Slashdot Mirror

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map

And some think that the NatGeo's prediction may be too low...

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/11/map-sea-level-rise-probably-wrong-its-too-optimistic/71246/

Yes. Obama created this storm to destroy his Kenyan birth certificate that his mother secreted at an Indonesia Bank ...

Really? I heard that was all just a plot to help hide the fact that Obama is a lizard man* and Biden used to wear a mullet (party on Joe!).

* That was enlightening. There are some Slashdotters I can peg to a number of those theories..

Republicans are doing this because every once in a while there's a news story about NSF funds being used to research duck erections or some other weird sounding science.
The story comes out, Republicans decry it as waste/fraud/abuse, then they rail against big government etc etc etc.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/04/duck-penis-study/63805/

Back in the 70s and 80s, a Democratic Senator used to give out Golden Fleece Awards.
It went pretty much as one would expect, with a lot of "fleecings" turning out to be useful programs
and one liable case that went to the Supreme Court, where the Senator lost and eventually settled out of court.

No, he's commenting on the bias of the NYT. That should be completely obvious from his comment.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; most conservatives are so hopelessly gullible and idiotic they actually believe Onion articles are real.

The second thing is fear of failure. Everyone is terrified of taking the blame for the next successful big attack. They want all the data in the vain hope that it means that failure can be avoided forever. It's not possible, but given effectively unlimited resources they can engage in the insane project of trying to spy on every human on earth.

Not only isn't it possible, but it's counterproductive. If you tapped every cell phone conversation, e-mail exchange, web browsing session, etc, you would definitely capture data to show terrorist plots in the making. The trouble would be sorting through all of that data to find the "terrorist plot" data elements. How do you do this without having too many Googled Backpacks and Pressure Cooker false positives? It's much better to have a more focused approach and just pull the data for selected individuals.

Then again, as you stated, there is a climate of fear and control. They are afraid of missing a data point that shows a terrorist plot in progress so they try to pull more and more data to make sure they collect them all. (Yes, that Pokemon reference was intentional.) At the same time, they want to maintain "control" over the situation so they use fear of terrorism to justify bigger budgets, less oversight ("don't get in our way or the next attack will be your fault"), and more powers to do basically whatever they want. Because "terrorists".

Or as a cartoon character. I refuse to be a caricature for their amusement.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/09/richard-dawkins-defends-mild-pedophilia-again-and-again/69269/

http://orientem.blogspot.com/2010/04/richard-dawkins-on-pedophilia-delusion.html

Nope, no need. While happy to report the proceedings and the action, mass media was very critical of the Iraq war and happy to report any slip-ups — however minor — by the government or the military.

Nowadays they are mostly cheering for the President — and many have gone to work for the Administration outright. But, with any luck, that will all change again in January 2017.

But Drummond said "no free for all", which is what that would be.

Only by one specific definition. Obviously the government does not think it is a free for all or they would not have been pushing for additional access ala CALEA II.

When did Google fool you?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/new-and-improved-facebook-and-google-statements-prism-still-have-some-holes/66024/

The ideal solution to me would be to treat it like tobacco: Keep it legal, but at the same time take measures to very strongly discourage use.

Except the tobacco scare tactics are unwarranted, with the possible exception for under-age use, or use while driving, as with any intoxicant.
Beer and wine regulatory mechanisms seem more appropriate. In fact Washington State tasked the Liquor board with the job of managing Marijuana sales and use in the state.

Yet still feds seem intent on sticking their oar in.

If that means that they finally actually manage to find real terrorists instead of going on the nerves of innocent people, I guess that's a good thing.

You really need to ask this question? Or you just playing stewpit?

The article has an update posted now a day later:

It says out the guy had been fired/laidoff ("released") from his job. His WORK was spying on his searches AT WORK from his WORK computer.

They reviewed his searches and freaked out and reported him to the county cops to investigate.

" Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.”

I'm not saying it wasn't unfortunate for the guy, but let's be clear that for THIS issue this was NOT it turns out a "the feds spy on me" story.

This is a "your EMPLOYER spies on you" story.

So it looks like this all may be an over-blown non-story.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/08/government-knocking-doors-because-google-searches/67864/

Supposedly, the cops got a tip from their former employer that they'd found these searches and then went to investigate. If that is the case, well then it is pretty much a non-story. Some employers regularly do look at what is done on their computers because they are paranoid employees are wasting time, stealing, whatever.

