No Wonder Bush Doesn’t Listen To Polls

Posted on May 14, 2006

No wonder the Bush’s don’t pay attention to polls. When one poll says the NSA leak helps Bush’s approval rating, one poll says 66% support the NSA efforts, and another one says the majority oppose it, what are we to think? Pick the poll that backs up your ideology. Its clear the public is split, but could the differences have something to do with how the questions were worded?

What Americans need to understand is that you can’t connect the dots if you can’t collect the dots.

I’m a strong believer in privacy rights. I don’t see why Americans are obligated to give the government their bank account details and the holdings therein. Other revenue agencies in other free societies don’t require that level of disclosure. But, given that the people of the United States are apparently entirely cool with that, it’s hard to see why lists of phone numbers (i.e., your monthly statement) with no identifying information attached to them is of such a vastly different order of magnitude. By definition, “connecting the dots” involves getting to see the dots in the first place.

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) feels differently. “Look at this headline,” huffed the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. Now, are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida?”

No. But next time he’s flying from D.C. to Burlington, Vt., on a Friday afternoon he might look at the security line: Tens of millions of Americans are having to take their coats and shoes off! Are you telling me that tens of millions of ordinary shoe-wearing Americans are involved with al-Qaida?

Of course not. Fifteen out of 19 of the 9/11 killers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. So let’s scrap the tens of millions of law-abiding phone records, and say we only want to examine the long-distance phone bills of, say, young men of Saudi origin living in the United States. Can you imagine what Leahy and Lauer would say to that? Oh, no! Racial profiling! The government’s snooping on people whose only crime is “dialing while Arab.”

QandO makes a great point.

1. You want the government to prevent terrorist attacks.
2. You don’t want the government to target specific groups.
3. You don’t want the government to engage in widespread surveillance.

Well, I’ve got bad news for you. Pick two of the above. All three of those goals cannot be achieved, and demanding that the world operate in a different fashion than it does is just childish and petulant.

This is sadly, the reality we face. Liberals don’t want us to profile any specific group, or use overall intelligence gathering either. What is even more sad is that democrats have no alternative plan to offer. I keep hearing about warrants, but you have to have leads first. Organizations like the ACLU have come out against random searches, profiled searches, and searches across the board. You are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t when it comes to liberals. The only plan that liberals have is obstruction. They want to reward those that have endangered America by leaking sensitive, classified information; when what we should be concentrating on is holding them responsible.

The debate needs to shift away from trying to punish our government’s efforts to protect us, and start concentrating on holding to account those that are aiding our enemies. Stop trying to tie our hands in this war on terror, or when we can’t connect the dots again and thousands die, blood will be on yours.

Check out Tony Snow Vs. Helen Thomas.

» Filed Under News, War On Terror

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One Response to “No Wonder Bush Doesn’t Listen To Polls”

Draven32 on May 15th, 2006 2:05 am

Want to make a poll come out with your preconcieved result?

Simple- look at the area that has voters registered in whichever direction, left or right, that will give you the results you want. Confine your survey to phone numbers in that area.

OR….

Say you’re doing a survey about illegal immigration… sort out all non-Latino phone numbers….