Slashdot Mirror

You're just like Fox News now.

Sure. Because the honest and straight-shooting New York Times and MSNBC would publish — indeed, revel in — every piece of bad news...

As long a Republican can be blamed for it — justly or otherwise — of course...

Iraq, for example, was a "quagmire" in 2003 — when the enemy was defeated and on the run. And so it was in 2006, when only minor insurrections remained. But it is not a quagmire today — with the enemy having recaptured vast swaths of the country — the same sophisticated publication is advising us on how to avoid the disaster, not admitting, is has already happened — with the Nobel Peace Prize winner at the helm and a direct result of his decisions and orders.

The Washington Post story states:

Researchers confirmed through DNA sequencing that the infection in the child is not a new infection, but was the one passed from the mother.

If the reinfection is also from the mother (which is what is most likely) then how can they tell whether it is the original infection or a reinfection
from the mother as presumably it's still the same strain in the mother.

Researchers confirmed through DNA sequencing that the infection in the child is not a new infection, but was the one passed from the mother.

I have my doubts that such an amendment would help. Over time, Congress critters would simply enter into quid pro quo relationships with each other.

That, too, should be made explicitly illegal, just as accepting bribes is illegal (and is occasionally prosecuted).

These guys can help! They might need new jobs too.

Scholarly journal retracts 60 articles, smashes ‘peer review ring’

.

I don't know what makes you think that Republicans believe in pretty much any of the things you are asserting.

Go ahead and state your claim, and we'll see. So far you've earned 0 points for argument by farting upwind.

I'm up one citation on you, here's another: those officials resigned without charge, seems all them "tough on crime" Republican AGs just couldn't be assed do to jack shit. Bush's AG couldn't be bothered with it either. 3-0, suckah, show me where Republicans gave a damn about gay prison rape of boys or men.

Trillions on war in Iraq? Afghanistan? Ring any bells? Do I have to provide links to both the budgeted and non-budgeted costs of these wars? Fine then, Iraq alone totaled $823 billion up to 2011. All in all we're going to pay 4 trillion for Bush's little expedition. Damn Obummer for cutting them short!

War on drugs? Wow, where do I start? After decades of "winning" the "war on drugs" the GOP just reversed course last convention. So yeah, any day now, we'll be getting magic brownies at the local starbucks. It'll remain to be seen if they'll stay on this course, or if they'll turn their hypocrisy drive to maximum thrust and change direction again once they are in charge and are no longer using it as a states rights plank to beat Obama for refusing to stop enforcing federal law over states' legalization efforts. (I'm sure Boehner's got federal decriminalization on the agenda... somewhere.. right? Right? ... Bueller?)

While I'm on a roll, tell me, "as a Republican", which of these sentences you believe are true:

1) Unions force companies to sign contracts they can't afford.
2) Bankers force homeowners to sign contracts they can't afford.

Question 2:

Who deported more illegal immigrants? GWB or Obama? Go ahead, take your time. While you stick some plugs in to stop the smoke leaking out your ears, peruse the various tea party talking head blogs whining about how the Republicans are lenient on immigration, that might help you guess.

Lightning Round!

Who was the Republican bitch that thinks we're doing enough to deal with wrongly imprisoned innocent people, and that we should be happy to be paying our tax dollars to feed and shelter these people and paying even more tax dollars when the Republican prosecutors fighting to keep them in jail finally run out of appeals and the innocent get a huge check cut from the government? Did you answer Republican Joan Huffman? Quote: "Texas has done a really good job to do what we can to compensate exonerees". Ka-Ching! Of course, how can handing out OUR tax money give someone back those lost years of freedom and gay rape? At least the prosecutor feels terrible. Surely between feeling sad and an appointment by Republican Rick Perry he has been punished enough for obstruction of justice in a case where holding the wrong man prisoner for years allowed the criminal to kill again?

Is this, as a Democrat, actually an issue for you?

What's that? Speak up sonny, all that "with us or against us!!!1!" shouting's got my ears ringing. You saying something about how Bush should be allowed to use executive orders to stick electrodes wherever the fuck he wants and damn Congress's Constitutional mandate to regulate the armed forces?

I don't know what makes you think that Republicans believe in pretty much any of the things you are asserting.

