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They'd be nuts to accept such exposure. As long as we can ensure that they do not receive an exemption from current law, net neutrality should be safe.

Unfortunately, it would appear they are nuts: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/10/net-neutrality-is-on-trial-in-washington-heres-what-you-need-to-know/ From that page: "Verizon contends that the FCC overstepped its authority by imposing what amount to common carrier regulations on broadband providers. The FCC disagrees.

North Korea does not have a modern military.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/25/a-photo-that-makes-north-korea-look-a-lot-less-scary/

They don't have enough fuel to launch their mig 29s (see above) and the ability of the average NK soldier or officer to act absent direction is nil. What you're saying is NK has some kind of dead man's switch whereby the body will attack even if the head is off. It's hard to believe that with our ability to fuck with their computers, fuck with their very old "long range artillery" with all our ability to direct force against a conventional army that we can't preemptively take out the creakiest conventional army ever assembled.

Compared to N Korea, what we can do is magic. The only way NK is relevant at all is as a feeder for WMD -which require state level power to create - to sub state actors. That's the issue we should be thinking about.

Honestly if I were POTUS I would baby walk KJU right down the path his mouth will take him until it was clear to everyone he intended to (had to now...) try to made good on his promise to wipe Japan or the US or SK off the map, then hit him preemptively and with zero warning.

It's not entirely the fault of the populace that they are ignorant. Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

It's precisely the fault of the FDA - they attack companies who try to label foods as non-GMO. It's a blatant First Amendment violation, but who can fault the the companies for not funding a challenge when there are Monsanto lawyers on the Supreme Court?

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used. ...

Obama's doing every damn thing that wackos claimed Hallibushitlercheney did.

Always has been "All f*&ked up..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/history-lesson-when-the-united-states-looked-the-other-way-on-chemical-weapons/2013/09/04/0ec828d6-1549-11e3-961c-f22d3aaf19ab_blog.html

I know...The Washington Post. Take it with a grain of salt if you must.

For more information on who we really have to blame for all of this shit, read on. While long, the article I link below describes--by name--some of the US companies involved in supplying the Middle-East with chemical and biological weapons. While the article focuses on Egypt, it also clearly illustrates the fact that Syria received much of their chemical weapons from Egypt, who in turn received various levels of support, in the form of both materials and technical knowledge, from US AND British Interests, including the US military. By no means does this limit involvement to the US and Britain--many other players are involved.

Highly informative history of Chemical and Biological use/capabilities in the Middle-East. Google cached version linked (I love using Google to help inform people about the abuses they help perpetrate).

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M2BQfifHFuwJ:http://www.acpr.org.il/pp/pp046-shohame.pdf%2BThe+Evolution+of+Chemical+and+Biological+Weapons+in+Egypt&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&gbv=1&filter=0&hl=en&ct=clnk

Short form?

The US uses other nations to test biological and chemical weapons, and now goes about calling for war when someone uses them. We GAVE them these technologies, now use the very same weapons as an excuse to impose our will upon them, and the media is complicit.

Wow, your numbers are even more insane than the Iraq body count data.

Studies vary between 655,000 and 1.4 million so I went for the average.

Of course it is about oil, why shouldn't it be?

It's this kind of aggression that shows how uncivilized governments are. Why do we need oil from the Middle East so badly? Are we dying without it? Canada has plenty of oil and they want to build a pipeline directly to the US. What's wrong with Canada's oil? Can't the US trade peacefully instead?

The US dollar is on the brink of collapse. The only thing keeping its value is OPEC. See Currencies used to trade oil
From Wikipedia

Since the agreements of 1971 and 1973, OPEC oil is exclusively quoted in US dollars. This created a permanent demand for dollars on the international exchange markets.[2][3] As of 2005, OPEC continues to trade in US Dollars, but some OPEC members (such as Iran and Venezuela) have been pushing for a switch to the euro.

Not to excuse there blatantly illegal searches, but to thing the whole system is some corrupt entity that s out to get everyone is simply wrong.

Sure. Even the Nazis weren't "out to get everyone" -- just troublemakers. Good Germans had nothing to fear from the SS.

(Yeah, yeah, Godwin's law, I lose, whatever.)

