Slashdot Mirror

Yeah, no. You are reciting the story that Cheney's handlers developed and pushed into the Washington DC media when things really started to go bad in Iraq (around 2005). And Cheney is very, very good at that kind of thing (managing his image and stroking the egos of DC "thought leaders"). The story was then revised and expanded during the trial of traitor Irving Libby (I'm surprised you haven't worked the name Armitage into your hard right fantasy narrative) and re-pushed very hard during 2008 and 2009 in an attempt to set the narrative and pre-write the history.

Here's what a reporter who spent five years researching the Bush/Cheney Administration had to say:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/07/why-did-we-go-to-war-in-iraq-an-interview-with-peter-baker/
EK: But it wasn’t hijacked by Iraq. The Bush administration chose that war. And, to be honest, that’s what I read the book to understand. I’ve never felt like I understood the reason the Bush administration decided to go to war in Iraq. Once that decision was made, I feel like I can track the arguments for and against it. But the fundamental choice to make that the project is a mystery to me. Now that you’ve written the book, do you feel like you understand it?

PB: I have a better understanding, but I think it’s one of these questions that will be revisited and re-debated for decades to come. My guess is 20 years from now we’ll still be seeing more books on that question. It is the essence of this presidency: Why go to war in Iraq? Some mention Bush’s father. Some mention Cheney’s sense of unfinished business in the Gulf War. There’s the false intelligence.

And overlaying all that is what it felt like in that moment. They were operating in an atmosphere of fear and anger and uncertainty. They were seeing these threat reports every day -- including episodes we didn’t even know about, like the botulism scare. When they come into office, they had thought, at the time, that Iraq was a top threat. Then once 9/11 happens it sort of removes all constraints that they might have had prior to that in their interest and inclination to use force. There’s a quote in the book from a senior administration official who was really involved in the decision to invade Iraq and who regrets it now who says we went into Iraq because Afghanistan was so easy. We needed someone harder to beat; 9/11 felt like such a signal event that it required action and response beyond simply toppling the Taliban.

EK: That quote is amazing. But it sounds like he also doesn’t know why they went into Iraq. And he was there! That’s less an explanation of the policy than of the psychology. And that’s something the book details really well. I think people can remember what it felt like to be scared after 9/11. But the amount of fear there is in the White House and the degree to which fear of a worse attack drives the decisions after 9/11 -- it’s a really psychologically unusual administration.

PB: That’s absolutely right. Every day they receive a briefing telling them 100 ways bad guys around the world are trying to kill Americans, Some are real, and some are fanciful. But in that moment the intelligence agencies, having missed the dots on 9/11, begin throwing everything they have at the White House.

Cheney has this history in continuity-of-government issues. He has for years contemplated the notion of an apocalyptic attack on the United States -- 9/11 convinces him his fears are real. Nineteen guys with box cutters, to him, are only a scratch on the surface compared to what could have happened. And that makes a lot of things seem more reasonable. Eventually, Frances Townsend becomes head of the Homeland Security Advisor and begins taking some of these threats out of the briefings because she felt it was so skewed towards danger and it was warping everyone’s mindset to be so exposed to every piece of raw data like that.

Lots more at that link.

sPh

Bipartisan
Bipartisan
Conservative
Recent
Recent

You conservatives are so SMART!!!

Ahh yes... the Democrats were more than willing to compromise.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102502408.html

"The decline of the Obama presidency can be traced to a meeting at the White House just three days after the inauguration, when the new president gathered congressional leaders of both parties to discuss his proposed economic stimulus. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor gave President Obama a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that "elections have consequences" and "I won." Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries. "

From what I understand, many people say that the project was underfunded for the scale of work being proposed. Also, as far as QA goes, most people understand that the software was released with late and insufficient 'system testing'. The conractor said they recommended not going live and they were pushed by officials in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Personally, I think Sebelius and those other officials should resign.

True or not but the wiki also says:

For the purposes of this law, illicit sexual conduct includes commercial sex with anyone under 18,[6] and non-commercial sex with persons under 16 when there is at least a four-year age difference or the person is under 12 years of age.

