Slashdot Mirror

Exactly! I bet 6 years ago when Obama was against gay marriage you were calling him a bigot and trying to publicly shame him too, right?

Bwhahahaha hahahahaaha. I've spent years calling out Obama for his bigotry and cowardice on gay rights, but thanks for asking.

the amount of emergency room treatment went up in Massachusetts when Romneycare passed.

Most studies indicate that after an initial spike, the number of ER visits fell over a period of several years.

I personally know people who moved to other states because the health insurance requirement meant that they lost their job.

So we shouldn't have health insurance for everyone because a few people lost jobs and found different ones elsewhere?

And because the new Massachusetts website was made by the same people who made Healthcare.gov, it still doesn't work

Heathcare.gov works fine. The majority of the people in my company used it to sign up (including myself) and it worked fine. For the few people who did have an issue (weird social security issues) they were able to call the hotline numbers and get enrolled. You do not have to simply rely on the website if it, for whatever reason, is not working for you. There are alternative ways to sign up.

By the end of the month, they still won't have insurance, and the deadline to sign up will pass.

They've had months to sign up. If they haven't by the deadline it is because they didn't put any effort into doing so. I've done it and it isn't hard.

Being a Soviet republic be the first step in joining the Russian Federation?

Huh? What do you mean? How are those two things related?

4. The Russian Federation guaranteed the territorial integrity [wikipedia.org] of the Ukraine.

Please Joe, there's a difference between "assurance" and "guarantee", besides it being an unratified agreement.

5. The Russian Federation has now invaded the Crimea.

Repeat after me: this is not an invasion.

In case you're wondering about stationing the troops only on the bases,
- the *democratically elected* president of Ukraine asked Russia to use military force.

[Putin] added that deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had no political future but asserted he was legally still head of state. "I think that he has no political future. And I told him this," Mr Putin said [...] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10669670/Ukraine-Russia-crisis-live.html)

- Russia was asked by the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to aid them:

Sergei Aksenov, the [...] prime minister of the Crimea region, has declared that he is in control of all military, police and other security services in the region. But he appealed to Russia's president for help in keeping peace there.(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10670827/Ukraine-live-Crimea-leader-appeals-to-Putin-to-help-as-Obama-warns-of-costs-to-Moscow.html)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

This comment on the Daily Kos article contains a very clear explanation of the Halliburton loophole.

Haliburton Loophole: No such thing.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/P...

Thanks for the link. The passage you apparently missed is on page 694 (sec 322).

CJ

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

This comment on the Daily Kos article contains a very clear explanation of the Halliburton loophole.

Haliburton Loophole: No such thing.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/P...

Thanks for the link. The passage you apparently missed is on page 694 (sec 322).

CJ

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

Your link is horrid. The use of strikeout to only something is crappy and poor journalism. Also, factually incorrect.

DO NOT watch the film "gasland".
It is full of lies, inaccuracy and misleading examples.
Horrid.

"has been hired to poo poo the film because it might hurt their business."
ah, so people who dislike lies and factual inaccuracies are part of a big conspiracy. Riiiight.

Some examples:
Water on fire: this is a known phenomena the predates fracking. If it was caused by fracking, it would take 1000's of years to go from the source to the water. The shot they get that from was no where near any fracking.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...
http://www.skepticblog.org/tag...

Haliburton Loophole: No such thing.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/P...

It was posted to dailykos, where the liberals congregate and dominate. But still, this is a first person account of an earlier town hall meeting: http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

Isn't Darrel Issa the arsonist Car theif who suppressed congressional testimony on Warrantless domestic wiretapping and dismissed the Bush admins erasure of E-mails on PlameGate as a simple software glitch? Why yes, yes he is.

While I have my doubts about Clapper, it really doesn't help the cause when you put a non-credible person at the front. Issa will say or do anything that benefits him, and that's not invective, it's documented fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

http://www.perrspectives.com/b...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.

I think you've missed the point. Dozens of companies in the peninsula have their own dedicated bus lines. The bus-to-person ratio is quite high, and this is not as eco-friendly as you might think. It also causes congestion in the city, and confusion at the shared bus stops (which are owned by the city of SF), both of passengers and of citizens looking for a bus they can actually ride.

The city taxing the bus services allows maintenance to be applied to the extra load of the stops as well as planning for the increased traffic these systems create. I think it is quite reasonable.

Daily Kos had a good explanation of the problem back in April.

Eventually.

After years of appeals, attempts to bury the employees in mounds of paperwork and bleed them dry on legal fees.

Followed by appeals over whether or not the defendants, if they lose, have to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees too...

Meanwhile, The H1-B Scam is alive and well, just two stories down from this one on the front page...

It is really telling that the ATF gave over 2500 guns to Mexican drug cartels, and no one from the ATF, DOJ, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the IRS targeted political opponents during an election year, and no one from the IRS, DOT, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that Obama campaign donors at Solyndra got $500,000,000 of tax payer money, promptly went bankrupt, and no one from the DOE is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the Fed prints $75,000,000,000 a month, totaling over $4,000,000,000,000 in the last 5 years, and no one from the fed is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the president himself breaks the PPACA on a daily basis by announcing parts he will be temporarily or permanently not enforcing, and he's not sitting in jail.