Go ahead and state your claim, and we'll see. So far you've earned 0 points for argument by farting upwind.

I'm up one citation on you, here's another: those officials resigned without charge, seems all them "tough on crime" Republican AGs just couldn't be assed do to jack shit. Bush's AG couldn't be bothered with it either. 3-0, suckah, show me where Republicans gave a damn about gay prison rape of boys or men.

Trillions on war in Iraq? Afghanistan? Ring any bells? Do I have to provide links to both the budgeted and non-budgeted costs of these wars? Fine then, Iraq alone totaled $823 billion up to 2011. All in all we're going to pay 4 trillion for Bush's little expedition. Damn Obummer for cutting them short!

War on drugs? Wow, where do I start? After decades of "winning" the "war on drugs" the GOP just reversed course last convention. So yeah, any day now, we'll be getting magic brownies at the local starbucks. It'll remain to be seen if they'll stay on this course, or if they'll turn their hypocrisy drive to maximum thrust and change direction again once they are in charge and are no longer using it as a states rights plank to beat Obama for refusing to stop enforcing federal law over states' legalization efforts. (I'm sure Boehner's got federal decriminalization on the agenda... somewhere.. right? Right? ... Bueller?)

While I'm on a roll, tell me, "as a Republican", which of these sentences you believe are true:

1) Unions force companies to sign contracts they can't afford.
2) Bankers force homeowners to sign contracts they can't afford.

Question 2:

Who deported more illegal immigrants? GWB or Obama? Go ahead, take your time. While you stick some plugs in to stop the smoke leaking out your ears, peruse the various tea party talking head blogs whining about how the Republicans are lenient on immigration, that might help you guess.

Lightning Round!

Who was the Republican bitch that thinks we're doing enough to deal with wrongly imprisoned innocent people, and that we should be happy to be paying our tax dollars to feed and shelter these people and paying even more tax dollars when the Republican prosecutors fighting to keep them in jail finally run out of appeals and the innocent get a huge check cut from the government? Did you answer Republican Joan Huffman? Quote: "Texas has done a really good job to do what we can to compensate exonerees". Ka-Ching! Of course, how can handing out OUR tax money give someone back those lost years of freedom and gay rape? At least the prosecutor feels terrible. Surely between feeling sad and an appointment by Republican Rick Perry he has been punished enough for obstruction of justice in a case where holding the wrong man prisoner for years allowed the criminal to kill again?

Is this, as a Democrat, actually an issue for you?

What's that? Speak up sonny, all that "with us or against us!!!1!" shouting's got my ears ringing. You saying something about how Bush should be allowed to use executive orders to stick electrodes wherever the fuck he wants and damn Congress's Constitutional mandate to regulate the armed forces?

That's what Obama claimed. Millions of small contributions from individuals add up, and it doesn't matter if some of that money comes from illegal aliens living on welfare, like his Aunt Zeituni

of course, lets face it, think of how stupid the avg american is, and remember 1/2 are stupider than that.

Most things that are talked about by politicians when it comes to subsidies are not only bending of the truth but straight up lies. For example the lie that the oil companies pay no taxes. it is a bullshit lie that many love to believe and keep perpetrating the myth for example EXXON payed a REAL tax number of 9.5 BILLION Dollars in total taxes in 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

people LOVE to fudge numbers, and the truth is it usually hurts them too. most people ONLY think of the federal income tax (which should be abolished) but we have state taxes, local taxes other fees etc etc.

Long story short, people really need to stop talking about the oil industry and politics together because people are fucking stupid

It's healthcare, both indirect and direct. Encouraging and/or insisting on birth no matter what the cost brings unwanted children, and often disadvantaged children, into the world, as well as back-alley and home abortions. These things are not good for anyone. Taxes (fundamentally, anyway) pay for what the representatives decide they need to pay for. We don't get a say. I could scream forever about funding wars I don't believe in, bridges I see no infrastructure purpose for, ridiculous monuments, tobacco and oil subsidies, and every penny that goes towards bad law -- but it does no good, because our system is structured as a constitutional republic -- top down decisions only amenable to pushback via bottom up, after-the-fact elections. SCOTUS is part and parcel of the top-down mechanism.