The actual text is a bit different, but yes there is a definition of illicit: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-108s151enr/pdf/BILLS-108s151enr.pdf

By the way it seems that judges are still free to pick and choose which laws and clauses to enforce: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011801777.html

Read this Washington Post article. Watch people here smoke their windings!

You have no right to criticize the publication. They share the same values as all educated and enlightened people (i.e. LIBERALS).

The writeup assumes that no version of Internet Explorer can be thought of as a modern browser. This is not true for IE 10 and 11. That said, a countrywide de-facto standard forcing vendor lock-in is bad.

The first problem is that standards evolve much more slowly than practice ---- and tend to codify existing practices rather than staking out new ground.

South Korea's government was among the first to encourage shopping and banking online, but many people were concerned about Internet safety. The government's goal was to make Internet shopping nearly as secure as a trip to a small-town market, one where vendors know all their customers by name and face.

To reassure South Korean customers, the government created its own system to authenticate the identities of online buyers. To make purchases, shoppers had to supply their names and social security numbers and apply for government-issued ''digital certificates,'' which they could present to sellers as proof of ID. The whole process took just a few clicks.

But the back-and-forth was technologically complicated, and it came with a catch: It required a piece of additional software, or ''plugin,'' known as ActiveX --- which is also made by Microsoft and worked in tandem only with Internet Explorer.

That system, implemented in 1999, remains largely in place today.

South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping because of security law

The second problem is that alternative desktop operating systems have never gained a significant --- barely visible ---- share of the South Korean market, Top 7 OSs in South Korea from October 2012 to October 2013

One of the linked articles says BootCamp costs $70. That's wrong. BootCamp in Mac OS X is free.

Maybe the author was thinking of the discounted cost of "The Healthy Nut Bootcamp" fitness club sessions.

he and others did and were ignored or worse prosecuted.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-09/world/39856622_1_intelligence-powers-single-point

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/12/U-N-Maps-Show-U-S-High-In-Gun-Ownership-Low-In-Homicides
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/gun-homicides-ownership/table/
http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/schoo-shooting-how-do-u-s-gun-homicides-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
http://gunowners.org/op0746.htm

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/12/U-N-Maps-Show-U-S-High-In-Gun-Ownership-Low-In-Homicides
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/gun-homicides-ownership/table/
http://tewksburylab.org/blog/2012/12/gun-violence-and-gun-ownership-lets-look-at-the-data/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/14/schoo-shooting-how-do-u-s-gun-homicides-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
http://gunowners.org/op0746.htm

Are the standards reasonable, appropriate and developmentally sound—especially for our youngest learners? In order to answer that question, it is important to understand how the early primary standards were determined. If you read Commissioner John King’s Powerpoint slide 18, which can be found here, you see that the Common Core standards were “backmapped” from a description of 12th grade college-ready skills. There is no evidence that early childhood experts were consulted to ensure that the standards were appropriate for young learners. Every parent knows that their kids do not develop according to a “back map”—young children develop through a complex interaction of biology and experience that is unique to the child and which cannot be rushed.

It goes on to compare the US Core with the standards from other countries such as Finland and Singapore.

It then shows the very real and large problem that it was "Pearson Education" that made this poorly written test.

This Pearson first-grade unit test is the realization of the New York Common Core math standards. Pearson knows how the questions will be asked on the New York State tests, because they, of course, create them.

Children and schools are evaluated based on State tests. Do you want your job being evaluated by something like this?

You mean like Medicare (single-payer) or the VA (government-run?) Both have high satisfaction ratings.

The only people who give the VA high satisfaction ratings are the people that never had to rely on it. Remember the problems at the VA wing at Walter Reed?
Or how about moldy hospitals, like the one in Martinsburg?