If you're a middle-class white American of mainstream religious and political beliefs, someone whose idea of a wild time is drinking four Bud Lights at a Kenny Chesney show, of course you've got nothing to fear from massive government surveillance. (Well, unless you used to date someone who worked at the NSA or something.) You can scamper about on your merry way knowing that the state is only interested in spying on deviants. You know the type. Malcontents. Dreamers. Granola peaceniks.

Good citizens like you have nothing to fear. You can feel safe, knowing the government is your friend. Heck, almost family! It's like having a protective old sibling watching you. I mean, watching out for you.

100% Iranian backed Assad regime*

(as a side note: no, Assad regime is not 100% backed by Iran. Russia has also some contribution, even if only a single word - veto - in the UN council).

Maybe you should worry more about the Australians since they may outnumber the Taliban.

Why should I worry about Australians? Did they planned any terrorist attack on Times Square?

In other words, interesting, thanks for it... but how is this info relevant to the question of "You think the US of A will be safer if it takes the side of the rebels together with Al'qaeda and now the Talibans?"

(I specificaly picked you to ask because all your posts on related topics seems to have put the US security above almost everything else, including the right to private communication; I'm quite interested to read your opinion on the side US chose to support in Syria, if you would be so kind to provide one)

Both sides are bad.

Both? This must be the understatement of the year: count them again, please.

Other than that, the PP is spot on

Syria - Shia/Alawite govt in spite of a Sunni majority (which is what irritates Saudi Arabia), sustained in power mainly by Iranian support. Now, I wonder if you remember this?

Other than that, if you really want to lose your mind, have a nice day, sir.

I really think the best strategic move for USA is to stay out of it: in such a nightmarish overlapping/conflicting seas of interest, it wouldn't take too much for the players to want a simplification: what would be easier than to explain to a population driven crazy by war than "The US devils are to blame" - they'll forget quite quckly about their internal quibbles.

Look here. The US has been a bad guy for many, many years. The last three years have been better than average, I suspect. We've drawn down involvement in illegal wars abroad, and tried to be pro-democracy in the middle east, even against our real economic interests, or the interests of our allies.

Another interesting source (that I just watched on netflix) is here: William Colby. This guy was a real spook, was involved in OSS work during WWII, early vietnam, CIA director under Nixon and Ford, who basically came clean during the Ford administration to congress. Got fired because of it (they hired George HW Bush to replace him!). Think of the things the CIA was doing back then! Assassinations, overthrows of governments, covert shit we still don't know about, and probably never will.

The NSA thing is basically just business as usual. Nearly everybody in congress who had to know about it supports it. You don't think the CIA was tapping phones during the cold war? They just weren't as good at it. If tapping phones is the worst thing they do, I'd be amazed and pleased. If the Snowden release gives them a bit more trouble making mischief, enjoy the respite. They'll be back at it again next week.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

More fun stuff. Its a whole political alliance. They cover each other and facilitate group corruption.

Here you have a journalist trying to rationalize teacher on student pedophilia.

Its a thing.

And it won't stop until the teacher's unions are broken down into small enough entities that they're not useful for large scale political action. See, they're related.

If the teacher's unions can be used for political action, you then need to give a reason for the teachers in the unions to offer themselves up for that. What do they get? Well, they get protected by the political establishment. They get protected from audits. They get protected from the LAW. Oh and lots of money in benefits and job security that they wouldn't have otherwise.

And in return the teachers organize for the politicians. And it gets worse because the other allies of the politicians such as this tame journalist will cover likewise.

Its sickness and corruption and should be burned out with fire.

The government provides the mission and funding, the private sector does what it does best.

Bribe senators & congressmen for contracts, inflate the costs to double or triple original estimates, deliver 20 years after spec while milking every dollar they can from the government? So, you want to turn NASA into the Defense Industry II?

At least the defense industry gets a workable budget.

2013 Estimated NASA budget : $17,000,000,000 - http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/632697main_NASA_FY13_Budget_Summary-508.pdf

Estimated cost of one year of the afghan war: $109,500,000,000 - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA

FY 2013 Intelligence Budget: $52,000,000,000 - http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/

DHS 2013 Budget: $54,807,277,000 - http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/mgmt/dhs-budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf

We spend about 3 times as much on intel and spying on our own citizens than space research and capability

When you add in DHS it is 6 times.

A year of one war is almost 9 times the NASA budget.