When we turn to the constitution, religious freedom is pretty much laid out; the problem, as I see it, with Hobby Lobby is that they employ the public, but they want Hobby Lobby's religious freedom to trump the employee's religious freedom (and medical care) via government authority. If they want to impose their religious beliefs upon employees, then they should form a church. When the public is involved in an employer-to-employee relationship, it's pretty clear that the employer's religious dogma may not be imposed upon another person, any more than the employer's sexual outlook or political views may be forced upon the employees.

SCOTUS made a huge mistake here (several actually, and no surprise) but again, our form of government is top down, not bottom up, so there it is.

It is also worth noting that "plan B" is not an abortifacient. It stops ovulation if it has not yet occurred; if it has occurred, then it can prevent fertilization, and should fertilization occur, then it may prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. If the egg is already fertilized and implanted, it does nothing. Plan B is a method that prevents conception, if taken at the right time.

Turning to Hobby Lobby, let's also not forget that they carry huge numbers of products from China; a country that forces abortion upon its citizens by imposing policy ("one-child") that leaves mid-level officials little choice in the matter. Furthermore, they invest in companies that produce birth control, including abortifacients.

So let's not get too tied up in Hobby Lobby's claim to the high road, or supposed adherence to "biblical principles." As near as I can tell, they're operating down in the gutter and have been all along. In the final analysis, this appears to be just another attack on the ACA. Exaggeration, emotion based on misinformation, hypocrisy, and the usual blundering of the fossils in the US supreme court have led to a very poor outcome for women, for families, and for children.

Can't say I'm surprised, either.

well swat teams are now 501(c)(3)'s so why not?

You do know that he tried Iran, right? And Venezuela? And Cuba? No, I suspect you don't.

You are misinformed. The list of countries that Snowden considered for asylum while stuck in Russian customs never included Iran. Iran actually approached Snowden with an offer to visit and "elaborate" on NSA spying - but didn't explicitly offer him asylum.

Snowden considered Venezuela, but he did not actually apply for asylum in that country.

While I doubt Cuba was at the top of his list, Snowden did apply for asylum there - but received no response.

Any whistle-blower who honestly believes the information being released will exonerate him/her should be willing to endure such, for the greater good...

That may have applied pre-Patriot Act (et al), but nowadays you can't get a fair trial to exonerate yourself in the US when you blow the whistle on three-letter agencies. It's simply naive to believe otherwise.

Assange is not accused of anything by the US. There are no US charges against him. There is still an investigation open, but it's questionable that they'll ever even be able to charge him with anything. Just assuming that they did, a terrorism charge would get utterly laughed out of each of the *five* different bodies (Swedish courts, Swedish governments, British courts, British government, and ECHR) that would have independent veto authority over a US request. You might as well accuse him of of beating to death an astronaut on the moon, it's about as plausible. And the US could barely get Abu-freaking-Hamza extradited, an *actual* who everyone hated, a guy who was working to set up terrorist training camps in the US (and even when they finally did, a decade later, they couldn't even put him in a supermax prison because the EU considers that too cruel). And "actively harming US security and interests" isn't even a charge in the US, let alone anything that would even remotely meet even the basic double criminality standard.

These articles may be of interest to you.

Arguably you are still correct, in that you, yourself should consent, making it a Tragedy of the commons

Actually Common Core was an initiative started by States, not the Federal Government. http://www.usnews.com/news/spe....

But absolutely agree with the rest of your post.

Actually, the Federal Government has been a lot more involved with Common Core than you think.

Among other things, people in the administration who were pushing Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative pressured States to adopt it and threatened loss of funding if they didn't.

There is also funding from DoE and other support from the Obama administration. Republicans tried to pinch it off, so far without much success.

There is propaganda on both sides, but here are some facts: Common Core was centrally planned, with cooperation and input from the Obama administration. It was not conceived or initiated by States on their own. It was adopted by individual States, but at the same time they were pressured to do so in order to receive Federal and private funds.

Also illegal, so far... It's illegal to use something other than the ActiveX plugin authorized by the Korean government to do online banking in South Korea. The current president promised to change things, but so far, nothing has changed. Here's his promise being reported:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/So...

The problem is that Korea requires use of their own national encryption standard, which has a governmental back door (and for which exploits have already been demonstrated at BlackHat) in order to "secure" banking transactions from snooping by foreign powers (guess they called that one correctly).

