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the problem isn't them blowing it, the problem is that a right wing, pro corporate and anti-worker regime has been in charge since Reagan. It's not about too much or too little, they've always done a lot, it's just mostly been bad. Tax cuts for the rich, attacks on Unions, deregulation (especially of banks who gamble with trillions knowing full well their losses will be covered by you and me) trickle down economics, austerity for the working class and opulence for the rich and endless war to support the military industrial complex.

We've been trying right wing politics for decades, whichever party was in charge. Folks have been trying to replace "The Establishment" without being able to understand who the establishment is.

Go look up opensecrets.org. That's a good place to start. Watch Secular Talk and Shaun. Read A People's History of the United States. Listen to what Bernie Sanders says about healthcare and what Liz Warren says about the banks. Do these things and it'll start to make sense. The problem is a wealthy elite who's greed and power hunger knows no bounds. You can't just look at parties or politician or who makes you feel good about yourself. What matters is policy and who does and doesn't take corporate PAC money. Oh, and watch out for guys like Beto O'Rouke, who seems to have gotten his money from the wealthy and hide that fact by having them bundle small donations.

This is the same guy that called the bribes he takes buying into his agenda.

If you are referring to all campaign money as bribes then you are accurate.

However, campaign contributions are considered legal, and the NRA is free to make them, as Rubio is to accept them. Lets not muddy the water by calling a legal contribution an illegal bribe. Even if it is NRA dollars after a shooting that killed 17 people.

This is spoken as a Dem that is pro-2nd amendment (yup we exist).

This is the same guy that called the bribes he takes buying into his agenda.

Like TFS suggests this is most likely just to preempt stronger protections from the states, particularly California. We've been relying on CA to protect the rest of the country from this kind of bullshit by passing laws that end up affecting the other states. Don't think the folks in Congress and their donors haven't noticed that.

The solution is and always will be to stop voting for people like Rubio who take corporate PAC money. I keep on saying this but the Dems have a wing of the party that does just that. I know of no such animal on the GOP side but I'm happy to be proven wrong. In the meantime you can't serve two masters. If your politician accepts corporate PAC money they're not _your_ politician. They belong to the donors who bankrolled their campaign. Full Stop.

the ruling class not wanting to pay for it is holding it back.

I mean, we have massive amounts of data that single payer healthcare would be infinitely superior. The latest studies (real ones done by Universities) show $5 trillion savings every 10 years. We could pay off the national debt in my kid's lifetime with that and all our foreign held debt in _my_ lifetime. 70% of Americans support it.. Still no go.

Meanwhile several Democratic congressmen just exited Congress while imploring their party to abandon Medicare for All (funny that they all took big money from insurance & Phrama, I'm sure that was just them buying into their agenda).

America has a ruling class, but we like to pretend we don't. Like most things in life pretending the real world doesn't exist is bad juju.

There is also a "coup" taking place in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Republicans Are Threatening a Legislative Coup

'This Is a Coup': Protests Engulf Wisconsin Capitol as Outgoing Scott Walker and GOP Move to Cripple Democratic Power

Assorted Zaniness and Silliness, Plus Oh Yeah, the GOP Attempts a Coup in Wisconsin

A coup in Madison? Let them hear you

Ap News, Reuters, Washington Post(they offer truth, but hate Trump), CNN, cbsnews, abcnews, usatoday, la times.

I am conservative, and find I find something of reference in all those sites

Would it surprise you to learn that all of the outlets you mention, including the WashPo and CNN, present mainly a center-right point of view? When there is a war to be had, they will all support the war, even if it's plainly foreign interventionism and "nation-building". They all support the surveillance state and will gladly post far-right claims without fact-checking. We had some rather amazing evidence of that just this week when USA Today posted an op-ed, without comment, by Donald Trump, that was so full of untruths and fantasy that they eventually had to be shamed into recognizing the lies. But by then, they had dutifully posted each false statement individually across social media (again, without any context or indication that the statements were total fabrications. When USA Today finally ran a fact-check on Trump's op-ed, it took over five times as many words as the op-ed just to unpack the lies and refute them. That's how densely-packed with horseshit his editorial was. The problem is not that the op-ed was published without comment and eventually debunked, but that it took a days-long outcry for USA Today to do what journalists are supposed to do in the first place. What you have are not unbiased media, but media that are biased toward power. And that's the most dangerous bias of all.

https://www.commondreams.org/n...

