Widespread Spying Preceded '04 GOP Convention 471
Frosty Piss alerts us to a story in the New York Times reporting on details that are emerging of a far-flung spying operation lasting up to a year leading up to the 2004 Republican National Convention. The New York Police Department mounted a spy campaign reaching well beyond the state of New York. For at least a year before the convention, teams of undercover New York police officers traveled to cities across the US, Canada, and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention. Across the country undercover officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with other police departments. Outlines of the pre-convention operations are emerging from records in federal lawsuits brought over mass arrests during the convention.
This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
Police has no morality whatsoever; they are not sworn-in to the Constitution like the armed forces are, and so are open to perform all abuses for the rich and powerful.
AGAIN again ..... (Score:2, Insightful)
NYPD once again violates Handschu Agreement.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why am I not surprised?
Re:This is the police. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is indisputably a Good Thing (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a couple days, half of people will get upset over the abuse of power and invasion of privacy and misuse of government while the other half excuse and justify it with comments like "if ya don't have nuthin' tuh hide" and "we're at war - you have to give up some freedoms to be safe during war!".
Some minor news organizations will make a huge deal out of it.
Most will largely ignore it and not make a story out of it.
Within 72 hours, Americans will have forgotten entirely about it and be back to fretting over the poor blond haired, blue-eyed, pretty, affluent girl that disappeared a couple years ago in Bermuda thanks to the non-stop cable news coverage (still, two years later - as of the broadcasts LASTNIGHT!).
Remember, this is America. We don't start revolutions. We don't fight for anything unless it's the last Tickle Me Elmo on store shelves at Christmas. The most effort we're willing to put into our civics and society and the most we're willing to risk of ourselves for them is a text vote or two on our cell phones.
The Best Intelligence Agency in the US! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is yet another illustration of my point... the people that need to be in Iraq and Afghanistan are the NYPD and the LAPD. Their SWAT, negotiations, and (apparently!) intelligence teams are what's needed - these efforts ceased being appropriate "military actions" some time ago. What's needed now is an effective police force - which not the U.S. Army or Marines.
And, by the way, yes, I do agree with what will no doubt the general sentiment on there - that is an outrageous, appalling, and despicable invasion of the personal privacy rights of ordinary citizens around the globe... but, aside from whining about how corrupt our elected officials and expressing my outrage, I figured there was some small glimmer of upside in this piece.
Previous operations of this sort (Score:5, Insightful)
* FBI abusing its snooping authority under the patriot act
* Major telecommunications companies provide secret rooms to the government to pick through Internet communications
* Al Gonzalez authorizes (illegal) collection of phone call databases
* "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program continues to create mass associative database of all american entities (people, businesses)
* Inkjet printers embed hidden serial numbers
* Newly issued American passports leak personal information including pictures
* Government has access to all Americans' financial transactions
* US government contracts w/private companies to harvest information (which it itself can't do)
* Law enforcement infiltrates peaceful organizations (occasionally incites and/or foments violence)
* Attorney General removes Federal Prosecutor for lack of loyalty to Administration... (raising questions about those who WEREN'T fired)
* ???
* Someone profits.
All that intelligence gathering for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So all this data was gathered and used for what...to cordon off a city block with snow fence and arrest EVERYONE in that block?
Ultimately the police likely had no real way to use any of the data, and to keep their Republican guests happy they resorted instead to just rounding up as many people as they could. By the time everyone was released the convention was over. The lawsuits will drag on for years (my brother is suing the city) and cost the city a ton of money.
The police like to boast that there were no disturbances or major incidents during the convention and they take the credit. More likely the reason is that the protestors and the citizens of New York were well behaved, protested peacefully, and even welcomed many of the convention attendees. My daughters (13 and 10 at the time) and I marched in the protest on Sunday during the convention and it was a wonderful day of peaceful expression of our political feelings.
Re:Knowing what to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if the other candidate is only slightly less repugnant. Eventually you'll run the crappy people out.
Apathy is the only reason politics is in it's current cesspool state.