The VA regularly loses paperwork for essential, would-be life-saving procedures, forcing people to refile a year or more later. It will deny care for more trivial reasons than any for-profit insurance company could get away with.
For a few more stories about the VA:
http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/more-va-madness-bonuses-despite-dead-patients/print/
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/pressure-grows-firings-over-atlanta-va-scandal/nYQwT/
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/04/25/update-dayton-va-medical-center-scandal/
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/08/a_va_scandal_scorecard.html

Maybe it's the fault of libertarians that seem to make up a significant percentage of the tech demographic; wanting to kill the Affordable Healthcare Act. Or tea party programmers wanting the same thing who managed to get on the project. Come on man! Think of some more conspiracies!! Lovin' it.

Of course it couldn't be the incompetence of contracting companies that seem to make a living because they have or aim to have some sort of inside track in Washington rather than the chops to do the actual thing that needs doing. Of course that would never happen in Washington or any other political capital. I'm not saying the way the primary contractor, Quebec company CGI, does business in any way follows recent Quebec business practices. They are probably a well above board and good honest corporate citizen (although according to the Washington Post article above they did screw up another medical system based project). I'm just saying that if Quebec ever did separate from Canada, as it is now, they'd have to think up some other adjective to describe it. It's too cold to grow bananas there.

Frankly (and personally) though, I wouldn't trust any company to government contracts with stated aims published in their profiles like: "The ultimate aim is to establish relations so intimate with the client that decoupling becomes almost impossible," (see Washington Post article). Especially not from Quebec.

Or yours, according to the Australian example: "the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/

Facts can be sooooo irritating.

The Morris Worm was written by Cornell University student Robert T. Morris while in school. He is the son of former chief scientist of the NSA's National Computer Security Center, and inventor of the Unix password scheme, Robert Morris. The incident is discussed in part of this book:

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

I've enjoyed reading it more than once.

I dont know how many times that has been repeated but i'm not sure its true.
How come "median wages adjusted for inflation" in 2011 are at the same level as 1995?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/17/the-typical-american-family-makes-less-than-it-did-in-1989/

While you are correct, unemployment/labour force numbers look good its the quality of the work/pay that is not (mostly low paying service industry jobs).

It's not 600 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/?wprss=rss_politics

The 'website' also includes all the rest of the entire federal exchange system. That's why it's so much money. It's also all broken. The HTML and JavaScript only made up a small portion of that, yes. The entire $600 million was spent, and broken crap was delivered.

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

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

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

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

It's not 600 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/?wprss=rss_politics

and I quote from your precious article:

"Update, Oct. 30: In testimony on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, in response to a direct question: “Congresswoman, we have spent about $118 million on the website itself, and about $56 million has been expended on other IT to support the web.”

That adds up to $174 million."

Do you really think this PIECE OF GARBAGE , was worth 174 MILLION US DOLLARS?.... REALLY? any way hippie liberals want to spin this, you BLEW 174 MILLION on GARBAGE.

What software architect here thinks they can do this entire site for substantially less? keep in mind, these are the OPTIMISTIC, hippie liberal numbers as reported by the washingtonpost.com . Yes, I'm not a democrat. and before you denounce me, look at the INSANE numbers here, and realize they probably underestimated it.

The truth lies somewhere between their LOW ESTIMATE, and the republican HIGH ESTIMATE.

I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.

But... that's exactly what he HASN'T done.

He has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations — The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. — and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra “Information wants to be free.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

The Washington Post already owned you so I don't have to.

What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but “ridiculously cinematic” and “narcissistic” as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a “traitor,” he lacks the requisite intent and menace.

But traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called. Harry Reid: “I think Snowden is a traitor.” John Boehner: “He’s a traitor.” Rep. Peter King: “This guy is a traitor; he’s a defector.” And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a “traitor” but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney’s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.

The early denunciations of Snowden now seem both over the top and beside the point. If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America’s most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III’s army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

It's not 600 million.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/10/24/how-much-did-healthcare-gov-cost/?wprss=rss_politics

Google is a less restrained than government. Google can limit your life a lot more than the NSA can.

I suppose, hypothetically, if Google execs really wanted to make me disappear, they have enough money to hire people to make it happen, but you have to be pretty far out there to think that Google founders have it in for you personally. If Google isn't making a profit from me, they could terminate all my accounts and sell all my data, but to do anything more would dig into their profits, so they won't.