This does not include all the other crazy defense spending. Even if NASA were completely axed today, it would not take even a tiny dent out of our national deficit. Cutting 'unnecessary' NASA spending is just a way to please ill-informed constituents, and make it look like our elected legislators are working to reign in spending. They are NOT.

They can detain you for questioning. You're not "arrested", which just means you don't have access to an attorney. They no longer require any evidence of wrongdoing to make a copy of all electronic data and question you to their heart's content.

Per the DHS, customs officers "have the authority to "take and consider evidence concerning the privilege" of any person to enter the United States." No clue what statue the DHS is quoting there, but note the wording: "privilege" and "any person".

Here's the WaPo story linked off the ACLU page. That was 5 years ago, and the trend is not in our favor.

It's later than you think. They aren't wearing jackboots and death's head patches this time, but I suspect that's because they have the confidence not to need to strut.

If you were correct, why don't we actully get any oil from there? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/19/where-the-u-s-gets-its-oil-imports-in-one-map/

The drug connection was more lucrative. Afghanistan, Turkey, the Golder Triangle are the main sources of opium and heroin, South America marijauna and cocaine, Central America and Mexico are the conduits for said drugs into the US via military and CIA flights. As to citations, no.

Bill Gates: " If they [my children] had to go to a general inner-city school, I would do anything I could to avoid that being the case, because as a parent, I particularly see the potential in my kids that that wouldn't unleash," Gates said.

President Obama: President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.

Matt Damon: Damon told the Guardian there were no longer public schools progressive enough for his family so private was the only choice in their new home of Los Angeles.

Your mainstream press at work again...

...and so you link to the Washington Times, and completely destroy any credibility you might have had.

Two problems. One, the mainstream press did cover the story. Two, old rocket engines and old chemical weapons shells in dumps and scrapyards tell us only that Iraq used to have WMD --- never a contentious point.

The conclusion that Iraq had no WMD at the time of the American attack isn't some liberal media (ha!) conspiracy, it's the conclusion of the gorram CIA.

Bush lied, and the Fox "News" set continues to lie, about Iraq.

You are wrong, do some research or substantiate your claims.

The US has been involved in the politics of Vietnam since the end of world war 2. Paranoia and fear of [the spread of] communism are the reason the US went into Vietnam.

If you were correct, why don't we actully get any oil from there? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/19/where-the-u-s-gets-its-oil-imports-in-one-map/

The math is harder when you're poor. It's been shown that it costs more money to be poor. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-05-18/news/36823675_1_poverty-line-middle-class-milk

It doesn't have to work to be useful. But it's only useful so long as people believe it works.

Yep, just look at the NSA. Their internal auditing caught few, if any, of their employees doing LOVEINT it was only because the suckers believed in the lie detector's abilities that they confessed.

What enemy, you ask? Well, that would (generally) be the citizens and the alternative and independent media that hasn't been compromised or taken over.

It looks like you are guessing, and are way off the mark. Try again.... here is a hint.

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
London terror bomb plot: the four terrorists
7 July Bombings

• Skype helped the NSA collect video and audio of conversations conducted via Skype
• Skype accesses more files on your computer than you'd expect it to
• Skype helps China's government spy

All of those are incredibly valuable. The CIA alone spends $11.5 billion on Data Collection Expenses each year. And of all organizations, Skype is one of the most able to provide information to them - whatever your PC's microphone's hearing now - whatever non-skype-related files Skype keeps accessing even though it has no need to - etc.

By all means, keep focusing on technical errors and isolated examples of abuse, that are in fact so isolated that it represents an agency operating in total secrecy, with alarming error and abuse rates.

FTFY

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-15/world/41431831_1_washington-post-national-security-agency-documents

You are correct in that it was the zone system which caused all sorts of issues with fares. As you related, it was almost impossible for a person to determine ahead of time how much a fare would be because of that system.

Here is an article discussing the switch.

Well, it wouldn't surprise me. DC's cab industry is incredibly corrupt. I rarely take cabs anymore, but I recall there being an issue with the way the city set rates - it made it virtually impossible to know how much cash you might need (maybe it was the zone system, which they no longer use). Combine that with the difficulty of finding a cab in many areas, and the tendency of some drivers to refuse to take you to certain destinations, if all you had was a credit card, or not enough cash (or possibly not enough cash, given that you didn't really know how much the fare might be), it created enough of an inconvenience that some people (myself included) were willing to pay a premium for Uber simply to not have to deal with cash, among other things.