Wow, that's a fun list. I count 3... 4? outright lies, 4 completely made up scandals, 1 thing taken completely out of context, several words that don't mean what you think they mean, and a complete lack of understanding as to how civics works.

It's always fun to debunk these kinds of lists, because I always learn something new, usually something that makes me proud of what our country is doing.

The only sad thing is that it takes me hours and the people posting them will either blindly ad hominem them ("YOU LINKED DAILYKOS THAT MEANS YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD~!~!"), call me a "liberal commy fagg 'MERICA hater", or ignore me and go right back to posting about how Obama was raised by Karl Marx on the Socialist Moonbase on the dark side of Mars or something. Or go back to quoting from the sites those guys run. Same difference, really.

Anyway, lets go!

1. Fast and Furious was made up. The entire thing was based on one right wing ATF source, who was discovered to be lying. It has been debunked so often that even the actual GOP doesn't mention it, only ultra-far right idiots in the Tea Party talk about it nowadays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/irs-scandal-democratic-acorn_n_3785717.html

2. Ditto for the IRS scandal, which was also made up. Darrel Issa asked the investigator to ignore the fact that the IRS was looking at all groups claiming to be charities, as they are REQUIRED TO DO BY LAW, and merely provide him talking points on Republican ones. The real scandal? The IRS failed to notice 10 out of 11 of the Koch brothers fake charities were fake charities. You'll note that Issa doesn't even bother talking about this one anymore, he's too busy trying to use Benghazi to kneecap President Hilary Clinton before her 2016 victory.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/26/1219172/-Here-s-how-Darrell-Issa-manufactured-the-IRS-scandal

3. Solyndra's loan was one of Bush's projects, not Obama's, and there's a HUGE difference between George Kaiser (a billionaire who raised a whopping 50-100k for Obama) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (a charity he started). There's a whole boatload more of made up crap about Solyndra, it's a very transparent manufactured scandal to try and drive us away from Solar and Wind technologies -- because oil will never run out or anything. I'll just leave this link as an exercise to the reader:
http://ourfuture.org/20120926/the-phony-solyndra-solar-scandal

4. Literally not true. The "Fed prints $75,000,000,000" is such a common meme that there are so many Tea Party sites shatting it out that it's hard to discover it's source. Took a while, but I found it - The fed is buying back a bunch of T-Bonds and Mortgage Bonds at the rate of 75 billion a month as part of the stimulus package, but that's not "printing money." The Feds have a FAQ entry up on it here, for those who don't roll

It's not just the federal government (healthcare.gov) that's fucked this up; state exchanges (like Covered California, supposedly on the forefront of things, to say nothing of Oregon's health exchange, who, to put it kindly, isn't at the top of the heap) have also fucked this up.

But it's not just the governments that have fucked this up. The private insurers have fucked this up beyond all recognition. Anthem's web-based payment system was unable to accept payments during the last week of December. Customers who signed up weeks before the deadline weren't billed until the new year. Multi-hour wait times for humans have resulted in Anthem's CA PR-bot being inundated with complaints.

You don't have insurance until you actually pay. This is difficult when the insurance company itself refuses to accept payment.

It's not just the federal government (healthcare.gov) that's fucked this up; state exchanges (like Covered California, supposedly on the forefront of things, to say nothing of Oregon's health exchange, who, to put it kindly, isn't at the top of the heap) have also fucked this up.

But it's not just the governments that have fucked this up. The private insurers have fucked this up beyond all recognition. Anthem's web-based payment system was unable to accept payments during the last week of December. Customers who signed up weeks before the deadline weren't billed until the new year. Multi-hour wait times for humans have resulted in Anthem's CA PR-bot being inundated with complaints.

You don't have insurance until you actually pay. This is difficult when the insurance company itself refuses to accept payment.

1. As demonlapin points out, you don't understand how tax brackets work.

2. Tax experts have pointed out, literally hundreds of times, that the attacks against Romney's income tax rate were politically motivated sound-bites meant to outrage people like you, who don't understand how taxes work. Here are just a couple of links: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/01/19/media_promote_myths_about_romneys_15_99470.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/27/1137048/-The-myth-of-Romney-s-tax-rates

It took me ten seconds to google "Romney tax myths"

3. Your source includes no claim or evidence that Romney "cheats on [his] taxes." The ones who decide whether or not a person is "cheating on his taxes" is the IRS. To my knowledge, the IRS has never accused or indicted Romney of tax fraud. Please tell us all how you know otherwise.

lllll AJ

That's prejudice.

First off, look at exactly how warmongerish the DNC has been for the last decade. It's really sad that only a sanitized version of the Code Pink discussion with HRC exists any more (textual description: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0307-01.htm ) -- she was so rabidly for invading Iraq, despite failing to read the Intelligence Estimate which called in to question the WMD shit ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/02/03/448804/-Hillary-Clinton-and-the-2002-National-Intelligence-Estimate-A-case-of-evasion# )-- frothing at the mouth for war.

Then we have Nancy Pelosi, my own lickspittle rep, and hundreds of other democrats totally on board with the whole neo-con agenda. You faux-liberals can take your awe of the Feds and just shove it.