On the other hand, The US Gov has put away several people I know for drugs, frequently after investigating them on totally bogus, unrelated charges. So I've seen people's data abused by the government for more than the targeted adds Google would have sent them. And this is not even mentioning all the time and money non-convict people I know have had to sink in defending themselves from damning scraps of data.

The NSA, by law, can't even enforce laws in the US

Yeah, they wouldn't enforce anything, they can just turn over their data to agencies that could enforce within the US borders. E.g.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/

the NSA could only tap foreign data centers

1) I accidentally made the horribly unpatriotic blunder of meeting and making friends with some of the six and a half billion people who live outside the US. Some in a public high-school no less!

2) Unfortunately for the good patriots, who did a better job of shunning the dirty foreigners, the internet is pretty fuzzy on borders and as the summary points out, data is often sent to information centers outside the US even if it is just returned unaltered, back inside.

3) I have never paid attention to the geographic location of my web-surfing before and I suspect neither have you. Are we sure even Slashdot has all it's data centers in the US? Many of the liked articles aren't, so I'm sure they got some good meta data on the two of us accessing leaked documents published by foreign agencies.

Really, in the side of Government vs. Corporation, the only side that represents YOU is Government.

Depends what the conflict was. Normally, yes, in healthcare, employment rights, unconscionable EULAs, etc, these are situations where the government needs to kick corporate ass on my behalf. This situation on the other hand, the government is not protecting me from the corporations; the government is coming after me. Even if the corporations only want to protect me to ensure their profits, I don't care. Right now they are on my side.

Now, if Google was caught tapping the NSA to get my personal info, then I'd be pissed at Google, not the NSA.

Without government, Corporations would, literally, have you as slaves.

This is true, but from here on out, you really left the situation at hand to talk about political movements I'm not familiar enough with to comment on but I'm thinking 30% chance you are going to reply to my post with "Sarcasm, moron: learn to detect it!"

...that I have to wonder who is guiding them. How would Snowden know exactly how to publish this data to maximum effect? He's a sysadmin, not a PR expert. This seems more like one of the successful KGB misinformation campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.

That inference has been made.

It's Now Clear That Russian Intelligence Speaks For Edward Snowden
Defector Describes Russia’s Handling of NSA Leaker Snowden
The Russians were involved with him long before it was acknowledged in Moscow.
Report: Snowden stayed at Russian consulate while in Hong Kong

Definitive? Not quite. Suspicious? Very.

Terrorists?

Why would they try to stop terrorists? The sooner there is another successful attack the sooner their budget gets doubled.

Your thinking is too limited. It's obvious that they enjoy being the subject of Congressional probes about their failures, with the added chance that the boss could be fired like just happened to two Marine generals fired for negligence in Afghanistan. Since half of NSA is reported to be military, there might even be a court martial or dozens.

And if it turned out that the attack they didn't stop was one involving Black Plague that ended up killing tens of thousands of Americans, just think of the pride they would feel. "I didn't stop that!"

Of course you have to understand that not everyone lives in a morally inverse universe, so their thinking may not be understandable by everyone.

There are some obvious reasons: The operations take place overseas, where many statutory restriction on surveillance don't apply -- and where the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) has no jurisdiction. In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011. So if the NSA decides to harvest that data on foreign soil, it can skip most of the oversight mechanisms.

We've seen a lot of articles recently about people demanding companies not host their data in the US so that they're not subject to PRISM. But if PRISM has more oversight than MUSCULAR, and MUSCULAR is only allowed to be used OFF of US soil, then it seems like the safest place for your data is in the US, after all.

There are some obvious reasons: The operations take place overseas, where many statutory restriction on surveillance don't apply -- and where the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) has no jurisdiction. In fact, the FISC ruled a similar, smaller scale program involving cables on U.S. territory illegal in 2011. So if the NSA decides to harvest that data on foreign soil, it can skip most of the oversight mechanisms.

Actually Appalachia went "red" a long time ago, only slightly behind the rest of the South. Excellent article on it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/10/26/a-blue-states-road-to-red/

Will someone remember Snowden is pointing out info to everyone. The most important info. Heck, the Russians pale in comparison to the dangers of the NSA. Ever heard of transparency? Got a clue?