What's kind of chilling... (Score:3, Insightful)
it's not democrat or republican specifically. It just happens that the guys who were behind what happend in '72 were also behind what happend in '04. They just happened to be republican. of course, now we have the problem that most of their ilk ARE the republican party, but that's beside the point.
This Defies Rightist "Conspiracy Theory" Arguments (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
and we'll find something else to read and rant about on
Re:Watch the Extremists (Score:3, Insightful)
It's kind of annoying that extremists can't seperate themselves from peaceful protesters. I mean, if you want to throw stones at cops, do it when they are beating up on civilians, or taking bribes, or driving through red lights without the siren on. Don't go fuck up a peaceful protest.
Funny, I always thought the guys starting those riots were undercover cops. Say, the type that would go cross country and violate who knows how many laws to spy on innocent civilians wanting to use their free speech rights.
C'mon, it's easy.
1. Get a cop to dress up in street clothes.
2. Enter protest.
3. Throw a rock, push some people around, start a fistfight, whatever
4. The protest turns into a riot, the cops come down and beat the crap out of whomever they want, arrest everyone else, and go home.
Re:AGAIN again ..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to be even-handed, wasn't it Clinton who caged protesters off in areas where he'd never have to see them? Something along the lines of "you have the right to free speech, but you don't have the right for anybody to hear you".
But no, you're probably right, that this admin is working hard to rise to Nixonian levels.
not what you think (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like good policework (Score:2, Insightful)
But you don't understand! If they are trying to blow up Republicans they are patriots and heros. Shame on the NYPD for aiding and abetting BusHitler.
Seriously though; read the whole article and reading through the painfully obvious bias the NYT put on it it looked like a textbook example of good police work. They didn't tap any phones or break the law, they read open sourses like webpages and they put boots on the ground at meetings open to the public to collect human intelligence. Yes they kept files on threats and non threats, who wants to have each team investigate the same harmless nuts? Then when the convention hit they knew which ones were the small hardcore fringe most likely to commit crimes and they culled em out of the herd while allowing several hundred thousand (misguided fools in my humble opinion, but I respect their right to BE fools) protesters to peacefully assemble and petition their government for redress of their idiot grievences.
Bottom line people, the right to protest DOES not include the right to anarchy, terror and violence. A million or so of the diehard socialist/progressive/green side need to learn the difference, including it appears 75% of slashdot's readership.
If by "best", you mean "overzealous" (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully you don't mean to conflate "people who planned to protest at the convention" with "destructive assholes". And that's the problem here: the police are treating people with dissenting political views as potential criminals. That's an unfortunate situation in a supposedly free society: at the very least, it certainly has a chilling effect on free speech. I've lived in a country where you had to worry about whether your neighbor or some of your college buddies were reporting on what you said to the government. That's a very effective tool for keeping a populace in line and suppressing dissent, or at least driving it underground. Paradoxically, though, the more you do that kind of thing, the more likely you are to have a huge blowup (figuratively and literally) in future.
Have you ever sat around with a group of friends who you know share your opinions, and bullshitted about how you'd like to kill someone, or see them killed, or blow up something to make a point, etc.? People say that sort of stuff all the time, even quite respectable people, especially when they're young. Now imagine there's an undercover cop in the room, and what's going to go in his report. Watch the movie "A Scanner Darkly" (or read the book) to get a bit of a feel for this, it's quite accurate in that respect. Pretty soon you've got federal agents chasing shadows, and SWAT raids on innocent people's houses. That hasn't happened all that much in the U.S. recently, yet, but the way things are going, it seems like just a matter of time. Perhaps every few generations, it's necessary to rediscover firsthand why the iron fist approach to governance doesn't work.
That all said, cops still have a job to do. But when conducting operations like this one, they need to be held to a high standard. Did you RTFA? Here's a quote:
The problem is that when you give people power over other people, abuse all too easily follows. We saw that in Abu Ghraib, and it's been demonstrated over and over in psychological experiments. When you turn someone into a spy, especially someone who isn't properly trained, it can be difficult for them to remember their real mission -- suddenly, finding anything out about anyone starts to seem important. (Some special prosecutors seem to have suffered from this effect, too.) So with operations like this, real care and oversight is needed.