Wasn't it a clever idea to let Magnaquench be sold to China? For those unfamiliar with it Magnaquench was one of, if not the, pioneer in rare earth magnets, and their use in various applications, including military. Here are links to articles about it in two websites that are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Anything that the Heritage Foundation and DailyKos agree on is definitely worth considering.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/05/magnequench-cfius-and-chinas-thirst-for-us-defense-technology

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/05/03/508203/-Magnaquench-160-Weapon-technology-with-a-bow-on-it

So sad that a criminal is listed as an influential person. Especially one so cowardly and spineless as to flee instead of actually staying and working towards what he believed in. I hope he lives to a ripe old age and has to spend his life constantly hiding in the shadows in fear. In countries with worse personal liberties and freedoms than the one he fled from.

I'm sorry you feel this way. Very few people here feel that way, in fact, the only people here that feel that way you do usually work for the NSA.

The NSA and their numerous sockpuppets enabled through Palantir technology [1] - that could be millions of "people" who "support" the NSA. They exist everywhere, even heavily moderated forums like /. and dailykos.

Let's see if the sockpuppets mod this comment down - it's happened before when I brought it up.

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All

Left and Right parties don't really exist in the USA. Both sides are basically moderate with some takes on eachother's side. It's a misnomer to think that they are any different than tea party or libertarians, either. Some people believe there's a divide, but when it comes to corporatism all sides are willing to sell out to the same sources.

Any news source associated with the above will out tea party messages, it's just a question of how obfuscated. Is it that CBS re-broadcasts's faux news, or is it that they just quote some random person who quoted the original tea party person? This is not unheard of. see http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/10/1035294/-Creepy-15-Media-Outlets-Use-Exact-Same-Phrase for an example.

Those maps are reasonably accurate from a geographic point of view, but they hugely distort the actual distribution of wealth in the population, because the population isn't distributed evenly. They would be less misleading if they had used cartograms, e.g. this one of 2012 election results. Those would show that there is a big concentration of wealth on the west coast and near Chigago as well as the one on the east coast.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense though. Everyone knows that doctors make a lot of money, yet there isn't a huge surplus of doctors.

That's because they have the Universities and the AMA regulating how many doctors actually get into the profession. Also the Government was afraid that there would be a surplus of doctors a few years ago and asked that fewer go through the program. I won't get into it but Doctor pay is probably tied to what they do, years of education, residency and the overhead associated with it.

If it really is that easy to be a programmer then people probably shouldn't be getting paid as much as they are. If, instead, it is a difficult thing which requires years of training, then introducing more people to it won't drastically change anything besides maybe increasing the levels of underrepresented minorities (a very good thing).

That's what I've saying, it's much more than "hey, learn javascript and you're done." And it's not purely logical thinking, you have to have creativity as well and I think it's more art than science anyway but that's a beer discussion. As for minorities are you saying you favor a quota system? I believe in equal opportunity but I'll point out that a lot of very, very successful high tech companies are run buy people who would be considered to be from minority groups. So that argument falls on deaf ears here. I don't care if the person is white, green, black, brown or tan if they have the skills and the aptitude to learn and stick with it then they should be given a chance. That doesn't mean however that if there's a candidate who's over 80 weeks on his unemployment looking for the same position; that person should be considered as well and abolish this notion of "over qualification" if you did that I think you'd see these two reprobates wouldn't have a leg to stand on. So teach whoever wants to be taught how to code but don't start telling me that after "Hello World" and all the dead bits that gave their existence to writing them makes these neophytes software developers and that Fuckerberg and Billy Bob are doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They want developers, sure they want a system where they make the rules, where they control the market forces meaning more H1Bs which drive down labor costs and screw over resident workers and flood the market with "so-called" talent. When that talent falls flat on its face, they'll go crying to DC to get more H1Bs. If you have an aptitude or a desire to write code, go write code and I suggest strongly that everybody stay the fuck away from these two because you'll just be a pawn in their little game.

  It seems like they are just trying to rectify a market imbalance caused by the fact that many people are not aware of what CS is and what programming jobs entail. Eventually we would reach an equilibrium where people are paid a fair value for the work and skills involved.

Another random federal agency has decided that they are the law-making body with authority over some aspect of our lives. Discretionary enforcement(*) allows them to pick-and-choose whoever they want.

The DHS regulates model rocketry, the DEA regulates chemistry sets, the ATF manages the second amendment, and so on and so on and so on.

Weren't we supposed to elect the lawmakers? I seem to recall a forum or meeting place of some sort where we could send people to make laws on our behalf.

Is this "regulation without representation"?

(*) This same federal agency doesn't suppress Starbucks cards, online gaming gold, or frequent flyer miles, all of which are just as much a currency.

dont worry, it will be used as a commodity market instrument by people that never really worked they entire life
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/04/1071052/-About-those-offshore-tankers-that-Koch-Industries-use-to-to-cash-in-when-the-Price-is-Right

The other problem stemming from the accumulation of wealth is the divide in economic power that, beyond a certain limit, starts to spill over into the political sphere.

Actually that doesn't happen in practice. I think you're confusing wealth and money (they are very different things) but when I see, for example, people decry about how some rich folks have trillions hidden in offshore accounts and are therefore "hoarding" wealth, that doesn't hold up.

Money sitting in some offshore account doesn't in any way equate to wealth. It's just a number on a ledger. There was some marxist group a few years ago who released a study indicating that all of this money could end world poverty 4 times over....only it can't actually do that. You see, they based this study purely on government figures that say "if you have at least x money, then you are above poverty" and figured that they could reach that amount four times over with this money.