I said I would consider your POV if you sent supporting materials. Since you can't support the one statement you made with any fact the only logical conclusion is that it is fiction designed to justify US presence in those countries as the one point you answered. I won't be wasting cognitive effort trying to validate your position.

Essentially your saying that an Iraqi or Afghani military presence in New York or the rest of the world having military bases in every state in the US to sort out your domestic disputes is justifiable using your reasoning. Newsflash: The US is the invader and the rest of the world would like you a whole lot better if you just went home and mind your own business. You seem somewhat obsessed with the idea of the US Empire. You keep your bases and I'll head off to the doctor to get my hurt feelings checked for free.

As for your claim of Whataboutism you've unsuccessfully attempted to invert my position. I don't need to accuse the US of hypocrisy because everybody outside the US can already observe that. Why do I need to disprove if Kim.Com faces court for copying a few shit movies when it has been established that GWB committed crimes against humanity, that's how the rest of the world views him. My viewpoint is already supported by law so the accusation has already been directly refuted.

Also US law, as according to the U.S. constitution, the U.S. president is responsible for all actions carried out by the executive, therefore, George W. Bush is responsible for the torture methods used by U.S. authorities, such as waterboarding. So what you're suggesting is that its ok to use these methods on US citizens the same way the US uses them on international citizens - or are you a hypocrite?

Or are you suggesting is that it's ok for the US to use these methods against US citizens - or are you a hypocrite?

Or is it more reasonable that the person responsible for bringing that shame on American citizens take responsibility for their crimes - or are you a hypocrite?

At least we agreed that you don't understand English, so it isn't like you didn't understand any of the words at all. That's something.

As for your accusations of flamebait, maybe, you bit, I've still given you a way out. As for my command of the English language I think I've demonstrated a suitable excoriation of your pithy ramblings to adequately provoke an emotional response in you with only half my wit, which is clearly double yours. I gave you a graceful, humorous way out so that you wouldn't look like a hypocrite but you were too stupid to take it. So feel free to go ahead, demonstrate you're a hypocrite and defend torturing people.

Too stupid to go looking through the dark web for verification of facts? Or are you too incompetent to even access such information on the public web?

Idiots like you that demand spoonfed information are what's fucking this country up. Zero critical thinking capability.

https://www.commondreams.org/n...

There, you search-challenged and brain-challenged fuckwit.

I don't recall a lot of people being okay with Obama's drone policy.

Of course, you don't — passive acquiescence is not memorable. So, please, cite anything by NYTimes or Washington Post denouncing Obama for the far graver offense of killing suspects, that's more passionate than this, or this, or this...

Heck, not only was he not denounced, his side praised him for killing Osama bin Laden, instead of arresting him... Online and IRL, Left were taunting "RethugliKKKans" with: "who is tougher on terrorism now?"

The only guy objecting was this maverick. Every single other "progressive" is a hypocrite...

Analysis of a Recent Facebook company announcement:

Buried in a company announcement was acknowledgement that nearly all of its users have been targeted to some degree.

That makes about 2 billion users whose privacy was leaked.

Also, Facebook was trying to collect patient data from hospitals:

The idea was to build profiles of people that included their medical conditions, information that health systems have, as well as social and economic factors gleaned from Facebook.

Also also, Diamond and Silk (two pro-Trump bloggers from the election cycle) were deemed unsafe for the community by facebook. Their followers no longer receive a notice when they make a new post.

From Facebook:

"This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in any way." (Note: This is the exact wording that FB emailed to [Diamond and Silk].)

Can someone familiar with these methodologies explain the criteria for statistical significance of these numbers?

Here’s all the explain you need.

Not surprisingly, Mulvaney has been taking money from Equifax, Experian, and other entities the CPFB has been investigating, and has delayed, or ended investigations against them.

https://www.commondreams.org/n...

Then again what else do you expect when the appointed leader of a government organization believes that organization shouldn't exist. (e.g. Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt etc.) Dismantling of government oversight, de facto bribery (not de jure only due to only ridiculously strict interpretations of the bribery law, explicit quid pro quo situations being prosecuted, and seldom even then.)

The Pope considered capitalism to be terrorism against humanity. And judging from the comments that follow that article, there are quite a few others who do so as well.

No, it isn't. You are flat out lying.