Interesting comment from an Anonymous Coward, and provably wrong. I think you would have to point to genuine transparency on the part of Russia. As to the danger of Russia compared to NSA, to start with, NSA doesn't have nuclear weapons aimed at NATO countries, Russia does, and that's not all. Russia has apparently continued the former Soviet practice of killing dissidents and defectors. Of course Snowden was welcomed to Russia after he made arrangements with the Russian consulate in Hong Kong.

Russian general says Poland a nuclear 'target'

Number of Russian spies in the UK back to Cold War levels, say security services

Russia supported Litvinenko murder, says security official

The Russian government supported the murder of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, it was reported last night.

A senior security official told BBC's Newsnight there were "very strong indications it was a state action" and that the Russian security services continued to have a "willingness to consider operations against people in the west".

Last year, the CPS issued an extradition warrant to bring Lugovoi back to the UK from Russia, but Putin refused to hand him over, saying it would be in breach of his country's constitution to do so.

Newsnight said it was told Russia's internal security organisation, the FSB, operated with far more autonomy than organisations usually entrusted with foreign espionage operations.

The source said: "We very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement."

The source used an MI5 operation last summer in which officers arrested and deported a man they believed to be on a mission to kill another Russian dissident, Boris Berezovsky, as an example of "continued FSB willingness to consider operations against people in the west".

The company that was the prime contractor CGI Group's American subsidiary CGI Federal also did several of the State Exchanges which are reported to be operating, so I suspect there is more to it the "Contractors screwed up" to it. If the problem was unexpected load, they would have just connected more webservers to the load-balancers, threw in a few more database servers, and did some industrial strength query caching; since they didn't my guess is it's much more of a team effort fuck up than an individual fuck up.

Or Belgium?

But generally your point still stands.

.

For example: Not one word about the anti-NSA protests in US media. Still.

Your news gathering skills are....poor to say the least.

USA Today: Anti-NSA rally attracts thousands to march in Washington http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/26/nsa-dc-rally/3241417/

Huffington Post: NSA 'Stop Watching Us' Protest Draws Thousands In Washington http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/nsa-stop-watching-us_n_4166640.html

US News and Word Report: Edward Snowden Endorses D.C. Protest Against NSA in Rare Public Statement http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/24/edward-snowden-endorses-dc-protest-against-nsa-in-rare-public-statement

Christian Science Monitor: NSA Washington: March against surveillance and a call from Edward Snowden http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/1026/NSA-Washington-March-against-surveillance-and-a-call-from-Edward-Snowden-photos

CNN: Anti-NSA rally targets Washington http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/26/anti-nsa-rally-targets-washington/

Fox News: Hundreds rally in DC to protest NSA http://video.foxnews.com/v/2772548586001/hundreds-rally-in-dc-to-protest-nsa/

NBC News: Hundreds march at anti-NSA rally in DC http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53383405

CBS News: Protesters March For Investigation Into Mass NSA Spying http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/10/26/protesters-march-for-investigation-into-mass-nsa-spying/

ABC News: NSA Spying Threatens to Hamper US Foreign Policy http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/nsa-spying-threatens-hamper-us-foreign-policy-20689770

Washington Post: Techies concerned over NSA surveillance will march in D.C., proclaiming ‘Stop Watching Us’ http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/techies-concerned-over-nsa-surveillance-will-march-in-dc-proclaiming-stop-watching-us/2013/10/25/5bedb546-3da7-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html

This is where I get tired of pasting, but I assure you the list goes on and on.

" Over the past decade Texas has convicted 51 people of voter fraud, according the state's Attorney General Greg Abbott. Only four of those cases were for voter impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that voter ID laws prevent.
Nationwide that rate of voter impersonation is even lower.
Out of the 197 million votes cast for federal candidates between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters were indicted for voter fraud, according to a Department of Justice study outlined during a 2006 Congressional hearing. Only 26 of those cases, or about .00000013 percent of the votes cast, resulted in convictions or guilty pleas. "
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376

And yet I'm sure you think having to wait 3 days to purchase a lethal weapon is a burdensome and onerous infringement on your 2nd amendment rights.