Here are some other articles about where the plugin is required to establish secure communications channels:

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/intern...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

A few details did slip out over the years via the "Connecticut Four" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and others who went to open courts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05...
http://www.americanlibrariesma...
National Security Letters (January 10, 2011)
https://www.aclu.org/national-...
"...web sites a person visits, a list of e-mail addresses with which a person has corresponded, or even unmask the identity of a person who has posted anonymous speech on a political website."
" provision also allows the FBI to forbid or "gag" anyone who receives an NSL from telling anyone about the record demand. "
FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge (May 7, 2008)
https://www.eff.org/press/arch...
"a digital library recognized by the state of California -- and its attorneys in November of 2007. The letter asked for personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user."
FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit (May 8, 2008)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

My personal problem with all this talk of immigration reform has been the consistent desire by both parties to making the expansion of E-Verify a requirement of any bill. To sum it up, E-Verify is a way for the executive branch to block the employment of anyone that the database flags. Or more colloquially, you have to get permission from the president in order to feed and house your family.

One of the biggest problems with e-verify is the false negative rate. Even if you assume absolutely no malice, you can easily end up on the "no work list" by accident. Note, that's not a false positive - giving people permission to work when they aren't permitted, it is stopping people who have done nothing wrong in the slightest.

Requiring government permission to work is absolutely unacceptable policy in a free society. E-verify is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.

If those borders still stood The USA wouldn't have much of an illegal immigrant problem but Mexico sure would.

Amazing naivete — unless you are joking... Illegal immigrant problems come to countries with relatively high standard of living — you don't have to be part of the much-despised Golden Billion, dirt-poor Thailand, for example, has this problem because their neighboring Myanmar (Burma) is even poorer.

Whether those borders still stood or not, I doubt rather strongly, we wouldn't have been substantially richer than Mexico anyway.

But, as things are currently progressing, we may lose those lands anyway — if they get saturated with Latinos the way Crimea is saturated with Russians (result of Stalin's ethnic cleansing of 1944), they may one day vote to leave the US and join Mexico. Whatever their true feelings might be, polite Mexican special forces (with our own border guards and military under orders not to shoot) will ensure, the referendum's tally is "correct".

The rest of the world will be as indiffirent as it is today to Russia's war on Ukraine. Thanks to Obama's today's help Mexico will finally have finally accomplished, what Santa Anna and Pancho Villa failed to do centuries ago.

I believe you'll find the difference, at least for blacks is not fully explainable by economic factors. There is a significant middle-and-upper-class black population.

Here's some data on economic factors separating American black families and white ones. TL;DR: the presence of a few successful black families in America does not negate the fact that white households continue to have significantly higher median incomes, and thus, access to greater resources for their children:

- http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...
- http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Just because the difference between a person with intelligence and talent and one without in more cerebral fields isn't as obvious as the difference between a person with talent in sports and one without doesn't mean the difference isn't there.

But the range of opportunities are totally different. Software development is not a "geniuses only" field. You can be of average intelligence and still have a good career as a software developer, or beta tester, or system operator, or network admin -- just like you can be a decent electrician, carpenter, or architect. But if you want to go into professional sports (in the sense of earning big bucks), you have to be physically exceptional, period.

As another AC, my agreement that Rigel47 is a low-information poster aka knows fuck-all about what he's talking about, won't mean much.

But this WaPo summary of the situation which confirms that the IRS had a 6-month backup retention policy should be meaningful.

I do not expect this information to change Rigel47's opinion one bit. Truth rarely convinces ideologues. But anyone else following along might learn something.

The hospital is taking marketing data and using it for pseudo healthcare related reasons.

This seems as good a place as any to bring this up. Have other people been getting creepy robocalls from people claiming to be affiliated with their insurance companies?

CSB: Robocall from a 'bot that knows my name, and it claims I need to fill out a survey for my health insurer. I ignore it. Bot calls back a few months later and says it just wants to be sure I'm getting the health care I need, etc.

I do some digging and discover a company called Inovalon (formerly MedAssurant). The deal appears to be that because the insurance companies can't do medical underwriting anymore, they give their customer data to Inovalon. Inovalon then tries to harass customers into getting a "personal health visit" either at a physician's office, or at your home (small PDF of FAQs for physicians).