Here is an earlier article from the EFF that was carried on Slashdot titled More Than 40 ISPs Across the Country Tell Chairman Pai to NOT Repeal Network Neutrality

Here's one showing who is really supporting the repeal of net neutrality -- with the bulk of all lobbying money ($572 million) being spent by just four companies: AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

The simple truth is the big telecom companies want to have the benefits of common carrier legal protection, without the limitations. They ALREADY have the rights, and abilities, to provide quality of service based on type of traffic. There is NOTHING stopping them from prioritizing VoIP traffic over e-mail because of the real-time nature of the service.

That is what they try and claim they can't do, but that isn't what they really want.

What they want is the ability to shape traffic based on DESTINATION. That is, Comcast will prioritize *THEIR* VoIP traffic but not competitors, like Vonage, unless they pay a premium for it.

That immediately sets up a protection-like racket where major ISPs can force non-ISP content providers to pay extra or their traffic gets degraded.

They've already tried to do this with Netflix and Vonage, to name a couple.

Net neutrality requires that any QoS or throttling that is done for bandwidth management be done UNIFORMLY, and not selectively.

What the hell, more links just because it is so easy:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21376597/ns/technology_and_science-internet/t/comcast-blocks-some-internet-traffic/

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/google-fiber-netflix/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-improve-its-streaming-1393175346

https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/28/5662580/netflix-signs-traffic-deal-with-verizon

How about Comcast astroturfing the FCC with bot-generated comments attacking net neutrality?

Comcast injecting packets to slow or disable traffic? Sure!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Comcast#Net_neutrality

Hey, how about Municipal Broadband? Guess who opposes it tooth-and-nail even in areas they have no presence in? That's right, the Big ISPs.

Net Neutrality is by far and away in the best interests of both consumers and small ISPs.

Cutting taxes is not giving.

It is, when those taxes were paying for services received, and instead of paying for them through taxes, you issue bonds which those wealthy snap up.

They double-dip, you know.

And, let's be real the taxes are not on the 0.01 percent. They are on the 10%.

You could confiscate 100% of the 0.01's money. Kill them for good measure. And you still would only have enough money to run the US Government for 4 months. (And that's assuming you get market share for their stocks. Obviously you would not as who would buy stocks under such a situation.)

So, people play the old bait and switch: look at the evil gaziollionaires. They need to pay their fare share - and since their money isn't enough they raise taxes on everyone.

Or we could do this.

You're just being stupid, raising a pointless strawman argument that does not resolve differences or explain anything, but merely makes you look irate.

Have you read what's happening in CT? They followed the plan of tax the rich. Ooops. How's that worked out for them?

Have you read what's happening in Kansas? They followed the plan of handouts to the rich. How's that worked out for them?

Sorry, but you can believe the lie brigade about CT if you want, KS is still a failure. It's a logjam due to partisan politics.

In exactly what way was Nixon a traitor, as opposed to a power mad egomaniac?

This is how: https://www.commondreams.org/v...

This has been known / suspected for a long time but not confirmed until relatively recently. LBJ decided to not reveal because he learned about it by illegal means

Yeah, and obama supporters voted for 'hope and change'. They got a basketball playing george bush, at least as far as civil liberties go.

Oh, come on! Obama was greater than Bush in every possible metric, including drone bombings. The thing is, what Bush did was absolutely terrible, and needs to be condemned, but when Obama did it, it was great--or are you a racist?!?

Anniston, AL and Sauget, IL, and some forty other past and current Superfund sites would like to have a word with you. Anniston in particular was knowingly polluted for decades:

In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided "there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges." In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to be carcinogenic."

(source)

Their pollution record is not quite the worst. They probably don't have as many direct deaths on their hands as Union Carbide, but I can't think of a more profound example of "damning with faint praise" than that. Also, their monopoly control over seeds and plant genetics cannot be discounted as "complete bullshit" -- it may be a complicated subject, but there are legitimate concerns. You would be completely correct to say that concerns about health effects of GM foods are greatly overblown, but Monsanto has a black history.

Bernie Sanders Called for a Halt to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Why Wonâ(TM)t Hillary Clinton?

Why Did Clinton Just Tap a Pro-TPP, Pro-Keystone Pipeline, Pro-Fracking Pol to Head Her Transition Team? Amy asks some damning questions.

Clinton Foundation Receiving Millions From Proponents of Keystone XL

She is everywhere and nowhere. WikiLeaks is shutdown (for now), now this.