Well-known chemical elements include carbon, silicon and iron.

Sigh...

Wondering where you get your news. I haven't seen "people...asking".

ok, that is a problem with your news collection, but google can help you, if you search for, "is Obama weak". Sarkozy was among the first to ask it (although I seem to remember people thinking that during his first campaign; I certainly thought so). Here is a reference to Sarkozy asking it.

Crazy talk undercuts credibility

Yes, it does. Pointing out that the "Tea Party" phenomenon was created and hyped by Fox, however, is not "crazy talk", it's the only conclusion anyone paying attention can reach.

Chuck Todd admits FOX News created and hypes the Tea Party Movement

How Talk Radio and FOX News created the Tea Party

The Tea Party: Populism of the privileged: "This must be the first "populist" movement driven by a television network: Sixty-three percent of the Tea Party folks say they most watch Fox News "for information about politics and current events," compared with 23 percent of the country as a whole."

Fox News spent weeks promoting apparent tea party scam: "Fox News heavily promoted the Tea Party Express; the Our Country Deserves Better PAC even used Fox's promotion in a fundraising email. Then Fox's Griff Jenkins hit the trail with the Express, following that bus around the country, throwing journalistic integrity aside as he declared its riders "the America that Washington forgot.""

Tea Party Promotion by Fox News

And there's the usual beautiful job by The Daily Show showing Fox clips puffing up the teabagger protests.

and "Palestinian rights group" is singular.

Not really significant to the overall point, but yes, it does seem that complaints from only one Palestinian rights group have been covered in the news to date.

It's at a 3rd of what it was 4 years ago.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MS

and people aren't pleased with SOny, but at least Sony is responding to their issues.
Here is why people are having issues with MS:
"So why did the market freak out? The biggest reason was that Microsoft booked a $900 million charge for “inventory adjustments” for its Surface tablets. In plain English, Microsoft admitted that its heavily-promoted tablet is selling poorly. And that’s an ominous sign for the Redmond firm’s long-term prospects. Tablets and smartphones are the future of computing, and Microsoft is falling farther and farther behind the market leaders, Apple and Google."

So there venture into the direct tech is going is failing.
and then(and this is classic Ballmer):
"But Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shouldn’t be too depressed. Microsoft probably won’t lead the next generation of high-tech innovation. But history suggests that Windows and Office, its existing cash cows, will continue generating profits for years to come."

That is not what you want a CEO of a tech company to say. MS should OWN the tablet market and cloud computing, but Ballemr surrounds himself with idiots, and management is pact full of people who won't make a decision, or take a risk.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/24/microsoft-is-doomed-but-first-its-going-to-make-a-ton-of-money/

I am, as I said, no great fan of Abstract Expressionism. A 'high brow con game' is what I said it had become. What I wanted to make clear was that Pollock was honest in his work. And that, without knowing he was doing so as such, he was channeling a mathematical reality that he saw or felt in nature. Nobody else has the high fractal index that his work has. It is diagnostic. And viewers sense it rather than see it. Our brains are wired to do so. That said, I agree with you that AE proved to be a dead end of sorts since it is so easy to phony up. Also the artist's expression of feelings is not communicated intact to the viewer with these paintings -- even Pollock's. They are emotionally quite neutral IMHO. Which is why interior designers love them for bank lobbies and such.

I am glad you did not dismiss him out of hand, but after due consideration. Ha ha. I think it took guts to stand up as you did to the tyranny of consensus. And to your small-minded art prof. You deserved an A for critical thinking. And for knowing what you like. And don't. And saying why.

For expressionism I prefer Edvard Munch. There is an awesome show in Oslo Norwayfor the next month or so for his 150th anniversary. He is a lot more than The Scream.

Garbled in cut and paste. Check original.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/23/al-gore-and-category-6-hurricanes/

Terrorist groups raise funds by many illegal means. Few people realize that the terrorist groups such Hezbollah and Hamas actually have at least hundreds, possibly thousands, of people operating in the US, many of them raising funds. This goes back to at least 1995 if not earlier. If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid.