Of note from the PDF: "What are the qualifications of the medical professional who will be evaluating my patient if they have a Personal Health Visit with someone else? The assessment is limited to a physical exam; treatment will not be provided. The medical professional will be a licensed physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant hired to perform this service. It is important to note that this exam is in addition to any regular visits the member has with you and is not a substitute for the memberâ(TM)s annual physical examination" / "Will I be paid? No. We have contracted with Inovalon to perform these visits. Since there are no additional resources required from you or your staff, no compensation will be provided to you. After the examination is complete, the documentation from the exam will be sent to you so you can better coordinate your patientâ(TM)s care."

Translation: Medspeak: "Go see your doctor, a doctor, any doctor, because an annual checkup is a good idea." Marketspeak: "It'll keep you healthy!" Truth: "See a doctor that your insurance company chooses, so that it gets all the data and we know who to drop from coverage when/if PPACA is repealed. We can't do medical underwriting anymore, but we can ask nicely and maybe get the data anyways."

CSB: Zero health problems for 15+ years, annual physicals every 3-5 years, I take my own vitals because blood pressure and blood sugar levels are trivially cheap to measure at home. Zero claims to insurance. Zero contact with insurance company for that entire time until this year when I switched from employer's expensive gold-plated plan to cheaper bronze ACA plan. Since then, six robocalls. Next open enrollment period, I'm seriously considering calling them up and telling them in most cordial fashion to go fuck themselves.

Our government in action:

Eleanor Holmes Norton ‘kills’ driverless car

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) was invited Tuesday, along with fellow members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to test drive — er, test ride — a driverless car on the Capitol grounds.

Well, the ride never happened, because Norton did a particularly good job of testing the car’s bright-red “kill” button — which, as captured by WRC-TV’s cameras, killed the car to the point that it could not proceed with the test ride.

...

The video there is not flattering to her - at all. And some of the comments are priceless.

What needs to happen is a permanent recording of all interactions with people so they can't just get together and decide what their story will be.

This is already happening in some jurisdictions. Still some issues to work out, but there is definitely movement in the right direction.

Thats what is being touted for the Shandong Tranlin Paper Co. greenfield mill being built near Richmond VA, and to break ground in 2016

Chinese paper company to set up shop in Richmond suburbs

Sure I don't expect 2000 permanent full time jobs, but injecting $2 billion into a community ain't so shabby

Early predictors of the tuition bubble: John Stossel and Matthew Continetti http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

In the news this week, Mark Cuban on the tuition bubble: http://www.businessinsider.com...

Making the bubble worse: the current Administration, by nationalizing the student loan industry and further removing market forces from individual decisionmaking: http://heritageaction.com/2013...

Those congresscritters don't get reelected on only 7% of the populace.

Because of gerrymandering and winner-take-all, effectively they do.

To use a recent example, 6.6% of the voting-age populace voted for Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th district primary (only 12% of the voting age populace voted at all).

> Comcast's peering connection to Level 3 has been saturated (over 90% capacity) 24/7 for over a year now

Got a source on that? Not that I doubt you, just looking to back up that claim.

While he doesn't come right out and say the name of any specific ISP Mark Taylor VP of Content and Media at Level 3 points his finger at 5 major US ISP's that have been saturated for over a year and refuse to upgrade their connection. Take that revelation and combine it with this graph which shows 8 Major ISPs and the relative speed with which Netflix traverses them and the 5 companies he references become pretty clear. Granted the graph does originate from Netflix so grain of salt and all that but I'm inclined to believe the data.

There's nothing wrong with Netflix, Hulu, Google, or anyone else for that matter, going directly to an ISP and saying "Here's some equipment; if you install it, your users will be able to get our content, which is a big reason they pay you, faster." There is, likewise, nothing wrong with the ISP saying "Sure, let's get that equipment installed. It's gonna cost you $10,000.00/mo to use our facilities and backbone." And, there's nothing wrong with the two parties agreeing to, and implementing that. What's wrong is the ISP moving the intermediary providers (e.g. the backbones) between them and the provider wishing to install their equipment onto slower links until the provider agrees to pay the fee (at which point, the intermediary becomes irrelevant and probably remains on the degraded link), thereby degrading service for everybody. Especially when there is a peering agreement between the ISP and the intermediary provider and/or the intermediary is willing (and even asking or begging) to pay for the link they were on before.