The issue is? (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, what the NYPD did is (1) travel to cities around the world (2) to observe public meetings of groups of people (3) who were likely to be in NYC during the convention (4) and cause significant disruptions in business and city services (5) for an extended period of time.
This is not espionage [reference.com], it is scouting [reference.com]. The NYPD did not obtain any secret information from these meetings. These were publicly open meetings intended to disseminate the information the NYPD was after to anyone in attendance. The NYPD took action that an average person could take if they were willing to spend a several thousand dollars.
This is no different than a basketball coach attending an opposing team's game or looking at their game film. This is no different, even, than a police man listening to two people talking in the middle of a busy street. It is settled law, in the US at least, that individuals or groups of individuals have no expectation of privacy in a public area.
The NYPD did not exercise any extra-jurisdictional control over these people or use any methods that would illegal under either US, New York, or Local Country law. All they did was attend public meetings without advertising their presence. There is no evidence here that NYPD was abusing its authority in observing these groups, that it infiltrated these groups to cause internal disruptions, or that its observation invaded the privacy of these groups. In short, the NYPD did nothing legally or morally wrong.
Re:Knowing what to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. You'll never get good citizen oversight of elected officials and the election process (at the national level) when the average Senator represents 6 million people. Politicians are not responsible to the people, they are responsible to the media who inform the people. Even most self-described "informed" voters get the bulk of their information from television.
You're right, apathy is a problem. But ignorance and miseducation are just as big a problem, as is access to media.
I can think of one truth... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Looks like good policework (Score:4, Insightful)
I watched this convention [wikipedia.org] on television and saw the mass arrests in D.C. during the Nixon years.
Police are always politically controlled and will commit any violence necessary to satisfy their masters.
When police leave criminal investigations to enforce political decisions, no one is safe.
Re:Knowing what to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AGAIN again ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? By many measures of governmental openness, this administration has surpassed Nixonian levels of secrecy. Don't forget that this administration had a long period where they controlled all three branches of government, enabling them to change policies and regulations so that secrecy became institutionalized. Nixon did not have an opportunity to do this.
Re:AGAIN again ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Knowing what to do? (Score:2, Insightful)
Soap Box,
Ballot Box,
Jury Box,
Cartridge Box.
Use in that order.
We're between Soap and Ballot Box at the moment. Depending on how the elections go, we MAY get some of these guys to the Jury Box stage.
LG
Re:Looks like good policework (Score:4, Insightful)
It does, however, include the right to speedy processing if you are arrested.
"senior police officials had said for months that they anticipated 1,000 arrests a day during the convention" (msnbc article [archive.org]).
So police intelligence indicated as many as 1000 arrests per day, the state and courts geared up for the onslaught, and yet the police department decided just to hold everyone in a converted maintenance garage and then release without charging them with anything? Sounds like a bit like a police state to me. Thankfully "State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo held officials in contempt of court. "These people," Cataldo said of those arrested, "have already been victims of the process.""
So the police had a wealth of info about who they should watch and arrest and yet they went over the top and arrested entire blocks of people.
Saaayyyyyy..... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless, they were a different breed of people. Those were people who would stand up for their ideals and freedoms. They didn't have to risk losing sit-coms on television, lattes at starbucks and their 9mpg sedans for standing up for themselves. Look at the liberties we've already lost. Do we even have half of our Bill of Rights left? I don't think so. And where is the outrage? There isn't any. As long as we can still buy Pepsi from vending machines, drive whatever car we choose and wave little american flags made in China and have our Superbowl, we believe we have freedom and are better than the rest of the planet.
Re:Knowing what to do? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that there isn't anything in between and I'm pretty sure they're the only options.
Go for the revolt. It's obviously the only effective thing to do and it's how our country tried it the first time, maybe we can get it right now...
Re:The issue is? (Score:2, Insightful)
Like if they got into your house undercover and then arrested you for something.
