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Yeah I was recently thinking how the "free world" nowadays is starting to seem not so different from the bad old days and messed up countries where Kings/Dictators could mostly do whatever they wanted - imprison, kill and torture whoever they want, seize whatever property they want. In those countries most people were usually safe if they kept a low profile and "followed the rules".

Same goes for the "free world" it seems. Yeah everyone has the freedom to say bad things about Obama etc. But see what happens if you considered a threat- Assange, Snowden, Poitras ( http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/ ). Heck even Kim Dotcom.

So maybe the real difference is in the free world the real rulers don't care about petty name calling, esp if it's targeted at puppets with term limits. Whereas Dictators and Kings are apparently more sensitive to that stuff.

Some kind of kinky "role-reversal play' among government agencies?

I imagine it's more some turf war / battle over budgets.

Remember back in in 2008, when the FBI wanted the right to monitor all internet traffic ("The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, whether it be .mil, .gov, .com--whichever network you're talking about.")? Apparently the NSA got an even bigger budget for that project than the FBI did, and I imagine the FBI's been jealous ever since.

Ever since news about how guys like Chalabi would play the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA off of each other, I've wondered how many of the world's conflicts are actually DNI(CIA) vs DoD(DIA)

Applies even more to internet hacking, where 4 of the 10 biggest hacker groups in the world are almost certaily DNI(CIA), DoD(DIA), DoJ(FBI), and DHS(NCSD). (probably all working under the alias "anonymous")

I think they just found a new enhanced interrogation technique.

A new one, hardly. They've been using it for 50 years. http://www.salon.com/2007/06/07/sensory_deprivation/

The main reason the premiums of those health insurance policies cost less is that they were bad policies. They didn't cover you for some of the problems you would be most likely to have, and when they did cover you, you wind up with enormous deductibles, co-payments and exclusions.

In the insurance industry, they used to call them "herd of buffaloes" policy. They only cover you if you get run over by a herd of buffaloes, and then only if it's on Main Street, and only if it's at noon.

But actually, most people will pay lower premiums for equal or better insurance, and most of the Obamacare horror stories aren't true. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/

I guess it's official.

Oh well, it's still stupid-- another symptom of the epidemic of people speaking without thinking about what they're saying.

You say that raising minimum wages causes poverty and reduces employment as if you have some facts to back this up. Unfortunately for you the facts say the opposite: Higher wages won't increase unemployement, no harm when wages raised, "another study says you are wrong.

How exactly does raising minimum wage not hurt the economy? I personally don't disagree that it probably doesn't have much of an impact on the unemployment rate. Businesses need the amount of personnel that they need to operate. I can't however ignore what I have personally seen every time minimum wage has been raised in my lifetime. Minimum wage increases a bit and cost of living increases far more.

Quote statistics and experts to your heart's content. If you can honestly deny that minimum wage increases are anything but forced inflation you either have no understanding of business and economics or you are generally blind as a bat. Businesses aren't simply eating these cost increases especially massive corporations employing hundreds of thousands and/or millions of people many of them at or slightly above minimum wage. They decrease the quality of their product or service and increase the price to make up for the lost revenue. There is more to it than that but that is the general effect on the average Joe.

Further, how exactly do you think raising minimum wage works out for those making between minimum wage and the amount to which it was raised? I can tell you this much I didn't get a 29% raise when it was raised from $5.15 to $7.25 and hour as a late teens factory worker. Instead I got a $.25 raise above minimum wage raise which was a decent raise from a dollar perspective but was far less than the resulting inflation from the minimum wage increase. In short those people end up back at minimum wage or very slightly above it. Employers aren't going to give raises across the board equal to the percentage of the minimum wage increase.

So how then does a minimum wage increase not result in an increase in poverty?

You say that raising minimum wages causes poverty and reduces employment as if you have some facts to back this up. Unfortunately for you the facts say the opposite: Higher wages won't increase unemployement, no harm when wages raised, "another study says you are wrong.

Police hate accountability, film at 11.

Oh wait, it's the cops who were part of this glorious defense of civil liberty? Yeah, I really feel bad for them.

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.

Apparently not enough to want to determine a baseline study if it might go against their political beliefs.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/24/nebraska_approves_climate_denying_study_scientists_refuse_to_conduct_it/

* Indeed, in the USA, the poor not only avoid all federal and state income tax but they receive credits;

false. The poor pay a hire real amount then rich people do.

Not to mention it cost more to be poor.
See: Vimes boot theory of economics.
Also
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/06/the_secret_tax_on_the_poor/

I was hoping someone would post something connecting Asimov's writings about robotics and political thinking, and your post comes closest of what I've seen so far.