The American people did vote. They voted for a candidate that explicitly promised the closing of Guantanamo

Not only has Obama not closed Gitmo, he closed the office that was charged with closing Gitmo . Go figure.

You are reading too much into things.

I give WashPo credit for their coverage of NSA and for going where other US based news sources fear to tread. Of course, I'd give them even more credit if they had been a bit more bold and not lost the exclusive.

This however, does not give them a free pass if they publish silly articles.

In any case, most of the comments here I see are directed at the article and the writer, not the newspaper.

there may be some foundation though.. remember the "dihydrogen monoxide" prank those Florida DJs pulled on April Fools.

possible felony charges (of course this was radio, so that's understandable because of the panic they caused)

the charges never materialized.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/04/florida-djs-april-fools-water-joke/63798/

Very little doubt about that.

About a year after Facebook reportedly joined PRISM, Max Kelly, the social network's chief security officer left for a job at the National Security Agency,

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/06/facebooks-former-security-chief-now-works-nsa/66432/

If you want to know who to blame in Congress for passing laws authorizing government spying, here is a very helpful summary .

Sitting members who voted for surveillance every time

Rep. Robert Aderholt (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Spencer Bachus (Alabama, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jo Bonner (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mo Brooks (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Martha Roby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Alabama, Republican)
Sen. Jeff Sessions (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Terri Sewell (Alabama, Democratic)
Sen. Richard Shelby (Alabama, Republican)
Rep. Ron Barber (Arizona, Democratic)
Sen. Jeff Flake (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Trent Franks (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John McCain (Arizona, Republican)
Rep. David Schweikert (Arizona, Republican)
Sen. John Boozman (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Rick Crawford (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Tim Griffin (Arkansas, Republican)
Sen. Mark Pryor (Arkansas, Democratic)
Rep. Steve Womack (Arkansas, Republican)
Rep. Ken Calvert (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Denham (California, Republican)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (California, Democratic)
Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Darrell Issa (California, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California, Republican)
Rep. Howard McKeon (California, Republican)
Rep. Gary Miller (California, Republican)
Rep. Devin Nunes (California, Republican)
Rep. Ed Royce (California, Republican) - all five times
Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado, Democratic)
Rep. Mike Coffman (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Cory Gardner (Colorado, Republican)
Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colorado, Republican)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut, Democratic)
Sen. Tom Carper (Delaware, Democratic)
Rep. Gus Bilirakis (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Vern Buchanan (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Kathy Castor (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Ted Deutch (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. John Mica (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Jeff Miller (Florida, Republican)
Sen. Bill Nelson (Florida, Democratic)
Rep. Rich Nugent (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Tom Rooney (Florida, Republican)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida, Republican) - all five times
Rep. Dennis Ross (Florida, Republican)

From the employees violating their privacy rules andspying on children (to whats amount to having sex with them) to Google forwarding phone sex, banks info and email, Google is violating your rights left and over.

The only way to stop this is just stopping using their services. In fact, not even that - but we need industry players to stop supporting Google and get everyone on our side. Google is made of creeps.

See http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/jerrold-nadler-does-not-thinks-nsa-can-listen-us-phone-calls/66278/. It looks likely that this was primarily a miscommunication and not what was actually going on.

What if it's true that in a series of well suitably positioned individuals, some will, irrespective of previous screening, be unable to resist the ability to abuse this information for political or personal gain?

What if the same is true at the level of an administration?

What if it's true that people simply cannot live with the fact of this level of surveillance? I recall an old joke that went something like

"How do you know it's going to be a bad day? When you wake up and see the 60 Minutes truck in your driveway.

the deep implication of this joke is that , as Edward Snowden alludes to, everyone or at least most people in society are consciously or unconsciously afraid that some hand picked series of facts culled from the totality of their lives, suitably presented , will make them look guilty of something they never did.

The belief is, guilt can be produced on demand. At any arbitrary future time, a series of revenge seeking "witnesses" can be produced to attest to whatever narrative the state wants to generate and the state can generate any narrative it wants through a process of selective culling and distortion of things you did and said and knowing who your enemies are.

The only thing preventing this from being realized is the incapacity of the state to preserve and access the ultra fine details of your life .

But now they have that.