On the other hand, how the fuck did we end up with this crap? You cannot roll out a project to millions of users this quickly and without adequate load testing.

The did adequate load testing. The testing results said the site would fail under load. They released it anyway. The flaws are there, but they were not in the testing.

Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.

So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?

Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-5.jpg ...from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/

Its garbage like this, and Apple's willingness to let the NSA spy on their customers 24/7 that has turned me away from OS X.

So what evidence is there that Apple has been willing to let the NSA spy on their customers _ever_?

Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/images/prism-slide-5.jpg ...from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/

Take heart: the Adler Planetarium in Chicago invested in a new Zeiss Mark VI about five years ago. You may have heard about it: John McCain, either through ignorance or willful deception, referred to it as an overhead projector, a $3 mil earmark that (then-Senator) Obama had requested.

Let's be honest, no elected legislator of either major party is willing to engage that concept, even in a lighthearted fashion.

It's been a mainstay request of Republicans for some time now. And do you know what Obama's counter proposal has been? He'll entertain the idea if he gets to spend the money saved from the reform: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-30/obama-tax-plan-tackles-budget-issue-with-political-hurdle.html

That's actually a very common thread with him actually. Just look at any of his budget proposals. Spending never goes down. He pretends to claim financial discipline via using tax hikes and retribution of dollars (by cutting programs he doesn't like) to account for added spending.

However, while I concede that there is perhaps not enough of a focus on cutting spending, you can't simply ignore the issue of taxation, even if only for the reasons I mention previously.

I would agree with this statement only if taxation wasn't already addressed while spending has been completely overlooked. Obamacare hiked taxes by about 1 trillion over 10 years: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/does-obamacare-have-1-trillion-in-tax-hikes-aimed-at-the-middle-class/2013/03/11/1e685f4c-8a9b-11e2-8d72-dc76641cb8d4_blog.html
The December tax hike on the upper income bracket resulted in 600 billion in new revenue over 10 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Taxpayer_Relief_Act_of_2012

That alone is 1.6 trillion dollars in new revenue over 10 years. Now show me a drop in the budget anywhere near that. Here's the last 6 budgets (over his total time in office, he has added 700 billion in spending to the budget -- and keep in mind, this is accounting for the savings in winding down Iraq/Afghanistan spending + TARP paying for itself...so even with those windfalls, we're at +700 billion):

2014 United States federal budget â" $3.8 trillion (submitted 2013 by President Obama)
2013 United States federal budget â" $3.8 trillion (submitted 2012 by President Obama)
2012 United States federal budget â" $3.7 trillion (submitted 2011 by President Obama)
2011 United States federal budget â" $3.8 trillion (submitted 2010 by President Obama)
2010 United States federal budget â" $3.6 trillion (submitted 2009 by President Obama)
2009 United States federal budget â" $3.1 trillion (submitted 2008 by President Bush)

You'll note that spending hasn't changed at all. At best, it's petered out at "unchanged" (and this is in an environment with very little inflation). So once again, you'll have to pardon me if I don't scoff at the demands for more taxes by the Democrats (or at the demands for more spending for "stimulus"). I find it particularly insulting that Obama has the gall to demand a "balanced" (i.e. "1-to-1") composition of tax hikes and spending cuts after he just permanently added 700 billion (20% more spending) to our total spending picture

The states had a good couple decades, centuries in some cases, to get this shit straightened out. Nothing happened.

Actually, I'm fairly certain the states dodge most of these issues because they assume mother government is going to handle it on the federal level. Otherwise, why haven't all the Democratic states adopted single payer programs as they've been clamoring for so incessantly?

I hear a lot of talk about reform. I have yet to hear any coherent plan to provide t

Actually I didn't say anything about the trend, I said the components were more popular than the whole, and it was more popular as a whole when explained (I couldn't track down that poll though it would be hard to do fairly). The only component that's particularly unpopular is the mandate but that's the part that's actually critical (and formerly endorsed by the Republican party).