Early in Asimov's future history are the "Spacers" who have a lot of robots per person. Aurora in "The Robotics of Dawn" is the most extreme in that regard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robots_of_Dawn

At the end of the book, the Earthers conclude they have nothing to fear from the Spacers because having so much robotic abundance has somehow sapped the will of the Spacers to expand, and so the Galaxy is open to the teeming masses of less technologically advanced Earthers (or something like that, it's been a long while since I read it).

The general setting as explained in another novel of the time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Caves_of_Steel
"They live roughly three millennia in Earth's future, a time when hyperspace travel has been discovered, and a few worlds relatively close to Earth have been colonised â" fifty planets known as the "Spacer worlds". The Spacer worlds are rich, have low population density (average population of one hundred million each), and use robot labor very heavily. Meanwhile, Earth is overpopulated (with a total population of eight billion), and strict rules against robots have been passed."

That theme of robots somehow sapping human will for initiative, health, and growth is a recurring theme in Asimov's work. I think the "mighty brains" that solve all human problems including weather control on Earth decide to shut themselves off at some point? Harry Seldon's "plan" hinges on a mysterious working-behind-the-scenes Second Foundation. Also, the advanced robots that continue from the previous novels are also said to somehow direct human affairs behind-the-scenes for human betterment (whatever that is) without being known, because if their influence was known it would somehow be bad for humanity.

There probably is a lot to discuss there about themes that relate to capitalism, communism, and socialism. Any discussion of such should bear in min a point that Chomsky makes, that the USSR claimed socialism was what it was doing as "Communism" even though what the USSR was more about was totalitarianism/authoritarianism at the time. But Chomsky also suggests the USA in vilifying socialism as what the USSR did also was doing that as self-justification for its own power structures and to avoid people thinking about alternatives. We have seen over the past few decades in the USA the vast increasing concentration of wealth as the wealthy buy favorable laws and also buy non-profits to spew pro-wealth-centralization propaganda, resulting in essentially flat real wages while the GDP more than doubled. Contrast that with more "socialist" countries of Western Europe like the Netherlands, Sweden, or even Germany, which in general show overall higher levels of health and happiness across the population that the USA.

On modern Germany:
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans."

By today's US standards, the "New Deal" is socialism, and the US Republicans are bent on turning it back in any way they can -- and many US Democrats for the most part are willing to let them under some notion of "compromise".

See also:

So your stance is the same as the President's: "I know I lied. I had to, so I could be reelected.

I didn't lie. I didn't vote for Obama or support him. I supported a single-payer system, which would cost half as much for the same coverage. And your choice of any doctor in the country.

You are too stupid to make your own health decisions."

That's true.

Lots of people lost the insurance that was helping them treat their preexisting conditions, like cancer.

Name one.

(Here's the fact-checking story BTW. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/ )

I don't need a fact checker or foxnews to tell me that this law destroyed my ability to get quality affordable healthcare. Wake up, idiot, and listen to what people directly affected by this law are saying rather than the people that are telling you how to think.

There's only one way to answer you. I'm going to have to commit copyright infringement.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern

I happened to turn on the Hannity show on Fox News last Friday evening. “Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.

As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on.

“These are the stories that the media refuses to cover,” Hannity interjected.

But none of it smelled right to me. Nothing these folks were saying jibed with the basic facts of the Affordable Care Act as I understand them. I understand them fairly well; I have worked as a senior adviser to a governor and helped him deal with the new federal rules.

I decided to hit the pavement. I tracked down Hannity’s guests, one by one, and did my own telephone interviews with them.

First I spoke with Paul Cox of Leicester, N.C. He and his wife Michelle had lamented to Hannity that because of Obamacare, they can’t grow their construction business and they have kept their employees below a certain number of hours, so that they are part-timers.

Obamacare has no effect on businesses with 49 employees or less. But in our brief conversation on the phone, Paul revealed that he has only four employees. Why the cutback on his workforce? “Well,” he said, “I haven’t been forced to do so, it’s just that I’ve chosen to do so. I have to deal with increased costs.” What costs? And how, I asked him, is any of it due to Obamacare? There was a long pause, after which he said he’d call me back. He never did.

There is only one Obamacare requirement that applies to a company of this size: workers must be notified of the existence of the “healthcare.gov” website, the insurance exchange. That’s all.

Next I called Allison Denijs. She’d told Hannity that she pays over $13,000 a year in premiums. Like the other guests, she said she had recently gotten a letter from Blue Cross saying that her policy was being terminated and a new, ACA-compliant policy would take its place. She says this shows that Obama lied when he promised Americans that we could keep our existing policies.