Follow the money.

You have to consider who controls the media companies, and that they benefit from the status quo and not journalistic integrity. Now factor in who is (and was) running as the anti-establishment candidate, it seems to me that it isn't just a matter of left-leaning ideology. For example, look at the treatment Sanders received by the media. Since we're talking about the Washington post, here is an example where they ran 16 negative stories on Sanders in one hour. I can't imagine anyone more leftist than Sanders, but I can imagine that you can't have someone in a position of power that could threaten treaties like the TPP being made law, and possibly set back the consolidation of power of the ultra wealthy by eight years. So Sanders was smeared in the press, and now the hyperbolic anti-Trump attacks have reached a fever pitch.

They're ringing the bell because it seems as if a good portion of the public act just like Pavlovian dogs.

Nothing a rubber stamp, and/or "hose" can't fix

Going forward I know I am feeding a troll, but I will explain just in case you really have the IQ of a four year old.

In this context the companies are consulting with ex-cia. They aren't teaching the ex-cia guy the ex-cia guy is teaching them.

If you're teaching something you must have some level of experience prior. There's only two types of people in the world that I can think of that would have experience data-mining social media; SJW's and individuals acting at the behest of a Nations security or military agencies. What the CIA does is obviously classified, but it goes without saying that people coming out of Govt organizations with this kind of teachable knowledge that *just happens* to align with the objectives our Govt has been requesting it's not a leap at all to come to the conclusion that CIA has been data-mining social media.

Oh wow, look at this:

https://theintercept.com/2016/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/s...
http://securityaffairs.co/word...
http://www.usnews.com/news/art...
http://www.commondreams.org/ne...

google: Cia data mining social media

U.S. Customs is just a late comer to the party that's already been going on that you're calling me a conspiracy nut over. News is out man, Go home, and go to bed.

I love eating bananas so much, I was shocked and scared when I read "Yes, we'll have no bananas" in a (paper) edition of The Globe and Mail (Canada's National Newspaper) in 2003 http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

Because the GOP's our opposition, therefore much as I hate those chintzy fuckers, opposing Obama is actually their entire fucking job.

OTOH in legal theory the internal politics of all nation-states are supposed to be totally irrelevant to the one another. People don't pay much attention to that shit, but it's still considered a big deal in terms of an international relationship if one country makes a guy who really hates the leadership of another country their fucking spokesman (non-spokesperson-type jobs are different -- nobody gives a shit whether the EPA Administrator thinks Justin Trudeau is the only Canadian stupider then Stephen Harper, but you can bet there's be some fucking angst if John Kerry or Jay Carnay said that shit).

This is magnified when the relationship we're talking about is Israel-US, because the US is pretty much the entire fucking reason that half the Israeli cabinet has not been banned from international travel over ethnic cleansing allegations. And it gets even more fraught now that the stupid fucking politicians involved are Obama and Netanyahu. They have had some extremely strong disagreements over issues such as the Iran deal, Netanyahu's stance on negotiations with the Palestinians, Netanyahu's inexplicable decision to make that speech in front of Congress detailing all that shit, his slightly more explicable decision to run as the don't-worry-I-won't-sign-a-peace-treaty candidate, etc.

Which basically means that by hiring this particular guy Netanyahu would be perceived as intentionally insulting the Obama Administration. Since Obama takes his campaign promises of 2008 way more seriously then he gets credit for, that's probably not a problem in the short term. But in the long-term it's ridiculously fucking stupid because Obama is term-limited, and there's roughly a 50% chance the next President won;t be nearly as pro-Israeli as he is. For example Bernie Sanders was angry enough at Netanyahu's behavior prior to that speech that he boycotted it. Hillary is probably the most pro-Israeli Democrat of any kind left, and she is architect of much of the Obama policy Bibi haters, her husband helped draw up the peace treaties Bibi is trying to work his way around, and if her position on this particular dispute is anything but "Fuck you too Bibi" she's gonna lose a lot of the black votes that make her more likely to be the nominee then Sanders.

I read the "single line of code" editorial as a distraction away from what matters: accountability and prevention.

Accountability can come in the form of lawsuits from affected car owners and those who can show the subsequent environmental harm caused a problem for them. Letting VW negotiate its own fate is ridiculous and, if the government's action with GM is any guide, unlikely to result in more than a slap of the wrist.

