of the reality of things on the ground with resepct to those policies, or that credits him with being the person who ultimately makes the important decisions and runs his own White House and executive branch; any of this outrages me!

   Bush is an imbecile and the only executive decision he seems to have made on his own was to nominate his surrogate mommie Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.

   Bush’s character is defined by his massive ignorance, his aggressive, adolescent petulance, and his delusional narcissistic infatuation with himself as supreme leader. His anger and his stubborn, denial-based refusal to acknowledge truths he doesn’t like are seriously destructive components of his character. His ignorance is weaponized to such an astonishing degree that any attempt to credit him with innate intelligence on any substantive issue is an insult to thinking people everywhere.

6. 

   Limelite on January 7, 2006 at 2:47 pm

   • Pentagon’s paralysis when it comes to purchasing and equippuing soldiers with body armor.
   • No-Fly Enemies List that is a cudgel used against dissenters, is unaccountable, and KGB-like.
   • Passing spending cuts in the face of spiraling debt from Iraq War costs.
   • The Iraq Quagmire itself and the conflicting opinions of command Gen. Casey who insists upsurge in violence is an “anamoly” and Iraq is not on the brink of civil war vs. the opposite opinion of former commanding Gen. Sanchez who told troops readying to deploy to Iraq in Hamburg, Germany Wednesday that “Iraq is a country on the verge of civil war.”  Don’t htese warriors know their own business?
   • Corruption in Congress.
   • Corruption among lobbyists.
   • Federal gov’t. shirking the enforcement, if it requires shutting down a mine, of regulations designed to promote miners’ safety.

   Don’t get me started.

7. 

   chocolate ink on January 7, 2006 at 3:00 pm

   in that I think I’m most outraged at MSM and the complete lack of decent/factual and investigative reporting about the whole criminal bushco administration. While bushco offends me I expect politicians to not always be on the up/up but to have the MSM completely abdicate their responsibilities to investigate and be a voice for the people just ties me up in knots.  With 5/6 big corporations owning news/media/publishing house/magazines just how are we going to get back to real honest news that actually reports the news?  We think most democrats have rolled over and played dead to what is happening but so has the Media except for a few brights spots here and there around the country in certain newspapers and on tv?…who except Olberman is consistant in his coverage?

   As for specific stories the ones that most have me screaming if only silently in rage have to do with child abuse, child rape and how rape is still in many cases not considered a violent crime against women or children.(just yesterday some judge in Vermont gave a guy who had repeatedly raped a 6 year old girl for 4 years-until she was 10..60 mfucken days in jail…60 FUCKEN DAYS)

   News that gets through occasionally only about how poor people(young, old, disabled) in this country are living and no one seems to give a shit. Due to being born in poverty, lack of decent education, jobs etc and nothing is being done to address these issues.

   Anything to do with Vets-from WW11 to Vietnam to our newest vets who always seem to be getting screwed by the government once they are home and out of uniform..or even before as the story on the vests that could have saved many more of our troops lives in Iraq-if they had only had decent ones.

   Last but certainly not least is the complete lack of awareness or caring about the desperate plight of living conditions of our fellow Americans who live on Reservations…a shameful and disgraceful period in our history that continues to this day.

   As for politics..all the chickenshit Democrats who can’t seem to muster any kind of decent defense against bush or even agree with that fucker on issues like Iraq….or think by becoming ‘centrist’ they can get more votes…got news for them-that ain’t work anymore. They either get back to the basic ideals of the democratic platform or get the hell out of the party or we will. That’s more of a statement than specific story but the dems have had story after story of them caving into to bush or simply not speaking up at.

   Ask an openended question like this boo and we could all be writing all day.

8. 

   outsideobserver on January 7, 2006 at 3:03 pm

   Some new definitions that cross my mind:

   We, the Mignons.
   The land of the Fee.
   The American Nightmare.
   Satan bless America.
   The Blackhouse.
   The Senot.
   Congrease.
   Freedom of Wiretapping.
   The right of bills.
   Anything you say cannot and will not be used against the president in a court of law.