Allison’s husband left his job a few years ago, one with benefits at a big company, to start his own business. Since then they’ve been buying insurance on the open market, and are now paying around $1,100 a month for a policy with a $2,500 deductible per family member, with hefty annual premium hikes. One of their two children is not covered under the policy. She has a preexisting condition that would require purchasing additional coverage for $600 a month, which would bring the family’s grand total to around $20,000 a year.

I asked Allison if she’d shopped on the exchange, to see what a plan might cost under the new law

Stop telling me my good insurance is bad. It is better than anything I can get on the exchange. I'm sick and tired of ACA supporters living in denial of the fact that this law is hurting a lot of people.

I don't know what your policy is, but here's an insurance professional who actually tracked down stories like yours on Fox News of people who complained that they would be paying more under Obamacare for insurance they don't need. It turned out that they would actually be paying less under the ACA. Unless you know a lot about health insurance, and you've compared the policies, you don't know that it's better than you can get on the exchanges. Since the low-income policies are heavily subsidized, it's unlikely you could do better with an unsubsidized policy than a subsidized policy.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Friday, Oct 18, 2013
Inside the Fox News lie machine: I fact-checked Sean Hannity on Obamacare
UPDATE I re-reported a Fox News segment on Obamacare -- it was appallingly easy to see how it misleads the audience
By Eric Stern
“Average Americans are feeling the pain of Obamacare and the healthcare overhaul train wreck,” Hannity announced, “and six of them are here tonight to tell us their stories.” Three married couples were neatly arranged in his studio, the wives seated and the men standing behind them, like game show contestants.

As Hannity called on each of them, the guests recounted their “Obamacare” horror stories: canceled policies, premium hikes, restrictions on the freedom to see a doctor of their choice, financial burdens upon their small businesses and so on....

I called Robbie and Tina Robison from Franklin, Tenn. Robbie is self-employed as a Christian youth motivational speaker. (You can see his work here.) On Hannity, the couple said that they, too, were recently notified that their Blue Cross policy would be expiring for lack of ACA compliance. They told Hannity that the replacement plans Blue Cross was offering would come with a rate increase of 50 percent or even 75 percent, and that the new offerings would contain all sorts of benefits they don’t need, like maternity care, pediatric care, prenatal care and so forth. Their kids are grown and moved out, so why should they be forced to pay extra for a health plan with superfluous features?

When I spoke to Robbie, he said he and Tina have been paying a little over $800 a month for their plan, about $10,000 a year. And the ACA-compliant policy that will cost 50-75 percent more? They said this information was related to them by their insurance agent.

Had they shopped on the exchange yet, I asked? No, Tina said, nor would they. They oppose Obamacare and want nothing to do with it. Fair enough, but they should know that I found a plan for them for, at most, $3,700 a year, 63 percent less than their current bill. It might cover things that they don’t need, but so does every insurance policy.

I am going with classic compartmentalisation, then PR has the same numbers any other staff and it all seemed just fine.
The other historic option was http://open.salon.com/blog/stuartbramhall/2013/10/08/the_phone_company_that_said_no_to_nsa
Thanks to Snowden the world now has a much more complete understanding of role of US encryption and the global role big US brands played :)

This shouldn't even be the least bit surprising if you've spent any time at all looking at the current research in the field, suggesting a combination of both environmental and neurological factors. It's like any other 'variation' in human sexuality, statistically you will find it anywhere given a large enough sample. Yet our solutions are entirely reactive rather than preventative. The solutions the experts propose repeatedly are simply never going to happen. This is a field where people assume getting really angry is the only way to fix things, and stopping to understand the problem and break it down into its components is somehow condoning it. Understanding criminal behavior with prevention in mind is 'hugging a thug' instead of getting tough on crime and we must operate under that false dichotomy.

If we fixed electronics like we treated society's ills, we'd take a sledgehammer to them accompanied by 'die MOFO die!' (a la office space) every time there was a problem. And we'd have a pile of wasted and broken things, and even more problems to deal with as a result... And well, that's what we are seeing, and will continue to see, until we get smart about this problem and start listening to what experts are saying.

A very small start, just the tip of the iceberg:

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/our_approach_to_pedophilia_isn%C2%B4t_working/

Let's be honest here. The company, its investors and medicos on the bleeding edge of a new and they hope lucrative technology are doing to do everything they can to promote it, including silencing problems. We're lucky even this much got out and wonder why the MSM haven't reported it? Because it is filled with egotistical assholes like Schieffer who think his opinion is a substitute for real reporting: http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/schieffer_on_snowden_this_kid_is_a_jerk_because_dr_king_and_911/

It's interesting that you equate surveillance with Bull Connor.