Perhaps the math works, but there's a big huge hole in that reasoning: Money can't just magically turn into material wealth, it has to be traded. Somebody somewhere has to actually farm food or manufacture useful things. Pulling that money out of those accounts doesn't do that - the fundamental problem of scarce resources hasn't gone away, rather the medium of exchange has expanded. The actual result of that would simply be inflation, or that since there's more money in more people's hands, the money itself would now be worth less, and those government figures about what constitutes poverty would simply rise.

Here's a nifty car analogy: You own a car. Would owning another car exactly like it add to your personal wealth? (presuming you weren't going to sell it or allow anybody else to use it) Not really. Why would you want a second car after you already own one? That concept applies to money as well. Adding more of something one already has plenty of simply brings in diminishing returns of actual worth. This is simultaneously why minimum wages don't increase wealth, and in fact have the opposite effect.

Another consideration to make is how poor people who win the lottery seldom remain rich. The fact is that most people don't know how to manage money. I myself actually live better off than many people who make a fair bit more money than I do, and it's entirely due to how I manage my personal finances.

Unions can be both beneficial and harmful. Their original purpose was to organize workers so that they had bargaining power that was on par with that on their employer when the latter is a major business. When they go beyond that level and monopolize the labor market, they are just as harmful as business monopolies.

That's a common misconception: The very first labor unions were intended to stem the growth of "yellow goods"; goods that were made by "chinamen". This was later extended to stemming the growth of black made goods in order to keep the wages of white people high. The original labor unions were very much rooted in racism. It wasn't until about the 30's that the modern impression of what most people think of as labor unions began, though most of the things that you hear "thank a union" for weren't actually brought about by labor unions (think this list which is just flat out dead wrong for almost all of these, for example Henry Ford started the 5 day 8 hour work week, not labor unions.)

hydro, geothermal, wave, leaf (and other biomass) gassification, biogas, biodiesel (not ethanol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy

It is false to say there is a technology problem. It's more of a political problem. Indeed with simply changes (proper insulation, solar water heater switch in summer, requiring new buildings have south facing windows), we could get dramatic energy savings.

Those who the most powerful economic interests in the world do not benefit from deterring from business as usual oil, coal and natural gas.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/21/1249269/-For-the-Koch-brothers-possible-100-billion-in-tar-sands-profit-if-Keystone-XL-pipeline-is-approved#

Oh, an AC vaguely remembers and article refuting what we already knew about the Koch brothers. My mind has been completely changed. I tried to humour you and read the article to see what wonderful thing they were doing. I used the search terms you provided and found this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/20/1225274/-The-Koch-Club-Charts-to-Support-American-University-s-Blockbuster-Expos# which says basically the opposite of what you said. Then I thought I'd look at Salon specifically and found this: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/koch_brothers_donated_big_to_alec_heartland_institute/ which also directly contradicts you.

Non-Academic Administrators include people like me. I'm a librarian.

Yes, I know what the phrase means, and I didn't mean to imply anything bad about all administrative (or "non-academic") positions -- AT ALL. I'm all for libraries and librarians. Apparently, if this blog is to be believed, the issue at this particular school is that there's also a significant amount of jobs going to friends of existing administrators going on in administrative hiring. I have no idea whether these claims are true, but the implication of the blog is that unnecessary jobs are being "created" and sometimes unqualified people are getting them.

This is NOT an indictment of all administrative staff at all institutions, let alone those who provide important services to students.

On the other hand, the reality of budgets at many schools is that administrative costs are rising at alarming rates (along with costs for new buildings and facilities, etc.), while academic budgets are static or going down, with more and more adjunct faculty hired at levels below minimum wage just to cover basic teaching needs.

These are general trends, and this blog seems to claim that one university has some particularly problematic stuff going on. Again, I have no idea how true it is, but that's the subject of this thread.

That "Non-Academic" phrase gets thrown around a lot and frequently includes people like guidance counselors who DO have an impact on student success.

Yep. That's great. SOME "non-academic" growth is certainly necessary at many universities to provide various kinds of student services, whether that's a career counselor or just an extra person at the registrar's office to facilitate student access to records.

The issue is the rate of growth relative to academic areas, making these administrative costs a significant driver of increasing tuition rates, as discussed in many news stories in the past few years. In many cases, these "administrative" staff have increased anywhere from 5 to 10 TIMES the rate at which faculty and academic staff have increased.

I'm all for providing student services, but if all of these guidance counselors and librarians, etc. are necessary for student success, what had colleges been doing before these giant increases in administrative hiring in the past decade? How could they possibly have functioned before with so few administrators?

I'm not at all saying that administration is somehow "bad" -- it's just that the growth seems disproportionate to other areas, and I'm certainly not the only person to have commented on that trend in the past few years.

Your ignorance of politics is striking.

Yeah, reading causes ignorance. True story.

This is only true if you think the statement "The government should promote the general welfare" immediately makes you a socialist.

It might, depending on what you think, the meaning of that phrase is. If "promoting general welfare" means — to you — people need to be subsidized to be "well", then, yes, you are a Socialist, willing to rob the productive Peter to console the idle Paul.