Prevention must also be dealt with, and strongly copylefted free software licenses will help here. Whether this was the result of a mistake (VW's years-long negligence) or planning (VW's years-long fraudulence) is a detail as far as prevention goes because either way VW should be freeing the complete source code to the cars and providing complete specifications for any code it cannot provide so as to allow the easiest possible reverse engineering. Any cost of purchasing code for freeing should be borne by VW.

VW is not in a position to dicker here. I don't buy the excuse of uncooperative upstream providers VW depends on for their code and the public shouldn't either. The stakes (our health) are too high to settle for less than complete corresponding source code under a strong copylefted license so that any published improvements are also free. Keep in mind, this is code car owners should have had from day 1 under a free license so they can fully own their own cars, taking code to experts they trust just like many take their car mechanisms to garages they trust to get fixed. Trusting the market got us where we are now, the market apparently will not grant us the freedom to let us help ourselves and our air-breathing neighbors by fixing the defective VW cars already out there since 2009 (over 480,000 of them). Not buying VW reaches the same conclusion. Not recognizing software freedom for its own sake and the preservation of that protection in copyleft will increasingly become a matter of life and death as we entrust more of our daily functions to software.

I believe that you are insufficiently paranoid. There are people associated with the manufacture of voting machines who have boasted that their machine would give the election to party X.

He said no such thing. The actual quote can be found here:

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

He said, pretty clearly, as a private individual, that HE was donating as a means of helping Republicans win an election. He didn't say the company was rigging the machines so they would give the election to anyone.

or that all the manufacturers who were that corrupt were arrogant enough to say so publicly,

There was no admission of corruption. Tempest in a teapot. Besides, didn't you know, vote fraud in the US is a fraud. We don't need to take protective measures to prevent it.

Many seem to be (well, have been) designed so that whoever has access to the machines can corrupt the vote.

It has been common knowledge, at least for most people who deal with computers, that "there is no security without physical security". Yes, that means that people who have access to a voting machine can corrupt the vote. Just like people who have physical access to a computer can break into it.

Is anyone surprised by that fact?

This is a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand. There's no problem that can't be solved by destroying nature and replacing it dollar-generating industries.

The basic tenet of the Church of the Totalitarian State is that there is no problem that can't be solved by just raising taxes and adding laws. Generally, "destroying nature" and the like can only be accomplished by a corrupt state supporting the big corporations, i.e., campaign donors. Even a corrupt state isn't too big a problem until it grows large. Even the Grant Administration had a limited short term effect because the size and scope of government was vastly smaller. The true Invisible Hand is rarely allowed to operate. Compare that to today where the government can simply force everyone to buy the products of the giant corporations that paid them off.

And just how would we avoid dangerous climate change from CO2 level rise, in the hypothetical condition that conservatives were convinced it was real, and we did not have a large corrupt state supporting big corporations? Stop buying petroleum products and let the free market eventually come up with alternatives?

This is a basic tenet of the Church of the Invisible Hand. There's no problem that can't be solved by destroying nature and replacing it dollar-generating industries.

The basic tenet of the Church of the Totalitarian State is that there is no problem that can't be solved by just raising taxes and adding laws. Generally, "destroying nature" and the like can only be accomplished by a corrupt state supporting the big corporations, i.e., campaign donors. Even a corrupt state isn't too big a problem until it grows large. Even the Grant Administration had a limited short term effect because the size and scope of government was vastly smaller. The true Invisible Hand is rarely allowed to operate. Compare that to today where the government can simply force everyone to buy the products of the giant corporations that paid them off.

Your economy is largely underpinned by expansion of the EU in the pursuit of relentless "economic growth". Business has been extremely good for countries like Germany because they have the EU hinterlands holding the currency valuation down. A Germany with just a Deutschmark would scarcely be able to find buyers for its expensive wares. Similarly, the EU countries that are largely justifying their existence by offering banking services to the world benefit greatly from dealing in a continent-wide currency.

So those are the upshots of EU expansionism (and all the exceptions eurocrats made when faced with the acquisition of new territory). The downside is that you cannot treat relatively un-industrialized / un-financialized lands just like they are France or Germany. You have the responsibility of either putting them into a 'Marshal Plan' to industrialize/financialize them, or structurally accommodate (subsidize) them based on their own economic profiles. Or, some measure of both.