Worse. They are synergistic. I think it's telling that you haven't considered the power of the NSA's records and surveillance capabilities in the hands of a Bull Connor, a Hitler, or a Pol Pot.

First off Godwin's Law. I believe I win.

Secondly just because a government has a capability that doesn't mean it will be abused. If it did disarming County Sheriffs would be neccesary every time the Sheriff was up for election.

Hell, if you actually care about freedom the Fourth Amendment is small beans. Illegal searches don't kill people, they don't allow a minority to dominate the government. OTOH Voter ID could easily be used to keep Texas Republican for decades after most of it's residents have become Democrats. Stand your ground laws actually do kill people.

Illegal searches do kill people.

Dude, that is an incredibly stupid leap to make. This isn't a Fourth Amendment issue. If you say something in public the police are allowed to hear it, and can use it against your ass in Court.

OTOH, there are issues of entrapment, and excessive force.

As to your other two claims, let us note the actual restrictions of the Texas voter ID law:

Procedures for Voting

When a voter arrives at a polling location, the voter will be asked to present one of the seven (7) acceptable forms of photo ID. Election officials will now be required by State law to determine whether the voter's name on the identification provided matches the name on the official list of registered voters ("OLRV"). After a voter presents their ID, the election worker will compare it to the OLRV. If the name on the ID matches the name on the list of registered voters, the voter will follow the regular procedures for voting.

If the name does not match exactly but is "substantially similar" to the name on the OLRV, the voter will be permitted to vote as long as the voter signs an affidavit stating that the voter is the same person on the list of registered voters.

If a voter does not have proper identification, the voter will still be permitted to vote provisionally. The voter will have (six) 6 days to present proper identification to the county voter registrar, or the voterâ(TM)s ballot will be rejected.

What you won't see here is the supposed means by which Republicans will stay in power. For some reason, coming up with a photo ID is strongly discriminatory against Democrats? I think it's because a good portion of them can't actually legally vote.

And again you demonstrate you don't understand how oppression works in America.

What's gonna happen in every small town is that every married woman whose changed her name on her ID but not her voter registration is gonna be allowed to vote, because the clerk knows she's who she says she is. If the clerk insists on a provisional ballot the woman in question will complain to her friends, and since it's a small town those friends are probably people quite close to the Clerk; which means the clerk's Thanksgiving will consist of people awkwardly talking around the burning question of why City Clerk Auntie Jany disenfranchised cousin William's wife. People who have lost their IDs will also be allowed to vote in small towns at fairly high rates.

In the big cities, and their suburbs, that won't happen. Yeah a lot of the people who don't have the right ID on them in those cities will be able to make good by showing up at the clerk's office later in the week, but not everyone will. I actually couldn't do that without taking a vacation day, because my bus from work doesn't get back to Cleveland Heights until the clerk's office is closed.
Even if you think that this arra

It's interesting that you equate surveillance with Bull Connor.

Worse. They are synergistic. I think it's telling that you haven't considered the power of the NSA's records and surveillance capabilities in the hands of a Bull Connor, a Hitler, or a Pol Pot.

Hell, if you actually care about freedom the Fourth Amendment is small beans. Illegal searches don't kill people, they don't allow a minority to dominate the government. OTOH Voter ID could easily be used to keep Texas Republican for decades after most of it's residents have become Democrats. Stand your ground laws actually do kill people.

Illegal searches do kill people.

As to your other two claims, let us note the actual restrictions of the Texas voter ID law:

Procedures for Voting

When a voter arrives at a polling location, the voter will be asked to present one of the seven (7) acceptable forms of photo ID. Election officials will now be required by State law to determine whether the voter's name on the identification provided matches the name on the official list of registered voters ("OLRV"). After a voter presents their ID, the election worker will compare it to the OLRV. If the name on the ID matches the name on the list of registered voters, the voter will follow the regular procedures for voting.

If the name does not match exactly but is "substantially similar" to the name on the OLRV, the voter will be permitted to vote as long as the voter signs an affidavit stating that the voter is the same person on the list of registered voters.

If a voter does not have proper identification, the voter will still be permitted to vote provisionally. The voter will have (six) 6 days to present proper identification to the county voter registrar, or the voterâ(TM)s ballot will be rejected.

What you won't see here is the supposed means by which Republicans will stay in power. For some reason, coming up with a photo ID is strongly discriminatory against Democrats? I think it's because a good portion of them can't actually legally vote.