What absolutely doesn't exist is a well-established and well-funded set of organizations with media outlets, think tanks, etc hiring bunches of people making well over $250,000 a year promoting socialism

Not true. The apparatus you are talking about exists and is scary. I'm talking about all the federal and state bureaucrats working on dispensing the taxpayers' monies to the "less fortunate". Their comfortable jobs — which give them the pay, the benefits, and the daily reassurance, they are better than others (their visitors) — would all be at risk, if the number of recipients went down. Obama Administration, for example, goes to great length to sign-up new recipients of Food Stamps, spending millions of dollars per month just on the advertisements for the program — something unthinkable, when it was originated. Why, if you need to be "encouraged to sign-up", then you don't really need the assistance — it is only for the truly desperate. Are you going to pretend, it is done out of sincere concern for the poor? No, it is because feeding those people — at someone else's expense — is a source of comfy jobs.

Sadly, their efforts — in what FDR once called "administering a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of human spirt" — are successful.

If you're thinking that the people receiving welfare are being rewarded for being a socialist

No, not at all — some recipients are decidedly against the existing setup. (So much so, they are being ridiculed for "hypocrisy", when, in fact, it is just the opposite — their willingness to abolish the program that benefits them shows their sincerity.)

They are arguably benefiting from the majority of voters believing that a bit of socialism in the name of preventing people from starving or freezing to death is a good idea

The majority of voters are being tricked into thinking, the programs do good to people in real need. Yet, the stories of people selling their food stamps (including on facebook, which, BTW, reveals their ability to afford a computer and Internet-access) constantly give a lie to the lamentations about "food insecurity".

Simply put, a politician, who is elected on the promise to "fight poverty" has a conflict of interest — what is he going to run on next time, if he succeeds in destroying poverty today? The Military-Industrial Complex, at least, produces something. The Welfare-Industrial Complex is completely parasitic.

Just a minor nitpick, but I used to think the Tea Party had genuine grassroots, as well, but:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/11/1186268/-Koch-Planning-Tea-Party-Since-2002-New-Research-Paper-Reveals

Now I'm not so sure.

Of asylum he was supposed to stop with all of the publication of information.

A pledge not to publish more information that could harm the United States was the condition under which Putin said Snowden could receive safe harbor. "Edward assured me that he is not planning to publish any documents that blacken the American government," Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's Russian lawyer said.

I guess we can all assume that Snowden is just a media whore looking for attention and to be honest, I think a good portion of the information being "leaked" is in fact made up. The last set of slides about the Google Data Center interception information was a sketch. Although we now know some of this information is valid, I'm starting to think that some of it is contrived. Certainly when dealing with espionage issues the notion of counter-espionage and disinformation campaigns come to into play. That way we all get confused as to actually what the US government is doing and how it's doing it. In the end we get confused about they said this and they said that and then we jump straight into the HealthCare.gov website fiasco and how Americans will lose medial insurance policies they've had and will have to get more expensive ones with higher deductibles starting in 2014. That and the government shutdown are great ways to spin this story to the back pages. Conspiracy Theorists in 10 years will look back and probably say that Snowden worked for the NSA all along and was actually spying on the Russians for the US.

If the law is unfair, then get the law changed.

With the current political climate: good luck with that. You have the "JOB CREATOR" defenders (sorry, I meant FREEDOM) who will do everything they can to give tax breaks to the very rich, and cry about how the media is just biased against them, and that everyone should pay less tax anyway, because tax cuts just magically pay for themselves in hughly unrealistic economic growth that is just waiting to explode when the government just shuts down the IRS.

Then you get a bunch of billionaires running "grassroots" conservative websites, encouraging alternative realities, to gum up government so they can continue to underpay and pollute, and the party faithful will tear around the country claiming to be victims of tyranny, and for some reason they think they are rebels.

As a conservative, I support tax reform, and I appreciate that most liberals want a fairer and simpler tax system. The political incentives are set for the GOP to simply cry about tyranny whilst fighting for Larry Ellison's carried interest tax break.

Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public? What is acceptable and what is not?

I can see press conferences, announcements, and factual information, but when does it become an attempt to persuade the public?

Oh, you didn't hear? They repealed the law that forbade the US government from using it's (formerly) foreign propaganda tools and assets domestically against US citizens.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml

http://reason.com/24-7/2013/07/15/with-ban-repealed-us-aims-propaganda-mac

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/17/1224321/-U-S-Government-Repeals-Ban-Opens-Floodgate-to-Mass-Agitprop-Meant-for-Domestic-Consumption

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3043041/posts

What I find interesting is that we see publications as politically/ideologically diverse as Daily KOS and Free Republic both highly critical of this travesty.

If only people would stop looking at only what they differ on and unite on what they agree on. That's how the government and their lackeys plays people. They stir up wedge-issue shit, create a carefully-crafted narrative, and push it through the various communications medias to enrage and divide people and suck all of the oxygen out of the air for public discussion about actual meaningful oversight, reform, and accountability of government and the political class.

I guarantee that even as a white male in his mid-50s, I and a 16-YO black or Latino gang-banger in the 'hood STILL have far, far more in common and agree with each other's views far more across the board then either of us would with the average Washington D.C. politician or apparatchik, regardless of political party.