There is also something to be learned from the Scandinavian rejection of the euro:

Most of its members’ governments did not seek their people’s approval to turn over their monetary sovereignty to the ECB. When Sweden’s did, Swedes said no. They understood that unemployment would rise if the country’s monetary policy were set by a central bank that focused single-mindedly on inflation (and also that there would be insufficient attention to financial stability). The economy would suffer, because the economic model underlying the eurozone was predicated on power relationships that disadvantaged workers.

Greeks are not entirely to blame for their situation. A lot of the dishonesty has come from the direction of the EU and EC, who started pushing policies to remake Europe in the image of the United States.

the military impose rules of engagement requiring positive ID of the bad guy before you shoot

What, you think we have to ID those journalists and harmless regular folks (kids no exception) before blasting 'em off the map? STOP THAT UN-AMERICAN TREASONOUS BULLSHIT.

And yeah... he could have stayed anonymous if he'd wanted to be kidnapped and hauled off to a black site. Putting his name and face to the news gave the story credibility and staying power. Snowden is the man to thank for the 82% concern about NSA surveillance and the ~60% support for weakening the Patriot Act. True, it's not enough to put an end to their shenanigans and restore reverence for human rights and due process, but it's definitely a setback for the NSA.

^^ This

Baloney... the story was NOT in the public eye (proof) and it wasn't headed that way. Despite very clear warnings from previous whistleblowers, everybody had their head in the sand. Snowden provided concrete, compelling evidence that forced the issue of NSA domestic spying into the US political dialog.

And yeah... he could have stayed anonymous if he'd wanted to be kidnapped and hauled off to a black site. Putting his name and face to the news gave the story credibility and staying power. Snowden is the man to thank for the 82% concern about NSA surveillance and the ~60% support for weakening the Patriot Act. True, it's not enough to put an end to their shenanigans and restore reverence for human rights and due process, but it's definitely a setback for the NSA.

Apart from the pretty colors, it's pretty badly designed. There's only the one video explaining why it's bad, no text, no in-depth analysis, no outside opinions, no nothing. There isn't even (that I could find) a link to the text of the TPP.

Even members of the US Congress only get extremely limited access to the text of the TPP:

Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, "If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving."

You basically have to be a negotiator or a representative of large business interests to get full access. Some chapters (5 out of 31) of the text have been made available via Wikileaks until now.

Anyone know and want to elaborate on what this TPP is?

The best, and definitely the most enjoyable, primer on the potential for abuse of the TPP (based on abuse of previously negotiated similar trade agreements) and the underhanded way it's being negotiated, is probably John Oliver's segment on it.

Most of our Republican Reps and Senators are for TPP.

Obama is going against the majority of Dem Reps and Senators in seeking Fast Track Authority for the TPP... http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

So, MOST of the Rs are for it, and SOME of the Ds are for it, and in your mind, they're equally bad.

Now, I absolutely agree with you that the mere secrecy surrounding this thing should be enough to reject it, but I have to say; You seem to have your opinions, and then you mold facts to them. Yes. I'm sure those Republicans are being duped into supporting Obama...... Sure they are... It wouldn't have anything to do with how they keep getting campaign contributions from giant companies. Noooo..... They're being tricked!

As an aside, I'm amazed how the Rs can't have Obama doing deals with Iran that move us toward peace.... They need to be able to tinker with the sanctions! Obama is overstepping himself? Oh, you want fast track authority to sneak in giant corporate giveaways? Give it to him, give it to him! The hypocrisy is amazing....

Anyway, yes, there are Slimy Democrats trying to get his passed. But let's not equate the handfull of Ds with the vast majority of the Rs trying to get his past us.

And whatever you believe, I at least take heart that you can see that the TPP is a Bad Thing.

Not true? http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

I'd suggest you learn about the legal issues before calling BS.

http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

You count nothing because:
(pick one)
A) you dont know how to count
B) you never tried
C) you are willfully ignorant and just ignore the multiple examples each year

http://www.dailydot.com/politi...
http://leftwardthinking.com/le...
http://www.commondreams.org/ne...
http://www.savetheinternet.com...

> The "1%" do not exist.

So are you denying that the top 25% of income earned does in fact go to the top 1% of earners?

> They are not a special group with magical abilities.

"A 2011 study by the CBO found that the top earning 1 percent of households increased their income by about 275% after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007, compared to a gain of just under 40% for the 60 percent in the middle of America's income distribution." WP

Sounds like a super power to me.