And stand your ground laws? They aren't killing a lot of people. For example, Florida has seen a tripling of self defense shootings from one dozen to roughly three dozen a year and many of those shootings fall under normal self defense law (such as the well-discussed Martin Trayvon shooting, for example).

I think this is enough evidence to confirm that you truly do not understand the issues surrounding freedom and why resisting illegal searches is so important to a democratic society - far more than a few self defense shootings or a gimmick for picking up a certain sort of vote fraud.

The biggest fish they've bragged about is some cabbie in LA and his friends who sent a whopping $8500 to some terrorist group in Africa

Not to mention that the reason he sent the money seems to have been a tribal issue, as in a bribe/tribute so his family back home would get better treatment from the guys running the town who also happened to be members of the terrorist group.

Meanwhile, under oath Alexander was forced to walk back their big claim of foiling 54 plots.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/nsa_director_admits_to_misleading_public_on_terror_plots/

Well, it did make for a good use of the chin-scratching T-Rex meme, which of course my Google-fu isn't finding an actual link for at the moment:

'If Obama is arming Al Qaeda rebels in Syria
could be be detained under section 1021 of the NDAA?'

Maybe they'd thought no one would notice after jumping the shark with MEK.

You keep using that word, traitor. It does not mean what you think it means. You're also ignoring in swearing the Oath of Office you swear to uphold the Constitution. Then there's the fact that "proper channels" are designed around keeping this shit secret. Leaving people of principle with no choice but to reveal classified information to the public.

In 2009, Kiriakou took the position of senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under John Kerry. His job was to investigate waste, fraud, abuse and illegality and he turned his attention to the 2001 Dasht-i-Leili massacre, in which an American-backed warlord had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Taliban soldiers when he ordered them to be crammed into metal containers and then loaded onto trucks bound for a prison in Shibarghan, Afghanistan.

A source had told Kiriakou that Americans wearing T-shirts and blue jeans oversaw the box-up of the prisoners.

"I wanted to know," Kiriakou said, "were these guys CIA officers? If they weren't, who were they? Were they Defense Department? Were they contractors? Who were these guys? And why didn't they stop this from happening?

"I interviewed everybody," Kiriakou said. "I interviewed Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's chief of staff and Karl Ford, the assistant secretary, Pierre Prosper, the special rapporteur for human rights. I called Colin Powell."

Six weeks later, Kiriakou got a phone call from John Kerry asking if he was investigating the CIA.

"I said, 'Yes, I am.' [He said,] 'I want you to stop right now.' I said 'but we've got a story here. This is a serious situation.' 'I want you to stop right now,'" Kerry repeated. "So I stopped."

In my opinion all the below have been for good, in particular operation Tunisia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tunisia

http://www.examiner.com/article/anonymous-exposes-pedophile-ring-hacks-lolita-city

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/anonymous_vs_scientology_partner/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Payback#Operation_Avenge_Assange

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/westboro-baptist-church-hacked-anonymous-protest-newtown-shooting-victims-funerals_n_2315070.html

Government is the most powerful entity in our mixed society.

That stopped being true thirty years ago.

Corporations can dictate what is and what isn't allowed, in your own personal life and in how you choose to conduct it? Corporations can choose to arrest or detain or kill whomever they want, without repercussion? Corporations can force you to buy their product, or ban possession of another's product?

Corporations are light-years behind Government in terms of power. Sometimes they play together (witness Obamacare), but the real power is Government. It, literally, has the power to take everything you have (eminent domain, drug forfeiture laws), and even execute you without trial. The kind of power that corporations can only dream of.

> Gitmo will close by the end of my first term.

Broken promise. He actually tried and was blocked.

It depends on what you mean by the word "close" because there are two potential meanings for "Close GITMO":

1) End the practice and shut down the prison.
2) Shut down the prison, retain the practice and simply move it to another location.

Obama's intention was #2, specifically, to "close" GITMO and move the practice to the Thomson SuperMax Prison in Illinois. http://www.salon.com/2009/12/15/gitmo_3/ Even liberal members of Congress voted against funding this proposal, but it has been deftly spun by the Obama admin as "Obama tried to close GITMO but congress blocked him." There is a lie of omission there so that despite being technically true, it leads to a totally false impression.

Sue them? And watch as they use state sovereign immunity to brush you off?

I am not a lawyer. this is not legal advice but of course you can sue the Feds for unlawful arrest, and even win.

If you are deliberately killing innocent people with drones, you aren't doing it right. That is why they don't deliberately target innocent people.

That's the point: they don't deliberately target innocent people. Drones seem to still kill a fuckton of civilians, though.