As for the trend the polls have been pretty stable. There might be a slight negative trend in this year but the polling data is really noisy.

Btw, you didn't mention anything about my other points. The question about the shutdown/debt limit standoff, or the non-scandal with the IRS. Do you concede either of those points or do you have some issue with my reasoning?

What is hear on the news (CNN, the Daily Show) or from my family is the Tea Party is mostly about bringing back racism.

That is a calculated political attack, it isn't true. You may recall that Herman Cain was strongly supported by the Tea Party in the presidential race.

It's partly true. Some in the Tea Party may support some blacks who are with them, but do you really think Obama's race isn't a factor? If so, why are we hearing so much vitriol about him being "different", "secretly Muslim", "Kenyan", etc.?

And if the Tea Party is more concerned with freedom than race, why is it attacking voting rights for minorities?

It failed because they went with the lowest bidder

It didn't fail because they went with the lowest bidder. This was apparently a "sole source" contract. They just added another task onto an existing contract.

Meet CGI Federal, the company behind the botched launch of HealthCare.gov

CGI's business model depends on embedding itself deeply within an institution.

"The ultimate aim is to establish relations so intimate with the client that decoupling becomes almost impossible," read one profile of the company. ...

CGI Federal's winning bid stretches back to 2007, when it was one of 16 companies to get certified on a $4 billion "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract for upgrading Medicare and Medicaid's systems. Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts — GWACs, as they're affectionately known — allow agencies to issue task orders to pre-vetted companies without going through the full procurement process, but also tend to lock out companies that didn't get on the bandwagon originally. According to USASpending.gov, CGI Federal got a total of $678 million for various services under the contract — including the $93.7 million Healthcare.gov job, which CGI Federal won over three other companies in late 2011.

It's also true that CGI Federal began lobbying as it started winning government work. According to OpenSecrets.org, it has spent $800,000 since 2006 lobbying on several different tax and appropriations bills.

Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design

Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.

CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal....

There is no evidence CMS issued any public solicitation for the Obamacare website contract. The Examiner asked both CMS and CGI for copies of any public solicitation notice for the Healthcare.gov task orders. Neither CMS nor CGI furnished any such public notice.....

The ID/IQ system provides a fast-track contract approval process, but it is much less likely than competitive bidding to secure high quality at a reasonable cost.

“Whenever you have limited competition, but certainly with a sole source or a one-bid offer, the government has to question whether it is going to get the best product at the best price,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog organization that monitors federal contracting.

Both USAspending.gov, which tracks federal spending, and the FFATA Subaward Reporting System, which specifically tracks contracts, refer to CGI as the lone bidder for the Obamacare website design award.

Each site describes the CGI contract award as the product of “full and open competition,” but CGI is the only bidder listed.

I can't find the link at the moment, but apparently this company is "favored" within the administration.... for some reason.

It's a ridiculously complicated system. (Scroll down to the graphic.) Figure out a way to release it in stages. Step 1, you can create an account and log in and read what the system will someday be. Step 2, make sure it's getting to all the right info from all the right places. Etc...

Why confine the conversation to ICBMs? They are the least destabilizing nuclear weapons delivery system. China's growing stockpile of short and intermediate range missiles are far more worrisome. They directly threaten our friends in Asia (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.), the Russians, and even American soil (Guam and the Marianas)

Russia has been making rumblings for a few years now about withdrawing from the INF treaty. A lot of analysts blame the US Missile Defense program for this, but there's a growing contingent that point the finger towards China's intermediate range forces:

"More ominous still is that China's missile buildup could result in the INF's demise. Moscow has already threatened to pull out if China does not sign the treaty. And, with its tactical fighter bases and surface ships increasingly vulnerable, the United States also may have no choice but to abrogate the treaty and deploy mobile land-based missiles - a capability much more difficult for China to attack - to places such as Japan; this could become the only way to deter Chinese aggression. The end of the INF would mean a missile arms race involving four great nuclear powers - India, China, Russia and the United States. Without sustained attention to China's missile force this frightening scenario is becoming more plausible."