And if you think that's not exactly what happened, please, explain this.

Due Process is going out the window. That also includes defending yourself with the lawyer you choose. Recently the SCOTUS ruled amazingly enough that it was okay for the government to even seize assets that were in your lawyers hands to pay for legal fees. So now the system is rigged against you to the point where the Judge and the prosecution pick your lawyer for you. Good by freedom, hello club Fed.

Found this on the Washington Post blog : http://www.washingtonpost.com/... The Daily Mail has lots of stuff on the 'scandal' but, well, it's the Daily Mail. Mother Jones calls it an "IRS scandal that isn't". Good point though about there not being any mainstream newspapers with the story. I think the IRS could do us all a favor and take away Fox's 'news' classification. More of a cult than a news organization.

How about the 86% of adults in the United States that didn't use the internet by 1995? Or the 64% that still hadn't in 2000.Source And that's for the US alone. Worldwide, even worse.

And yes, I realize this is a computer magazine, and probably had higher internet adoption, but other magazines get printed as well. Some of which aren't geared towards techies that used the internet in 1990.

And on a personal note, early 90s childhood me would like that thank gaming magazines. Mostly for cheat codes.

Redskin means "top of scalp taken from a dead Native American to be turned in for a bounty to the US government (which paid for the murder of Native American men, women and children)".

No, it didn't.
Redskin has always referred to the people, due to their "red" skin. It was first used by First American chiefs in discussions with the British & French. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Even in the proclamations and stories offering rewards for scalps that actually used the term "redskin", it referred to the people, not the scalps.

Today it is still used by First Americans for their own mascots. Upwards of 90% of First Americans don't even find the term offensive. http://washington.cbslocal.com...

If you watch the Tesla news lately, I think it is apparent that the current American launch monopolists have initiated a wide ranging propaganda and political campaign against SpaceX. Examples of this are here and here, as well as comment boards on various articles about Space X. The memes I have noticed emphasized are first and foremost that SpaceX is cutting corners (aimed at legislators), that Space X is the beneficiary of "corporate welfare", and that Musk is a "communist bum" (aimed at right-leaning readers).

One of the primary reasons I think this is evidence of an organized campaign is the timing. Space X initiated the campaign against the Russian rocket engines being used by ULA, as well as objecting to the bulk purchases of launch contracts by the Airforce from ULA, thus locking Space X out of a significant number of launches before it gains certification. I can imagine this as a directive from ULA exectives being given around that time. Such campaigns typically take a few weeks to work-up. They take studies of public opinion, come up with themes to base their campaign around, and then test those themes with the public, often with focus groups. This lag of a few weeks for propaganda campaigns is typical when an organization suddenly decides to initiate a campaign based on new information. Watch for it next time you see a government or corporation being attacked by a new threat. This lag of two or more weeks between threat and response is typical I believe of an organized propaganda campaign.

Fucking google it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Prior to the eruption of the IRS controversy last spring, the IRS had a policy of backing up the data on its email server (which runs Microsoft Outlook) every day. It kept a backup of the records for six months on digital tape, according to a letter sent from the IRS to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Whether Obama fanbois like you take complaints against him seriously hardly matters. What matters is whether Obama has the trust and support of the American people, and he does not, as poll after poll shows, e.g.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

At this point, Obama has broken so many of his campaign promises and screwed up so often that he has lost the trust of the majority of Americans. So, even if he happens to say something that's true or proposes a policy that might work, we don't trust him and we don't care. It simply isn't worth anybody's time to separate facts from lies, good policies from political payoffs and crony-capitalism, with Obama. All we can hope for is that Congress will prevent him from doing any more damage before his time in office runs out.

(And I say that as a former Obama voter.)

They don't need to "get together to conspire". They have all been educated in the party line and they follow it without question.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/libe...

Or are you going to deny the fact that colleges have a completely lopsided political composition despite the self-described politics of the people who work there? "They can't have a liberal bias because that would require colleges to get together and engage in a gigantic conspiracy?"

BULLSHIT!!!!