Former US drone pilot quits, regretting bombing innocents, including children

U.S. Accused of Using Drones to Target Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan

Living Under Drones: Stanford International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic"

Rather than spend a lot of money to make medical care more expensive (via the large health insurance subsidies plus those mandates on insurers)

Serious numbers on this speak a different language. Health care will be a lot cheaper (and better) for the vast majority of people, and only a little bit more expensive for those well off. The right is just making shit up. I don't really understand the motives - perhaps they like it when other people suffer? Perhaps they are just crazy? Most likely both.

How the hell did Soros ever get to be a conservatives' bogeyman? He crashed the UK economy to make his fortune for fuck sake.

$185k of his dollars may have indirectly made it's way to one of the early promoters of OWS:

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/reuters_george_soros_is_secretly_behind_occupy_wall_street/

LOLZ DUM OCCUPIERS BUNCH OF USEFUL IDIOTS FOR DARK LORD SOROS HAR HAR!!1!ONE!

Yet when the Koch brothers dump millions directly into the Tea Party's 2 main organizing foundations, one of which they founded and run, that's exactly the same thing.

If there's top-down Democratic support, why would they take away TV cameras when they send in cops to bust up the camps, or organize a protest which is very nearly as much against themselves as the other parties? And why haven't they done any more than pay a little lip service to OWS causes? Man they sure are shitty at organizing a conspiracy.

What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US. Things like this cause nations to implode. A bankrupt, non-functional state has time and again led to violent overthrow and civil war. This is what their game of chicken was risking. And when you listen to some of their backers they would welcome this in the hopes to build a different state from the ashes. Only their vision is really frightening.

Indeed it should be, but I hope you're not under the impression that this is anything unprecedented in any way, shape or form. The actions of the Tea Party are perfectly rational given their underpinnings. Here's a thought-provoking (and well-researched) analysis about their origins, motives and strategies: Tea Party radicalism is misunderstood: Meet the "Newest Right"

That is a fake offer, made in poor faith; they can't promise not to hand him over if he's charged with a crime in the US.

Nonsense. Foreign countries refuse to extradite people to the United States all the time, based on our death penalty and atrocious civil rights record. Given the psychological torture inflicted upon Bradley Manning, and Obama personally intervening to keep a journalist brutally imprisoned in Yemen, any country in the world has a perfectly valid reason refuse to hand over whisteblowers and journalists to the U.S.

If you want to try and run with this "you must extradite" line of reasoning, why don't you start by demanding the State Department turn over Luis Carriles to authorities in Cuba and Venezuela to face trial for bombing air planes. And when will George W. Bush be arrested and turned over to Malaysian authorities?

And since he hasn't been charged with any crime here, they can't even give a conditional promise not to hand him over for a specific charge.

Hardly. U.S. charges would of course be based on Assange's activities at Wikileaks, so it would of course be trivial to make a promise not to extradite for anything having to do with journalism. If the FBI suddenly turns up video and DNA evidence that Assange was a triple ax murderer in Ohio, then they could request extradition for those charges.

It's also well known that the DOJ has a sealed indictment against Assange, which means they have charged him, they just haven't been open about it.

And honestly, as an American, it seems pretty absurd that somebody in his situation would have real fear of charges. No US jury would convict him. Even a jury that hates him would find him "not guilty." The people who leaked to him often committed crimes in the US, but he did not, and since his intent was clearly to act as a journalist, even if he'd been in the US when he did it, his part in it is explicitly protected.

On some other planet where a whisteblower wasn't just handed a longer sentence than eight spies who sold secrets to Russia, for money? Where the only person to do jail time for the Bushco torture program was the person who confirmed it's existence?

Azerbaijan and BP http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/19/bp-azerbaijan-100bn-dollars-gas-deal
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/10/12/is-bp-on-borrowed-time-in-azerbaijan-yes-but-so-is-baku/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-bp-azerbaijan-idUSBRE89N0PC20121024
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/19/bp_strikes_gas_deal_with_azerbaijan_newscred/
Complex but after fall of Soviet Union the UK got in fast and was very friendly :)
Soviet Union left a lot of oil related factories, workers apartments and did a lot of exploration.

Be careful, Linus Torvalds has specifically repudiated that he was approached, he clarified that he was joking.

However, as far as I'm concerned Linus is an idiot for 'joking' about that in the first place.

Fanboys blaming everybody but Linus instead in 10...9...8...

Kissinger quipped: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’

What about 5 millons, if you count private sector and not top security clearance? And of those 2 millons with top security clearance, half a millon are from the private sector. No matter what numbers have China, US ones are far bigger, and with less population.

