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One tends to ponder for what purpose they would be flying over San Berdu after the mess.

1. The aspect of there never being a cop around when you need one?
2. Making sure the people treated as mushrooms for 50 years don't have any clue as to what is going on because being on that terrorist watch list thingy is scary... ( http://www.newsmax.com/Headlin... ) Incidentally WTF are they doing flying in airplanes anyway? Anyone think Obummer will take their guns AND planes beyond not selling them anymore guns? Billions of rounds and not one gun eh? Would suck to be in DHS in Cincinnati. ( http://www.ctpost.com/news/art... ).

That no one has died yet as a result of swatting suggests that they're largely doing their jobs.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap
http://www.sott.net/article/266876-Swat-team-shoots-innocent-man-22-times-in-front-of-his-family-case-settled-in-the-millions
http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/misidentified-man-killed-when-swat-team-started-his-house-on-fire/
http://www.businessinsider.com/9-horrifying-botched-police-raids-2012-2?op=1
http://www.mintpressnews.com/video-swat-team-kills-innocent-man-drug-raid-found-just-2-marijuana/200738/
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/A-costly-SWAT-raid-gone-wrong-4303215.php
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-raid-casualties

"You have to pass the bill to know what's in it." - Nancy Pelosi

And this representative from California was re-elected. Huh. Well as Ron White says "You can't fix stupid."

If you wanted to fix the US Healthcare system by making care affordable for all and allowing people with pre-existing conditions to get insured, then it wouldn't take 2700 pages of other crap that's in the legislative package. What we didn't get was:

1) No direct influence over rising expenditures for Medical Care. You have a system which doesn't abide by market forces and hospital administrators get paid millions of dollars in salaries and benefits. When you're seriously ill, you don't usually have the time to shop around so whatever they charge you (or your insurance) is what's charged. Sure, there's negotiations and maximums that insurance companies negotiate but that drives further business through insurance companies, forcing you to deal with them.
2) There was no discussion on tort reform so thousands of ambulance chasers can still sue the doctors and hospitals when your scars comes out a little bit strange. A big component to care is the necessary malpractice insurance which can cost upwards of $200,000 in some high cost states. Add that to office staff, paying the Nurse, the building costs and the medical coder to bill the insurance companies correctly and you can see easily why it costs a lot to see a doctor over a routine sniffle.
3) The Drug companies were let largely intact. There are a few costs they'll have to put up with but they're still expected to rake in Billions in profits under the ACA. Ask yourself why that pill you're taking is $5 and why, if it was allowed, you could get it for $.25. Sure the drug industry will claim that "these are inferior" but really it's a smokescreen.
4) The Single Payer system died. Nobody wanted to go against the big Insurance Firms and their lobbyists so we love big business in this country, so why not throw a few billion dollars their way. Well, they do now have to spend more on direct costs for Insurance which is good but allowing interstate competition and other market driven forces into the process would have been much better. That's what the exchanges are supposed to do but here we have the US Government trying to create markets rather than creating incentives with appropriate regulatory oversight for markets to flourish. Oh wait, considering the Financial Collapse, the Regulatory Process failed, so DC can't be trusted with that.

To be honest, you could have taken this 2700 pages, cut out the BS, the Pork like the "Exchanges" which Deloitte is now merrily feeding upon it seems and done away with it and had legislation that was no more than 10 pages long. Starting next year you'll hear more pigs in DC all lining up because the Feds have just blessed one industry with unlimited monopoly powers and you have to pay what they want to charge you. You have no choice, so invest in big Pharma, Hostpital chains and big medical concerns because they'll be raking it in even more.

First off i have a very hard time believing backdoors are built in the large networks they sell. In complex systems like that its next to impossible to hide things in the long run. Anything suspicious would have been found in the audits.

Umm, they WERE FOUND. The report mentions sending "beacons", "relaying data", and other "anomalies".

Huawei's only contention is that they're merely INCOMPETENT, and their firmware just has tons of bugs, and none of them are (intentional) backdoors.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229785/Hackers_reveal_critical_vulnerabilities_in_Huawei_routers_at_Defcon

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/China-high-tech-firms-deny-spying-before-Congress-3861472.php

Anybody here evaluated Huawei equipment, or otherwise know more details about the reported issues of it sending "beacons" or "relaying data" back home, or the "anomolies" that appear to be backdoors? The real good stuff seems to be locked-up in that "classified" section we don't get to see...

  http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/China-high-tech-firms-deny-spying-before-Congress-3861472.php

I'm assuming there's something more than just the bugs exposed at defcon:

  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229785/Hackers_reveal_critical_vulnerabilities_in_Huawei_routers_at_Defcon

Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correlate with student achievement. I believe him. I don't agree with his assertions that schools are underfunded and couldn't educate poor students even with more funding.

There is even less correlation between cost per student and student performance than between teacher and student performance.http://www.npri.org/blog/does-more-spending-increase-student-performancehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/24/us-usa-education-spending-idUSN2438214220070524http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/03/02/opinion/doc4f51a55f28207547363660.txthttp://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Little-correlation-found-between-per-pupil-823833.php

It is common for urban poor school districts to cost much more per student than the surrounding suburbs. Look at Kansas City or Washington DC for stark examples.

Seriously, spending more than $10,000 per year per student is a travesty. A class with 30 students should not cost $300,000 and the money is not going to the teacher!

I agree, end the war on drugs and greatly reduce parent incarceration rates.
I agree, find employment for everybody that raises them above poverty.
I agree, support family planning, pre-natal care, nutrition, and free pre-school or head start.

But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture. There is an urban poor culture that doesn't exist among poor rural students, and the outcomes differ. How can we change the culture that devalues education? How can we change the violence and street power culture? How can we convince people not to have children that are later neglected and abused?

The charges and the character assasination were ALL bullshit.

No they weren't. By your own words you were a drug addict who lost control of themselves and used tannerite on at least one piece of property that you did not own. Not just "took a plea" you made actual statements about yourself. You admitted to the charges and assasinated your own character. This doesn't sound like an innocently targeted man at all, can you refute any of this? I am not intentionally being derisive; rather I hope you would respond with a statement to exonerate you of this all, be it hearsay or otherwise.

See also this. Did you not consent to be interviewed? You even posted a review of the book this excerpt is from on slashdot!

and what about this? Of course the statements that your anger and gun issues were escalating is pure hearsay; who knows what kind of person you are? But you really glossed over the use of tannerite didn't you? That's WAY more serious than you made it sound. Another article here

Sadly, I agree with everything you say about our overly intrusive gov't and the erosion of out rights, so it's unfortunate that your case doesn't back up those positions. By attempting to be an example of a problem, you are supporting their cause. Please stop.

More here and here. You'll want to read the last couple of comments on this one, bruce. The posters sound like old friends of yours that want to get back into contact with you. This guy too.