A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division. ...

The Pinocchio Test

In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.

FWIW, "four Pinoocchios" is as bad as it get when it comes to lying.

And that was over a year ago, before 12 months of foot-dragging culminating with seven cases of "the dog ate my hard drive."

From the report (specifically page 6):

In August 2010, the Determinations Unit distributed the first formal BOLO listing. The criteria in the BOLO listing were Tea Party organizations applying for I.R.C. 501(c)(3) or I.R.C. 501(c)(4) status. Based on our review of other BOLO listing criteria, the use of organization names on the BOLO listing is not unique to potential political cases.16 EO function officials stated that Determinations Unit specialists interpreted the general criteria in the BOLO listing and developed expanded criteria for identifying potential political cases.17 Figure 3 shows that, by June 2011, the expanded criteria included additional names (Patriots and 9/12 Project) as well as policy positions espoused by organizations in their applications.

Furthermore, the criteria for expanded scrutiny:

Figure 3: Criteria for Potential Political Cases (June 2011)
“Tea Party,” “Patriots” or “9/12 Project” is referenced in the case file
Issues include government spending, government debt or taxes
Education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to “make America a better place to live”
Statement in the case file criticize how the country is being run

Certainly seems to skew HEAVILY towards tea party/conservative groups...

Now, given I've read the report and quoted DIRECTLY from it (I've linked the report for you), who's the idiot, and who's the one that swallowed the story from the progressive/liberal side of things that would love to see this go away? Who benefits from the IRS "losing" the e-mails? The same group that wants this to go away. Essentially, the liberal side of politics in the US.

Hereâ(TM)s how the IRS lost emails from key witness Lois Lerner
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/16/heres-how-the-irs-lost-emails-from-key-witness-lois-lerner/

It kept a backup of the records for six months on digital tape, according to a letter sent from the IRS to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). After six months, the IRS would reuse those tapes for newer backups. So when Congressional committees began requesting emails from the agency, its records only went back to late 2012.

The IRS also had two other policies that complicated things. The first was a limit on how big its employees' email inboxes could be. At the IRS, employees could keep 500 megabytes of data on the email server. If the mailbox got too big, email would need to be deleted or moved to a local folder on the user's computer.

I don't think that qualifies as "massively inept," only as garden variety ineptness.

Look - the Inspector General of the Treasury Department said it targeted groups for political reasons and that violates the equal protection under the law clause. Not to mention targeted audits of the same donors to those targeted groups. If it didn't do anything wrong, then why did the IRS apologize for its activities?

Apparently you don't have a problem with the politicization of the IRS, to use the Government to attack political opponents. I get that. Most sane and reasonable people do have a problem with it - at least an ethical, if not recognizing that it's illegal and a gross misuse of Government power.

According the IRS Inspector General, that actually wasn't the case. It was overwhelmingly conservative groups.

You should read what the IRS Inspector General said. It was overwhelmingly conservative/tea party groups that were affected, many delayed for so long they withdrew their application (closed down). It was quite secret (internal BOLO requests), it was unlawful (illegal information required before any action could be taken), and it was harmful (many groups folded because of the delay).

At least, that's what the Inspector General said. But I'm sure they are biased against their bosses and shouldn't be trusted...

A few weeks ago a couple of characters in Doonesbury were looking for a new slogan for their company. Their choice was: "Don't be Google". This stuff just adds more weight to their decision.

So don't be Google!

".. a Fiduciary Responsibility to Maximize Shareholder Value."

Capitalism 101 guys - In America, reaping obscene profit is not only desirable, it's the law!
http://www.litigationandtrial.... ..Consequences be damned!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Whether this guy is an idiot or not, he's right. It might be a silly stunt, but it is the right stunt. It underscores the ubiquity of the violation of everyone's privacy by the feds while undermining the "we lost the emails" evasion.

As to your snark about the President and the Constitution, this President has made no secret of his contempt for the separation of powers and constitutional limits on the federal government. The list of power grabs and constitutional violations is long. And with the last couple of presidents agreeing on the expansive powers of the presidency and appointing supreme court justices that are deferential to the executive and legislative branches, there are really no brakes on the abuse of power.