Instead of, for instance, arguing over "racism" over the Trayvon/Zimmerman incident, how about holding those responsible for the 35% black unemployment rate and the generally crap economy that had Trayvon and has many more like him out on the streets instead of working a job and raising a family, responsible for their actions or lack of, and craft some practical solutions instead of trying to start a race war.

Same thing with Chicago/Detroit gun violence...treat the cause not the symptoms. Hold the politicians responsible for the high poverty & unemployment in those cities and others around nation responsible for the crime, violence, and hopelessness it breeds instead of attempting to shift the blame to 2A rights and individual gun ownership.

Always watch the other hand. Do you really think any of those politicians and political apparatchiks give a single damn about gun deaths or racism? All any of them (outside of a couple of pariahs of the mainstream party-establishments) actually care about is securing and increasing their wealth & power by increasing and broadening every aspect of their control over YOU.

Welcome to "Serfdom, 21st-Century Style!".

Strat

Yes indeed, this is how dirty politics works. Everyone votes for the whole pile of pork in order to keep the one program that actually benefits them personally.

The continuing resolution that reopened the government contained lots of pork, according to this. Another article talked about a spending increase of $1.2 billion. It's hard to tell, because the money is hidden in the final bill as amendments to previous legislation, saying things like "in place of the number X substitute bigger number Y."

This is a continuing resolution that is supposed to be continuing the previous budget until a new one can be worked out. And wasn't supposed to be negotiated at all. Senate Democrats balked at the first CR that contained extraneous legislation, but this one was just fine. Nobody wanted to deny the widow of Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) her $174,000 payout.

Here are the words of Markos Moulitsas, the owner of Daily Kos.. before the ACA was passed

My take is that itâ(TM)s unconscionable to force people to buy a product from a private insurer that enjoys sanctioned monopoly statusâ¦.

Without any mechanisms to control costs, this is yet another bailout for yet another reviled industry. Subsidies? Insurance companies are free to raise their rates to absorb that cash. More money for subsidies? More rate increases, as well as more national debt. Donâ(TM)t expect Lieberman and his ilk to care. Theyâ(TM)re in it for their industry pals.

If you want a similar model, watch how universities increase tuition to absorb increased financial aid opportunities.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/15/814776/-Remove-mandate-or-kill-this-bill

Of course now he's the biggest champion of the ACA.

More people do oppose Obamacare than support it.... however, those people support the ACA more than they do Obamacare. In additional, ALL of the major parts of the ACA (AKA: Obamacare for anyone without their head shoved up their ideological ass) show a large majority support (some over 90%), other than the individual mandate.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/17/1239587/-Obamacare-or-Affordable-Care-Act-Don-t-ask-GOP-to-choose

So...saying more people oppose it than support it is a Microsoft answer...technically correct, but bullshit. As soon as you change the question to do they support the ACA (instead of Obamacare), almost 60% of conservatives change their tune. The real answer is: more people don't know enough about it, or are ideologically incapable of agreeing with ANYTHING that has Obama's name on it.

Difficult conversations,yes. And here is an even more difficult aspect, because there is no profit in it for the mainstream cancer industry: http://www.lef.org/protocols/cancer/brain_tumor_01.htm
"Vitamin D3, the chemical form of vitamin D made in the skin and sold as a nutritional supplement, calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D), the active form of vitamin D, and various chemical analogs and metabolites of vitamin D, have all been shown to inhibit growth and trigger apoptosis in neuroblastoma and glioma cells (Naveilhan P et al 1994, Baudet C et al 1996, Elias J et al 2003, van Ginkel PR et al 2007)."

Iodine is another thing to consider for helping with cure and prevention, and again is very cheap and not patentable so has few advocates in the cancer industry:
http://brain-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/2011/12/could-iodine-kill-cancer-cells.html

As Upton Sinclair said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Upton Sinclair also wrote a book on using fasting to heal cancer, btw, but what profit is their in advising patients to fast compared to advising them to buy $10K bottles of pills every month?
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/fasting-cure-for-health.html

But once you have cancer, getting rid of it is iffy no matter what you do. The best thing to do is to prevent it, which again is fairly inexpensive, without much profit for the mainstream medical industry:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx

The USA even subsidizes creating cancer through its agricultural policies:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

I doubt this level of alleged fraud is common, but it does show the risk of conflict of interest in oncology, where the same doctor prescribing the treatments profits from carrying them out:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/07/1229570/-Michigan-doctor-arrested-for-purposely-misdiagnosing-cancer
"In the course of the scheme, prosecutors say Dr. Fata falsified and directed others to falsify documents. MHO billed Medicare for approximately $35 million dollars over a two-year period, approximately $25 of which is attributable to Dr. Fata, federal officials said The complaint further alleges that Dr. Fata directed the administration of unnecessary chemotherapy to patients in remission; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients as having cancer to justify unnecessary cancer treatment; administration of chemotherapy to end-of-life patients who will not benefit from the treatment; deliberate misdiagnosis of patients without cancer to justify expensive testing; fabrication of other diagnoses such as anemia and fatigue to justify unnecessary hematology treatments, and distribution of controlled substances to patients without medical necessity or are administered at dangerous levels."