And, of course, is not that most international internet traffic passes through China, nor most internationally used internet companies are based on that country and have to follow their laws giving all the information of their customers.

or to have them ritually mutilated.

If you bothered to read the previously linked story it shows he was directly connected to multiple plots.

If you bothered to read the story it's nothing more than a series of accusations. If we did domestically what we did overseas, you would have nodded sagely at the drone strike that took out Richard Jewell, because accusations == proof.

Al-Awlaki was quite open in his declarations.

What a pernicious hack you are. You wouldn't hesitate to argue that Israel is justified in fighting the existential threat posed by qassam rocket yet Muslims are just supposed to roll over and take it when they are bombed from the air by CIA pilots on the other side of the planet.

Aside from that, there's the slight problem of Awlaki speech calling for resistance being a Constitutionally protected right.

Yes people can read about the "each will have a place under imaginable conditions" at:
http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/
Bans, taxes, cognitively infiltrate, gov funded counter speech....

As usual, people spouting nonsense continue to ignore relevant facts. "Peak oil" is about increasing production more than it is about production itself. It is the point at which, despite all the known and even un-known reserves, total production cannot increased. It can only stay roughly the same for a while, after which it declines. And nothing you have written indicates that our oil-production capabilities are actually growing to match world population growth (annual death rate from all causes is roughly 50 million per year, annual global birth rate is about 130 million per year, making the annual growth rate about 80 million per year).

As for fresh water, I know a significant about about desalting, and even about methods that are quite energy-efficient in accomplishing it. The energy for that still needs to come from somewhere, while all those extra people, every year, make their own demands on available energy supplies, for other purposes. Are we increasing our total power production to match population growth? NO.

Regarding synthetic fertilizer, I refer you to ammonium nitrate. Here is a relevant article. Basically, phosphates are not the only nutrients that plants need. So, the more people we need to feed, the more nutrients we need to feed plants, in order to grow food to feed people. The energy consumption associated with making ammonium nitrate can only go up, so long as population increases AND we don't want them to starve.

I see you also made the same Truly Stupid Statement made by so many others who dis the facts regarding world resources. "We have enough supplies that I know of to feed us for at least 200 years assuming our population doubles 3 times." WHAT THEN??? It is like you actively want a Malthusian Catastrophe to be as bad as possible, when it inevitably happens! To see just how stupid that attitude is, read this. Unlimited Growth Is Mathematically Incompatible With Finite Resources, Even When You Include The Entire Universe.

Growing food indoors is yet another way to consume energy (for the grow-lights). You didn't say where you expected it to come from. So now let me mention a phrase you probably don't see very often, "global thermal balance". The average temperature of Earth mostly depends on how much solar energy it receives in the daytime, and how much it radiates to space, mostly at night. If the arriving energy increases, then temperature goes up a bit, and the world tends to radiate a bit faster (maintaining that higher temperature). Likewise, if the arriving energy decreases, then temperature falls a bit, and that is also maintained. This happens every year (about a 1% change) as the world's elliptical orbit changes the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Well, humans are doing things to add extra energy into the global heat balance, besides what they are doing with CO2, interfering with the normal rate at which heat can escape to space at night. Some of what we produce is irrelevant, because it is directly related to the normal energy cycle (solar, wind, and hydro power). But much of it is a relevant factor. Burning fossil fuel releases energy that was stored away millions of years ago; it is now an addition to the global thermal balance. Nuclear power, whether fission or fusion, also directly contributes to the global thermal balance. One of the more popular ideas for energy production is about collecting solar power in space, and beaming it to Earth --every erg of that would also be a direct addition to the global thermal balance.

The point is, even if we solved the CO2 problem, so long as population increases and we find ways to generate more energy, we will be working to upset the global thermal balance. Right now our total effort is trivial, compared to what the Sun supplies to Earth. In the long run, though, it cannot be blithely ignored.

The reason that this story has the reference to autism in it is because the accused is attempting to use his alleged autism (I am going to assume that he has an actual diagnosis, not that it means he is actually autistic) as an excuse for his crimes. This story is actually a perfect example of what is wrong with the way our society (in general) is approaching autism. It is viewed as something which makes one unable to tell right from wrong. I do not actually believe that this man has autism, although I think it likely that he was diagnosed with it. This article does a good job of explaining what I am talking about.

It's also gotten itself to become an empire with the belief that only a single "super power" can protect the world today.
 