Could a Cheney resist this kind of power ? Did they when they went after Valerie Plame and Edward Wilson ?

What if Cheney had this power earlier as he was aspiring to political power ? What kind of trail of destruction of other people's lives would he have left? Who would be in prison for life right now over something that never happened?

We all know that people seeking revenge or power will stop at nothing. Witness the recent spate (!) of ricin letter framings , one by the framee's wife.

A friend I have who is a lawyer claims that in at least 60% -70% of divorces where there are children, one spouse will try to accuse the other of molesting them . If there's a bomb you can drop on your enemy, you will.

A lot of people cooling their heels in GITMO were put their through just this kind of petty revenge seeking on the part of local "informants".

. People have deep and twisted motivations and especially it seems, with respect to revenge against real or perceived enemies, just ordinary people can justify anything; no one can be trusted.

Some say this is what the Iraq War was really about- Bush tasking revenge in some primal macho way against Hussein for the plot against Bush Sr.

Given human nature, the nature of politics and the "justice" system, the deep question is- can anyone be trusted with this power and also will other people accept the premise that there exists a system in which this power just can't be abused? If all that' s needed to destroy someone's life is the will and a near demented, perspectiveless prosecutor like Carmen Ortiz

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/01/guide-finger-pointing-after-aaron-swartzs-suicide/61015/

and anything goes for anyone at any time. \

Just think how this could play out. "Kill em early" would be the slogan of the enfranchised against people who at age 15 or 18 or 25 fit the profile of "the enemy" and get targeted for selective "enforcement".

I think that the answer to the question "will society accept this" (and really, can anyone be trusted with it) is- not without some kind of transparency the nature of which we have not yet invented. The problem is transparency is the opposite of stealth and need-to-know.

Half a decade of Government-R-Us filling the appointee posts with statists oblivious to the optics of the hate-filled world view trained into their souls... I think the right is going to have a good year in 2014, 17 months from now.

A question; the IRS persecution of "tea party" outfits was either Obama campaign/administration shenanigans or it emerged spontaneously among IRS staff. Which is worse?

Looking forward to the IRS bubble bath shots as investigators figure out how these celebrity bureaucrats pissed away $50e6 on "conferences."

Don't doubt for one second the voters won't punish. That's what they use midterms for.

I call the Justice department the ringmaster in violating the civil rights of The Press.

I call the Justice department the ringmaster in agenda driven gunwalking cover-ups.

I call the Justice department the ringmaster in whistleblower persecution.

Price fixing e-books? Yippie disposable income doesn't actually rate at this point; we have bigger problems.

Presumably there are some electronics in the gun making this decision, which means if the electronics are messed up (eg: with an EMP or by being immersed in water), the gun becomes unreliable.

Just imagine someone with this gun living in fear of an assailant with ... a water pistol! (scary music here).

Don't worry though, we can fix this by banning water pistols!

As detailed in my last post on this topic, some responsible individual on Reddit named Thirtydegrees decided to give us a little background on what went down (I know it's long but it's worth the read for chronological context).

But wait! We can do better than that! Let's go look at /r/FindBostonBombers to see exactly what happened! Well, you can't. Oddly enough, the founder of that subreddit decided that he should just set it to private (here's a Reddit friendly vulgar meme of my request). Guess what? The founder of findbostonbombers doesn't want to be identified! Bizarre that he/she would create a subreddit devoted to identifying people and then themselves think that it's completely acceptable for their identities to be protected. Should you have a right to know who is accusing you of what? Well, you find out that you have done something wrong ... time to own up to it, right? Right? No! Not in the futuristic amazing world of crowdsourcing!

Also hilarious is that they are saying the bombers have been found. Wrong. Whatever they did, they are still innocent until proven guilty! I am quite upset with everyone dropping the "alleged" word and referring to them as "the bombers" instead of "the suspects." They will get their day in court, that's how this stuff works. That's what lead to all the bad stuff that happened in /r/findbostonbombers. They went straight from "we have images that our untrained eye finds suspicious" straight to "these are the guys who killed innocent people, help us identify them and harass their families."

We live in an era of digital lynch mobs.

If anonymous speech didn't exist, this wouldn't have happened. The problem is anonymous speech.

As detailed in my last post on this topic, some responsible individual on Reddit named Thirtydegrees decided to give us a little background on what went down (I know it's long but it's worth the read for chronological context).