Conflicts of interest apply to research as well:
"Financial conflicts of interest in economic analyses in oncology."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21441858
"Some financial conf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Accusations_of_anti-Semitism_and_bias_in_coverage_of_Israel
http://cifwatch.com/2013/04/30/guardianap-story-on-tunisias-jews-omits-history-of-antisemitic-persecution/
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/91164/antisemitic-guardian-gaza-cartoon-shows-jews-puppeteers
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/reuters-bbc-and-guardian-celebrates.html#.UleSExBFNoo
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207175/-Guardian-Battles-Financial-Woes-Antisemitism-Allegations
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/624/the_guardian_acknowledges_a_degree_of_anti_semitism
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100196562/the-guardian-speaks-up-for-paedophiles-flirts-with-anti-semitism-and-jumps-on-every-crazy-leftist-bandwagon-in-sight-what-happened-to-quality-control/
http://engageonline.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/michael-white-guardian-assistant-editor-cries-israel-in-response-to-concern-over-lord-ahmeds-antisemitism/
http://cifwatch.com/2013/05/22/top-10-warning-signs-you-may-be-a-guardian-left-anti-semite/

Eagerly awaiting your reply. I'm especially excited about how many points get you on the last one.

We spent $2.9 trillion (out of $2.5 trillion in revenue) on "mandatory" and defense in 2012. In other words, we were already $400 billion in the red before we even spent a penny on national parks or NASA or roads or any of the other stuff people actually want the government to do. In 2012, all that stuff cost only $615 billion, which is small peanuts compared to the "mandatory" junk. Clearly, all this whining about cutting out little chunks of programs, like the Tea Partiers are doing, is pretty much worthless.

More to the point, they're certainly not talking about cutting "mandatory"+defense by 36%, which is what it actually would have taken in order to balance the budget in 2012. Even Paul Ryan's plan would have an ~$850 billion deficit in 2013 and a ~$525 billion deficit in 2014!

(2012 revenue total came from here; the rest came from here)

Not to mention, of course, I could also cite stuff like this and this....

I think you must have entered the wrong URL. I think this site is what you are looking for.

would not be in the pocket of big money, the story would go in that manner:

What? Not ready by 01/01/2014 - it's going to cost you a million a day per case penalty and all the systems would be able to add up the numbers at deadline just fine.

This is laughable

An yes, the whole Obamascare show is political: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/11/1230529/-The-real-reason-for-the-GOP-s-all-out-war-on-Obamacare?detail=email

The IRS suppressed the speech of political groups and disseminated private information about them to other groups apposed to their views

"Suppressed the speech"?? How? But there was what seems to be a clear violation of policy in some of the info that was released to ProPublica.

Finally, this isn't about wanting taxes or not. Besides, the IRS is NOT A POLITICAL organization and should not in any way be singling anyone out because of political ideology or political speech

The IRS is an INVESTIGATIVE org and since there was influx of groups on both sides applying for tax-exempt status thanks to the idiotic Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, extra scrutiny is warranted based on a group activities since there are restrictions on the POLITICAL activity for groups granted tax-exempt status.

To reiterate, if a group seeking to be tax-exempt is going to be POLITICAL, then it behooves the IRS to be INVESTIGATIVE.

Imagine what happens when someone opposite your screwed up ideology gets power and the IRS starts coming after you.

That IS a grave concern and serious allegations SHOULD be investigated - but Issa and co appear to have started on the assumption that Obama has the Cincinnati office on speed dial and their "investigation" quickly became a witch hunt and is going up in flames.

twits like you

Et tu, sumdumass?

Further reading:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/19/1210132/-The-Only-Scandal-Regarding-the-IRS-is-How-EVERY-Tea-Party-Group-Obtained-501-C-4-Status
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/meet_the_group_the_irs_actually_revoked_democrats/

Can you point me to an example of a person self-diagnosed with Asperger's? Why would anyone want to claim they are on the autism spectrum when they are not on it? As a professionally diagnosed autistic [Asperger's], I see so much discrimination when people find out that I am autistic. Recent shootings' news commentators claim that the shooter had Asperger's and that is why he killed all of those kids. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/15/1170176/-They-re-Saying-the-Shooter-Had-Asperger-s Why would anyone want to claim that they have the same thing as a mass shooter of children? People also say that we are vaccine-damaged and unable to care for ourselves. I want to talk to these supposedly real people who self-dx themselves. I have yet to encounter anyone like that despite my time hanging out in the neurodiversity movement online. This trope about Asperger's needs to end.

They didn't need to shoot Manning, they already had him in custody and could do anything they wanted to him.

It's a bit like Winston Smith in that book. You don't have to shoot them; just convince them that the bullet is coming.

Constant war like that is a new invention though. Before agriculture there was much less need to defend any particular piece of land and people moved around too much to claim resources. (Random source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/23/1225878/-Study-of-Hunter-Gatherers-Shows-War-Not-Inherently-Human )

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/08/1043424/-10-Things-Obama-Has-Done-To-Strengthen-Israel

With the amount of gratitude you show the United States, I'm amazed that we spend so much money on Israel. We could be using that money to fix our infrastructure, upgrade to a nationwide fibre internet, and perhaps switch to single payer healthcare.

We don't want to attack Iran just because Netanyahu brought out a Wiley E Coyote diagram at the UN. I'm sorry if that offends you. Israel has been crying wolf about Iran for decades.