> It is just an arbitrary number set by people to direct their jealousy.

Or it's the anger of exploited people who are cheated out of the value they produce, by a system that's tilted against them?

For all the noise about "trickle down" that the Republicans made, we still have a "trickle up" system. American productivity has increased 300% in the last 30 years, and ALL the gains went to the rich while the lower and middle classes had to trudge on with basically the same income.

You really don't understand why people are fed up with this crap, do you?

It *is* nonviolent.

Sure. It is also "quiet" and "stealthy" — and a bunch of other things. Which is the best term to use in this context? That depends on the subtle connotations of each one, does not it? I am willing to believe, TFA's use was an honest mistake — the article makes no (other) suggestions, bank-robbing (violent or otherwise) may be a just thing. But...

Are the Somali pirates just that — pirates — or are they hard-working folks laboring in a harsh environment, risking their lives directing foreign aid to their impoverished country and the people, who need it most?

See also "Hezbollization".

See also, for an old German example: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/...
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. ..This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ... To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measure"â(TM) that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head. ..."

That said, every country is different, with different strengths and weaknesses in different situations. It is not clear how it all will play out in the USA. Like Howard Zinn wrote in 2004, on "The Optimism of Uncertainty":
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth.
Let's go back a hundred years. A revolution to overthrow the tsar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers, but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Given the Russian Revolution, who could have predicted Stalin's deformation of it, or Khrushchev's astounding exposure of Stalin, or Gorbachev's succession of surprises? Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of

Yeah, except for the fact that we're sitting here openly talking about it.

Except you don't know what you're talking about. Just look at how the Sedition acts were used in the past when TPTB were seriously challenged at home. All it takes is for the population to reach a certain level of difficulty putting food on the table, and the elites will find any number of excuses to "restore order" to keep their own asses in the driver's seat.

Nowadays, anything that insults the dominant consumerist worldview is a candidate for active supression: Food producers are banned from labeling their products as GMO-free, government whistleblowers are criminalized at an alarming rate, Ag-gag laws now criminalize agricultural whistleblowers. And it didn't take long for the feds to start considering the possibility of labeling Occupy as "terrorist".

Then there is the War On Drugs which turned into a class and race war and helped push 1/5 of the adult population through a prison system that delights in letting people get raped under its watch. Most of those jailed are pressured into an informant relationship with the police. What you read in 2014 about militarization of police is another outgrowth of the War On Drugs.

So, yes.. the parallels are there and the comparisons are appropriate even if the ideology and history and the accents and the pretexts aren't the same.

Are U.S. troops set up in Afghanistan anywhere except there's a running oil pipeline?

There is no pipeline.

Pipe Dreams - The origin of the "bombing-Afghanistan-for-oil-pipelines" theory.
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Still a Dream* - Published on Monday, September 20, 2010

A working pipeline, if it ever gets built, will require a country more stable than Afghanistan is now or will be any time soon. It is too easy to sabotage otherwise, and that would result in billions of dollars down the drain. Nobody is going to risk it.

I'm sure that you are aware of the U.S. involvement where Iraq is concerned. We install a dictator until he gets so out of control, then go in and knock him down, while the war profiteers rejoice.

The US didn't install Saddam. He was a local bully-boy that worked his way up in the Baath socialist/fascist party by native wit and sheer ruthlessness.

So knowing that, don't you think that it's a little peculiar how this whole Sony hack is getting so much press recently?

Not really, no. From what I understand the hack ended up trashing a large percentage of Sony's computers, led to leaks of emails that were fodder for many news and gossip sites, and stopped the release of a movie that was already being advertised. You don't think those extraordinary events would get coverage otherwise?

Is the U.S. creating another flimsy excuse to go to war against N. Korea?

I doubt it, no. Getting into an actual shooting war with North Korea wouldn't be a trivial thing. The body count would be huge if for no other reason than the inevitable crippling of the North Korean state would lead to widespread starvation among a population that is already barely making it. But before that happened the capital of South Korea would be flattened by artillery from North Korea. Nobody wants either outcome.

Do you really have such blind trust in your leaders that you believe any press release that they issue?

I'm willing to be skeptical, but this doesn't seem to be something contrary to the known behaviors of the North Koreans.

Has recent 20th century history taught you nothing?

One of the 20th Century's lessons is that the West has not always been firm in confronting evil regimes such as North Korea's.