But wait! We can do better than that! Let's go look at /r/FindBostonBombers to see exactly what happened! Well, you can't. Oddly enough, the founder of that subreddit decided that he should just set it to private (here's a Reddit friendly vulgar meme of my request). Guess what? The founder of findbostonbombers doesn't want to be identified! Bizarre that he/she would create a subreddit devoted to identifying people and then themselves think that it's completely acceptable for their identities to be protected. Should you have a right to know who is accusing you of what? Well, you find out that you have done something wrong ... time to own up to it, right? Right? No! Not in the futuristic amazing world of crowdsourcing!

Also hilarious is that they are saying the bombers have been found. Wrong. Whatever they did, they are still innocent until proven guilty! I am quite upset with everyone dropping the "alleged" word and referring to them as "the bombers" instead of "the suspects." They will get their day in court, that's how this stuff works. That's what lead to all the bad stuff that happened in /r/findbostonbombers. They went straight from "we have images that our untrained eye finds suspicious" straight to "these are the guys who killed innocent people, help us identify them and harass their families."

We live in an era of digital lynch mobs.

Oh shit, now there's a guy shooting police officers at MIT. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/theres-shooter-loose-and-officer-down-mit/64379/

Related? Those suspects do look college aged.

What makes you think it was an individual. Maybe it was a three letter government agency in want of funding.

You know, capitalist Russia style. (Chechenia war) ... or like was the case with the "underwear bomber" http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/05/tracing-cia-underwear-bomb-leak-back-white-house/52537/

This new party would be best advised to stand a full senate team for each state and look to exchange preferences with other minor parties. The difficulty here is that the Wiki Party voters would probably also be Greens voters and the Greens might be hostile to an exchange.

Yeah, I imagine calling Sweden "the Saudi Arabia of feminism" might go down poorly with them.

Then again who knows. Maybe in best Orwellian leftist fashion they'll just decide we have always been at war with Eastasia^H^H^H^Feminism. It all depends which parts of the alternative media they get their news from.

Even the "underwear bomber" has now been positively outed as a US "intelligence" operation. Not that anyone is noticing that little story.

The article to which you linked is about a separate incident (in 2012) from the original underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was not a CIA spy and very much intended to cause harm (in 2009).

Pull the other one. It's got BELLS on it.

This is a pure propaganda allegation. Unsourced, with out validation. Hamas? Gimme a break.

Wait for the shoe to drop, with additional restrictive and obtrusive laws on Internet users.

Even the "underwear bomber" has now been positively outed as a US "intelligence" operation. Not that anyone is noticing that little story.

Credit to John Stewart.

Indulge me in a little hyperbole: for a friend of mine, hacking AT&T was a death sentence.

Lance Moore was involved with LulzSec, foolishly no doubt. As an AT&T technician of some sort, he acquired and subsequently distributed some internal corporate documents. The Justice department is liable to be a more accurate source of the specific complaints. He was caught. The FBI seized its opportunity to bring the hammer down. I've seen various figures given for the amount of jail time he was facing; somewhere between five and thirty. He was found dead by his own hand on February 24 of last year. His crime has by now likely been forgotten by all that were involved with it.

Sixteen other people were arrested the same day that he was arrested. I don't know their stories. The reader may judge whether justice was served.

You really should start your medication, boy. Then read the fucking article, which says this is common and expected behavior. Of course, if it had been anything but the Register it wouldn't be blowing it so much out of proportion. Here are a few better links to the same story, by less disreputable sources:

New York Daily News
Atlantic Wire
Herald Sun (Australia)
Huffington Post
Slate (Slate credits BoingBoing)

Google News is full of them. There was one story by a business blog that questioned its authenticity on Google's list of stories from the search term "Ukraine dolphins"

I think Silver stands out because unlike too many modern American politicians, he is interested in the facts, and not what bullshit he can use the data to support.

So it's not so much that he's done a fantastic job figuring all this out, it's just that he's fucking honest about the results unlike a certain perpetually-deluded political party I'm sick of naming.

Arguably, it isn't really politicians who he differs from most meaningfully. Sure, there are a lot of politicians living in absurd contrafactual fantasy worlds; but that is(unfortunately) mostly a product of the fact that they are acting as representatives of people who do exactly the same thing... Pandering is a nonfactual enterprise in the sense that it may involve telling people the most insane lies, if that is what they want from you; but it is an eminently empirical exercise in the sense that you must constantly strive to better understand what people want to hear, so that you can better pander to them.