Homegrown terrorists - How a Hezbollah cell made millions in sleepy Charlotte, N.C. - Posted 3/2/03

Moonlighting from his job as a deputy sheriff, Sgt. Bob Fromme was working security one day at JR Discount, a tobacco wholesaler in Statesville, N.C., when he saw three Arabic-speaking men buying a huge stash of cigarettes--300 cartons apiece. But what really caught Fromme's eye was how the men paid. They reached into shopping bags and pulled out wads of cash, bound in rubber bands. The men soon became regular customers at JR, shoving pallets of Marlboros and Winstons into waiting vans.

That was back in 1995. Over the next four years, Fromme worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in tracking the men. His suspicions would ultimately prove dead-on. The investigation revealed a multimillion-dollar tobacco smuggling ring. Copying an old Mafia scam, the men ran truckloads of North Carolina smokes--taxed at only 50 cents a carton--to Michigan, where the tax was $7.50 a carton, and illegally pocketed the difference....

Cigarette Smuggling Linked to Terrorism - 2004;

Terrorists may get money from regional, cheap cigarette smuggling ring: Ray Kelly

Some of those arrested in the bust have links to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, and Rashid Baz, who opened fire on a van of Yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing Ari Halberstam. ‘We're concerned because similar schemes have been used in the past to help fund terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah,’ says Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

That is a HUGE set of assumptions. You would need to go do some real research to find out if that was remotely valid.

That's fair. Interestingly enough, there is such a study conducted by the Indiana University, Bloomington on the correlation between voting patterns and tweets. I'll skip to the findings here:-

Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? We answer this question using a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from August 1 to November 1, 2010 and data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional elections provided
by the Federal Election Commission. Our results show that the percentage of Republican-candidate name mentions correlates with the Republican vote margin in the subsequent election. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district’s racial and gender composition.

Theres also a WashPo article discussing the same research paper.

So, there is some scientific basis for the assumptions stated in the earlier post.

Should have said 'likes him', for which a citation is provided. Granted it is a few months old, but I expect it is still over 50%. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/postabc-poll-impressions-barack-obama-hillary/2013/06/26/4d6c1f0c-de4e-11e2-bc84-8049224b33e1_page.html

Woke up, to news of "Chelsea Manning", a guy who says he is a chick,
He is doing time in prison, and no longer wants his ****.

I read about this on WaPo about half an hour ago, where I noticed they did an incredibly intelligent and thoughtful thing: they disabled comments. Now if only that were possible on /.

Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited

The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.

So in other words:
1) The court has no power to initiate an independent investigation, it must rely upon the guilty party to bring cases to it
2) Huge hullabaloo results from the Snowden leaks
3) NSA decided "grudgingly" to declassify a case where they got their hand clasped
4) Nothing to see here! Move along! See, we can effectively police ourselves - TRUST US!

Did I get that straight?

To excerpt from a post at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4113917&cid=44632619 I suggest it serves these people:

Child prostitution -SOMEONE at Dyncorp and the US government for employing them to do so.
Blackmail -SOMEONE at Pfizer.
Smuggling -SOMEONE at Chevron.
Espionage Hilary Clinton and the State department.
Perjury - James Clapper. Illegal warrantless espionage against US citizens on US soil. And no, FISA is not looking over their shoulder.

More generally? The kind who think, "Screw the world, got mine, getting more." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html

Sure, but there are plenty of professional athletes that compete without the help of drugs. Shouldn't they have more respect that the ones who cheat (and by cheat I mean breaking the rules that are in place).

There are? You know this how?

The current crop of baseball players denouncing Alex Rodriguez sound just like Rafael Palmeiro did before he got busted for using steroids.

"No one has been tried for the crimes uncovered by Manning."

what crimes?

Child prostitution -SOMEONE at Dyncorp and the US government for employing them to do so.
Blackmail -SOMEONE at Pfizer.
Smuggling -SOMEONE at Chevron.
Espionage Hilary Clinton and the State department.
It goes on and on. It's almost as if there's a systematic flaw that's so pervasive it's hard to see the trees for the forest. Seriously, haven't you looked at any of this?

"No one has been tried for the crimes uncovered by Snowden."

it's on going, and he uncovered very few crimes.

Perjury - James Clapper.
Illegal warrantless espionage against US citizens on US soil. And no, FISA is not looking over their shoulder.