Has recent 20th century history taught you nothing? I suggest that you cool your jets for a bit before rushing to judgement, especially when it concerns global matters.

When it comes to global matters there is no shortage of people that get it wrong when the question involves the US.

Unless you are yourself enlisting to be in the infantry's front lines.

Whether I do or don't, have or haven't, I'm pretty sure I can form reasonable opinions and make useful arguments.

* I can't tell you how painful it is to reference Ted Rall, slightly less so for Common Dreams.

A Republican by his actions and policies.

Oh, no you don't... You keep him. A Republican would not have withdrawn all troops from Iraq — allowing ISIS to bloom and necessitating a painful return.

A Republican would not have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine by lifting all sanctions imposed over a similar invasion into Georgia.

A Republican would've continued to detain terrorist suspects — in Guantanamo or elsewhere — rather then order extrajudicial killings — most infamously one of Osama bin Laden himself.

No, Obama is an Illiberal Democrat through and through. But such people — yourself included — are famous for inability to recognize each other — so far are their deeds from their proclaimed ideals.

Yes, the most important racism out there is affirmative action.

Wow! That's a pretty damning list. Now all you need to do is prove that they are in fact lies. The problem is, your list of lies contain lies of its own. And when it can be found that something was said that turned out to be incorrect, can you prove that those are lies as opposed to the results of early models that didn't have the sophistication of our current models? If you claim that someone is lying, then you are saying that they are attempting to deliberately mislead people.

Being wrong or making a mistake does not prove that deliberate misleading is going on, nor does a handful of claims invalidate the thousands of other claims that have been shown to be correct. Even the scientist who pointed out the mistake that the IPCC made about the glaciers still said that he believed that the errors shouldn't shake people's belief in climate science..

If you do believe that catching someone in a lie disproves what they are saying, what should we think about how you have misreported what people said? You claim that Al Gore said that "Polar ice caps would be ice free by 2010", but what he actually said was this:

Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

So instead of the definitive claim that it would happen, he said that just some models predicted that there was just a chance that it COULD happen. A model being inaccurate does not constitute a lie. Misquoting someone to twist what they say into a lie, is actually a lie.

So did anyone really claim that there would be hurricanes more powerful than Katrina? It seems they did claim the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic that are as strong or stronger than Hurricane Katrina will increase twofold to sevenfold but that was for every 1 degree C increase, which hasn't happened the time of Katrina.

I'm getting bored, so I'll skip to the end. Your assertion that every single prediction of the IPCC from before 2007 is demonstrably wrong.

Oh, come now, you left out the best story: Monsanto secretly poisons Alabama town.

However, I do think you're completely trolling with this anti-GMO riff. Monsanto being a bunch of evil bastards does not mean that GMO is automatically harmful, and there is a distinct lack of factual evidence in your post to support that idea.

I am not interested in rhetoric. If you cannot show harm, then you are in exactly the same position as anti-vaxxers. If you want to argue that there should be rigorous testing of GMO organisms, sure -- vaccine manufacturers eliminated whatever minute quantities of mercury were used in the manufacturing process based on hypothetical dangers, and there's no reason not to be extra-careful when dealing with possible biological threats. If that's what you're after, maybe you should try mixing in some alternative content with your FUD.

Recently released documents confirm that our then-president nixon committed treason, which directly resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 US servicemen.

http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

President Nixon committed treason?! This is an utter outrage! It cannot stand that he is left unpunished!!!
Now we all know what the punishment for treason is, dont we...Death!!!

Death to Nixon for the Crime of Treason!! the man should be dragged out of whatever hole he is hiding in, and he should be executed by the State!
Death to Nixon for Treason!

Now where is he hiding....we must find him.....

Recently released documents confirm that our then-president nixon committed treason, which directly resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 US servicemen. http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

Incidentally, didn't Obama announce some changes he was going to make to fix the NSA?

This is the guy who disingenuously said "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls", knowing the monitoring is done by speech recognition and only a tiny fraction needs to be listened to by humans, and who appointed Clapper to establish an NSA review board, knowing he had already lied to Congress to protect the NSA.

The definition of due process is beyond the scope of a /. post, but at a minimum it would require the right to be confronted with the evidence against you and a review by a judge and/or jury of your peers. Some bureaucrat in the national security apparatus adding your name to a list does not rise to the level of due process under any definition.

That's not what the Attorney General of the United States says -- "a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to 'due process''