Where Silver, and his data-driven compatriots, really differ from the traditional is with the 'pundit' class. Pundits are selected pretty much entirely for their ability to tell emotionally compelling stories, with minimal reference to data, and provide marketable column inches and cable news minutes. The better ones, to their credit, are masterful in engaging audience emotions, weaving stories, and other affectively gripping flimflam. However, they tend to be somewhere between extraordinarily weak and overtly hostile to the idea that 'data' rather than 'feelings' can actually provide excellent information about the world, particularly if you use this crazy 'math' stuff that the nerds are always going on about.

Pundits make good TV(and, very conveniently, can offer viewers everything from lowbrow talk radio shouting matches to middlebrow 'public intellectual' posturing with little more than a change in tone and presence or absence of a thesaurus, unlike stat-heads who pretty fundamentally lean on nontrival math); but the kind of suck compared to statistical models.

No one is reporting on how the ACLU are investigating the ever-increasing level of militarization in our police forces.

And as I recall the Air Force has used Predator drones for domestic surveillance (yes, the ones you can put missiles on) several dozen times in the past, which came to light during the whole Dorner thing. Where's the public outrage now?

Actually I'm in Arizona, and yes the word "dole" very much applies due to what we term anchor baby syndrome. Parent(s) here illegally, kid is here legally and is entitled to medicaid (here we call it AHCCCS - which provides comprehensive care by the way, and is better than the health care that 90% of americans have with zero premiums, zero deductable, and copays no higher than $5.) which also makes one or both parents automatically eligible for that program as well as food stamps and cash assistance. Used to be that we deported them, but Obama signed an executive order saying that we can't.

You have been misinformed. Those here illegally do not qualify for medicaid and other social services as a result of having a child here. The children do qualify for various forms of assistance, but the parents are only entitled to emergency care, of which every human being on our soil does regardless of legal or financial status.

I hope don't think the meager assistance afforded to a child is enough for an entire family to live off of.

I live in Central California and grew up around families of mixed legality and based on my experience, your narrative of the lazy welfare sucking migrants is pure fantasy.

Leaving all of the disputed details aside, it is still true that low skilled immigrants place a lower burden on the welfare state than citizens of the same socioeconomic class.

There is absolutely no data to support the "anchor baby" narrative that scares nativists so much, while there is in fact data that disputes it.

They do not. However there have now been questions raised as to the analysis by Musk by other papers. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks-data-doesnt-back-his-claims-new-york-times-fakery/62149/

There's been mention of the 2/12 response from Broder (previous to Musk's rebuttal), but the first post-rebuttal articles are now showing up:
* http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/conflicting-assertions-over-an-electric-car-test-drive/?smid=tw-share
Plus a general line by line analysis of Musk's comments:
* http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks-data-doesnt-back-his-claims-new-york-times-fakery/62149/

Considering The U.S. Military Spends $20 Billion on Air Conditioning for Troops 135 billion $ doesn't sound like much for Appolo program.
I'm afraid Mars program is much more expensive than 10 times. I recall engineers that were involved in Soviet space programs say that going to the Moon was more than 100 times more difficult than bringing man into space. So should be the Mars mission.

1) Spaceship will be much heavier and it has to travel to much longer distance
2) You can't keep people in small capsules like it was possible in the Moon mission, since it will take
3) Gravity on Mars is much stronger and it has an atmosphere, so taking off Mars will be so much more difficult.

PS
One way flight is much easier to do and there is even a non profit organization planning to land for humans in 2023 for permanent settlement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One

Busted ACORN??? For what? Are you talking about the "Project Veritas" videos that multiple attorney generals found were heavily edited to make it appear as though ACORN employees were guilty of giving advice on how to run a child prostitution ring? And who reviewed the raw footage and found no evidence of illegal behavior?

Oh wait, you mean FOX news didn't follow up on the story or post a correction and instead let the fraud stand so that numerous innocent lives were ruined and dozens of jobs were lost?