Calling out a nutty back-bencher for pointing out something as overwhelmingly obvious about the POTUS is just lame. The list of imperial Presidency power-grabs and constitutional violations is long, but I'll prime the pump with this little known nugget: Operation Choke Point. No, this is not a nutty right-wing conspiracy. This is an actual program of the federal government to use its regulatory power to pressure banks and other service providers to refuse to do business with people they deem unsavory. Like porn stars or gun stores or payday loan companies.... any number of perfectly legal businesses. They are trying to run them out of business by making it impossible to conduct their business.

Those are terrible counterexamples, because US investments in Europe, South Korea and Japan easily payed themselves back a thousand fold. The cold war was really a form of modern mercantilism. Whereas 18th century mercantilist empires took raw materials from their dependent nations and sent back manufactured goods, 20th century mercantilists (the US, and to a lesser extent the USSR) built silos abroad and sold arms and bonds to their dependent nations. In return the US got enormous shares of stock in companies like Renault, Dassault, Volkswagen, Daimler, Samsung, and Nippon, sources of cheap manufactured goods, and Iranian oil (Saudi oil after the Shah was overthrown).

We Americans like to pretend that we have the largest economy in the world because our parents and grandparents were harder working, more intelligent, and more creative than foreigners. The reality is that we are on top because we were the only nation to come out of the second world war unscathed (thanks you, Atlantic Ocean), and we used that position to take advantage of everyone else.

Winning wars = winning money. Fighting 13+ year unwinnable wars = losing money, but that is a separate issue.

As people are slowly understanding its a vast pool of people working on "classified" stuff. Much of it is now "classified" to just stop the press, courts, law reformers, other politically active groups from finding embracing details. From over priced failed projects, crimes and the use of contractors, hidden sites, staff- doctors, lawyers who worked at remote sites. The rapid advancement and political protection of people who faced no real background investigations to the use of dual citizens... to a vast illegal telco surveillance network and the tame brands that helped..
"A hidden world, growing beyond control (July 19, 2010) "
http://projects.washingtonpost...

As I replied to the parent poster myself, anyone that says "GMOs are safe" or "GMOs are dangerous" should substitute the word "chemicals", as in "chemicals are safe" or "chemicals are dangerous". That makes both statements sound equally silly as both are broad categories that could readily contain both healthy and unhealthy products.

In sufficient quantities, any chemical is dangerous.

On the other hand, a statement like "companies must submit studies, and the FDA must approve them, before a chemical may be added to a food" sounds rather reasonable to most non-libertarians.

That seems fairly reasonable, but it isn't how the law currently works.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/04/07/are-secret-possibly-dangerous-ingredients-in-your-food/

So really it's "companies can submit studies, withdraw them if the FDA doesn't say yes, then claim the chemicals are safe for your food anyway"

First, citing government-run pro-Democrat NPR on this subject is like citing Geobbels as an "unbiased" source in holocaust denial, or citing an article by Putin on the status of the Ukraine - an absolutelty insanely ridiculous exercise.

Second, The actions of the IRS were SEVERELY anti TEA Party:

1. Groups friendly to the President were approved within DAYS (particularly in the case of an application by Obama's brother who got his in 34 days PLUS retro-active certification!)

2. Groups (of ANY orientation) with actual standard problems were denied at the usual rate.

3. TEA Party groups were not given either an approval (allowing them to get busy) OR a denial (allowing them to prep and file an appeal). They were simply tossed-into legal limbo unable to move forward as an approved group (and therefore not able to take-in money from donors, most of who require evidence of the tax status of the groups they support)

Third, even the NPR page you cited admits (READ the table) that 100% of the "progressive" groups were approved and that TEA Partiers were asked for 3 times as much supporting information to get their approvals - with TEA Partiers being put through so much of a hassle that nearly half eventually simply GAVE UP trying to get certified.... that's VERY effective suppression of the President's "enemies". Hell, the IRS had NO business setting-aside and specially-processing applications with "TEA Party" in the title to begin with! They are BY LAW supposed to be BLIND to politics! This meant that the already tax-exempted liberal groups like the unions (who'd been organized like this for DECADES) were free to do their voter outreach and voulunteer training efforts through two entire national elections while the TEA Partiers were being suppressed - many afraid to do ANYTHING political or take ANY contributions while being investigated by Obama's IRS.