Liberal Street Fighter is shocked, shocked that Bushco are totalitarians!
So, our appointed Head of State haltingly spoke to the nation last night. It’s hard to focus in on that stuttering drone, repeating the same tired catch phrases, the same weird combination of red meat for the hard right alternating with empty promises of a middle ground as he diligently works with his regime to bring back the gilded age. Eyes glazing, harder and harder to focus on that voice, that fake drawl and “aw shucks” put-on, then out leaps THIS:
A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof. A tamper-proof card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for violating it. And by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place.
Apparently, no one in the Democratic Party picked up on this scary little sentence, nor anyone in the media. This morning is full of talk about numbers of troops and militarizing the border, but the real militarization is wrapped up in that little sentence. Combine a high-tech biometric card with the soon-to-be-required REAL ID card for us citizens, and you’ve got yourself a national ID system.
Americans, willing to wallow and quiver in fear of invading hordes, will apparently allow this country to be turned into a police state with nary a whimper, with the police and the military increasingly indistiguishable.
What are we so afraid of? It can’t really be terrorism, not in any real sense. NOTHING has been done in half a decade to secure our ports. The FBI still has disfunctional computer systems, and gets sent on wild goose chases by an NSA run amok, scooping up as many details of our everyday lives into personal databases. (Oh, and don’t expect Senator Spector to fulfill his oath to the Constitution and actually put teeth into illegal government spying on American citizens.)
While Americans continue to forget FDR’s words about giving in to debilitating fear, we get stampeded into one abrogation of our liberties after another, while corporate America can continue to fail to secure ports, trucking lines, chemical plants and refineries and power plants. Don’t worry though, they WILL get their indentured servants 2.0, with nice shiny big-brotherish ID cards.
This last five plus years has been a litany of failures. Osama bin Laden is still alive, still uncaught. This same administration failed to prevent the attack he ordered despite loud and frequent warnings. They’ve allowed a city be washed away, her citizens drowned unrescued, unaided, unmourned. They’ve done nothing to correct problems with our security apparatus, instead setting about dismantling civil liberties protections and threatening critics and the press with punitive investigations. We are arguably LESS safe than we were on September 10, 2001, mostly due to incompetence and failures, yet instead of dealing with our real problems, everybody is up in arms about the Mexican border.
What ARE some so afraid of? Could it be WHO is coming across that border? Since the right seems perfectly willing to support a party that is a wholesale failure, one has to ask. For years, the right screamed and moaned about the government taking away their guns, flying overhead with black helicopters. Pat Robertson and his ilk railed against national ID programs, likening them to the Number of the Beast. Still, though, it’s hispanics streaming north from countries decimated by US trade policies and US military and anti-drug programs that get Americans off their ass and screaming for blood, eager to surrender liberty as long as this horde is kept out.
One has to ask, is this really about security, or something … darker?
Wonder what company is going to get the contract?
ChoicePoint?
Is this about something darker? of course it is! America is nowhere even close to looking at the ‘heart of our darkness’, we actively look away.
It is dog eat dog time, make no mistake about it. Everything else is ‘manners’ and subterfuge.
Aack, not Ark.
“Animal Tracking: The owner will be required to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animal’s ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Also, every time an animal goes onto or off of another person’s premises, a report would be required, showing that the tagged animal had been on each of these other premises. Such events must be reported within 24 hours. (Standards, pp. 12-13, 17-21.)”
Muffy, Killer, load up, we’re goin to take the trash to the dumpster. Keep your heads down though, there’s meebe a thousand dollar a day fine for you not being chipped.
Check it out. They’re debating and voting now. Oink oink, Appropriations. Liberty Ark
1. Call YOUR Congressman. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 225-3121.
can’t remember where, that all the bills calling for Employee ID cards for immigrants require Employee ID cards for everyone. Practically speaking, the system would have to be that way to work.
Last summer when I applied for a part-time job, I had to show my birth certificate, S.S. card, pass a drug screen and consent to a criminal background check. It would have been so much quicker — and cheaper for the employer — if I could have shown my EID card.
One imagines that only housewives, the self-employed and the idle rich could avoid having such a card and it would essentially be a National ID card. Eventually, a bank would offer access to debit and credit accounts thru this bio-metric, identity-theft-proof card — one card to rule them all — and everyone would want one.
These cards could still be lost or stolen so the ultimate solution is imbedded RFID chips so you just wave your hand over the scanner at the check-out counter and take your groceries home. Think of the convenience!
If the NSA is successful at sorting billions of phone records for patterns, then it’s just practice for datamining where you work, what you eat and drink, and what you do on your time off… It will eventually become easy to identify people with “mental health” problems and “help” them…
all very much w/in the realm of possibility.