I see a lot of angst from Conservatives about the fact that Patrick Moran, son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran, won't be charged with voter fraud even though Project Veritas released a video of him supposedly engaging in criminal acts, implying the kid has connections that give him a free pass, but ignoring statements from the police that they can't prosecute because James O'Keefe refuses to hand over the unedited video. Considering his history with the ACORN video, can we make assumptions as to his reluctance?

For those of us not living in FOX News land, O'Keefe is a scumbag who is famous for defrauding the public. In Conservative media land he's a damned hero and national treasure. Take a long look in the mirror before you start accusing other of "drinking the kool-aid." Your utter lack of critical thinking and willful frustrates me bitterly.

Except for a few things:
They have no re-entry capability.
They lack guidance is systems capable of hitting the intended target, unless your intended target is "anywhere on the continent (or nearby)". This answers your question.
The satellite they launched weighs 1/10th the weight of the average nuclear warhead.

See this article for more detailed info.

Maybe they're not smarter, maybe they're just interested in different things? Animals with a gut all evolved from worms, in a sense the rest of the animal is there to keep the "worm" inside them alive. A human gut has it's own nervous system that can continue to function normally even if all connections to the brain are severed. If a fish gut works the same way then maybe they are "just" moving computing resources around between gut and brain? Kinda like getting an Obama by selectively breeding Texan Governors.

They bred these guppies for a BIGGER brain. Not a smaller one stuck repeating "Blame BOOOSH!!!!"

And running the country like an unpatriotic out-of-control banana dictatorship.

Can we trade our current 9% unemployment rate with the smallest percentage of labor force participation since the 19-FUCKING-60s (in other words - TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE GIVEN UP LOOKING FOR WORK) for TEH EEEVIL BOOSH'S "horrible" 6% unemployment rate with some of the highest labor force participation rates in history?

Can we trade our current $1.5 TRILLION per year deficits for those "unpatriotic" $400 billion per year deficits? And you know who called those $400 billion dollar deficits "unpatriotic"? Yeah, Obama himself. So, there's your "unpatriotic" and "out-of-control". Because if $400 billion is "unpatriotic", what's $1.5 trillion? Hell, you could even make a case - using Obama's own logic - that Obama's performance on the deficit is flatly anti-American. It's certainly out-of-control.

You know what the difference between a drunken sailor and Barack Obama is? When a drunken sailor runs out of money, he has to stop spending.

But not Baracky.

Oh no.

Now that we're up against the debt ceiling (again!), and Baracky's had his "tax the EEEVIL rich!" demands met, what's he going to do now when it becomes obvious in a few months that his tax-the-rich demagoguery was nowhere near sufficient to raise revenues from their already historic highs (yep - the US government is now and has been for several years sucking more money from the pockets of the people than it ever has - ya think maybe that's why Obama's economy STILL sucks?), what's Obammie gonna do about the fact that he won't get the debt ceiling raised because he won't get his utterly out-of-control spending in check?

How's Obammie going to keep spending without Congress upping the debt ceiling?

Banana dictatorship style, he'll have the Treasury mint special coins and stamp ONE TRILLION DOLLARS on them..

Link provided, just in case you think I'm making this ridiculous shit up.

But I'm not.

One does wonder if Baracky's going to put his pinkie to his mouth as he utters "ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!!"

Yeah, that's how Obammie's going to get past the debt ceiling - stamp ONE TRILLION DOLLARS on a chunk of metal, then spend that "money".

Wny not TEN trillion dollars? Hell, why not INFINITY DOLLARS? I guess he must have thought THAT would be silly.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present President Barack Obama, making banana dictators the world over look like shining examples of respect for law and order and fiscal propriety.

And you fucking fools made fun of George W. Bush.

Fucking fools. Literally.

Cuz you been FOOLED.

By state law, it is public information. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/local-government-refuses-give-local-newspaper-data-its-gun-owner-map/60498/

Actually, there's a county trying to stop the release of the information with which I have a bigger problem. Fix the law if it's bad, but I don't expect county officials to violate state law on their own discretion.

How is that any different than the people that refused to sit on the back of a bus in the south during the 60's? Sometimes the only way to get a law changed is to openly oppose it and violate it. If your case has merit, then the Supreme Court can make a valid ruling on it. I am all for any agency or person who puts their money where their mouth is and stands up for what they believe to be is right. Now they may be taking this stance to garner votes, but that's okay with me too. They are still challenging something that their constituents think is wrong.

