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TSA Got Everything It Wanted For Christmas
OverTheGeicoE writes "It looks like Congress' recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May."
Yes. Revolution is an extension of evolution.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Just sayin'.
...Not going to education, science, health care, yadda yadda because that would 'cost too much money'
I thought Barack Obama was a democrat.
dumber people are doing harder things everyday
Between this, Indefinite Detention, and SOPA, I am really struggling to recognize America this month.
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
$7.85 billion is the budget, not the budget increase.
The TSA didn't receive a $7.85 billion budget increase, according to the article, their total budget is $7.85 billion with an increase of $153 million over the previous year.
When did the difference between Democrats and Republicans amount to anything more than a distraction? We have a one-party system, except that the one party happens to be somewhat divide on minor issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. People are easily distracted, which is how these crooks get away with so many abuses of power.
Palm trees and 8
Hope and change my friends. Hope and change.
Until we dump the two party monopoly in America, the current direction will not waver regardless of which presidential candidate gets elected.
As opposed to some other month?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_industrial_complex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_On_Drugs
Palm trees and 8
It's pretty clear that the primary threat the Think Tanks envision is not shoe wearing, scrotum burning terrorist but rather the US population and what's likely to happen when it becomes obvious to every unemployed dolt that we are in a serious depression, that the chance of a multiple massive riots/race war/civil war starting is high and the sheer volume of military weaponry owned by the average citizen makes it a certainty that it will be bloody, very bloody.
From the nut job militias, (Idaho, Utah and elsewhere) massive illegal immigration, record gun sales and ammunition sales, to the fact that the membership of the 18th street gang in L.A. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_Street_Gang) is more than twice that of the police force, and that's just one gang, it's become clear that we are in serious trouble and it won't take much to set off the powder keg.
I hope I'm wrong about this and it's really just some large corporate contract raping the wallets of the American people again but things are looking grim.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
TSA. Keeping you safe from terrorists like this one:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/18/1027775/-TSA-Arrests-Me-for-Using-the-Fourth-Amendment-as-a-Weapon-(Tales-from-the-Edge-of-a-Revolution-2)
No big surprise that you posted this as AC...don't want to claim your own opinions? Revolution is necessary in a large number of situations - generally speaking, when all other avenues have been exhausted. The United States is not - YET - at that point, however (as many) I'm seeing the same trends happening around the world and, let's face it, the United States is not full of leaders. We are not, as you say, "stuck" with what we have. We have had (and continue to have) opportunity to effect positive change. We also have probably the worst case of National Apathy that I've seen in a long time. When people get pissed off ENOUGH, then the Apathy will go away out of necessity. I see this playing out in one of three different ways (there may be more, lists are for goobers): 1) Citizens pull their heads out of their asses, get educated, and start participating in effecting positive change. That needs to happen before: 2) The Government manages to strip the last of our remaining rights away. If #1 doesn't happen, then #2 certainly will. As soon as people wake the fuck up, then we can expect to see: 3) People rebelling against the government that treats them as a consumable to be bought, sold, and abused as They see fit. I can't say that there will or won't be a revolution, but I will say that it's likely to help things more than hinder them (in the long run)
One party fought for public option health care.
Not very hard, and what they passed instead is a bloated taxpayer funding of giant lobbyists (insurance and pharma).
They fought for increased taxes on those who can afford it,
Not very hard, they have one house and the Presidency, and they gave in.
rather than insisting that taxes only ever go down.
Not very hard. In fact, they pushed for some of the tax cuts.
They fought against the enormous and expensive blunder that was the Iraq war.
Not very hard. They signed the paper that gave Bush and the Neocons the authority to do whatever they damned well pleased. Obama even started some new policies, like summary execution of United States citizens.
They fought against allowing unlimited corporate money to influence politics.
Not very hard. They said they were fighting for it, but when Citizens United went through the Supremes, they threw up there hands in surrender.
They fought against torture.
Not very hard. We're still doing it.
They fought against teaching creationism in school.
This is one of the theatrical wedge issues. Notice how, for all the stage presence they demonstrate in the fight, no actual policy changes have happened?
they fought for the rights of gays and women
This is also a theatrical wedge issue. The only slight difference is that public opinion fell heavily on the "change the military policy" side, so one tiny corner of gay policy got changed. Until gays have they same rights as non-gay citizens, they are still not showing true support. How many of them are fully invested in truly equal rights for gays? How's Obama's position on gay marriage? They don't even get the half-a-loaf that is civil partnerships. Has there been a single substantive change in non-military policy regarding gay rights?
That is why we call this political theater. Because all the supposed support amounts to sound and fury signifying nothing.
Gridlock, you say? Hardly! We have made enormous changes in our policies, domestic and foreign. We have signed treaties and created sweeping new laws. We have completely revised our interpretation of the Bill of Rights. We have discarded any notion of respect for the War Powers Resolution.
All the truly significant changes in United States policy, happening at a truly blistering pace, are authoritarianism and expansion of monopolies and barriers to entry (copyright, patents, trademarks, insurance, drugs importation). The dramatic changes are all one of two things; the ability to control dissidents (enemy or patriot, foreign or domestic), and government influencing cashflow into the pockets of major corporations that do a lot of lobbying.
Look at the substantive change. If the substantive change does not match the rhetoric, questions must be raised. Show me substantive change, and I will believe that the rhetoric is more than theater.
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