Re:All that intelligence gathering for what? (Score:1, Insightful)
I doubt that your daughters, at that time, had any "political feelings" that you didn't give them. So much for independent thought.
Re:The issue is? (Score:2, Insightful)
They didn't just attend open meetings. They took down information, names, places, times, what was said, political viewpoints, etc. They then entered this information in a database somewhere, which they shared with other law enforcement agencies. That information in turn gets percolated to other government agencies like the FBI, CIA, DIA, etc.
So, for participating in a lawful activity your name is now in reports you'll never see, in a file with your name on it, nor will you know how they've categorized or portrayed you, nor is there any way to challenge the information or its correctness, or have the records removed. And this information will be used against you when it is advantageous to do so.
Plus, the whole law enforcement system is set up to track information about *criminal* activities. If information is now being collected about non-criminal activities, where does it go? Into the same databases? Where does it appear? Who sees it? Who has access to it? Who has worked out the protocols and what guidelines are they using for sharing the information? Isn't there a legal requirement to inform the subjects?
Re:The issue is? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is missing in this hysterical world is good police work. Such work requires investigation, analysis, and conclusions free of political bias. Such work is difficult, not glamourous, but must be done. So, instead of working to reduce the 80,000+ violent crimes, the nearly 900 murders, that is one every 10 hours, 3000+ forcible rapes, they decided to attend meeting, file reports, and make accusations against individuals for which they had not evidence.
Is it clear the parent did not read the article because the parent missed the whole point. Let's put this in another perspective. What the NYPD did is in effect a very expensive fishing expedition. Such work is frowned upon. For instance, police cannot enter a premises without cause. Police cannot create reports and exchange reports for innocent person. For instance, a police officer does not have the right to claim that parent poster is a murderer if not such evidence exists. For those who have forgotten history, we do this because the country we were fighting in the American revolutionary war felt like it had the right to enter where it like, take what it wanted, and hold anyone indefinitely without cause. Many thousands good people lost their life fighting England for the freedoms we know enjoy. What is sad that we are so afraid of losing our lifestyle, not out life, just our lifestyle, that we are willing to throw it all away.
I often wonder if the people who support the policy of widespread detainment and widespread police power would actually be willing to allow their property or person to be searched without warrant, or would be willing to give up all possession for the benefit of the state.
Re:This is the police. (Score:2, Insightful)
It is generally known that the reason you learn to defend yourself and carry a gun is that the police do not exist to save you from rape and murder. Presuming you can get to a phone in the middle of a life and death situation, there is no certainty they will arrive in time to help. Their job is to catch the person after the crime has been committed.
Likewise, it is not the job of the police to protect your individual freedoms and liberties and constitutional rights. In fact, police are always violating them from one end to the other. Sometimes by sheer will and other times by sheer ignorance. It is the job of the lawyers and judges to ensure that your rights are not being violated. That is why when a copy abuses you, treats you poorly, violates your fourth amendment right, threatens you, fabricates evidence or fabricates statements in his police report, you should never argue with them. Just shut your damn mouth and take it up with a lawyer afterward.
And that is where the problem comes in. The people who are supposed to directly fight for our rights as individual citizens and be sure that public servants serve without violating people's rights are not free. And the more money you have, the better lawyer you can get. The more money you have, the more you can afford to assert and protect your rights. Even better - the more money you have, the more you can afford to assert your desires by bullying other people and violating their rights.
Re:The Best Intelligence Agency in the US! (Score:4, Insightful)
I take it your assertion is that China and India have ineffective, inefficient, badly run governments? Because while I sure don't agree with the means to China's ends, they don't seem to be failing at their goals or wasting their GNP.
Re:Key Question: "What is the next step?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
For a couple days, half of people will get upset over the abuse of power and invasion of privacy and misuse of government while the other half excuse and justify it with comments like "if ya don't have nuthin' tuh hide" and "we're at war - you have to give up some freedoms to be safe during war!".