Shamelessly stolen from Salon.com

No, OP is correct. Any picture of a naked child can be treated by the authorities as child porn. Numerous people ran afoul of this back in the film camera days. They'd take pics of their kids taking a bath and drop the fiilm off to be developed. Some state laws required photo developing labs to report any "child porn" without defining what child porn was, so in an abundance of caution the labs would report anything with naked kids in it, leaving the judgement of what constitutes child porn up to the police. The police and especially child services usually try to err on the side of caution and assume child abuse unless proven otherwise (backwards from the innocent until proven guilty standard used elsewhere).

The number of these incidents has just dropped because photos are now digital and photos of private family moments like bath time are never seen by outsiders. You can still run afoul of the nebulous definition of child porn if you post such photos on the web though.

"We" is a lot of people, some that could be respectful, some that not. Also forced the maker of your locks to be able to be opened with a clip to make things easier for us, knowing that no "proper" thief would never figure that. And planted a few hidden bombs just in case we think that you are misbehaving.

Did we mention that we have to pay private prisons if we don't keep them nearly full? Is not that you would have to worry about that

The details are of no interest to anyone in power, but patterns are.

It has already been made public that huge volumes of email, actual phone conversations are recorded.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/
http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/15/yes-actually-the-nsa-says-they-can-eaves
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/irs-audit-emails-warrant-aclu/

And further, the NSA leaks content to local and state law enforcement.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_nsa_dea_police_state_tango/

So the this whole discussion about meta-data is moot. When you can archive, transcribe and catalog content, who needs metadata?

NSA (& associates) made that equation worthless when started to require to manufacturers to insert backdoors and timebombs into their products and spread privileged access over too much people.

So a single person or a group of them (either being insider, or finding how to access those backdoors deployed everywhere) with the right motivation can access most of world's critical information, including US one, and Snowden is a proof of that, the one that decided to go public, for good. What you don't know is how many in the past, present or future will abuse that privilege, or just will make a security mistake giving access to that information to the wrong people.

We need to retire the use of the phrase "theory" when used in the context of a scientific theory.

So you're LITERALLY asking to change the definition of a word or retire its proper meaning when enough stupid people use it wrong?

Sigh... Again...

Good points, along the lines of books like "Brave New World" and "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Although it seems lots of systems link together to support power, so there is probably not just one, even if one may be stronger at one time.

The movie "Elysium" features security robots, for example. I envisioned something related here with robots enforcing the "rules":
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA

Marshall Brain talks about robots enforcing things in "Manna":
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

But right now, the laws the human police (and legal bureaucracies) enforce are created through political means:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica
"Q: So, who does rule America?
A: The owners and managers of large income-producing properties; i.e., the owners of corporations, banks, other financial institutions, and agri-businesses. But they have plenty of help from the managers and experts they hire. ...
Q: Then how do they rule?
A: That's a complicated story, but the short answer is through lobbying, open and direct involvement in general policy planning on the big issues, participation (in large part through campaign donations) in political campaigns and elections, and through appointments to key decision-making positions in government."

That said, perhaps the world will always be run by the "1%" who are paying attention in any community? Even those who showed up at "Occupy Wall Street" were, in a sense, part of a "1%"?

OWS's "We are the 99%" was actually a divisive slogan. A focus on increasing egalitarianism might have been better:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

Maybe the main issue is whether those who are paying attention have an egalitarian mindset to some degree, at least as far as distributing most of what nature and industry produces? If you look at Western Europe, there is a somewhat different sense of political and moral accountability among leadership. Granted, that is driven by a more active and aware populace building upon ideas from the USA's past:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010
" How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place? ... The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans."

Thus:
"How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
"In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germanyâ(TM)s big three car companies --- BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen -- are very profitable."

That comes down somewhat to culture and mythology and the stories we (including the "1%") tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be (and why).

Or Salon. The tea party was a bought and paid for made up movement by the rich to push their agenda of low taxes, no regulation and no social safety net. They had tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars behind them. Christ, Fox news used to run stories about 'spontaneous' tea-party gatherings a week in advance.

OWS was a real grass roots movement. And like all grass roots movements it was relentlessly pounded into the ground. My favorite part was when they used the Patriot Act to mobilize local law enforcement against it. Remember when we got promised it would never be used on US soil? Yeah, nobody else did either...

You don't choose the candidates unless you are called Lester. Explicitely not voting the main parties (voting third parties, voting for no candidate where you can do it, not sure if can get there the pirate or green parties) is something you can do. Not going to vote or buying the don't throw your vote message picking one of the 2 main parties (that are anyway controlled by the same people, and have essentially the same agenda) is not doing something against it . Believing their promises that "this time we will change" (Obama main selling point was "change" after all, and you know how that resulted) won't help neither.

Maybe you won't make any difference, even if most people try to follow this, but at least will become even more evident that US is not a democracy.