Those protesters weren't government officials whose entire job is to enforce state law. They were ordinary citizens. A county official, OTOH, has a job to do. If the job is release CCW permits that is what they have to do. They can do it reluctantly, or they can resign. But keep your job and not do it are not acceptable options.

BTW, keep in mind that under the American legal system a County-level official who flat-out refuses to implement a state-level policy is actually supporting that policy. To sue to get a policy over-turned you generally need something called "Standing," and the easiest way to get Standing to Sue is be damaged by a law. If the Kansas City School Board had said "we dislike segregation, so we'll let this kid go to school," Brown vs. Board of Education probably does not happen.

In this case it may not matter because other counties did release the info, and the Paper may sue the hold-out. But in general a County-Level official who flat-out refuses to enforce an Unconstitutional policy is protecting that policy from the Courts.

By state law, it is public information. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/local-government-refuses-give-local-newspaper-data-its-gun-owner-map/60498/

Actually, there's a county trying to stop the release of the information with which I have a bigger problem. Fix the law if it's bad, but I don't expect county officials to violate state law on their own discretion.

How is that any different than the people that refused to sit on the back of a bus in the south during the 60's? Sometimes the only way to get a law changed is to openly oppose it and violate it. If your case has merit, then the Supreme Court can make a valid ruling on it. I am all for any agency or person who puts their money where their mouth is and stands up for what they believe to be is right. Now they may be taking this stance to garner votes, but that's okay with me too. They are still challenging something that their constituents think is wrong.

Step 0: Control media outlets and discredit all that are not under your power, Propaganda!!!
Why is this step 0? Because with the media intact and doing what it is required by society, none of the other crap would have happened, however the buck stops with the people, if the people aren't going to do anything about it then they get what they get.

Step 1: Create a crisis or allow one to happen.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
-Rahm Emanuel

Create an enemy that will never go away (terrorist) and wage a war that will never end (terrorism) and define the enemy as "those without any rights" and can be held indefinitely (National Defense Authorization Act)

Step 2: Promise to protect the populace from said crisis/enemy by any means necessary, begin by restricting rights in the name of security.

Step 3: Implement a massive trillion dollar (data from The Economist) surveillance network HLS, TSA, NSA, DIA OMG, WTF, BBQ ), record all calls, maintain facial recognition database (thank you Facebook) fill the air with drones and the ground with cameras.
Monitor for dissent. (see: fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy below)

Step 4: Dis arm populace (http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/assault-weapons)

Step 5: Tighten grip further via martial law or other "required security protocols", rename political protest groups as "terrorist" deregulate corporations, dismantle workers rights, remove environmental protections, and finally ammo up. (Department Of Homeland Security Is Buying 450 Million New Bullets)

Anyone not complying or protesting is a terrorist. (see step 1)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/09/costs-homeland-security

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/12/fbi-treated-occupy-terrorist-group/60289/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-28/news/31247765_1_atk-rounds-bullet

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/27/5079151/california-gun-sales-increase.html

Um ... no. Obama has taken us places GWB couldn't have because if GWB decided that his opinion alone sufficed as "due process" in the phrase "no person shall be deprived of life ... without due process of law," Democrats would have gone apeshit on him. But, when Obama says his opinion alone is "due process" (citation), Democrats say nothing at all. It's despicable partisanship.

So, the Bush Doctrine had some limits -- in the hands of a Democrat, there are none at all.

Anyway --- you should really think about that friendly kind peace loving Democrat Eric Holder's statement that "due process" does not mean judicial process. That is opening the door even further into authoritarianism -- a state where the President's unchallenged opinion is all that is required to kill you or put you in a gulag.

It seems many people here don't like news from a different perspective, or providing inconvenient facts, if you know what I mean.

I like news from different perspectives. "Fox News", however, is primarily an entertainment channel, and is an active source of noise whose viewers are less informed than people watching no news at all. I also avoid MSNBC, which seems to be increasing following that model but in mirror-image.

For a right-wing perspective I can turn to sane (often wrong, but sane) media outlets like the WSJ, National Review, U.S. News & World Report.

An "indirect" example: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/voting-already-mess-florida/58682/

A possible "direct" example: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/

Yeah, it was well reported in the science press at the time: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/07/richard-dawkins-draws-feminist-wrath-over-sexual-harassment-comments/39637/