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by sillygeese 3941 days ago
> The plaintiffs/petitioners presented only a tenuous case that their records were actually collected, which reduced their perceived likelihood of success on the ultimate merits of the case enough that they were not entitled to a preliminary injunction.

So let's see.. Because a person can't prove to the government that the government is violating its own rules, the government decides that the person doesn't actually have a case, even though everyone knows the government is spying on everyone, and thus violating its own rules.

Rright. So even if the government decided the case against itself, i.e. forbade itself from spying on everyone, why would anyone think they'd actually curtail their spying activities?

If a wolf had been eating sheep left and right, and suddenly declared he'll stop doing that because eating sheep is Ba-a-a-ad, would the sheep have reason to believe he'd actually stop?

Eating sheep is in the wolf's nature, and he's never had a problem with it before, so why would he stop? It would serve the wolf's interests to distract/placate the sheep though, so that they'd be easier to eat!

1 comments

Try, if you can, to imagine that the government is not a single monolithic entity. Or you could just go through your comment and replace every instance of "government" with "people" for all the sense that would make.
There really is a difference between NSA staff and the average American. For that matter, there is also a difference between a federal judge and the average American. This "well next time be sure to vote for a good candidate!" horseshit is tiresome.

[EDIT:] Apparently this is not clear to everyone, but there is a logical difference between the proposition that two sets differ in some salient respect (e.g. that only those in the NSA may "illegally" spy on other Americans, with impunity), and the proposition that they differ in every respect. A careful reading of the previous paragraph will reveal that I have claimed the former.

> There really is a difference between NSA staff and the average American.

What a terribly silly thing to say.

"there is a difference between people who work at X and the average American."

You are claiming that every single employee that works at NSA can in no way, shape, or form be considered an average American. All 30-50k or however many of them there are, they just can't be average Americans?

I mean, I totally agree. I bet they don't have lives outside of work. Probably none of them have kids. I bet they've never been married, or divorced. I'm sure they all rent under pseudonyms, none of them actually buy a house.

Hobbies, pshaw, all they care about is their job, and breaking the law as often as they can. Every single one, a zealot to the cause, insanely loyal to their employer. They don't have bad days at work, or don't feel like going in, because damn it, they're different than the average American.

I mean, there's no way that they just need to put food on the table, or can't leave the area because they have joint custody of their children. That kind of thing only happens to the average American, not NSA employees. By gosh, the horror of even considering that most of them are in fact average Americans, I'm getting tremors down my spine just thinking about it.

There is also a difference between NSA staff and federal judges.
How so? From my perspective, it looks like the DC appeals court in particular is a slave to the "intelligence committee", and patent lawyers.

That is, it's compromised in some way, and therefore rules in favor of Deep State type things all the time.

You lose credibility when you don't realize that the DC Circuit (the one in this story) and the CAFC (the target of your misplaced jab about patents) are completely different courts.
Nice to see someone thinking for himself. These might still make things clearer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngpsJKQR_ZE http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/Contents.pdf

I apologize for telling you how to vote.
If you have a new flavor of this hoary "blame the people" pablum, then don't keep it to yourself!
Am I the only one that finds it ironic that everyone refuses to vote for anyone but the lesser of two evils, and then people are shocked and appalled that an evil of any kind got elected?
Look, all you need to know about the government is that they take our money by force. If the masses benefited from having a government, they wouldn't need to do that.

No seriously. Think about it. It really is as simple as that. Apple doesn't have to force people to buy their devices.

People aren't extorted for their benefit, but the extorter's, even if the extortion is shrouded in brainwashing, propaganda, rituals and so on.

So once you accept that taxation is extortion and politicians are psychopaths, you'll start being able to make sense of the insanity of the world.

This book thoroughly destroys most of the pro-state arguments people have come up with: http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/Contents.pdf

Are you uncomfortable with reading that? -Well why might that be? What sense does it make? Keep going anyway.