Ah, so then by that logic, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers and Karl Rove should be the first ones to volunteer to testify in front of the House and Senate committees investigating the federal attorney firings. After all, if they had nothing to hide, then they should have no objections to testifying under oath, in public, with published transcripts made available immediately.
Re:Looks like good policework (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, what these officers did is blatantly unconstitutional in California, and only questionably unconstitutional in other jurisdictions.
Since the NYPD police have zero jurisdiction in California or any other place but their own city, they have no more or less rights than any other citizen. They are just regular people. So they can goto public meetings like any other US citizen can. They have no power of how to tell how the NYPD runs its police force, and to make some blanket statement to all police from any state would run afowl from Equal Protection.
Continue to tell yourself that 90% of the world's population and 75% of the American population is wrong about current policy and that you, in your infinite wisdom, are the only one who understand how true peace and order may be brought to the world.
I don't know about 75% of the US population, but I could not give a darn what 90% of the world's population thinks. If we did care, this country would not have existed in the first place. If you do care about the majority opinion, prepare to make adultery and homosexuality illegal. "The World" is more than North America and Europe.
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AGAIN again ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know many canned(or professional) protesters who do the same thing. But they don't jump up and claim they put some one else up to it either. If the police are breaking the law or inciting a riot then they should be held accountable for it in addition to the people who broke the law. We have terms for entrapment when the police plant evidence and such. But somehow I don't see this as what is going on.Big brother has nothing to do with this. The mere mentioning of it only goes to show the total lack of understanding. Look around and tell whoever to stop pulling your strings. This was nothing more then an investigation into people planning on participate in an activity that Usually ends up in violence, laws being broken, property damaged or destroyed and whatever else. If it was big brother, they would have watched all the citizens going to work, shopping, eating out, and/or whatever else someone does in their normal life. This situation involves the police looking into people planning to participate in an event. Nothing more, nothing else. Most cities require a permit to protest or hold a rally and it isn't big brother. The people monitored weren't just going about their normal daily lives.
And truthfully, This is the exact reason Bush needs the patriot act and the secrecy surrounding holding enemy combatants. This is exactly why he needs the suspension of Habeas Corpus for some non citizens. And this is exactly why he need the process to be conducted in a secure manor. None of these investigation or so called spying techniques would have been public for quite a while unless the various criminal charges in the court system haven't went to trial. The likelihood of the police infiltrating organizations in the future to head off illegal and criminal activity in this area of concern has been greatly damaged. Imagine if all the detainees pulled from sting operations or the middle of the battlefield were afforded this opportunity. The enemy would know exactly how and were they got their information, possibly endangering the lives of the agents working it, and let them know what to do in the future to avoid getting caught.
If there is any story here, It is the justification and necessity of the secrecy involved in the war on terror. I wonder which news agency broke this story?
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
What they wont do is go in and have all this stuff made public or be sworn to an oath that has no other purpose then to position them into a perjury trap. The dems are trying to pull a Lewis Libby in were they confuse them, and then hold a misstatement that was made that he later corrected on his own admission as perjury (lying to an investigator)and trick a conviction out of them when nothing illegal has been done.
And to note, In case you one of the few who know enough to blame Cheney for the "Plame outing", I guessing you already know that Richard Armatage was the person who outed Plame. He is a long time Democrat and a critic of the bush war policy who notified the special investigator that he was the one who outed Plame on accident in a conversation with a reporter at the very beginning of the special council investigation process. So we had Four years of collecting evidence on someone who misstated the order of events in which reporter he talked to first when they were all asking if it was Cheney's office that outed her.
Tell me it isn't a perjury trap. They have all the emails and communications records in the last several months pertaining to this including several Prominent democrat communications questioning the records of some of these prosecutors. Everyone investigating says no law was broken. Tell us why the Bush administration's pulling executive privilege on this is any different from Clinton's when he did it except that Clinton was actually guilty or suspected of breaking a law.
Re:This is the police. (Score:4, Insightful)
Do what you want. But tell it like it is, Those that oppose criminal and illegal activity are not opposing free speech.