China probably has about the same number of nuclear weapons as France or Britain

The "probably" part is what's worrisome. China simply doesn't operate as transparently as the United States or Russia with regards to nuclear weapons. We know exactly how many weapons the Russians have, how many are currently deployed, where most of them are deployed, etc. Ditto for France and the UK. The Russians know the same about us. Each side has the legal right to send inspectors to the other to verify what they are being told. None of this framework applies to China.

There doesn't seem to be any real necessity for a brand-new missile to replace the existing fleet other than as the existing hardware ages out

There's a necessity for a replacement of the Ohio class, something the Russians and Chinese are already doing....

This was the 18th government shutdown. Most of the previous 17 shutdowns were resolved by compromise. Harry Reid and Barack Obama both proudly said they would not compromise, at all, ever, on anything, with the House. So clearly we should blame the House 100% for the mess?

The "shutdown" tactics used by the House... were you outraged when the identical tactics were used by Tip O'Neill back in the Reagan years, or will you say "That's different" because you like Obama and you don't like Reagan? How about when Tom Foley did it to George H.W. Bush... was that also irresponsible?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/25/here-is-every-previous-government-shutdown-why-they-happened-and-how-they-ended/

And this 18th shutdown was the nastiest ever, because it represents the first time the executive branch has spent taxpayer money to fence off open-air monuments and mistreat octogenarian World War II veterans. Do you blame this nastiness on the Tea Party as well?

The Constitution gives the power of the purse to the House. The Tea Party guys tried to use it to prevent financial catastrophe a few years down the road. Saying the shutdown "is not fiscal responsibility" is like saying a surgeon is hurting a patient by cutting her with a scalpel... some harm now in the service of staving off worse harm later is not irresponsible. (Now, you can argue that the House did not execute well, and didn't gain what they wanted, so the $26 was in the end for nothing. That's a separate argument though; you were making the argument that a shutdown is irresponsible if it has costs.)

The USA has incredible future obligations under the "big three" entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid). Rather than cutting our future obligations, the Democrats have seen fit to add a fourth big entitlement program, Obamacare. Obamacare was passed using naked political power, purely partisan, not bipartisan in any way, and a majority of the people were opposed to it. (About 100% of the mainstream media were in favor of it, but check the actual polls.) If you can't see opposition to Obamacare as being principled, then in your mind can opposition to the government ever be principled?

What is hear on the news (CNN, the Daily Show) or from my family is the Tea Party is mostly about bringing back racism.

That is a calculated political attack, it isn't true. You may recall that Herman Cain was strongly supported by the Tea Party in the presidential race.

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

How is it regressive? Steve Jobs didn't live long, now did he? However, I posit that it should be progressive -- keep the limits on how much you can collect but end the limit on how much you can pay.

Steve Jobs was just one person (I did say "more likely"). On average, wealth correlates to longevity.

#1) You seem to have an awfully narrow definition of "ugly". What about gun violence? Rampant obesity? People getting dumped at hospitals for emergency care? What about those damn whipper-snappers who don't cut their lawn? Lemme guess, while you're "libertarian" you're totally backing the social security entitlement program?

#2) Dude, the only thing this says is that people are allowed to spend their own money. What the hell? This is your solution to education? "Spend your own money"!? Take a guess about how much money poor uneducated kids can borrow. No, no. No government education loans. Take a guess.

#3) "anyone who wants a job should get one". "get one" as in it's provided for them? or "get one" as in they really ought to just go out and get one themselves? If it's the first, WHOA BOY is that some serious government intervention into the economy on the scale even ultra-nanny would balk at. Or maybe you're just talking about public works programs. If it's the second, it's as empty a statement as #2.

#4) Is a wishy-washy half free-market half-welfare statement. I think you're arguing for free healthcare... but only if they're dying and only if it's cheap? Dude, look up "emergency care".

#5) Yeah, dude, you just pointed out three factors that are at odds with each other. If you stress any one of those three sentences you can have labor laws and regulation that looks like anything from China, to France, to the USA.

WTF is this "community" you seem to be worshiping?

  Your ideas are half-baked. Please come back when you actually have some opinions about how to do things.