   Actually i could go on like this for hours…

   You Americans are sooooooo fucked.

   Delay gone? Great! Only three corrupt branches of government to go…

9. 

   Disgusted in St Louis on January 7, 2006 at 4:54 pm

   Just how fucking screwed is this?

   (via John Aravosis @ AMERICAblog)

   Anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online

   And the best part? Congress and the Executive branch have known about this problem for half a year or more and no one did a damn thing to fix it.

   In a nutshell, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story two days ago about a Web site that sells phone records, for cells and land-lines, for $110 a pop. The company boasts on its own Web site:

     Give us the cell phone number and we will send you the calls made from the cell phone number.

   So I went to their site, plopped down $110, and within a day I had a list of every single phone number that called my cell, or that I called from my cell, for the month of November. I even had the dates the calls were made, and for a premium I could find out how long the calls were.

   I called Cingular and they were shocked by what I told them – yeah right.

   Aravosis asks eleven questions explaining his concerns, which I share, about this “service”.  IT is well worth clicking through and reading his entire post that concludes with:

   What’s most infuriating to me is that our government, both Congress and the executive branch, has known about this since at least last July when the Washington Post story ran, and they didn’t do a damn thing about it. Congress could have easily passed legislation to make this illegal. But they didn’t. Hell, Bush could have evoked his apparently all-powerful divine right of kings and simply outlaw the damn practice – a much better use of his dictator police-state powers than spying on innocent Americans.

   But Bush did nothing. Republicans and Democrats in Congress did nothing. And the FBI and the privacy groups have known about this for a long time, and they did nothing.

   This is the kind of issue that you could get fixed on Capitol Hill IN ONE DAY. But that would require someone who actually understands politics, who understands how to get things accomplished, and who gives a damn. It also takes someone who isn’t in the pocket of the telecommunications industry, the telemarketers, and the direct marketing lobbyists.

   And finally, let’s not forget the biggest criminals of all in this affair. The phone companies. There is no way that these online services are outright stealing this information, if they’re able to get in just a few hours consistently. They’ve got access to the info, and from the reading I’ve done it seems the cell and land-line companies are selling our info for profit. So, the biggest slap in the face should be to any phone company out there who has ever sold one big of information about you to anyone else. Not only is it unethical, but they just might have helped Al Qaeda. Congrats.

   So, anybody got Bill Frist’s or Harry Reid’s phone numbers? Or maybe the phone number of the FBI tip line?

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     dada on January 7, 2006 at 5:16 pm

     Thanks?…This is waaay over the edge.  Scary Shit! imho

     Encryption of ALL communication may be the only way out of this…

     Peace

     • 

       Disgusted in St Louis on January 7, 2006 at 5:46 pm

       Encryption won’t help against tracking who, where, when, and how long you are communicating with someone else.

       Furthermore, my computer engineering background including several years consulting the analysis/design for secure data transmissions for banking, insurance and telecom companies compells me to ask you the following:
       If you are not using your own encryption program or algorithm what guarantee do you think you have there isn’t an embedded backdoor security key?

       In addition, you should also consider the following:

       Encryption Key Recovery

       FBI software cracks encryption wall

       Efforts to Ban Encryption

10. 

    suskind on January 7, 2006 at 5:44 pm

    Outrageous

    1.  80% of Marine casualties in Iraq could have been prevented had they the proper and adequate armor
    2.  The NYT sat on the NSA illegal domestic spying story for a year because the Bush Admin ordered them to kill the story.  On Dec. 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story.  

    This goes back to May of last year when the Bush Admin via Scott McLellan forced Newsweek to retract and apologize for a true story on the desecration of the Qu’ran in Guantanamo, as reporting the truth would incite riots, violence, and escalation in war around the world.

    It has to do with freedom of the press, and that’s what’s most outraging me for the present time.