Re:Clinton fired 92 US Attorneys (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the trolls. Don't feed the... ah, crap.
The current controversy is because firing US Attorneys en masse in the middle of a President's term is unprecedented. Lots of presidents appoint new attorneys when they take office. If you think Clinton is getting a free pass, here's a brain twister for you: Bush did the same thing when he took office, and nobody said a thing about it. If it's really "it's okay if Clinton does it, but not Bush!" then why didn't anyone complain then? Maybe because what's happening now isn't the same thing?
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
And truthfully, This is the exact reason Bush needs the patriot act and the secrecy surrounding holding enemy combatants. This is exactly why he needs the suspension of Habeas Corpus for some non citizens. And this is exactly why he need the process to be conducted in a secure manor.
But those of us who are not cowards would prefer to have some risk (even though even what there is is largely overblown) than to have a totalitarian society.
In fact, that's how this country came to be.
So your cowardice (don't whine ad hominem, a coward is exactly what *you* just declared yourself to be) and that of those like you is the gravest threat our nation faces or has ever faced.
Since you're too weak and cowardly to live in a free society, why don't you move to Saudi Arabia or some other country where they already live under your favored system rather than working to fuck this place as well?
Oh yeah, that would take the courage of your convictions and you've already admitted to being a coward.
Re:This is the police. (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose a police officer would get posted outside your house. He doesn't enter your private property or anything, but he stands there, and when you leave the house, he follows you; if you enter another piece of private property (one that he can't enter - your office, for example, or a friend's house, as opposed to a supermarket or a pub), he waits outside again until you come back out. He's always with you, listening to everything you say in public, compiling a file on you that gets shared with the FBI later on. Heck, for added fun, suppose he's also recording every public conversation of yours and videotaping your actions in public.
Are you OK with that?
Clearly, the same reasoning you use could be applied here: you're in public, so everything you do and say is - well - public. And if you ask the police officer why he's doing this, he will tell you that it's in the interest of "security", of course - national security, most likely. And he's sorry, but he cannot give any details, but since he's not intruding on your *private* life, there's no issue there, right?
Now suppose the same thing's happening, but he's not identifying as a police officer or letting you know he's recording your conversations etc. or compiling a file on you; in fact, you don't even notice that he's there. He's always following you, but you don't even know until you find out years later by pure coincidence. Are you still OK with that?
The problem here is that the police simply has no business interfering with the lives of people who aren't suspected of doing anything wrong. And that's DOUBLY TRUE when we're talking about protesting and political dissent, since that's arguably one of the fundamental pillars upon which democracy rests; harassing (and I intentionally say "harassing"!) innocent people simply because they intend to attend a political demonstration creates a chilling effect and is at completely odds with democracy.
THAT is what the issue is.
Re:This is the police. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure the user name was meant to be ironic, but seldom has a slashdot user name been more appropriate. The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves at the gullibility of the U.S. citizenry and how they spit on these hard-won freedoms
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
Surveillance of activities in public as well as undercover operations have been used by the police for a long time. The police are allowed to do these things based on a hunch if they want, they don't need a warrant to do any of it.
What, specifically, did they do that's illegal/unconstitutional?
Re:This is the police. (Score:3, Insightful)
"reasons the schools are fighting the testing is because people like you woldn't get it anyways" = you are stupid, or alternately, No Child Left Behind is wonderful!
"and set them loose on little sally" = Think of the Children!
"your affraid of the police knowing what your doing" = If you don't have anything to hide, why should you care"
"At least i'm not on the side wanting to give the enemy all the aid and comfort." = If you are not with us, you are against us.
"when you can't leave you house for fear of being blown up" = Be afraid! Be afraid!
"usualy people like you flock to groups and make things up and secretly one person is the leader and has an alternative agenda" = The Vast Liberal Conspiracy!
"What does that make the people who are wanting the other side to win?" = If you are not with us, you want the terrorists to win.
"But i will tell you what, It isn't anything with a real conect to reality." = I am right, and you are delusional for not agreeing with me.
Did I get them all?