The problem with crying wolf is that eventually people start ignoring you. Hell, I've been the victim of it even though I never cried wolf. I was bleeding badly after getting a nasty cut in the woods and I had to haul myself to safety as a child because adults thought I was just a kid playing around by screaming "HELP!"

It probably does but not in the "she was dressed like that" manner but more of a this requires further investigation manner. Given the type of weapon, a real assault rifle and not something with different trim, it was (he was a tax stamp holder I assume unless it was an illegal weapon) it would have been highly valuable. Since you are implying he was targeted now the question is how did he become a target?

One guess would be he liked to show the weapon off to just about anyone who came over and even like to show how secure it was since the criminals came prepared. This leads me to the question of why would bank robbing criminals need a fully auto weapon over the standard handgun, shotgun, or semi auto rifle? The others are much easier to come by and if planning a big heist a fully auto weapon will just eat through ammo and wouldn't be of much use unless they were planning to mow down a crowd. You also mentioned that the criminals were caught aiming it out a window which seems to indicate these aren't the real serious criminals who know to shut the hell up and be low key. Most of your criminals (99.999%) aren't like those in the movie Heat even worse is most (99%) don't even measure up to the barely competent Man in Black Robber so something does smell a bit fishy. You claim they were serious criminals but yet they seem to be exceptionally stupid, as in below the average crackhead gang banger who knows not to wave a fucking gun around where people that can turn you in can see it.

Another scenario that jumps to my mind is insurance fraud given the value of the firearm (probably at least $15,000). As such I would have looked at the connections between your father and the criminals as there probably is a very close relationship with 1 maybe 2 degrees of separation if not directly known by your father. Again this seems to fit with the well prepared but incompetent criminals. The only other scenario that seems to fit might be your father wasn't a tax stamp holder (seems unlikely) then it seems like the person who he got it from let someone else know where to get one in which case I don't have much sympathy. But there that doesn't seem to fit since how would the criminals have known to come prepared to remove a wall.

Also I tried to find some cases of a legally owned assault rifle (even ones that were previously legally owned and registered in the US) being used in crime and that seems difficult to find as I haven't come up with anything yet. This task is further confounded by the nebulous term of assault weapon which idiots in the media equate to assault weapon when they are not the same thing. Here are some of what I have found:
Assault Rifles Are Not Heavily Used in Crimes
Has any Fully Automatic Firearm ever been used to commit a Violent Crime?
Fully automatic guns in the US are highly regulated, and regulation workshardly a right wing outfit
I did find a case where privately owned assault rifles/machines guns were stolen but it seems far more common for the government to have them stolen
Feds release photos of stolen machine gunsThe one case of privately owned ones stolen. incompetent as hell
Hotchkiss man pleads guilty in theft of cop’s assault rifle, SWAT gear
Cop shot looking for stolen police rifle

I'm glad you asked. The answer, according to a preliminary report which was written at the request of the President and very recently released, guns are probably used for defensive purposes at least as often as they are used for criminal purposes. Here's a summary of a few interesting points made in the report. Point #7 addresses your exact question.

Because this THIS is revealing state secrets for personal gain, which is worse, much worse than what Manning, Snowden Tice , Drake , Klein, Binney , Kiriakou

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-whistleblower-william-binney-was-right-2013-6

Tice,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/01/21/687340/-Exposed-NSA-Watching-Everything-on-Anyone-Illegally-Updated-x3#

Drake,
http://www.whistleblower.org/action-center/save-tom-drake

Kline,
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135645/The_NSA_wiretapping_story_nobody_wanted

Kiriakou
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/29/imprisoned-cia-torture-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-pens-letter-from-loretto/

Conclusion: you have to be extremely naive or engagged in a career enhancing self-serving thinking process to imagine that universal spying on ordinary Americans won't be used to in the basest way control the internal political trajectory of the nation by the next group of people like Cheney PErle Rumsfeld and Bolton.

Yes something very bad could and probably will happen . Yes we will lose relevant information by not constantly tapping all Americans , The but alternative path is worse. When bad actors get involved, there are often no good paths left.

the NSA does whatever policy makers tell them to do without getting all "philosophical" or "speculative" about whether it's exactly or even slightly legal or not. That's what we know for certain. Anyone able to worm themselves into a position of power - from the analyst level on up, has God power over The Database Of Guilt. Unelected officials - Perle Rice Rumsfeld Abrams Bolton Cohen etc can and will commandeer that database for their own illegal purposes and the NSA will comply because that's what they do. It may already be happening.

This is 100% unacceptable. This is no-go no-matter-what territory.

Worth the trouble? You should weight how much it costs you privacy vs what could cost you don't worry about it, but unfortunately, english is a bad language to realize how important the future is.

How it could affect you? You can check what have the FBI/NSA about you. You can see precedents of what NSA did with private information (if that the respect that soldiers in the battlefield deserve, good luck about you). You can see the starting trend of misusing information and how it could impact you in the future.

I think that the widespread perception of the danger is not enough... yet. But as jailing/killing the people that could inform you about the real situation is the new normal, you probably won't be aware of why you should had done it before until it hits you. Or won't have the chance, as the next salvo probably will be outlawing consumer encryption (it already started). Some of the things that you can do could be complex or cumbersome to do, but you can start progressively with this tools, taking the path of least resistance, it will protect you not just from the NSA, but from other evil people and organizations too.