As a culture we haven't even decided if information sent though multiple servers around the globe IS private.

Yet as a legal body we HAVE decided that email is private for the first 180 days. At least by US law. And we're pretty damn sure even as an amorphous cultural body of billions of people that encrypted communications is private, so suck it.

You can try to refute all that citation (and hey, some of it might even be off), but you'd best bring a big-ass list of citeable sources and have a DAMN good argument for why I shouldn't believe what appears to be really bloody obvious to me.

In 2012 Obama pretty much said thet the US would not intervene in Syria unless they used chemical weapons. Colour me surprised with the numerous allegations of chemical warfare since then. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html

He didn't say WHAT the focus was. Probably "economic equality". http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-obama-50-years-after-historic-march-economic-equality-the-path-to-racial-justice/2013/08/17/de89ee5e-0682-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html

• 2 Senators on the intelligence committee said the violations revealed in the Post article were just the âoetip of the icebergâ

• Glenn Greenwald notes: âoeOne key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washingâ.(Even so, the White House tried to do damage control by retroactively changing on-the-record quotes)

• The government is spying on essentially everything we do. It is not just âoemetadataâ ⦠although that is enough to destroy your privacy

• The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that âoeeverythingâ is relevant ⦠so it spies on everyone

• NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word

• Itâ(TM)s not just the NSA ⦠Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS â" concerned only with domestic issues â" spy on Americans as well

• The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally âoelaunderâ the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way ⦠and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges

New York Times Web site goes down, panicked mobs stream into street demanding to know the trends

Who knows if one, or more, of these newspaper sites are hacked? I cannot tell anymore...

Given that most anti-gummint types declare themselves pro-business, it's amazing how few seem to comprehend the difference between deficits and debt. It's really not that difficult: you run a surplus if your annual income exceeds your annual expenditure; if it's the other way round, you have a deficit. If a country were a government, this would be profit (or loss). It is possible to be a profitable country and still owe money to others, just as it's possible to be a profitable company and owe money to a bank, or be a solvent individual and owe money to the bank in the form of a mortgage. You can argue about how much debt a country ought to hold, but conflating deficit and debt is just .... stupid.

CBO figures show quite clearly that the Clinton administration ran a surplus in its final three years (and also in 2001 due to momentum):
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43904-Historical%20Budget%20Data-2.xls
They also give the lie to your assertion that the national debt went up every year he was in office. In fact, debt fell in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. By 2001, it was down to 3.3tn, having peaked at 3.8tn in 1997. That was a fall from 48.4% of GDP in 1996 to 32.5% of GDP in 2001 -- 16% points in 5 years. I wish I was paying my mortgage off that quickly.

Then Bush came along and fucked it all up. Royally:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/05/the-three-best-charts-on-how-clintons-surpluses-became-bush-and-obamas-deficits/

Honestly, I see no point in your deluding yourself about economic history. Get over the cognitive dissonance and learn to accept the world as it is, not as you would like it to be.

First off: bulls*it. http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/O000167/votes/page129/

Secondly, even if we accept it as true, when the party puts forth people like Bachmann or Perry as major candidates that we're expected to take seriously, the media certainly didnt have to work very hard to "taint" them. those two did most of the work themselves.

Unfortunately, it might not be just the children of Microsoft employees... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/15/bill-gates-expands-influence-and-money-into-higher-education/

we also consider the two donkeys carrying all the supplies when we start out as a part of the meal plan so we dont waste space.

You could do that with half the astronauts! Hell, there's no shortage of volunteers for a one-way trip.

While our military spending is rather excessive I get the impression that Europe rather enjoys our spending on our military as it means they get to spend less on their militaries and enjoy the influx of US dollars into their countries. As a side bonus they get to divert those funds they would have to spend on their own defense elsewhere and can point out how much less they spend on defense than the US. Personally I would love to see us bring all of our troops home starting with Europe, the middle east, and South America as those are the easiest to unwind. There are a few instance that will take a bit more to unwind like active ares (Afghanistan, South Korea, Africa) but I would love to see us out of every country that isn't the US or its territories within the next 4 years. The only other issue I see is with keeping shipping lanes open and free of piracy which the US Navy puts a lot of effort into doing which seems to be a valid function but other countries should be stepping up to the plate more with this as well.