Obviously not, but today, Obama actively sought the Supreme Court's acquiescence in warrantless GPS tracking. So, Obama is actually responsible for this particular usage because it complies with his general policy goals. Do you seriously think Obama had no idea what was being argued in his name at the SCOTUS?
Not just "nothing", but "nobody actually knows" because of all the secret legal interpretations (i.e., secret laws) Bush and Obama have been using. That's sort of worse than "nothing" because in a completely arbitrary system, you know to expect arbitrary abuse. But in ours, where the rule of law is supposed to mean something, there is a the sense that something has been lost.
That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, "provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking.
Anyone who exposes such attrocities, whether such exposure is against the law or not, is doing humankind a service and deserves laurels. If that is Manning, he deserves a peace prize, not solitary.
The scary part about Libya was that Obama ignored even the weakass nod toward the constitution that is the War Powers Act. Our founders wanted to make it so that one person was not able to embroil our country in arbitrary wars. That is why the constitution requires that Congress declare the war, and the Executive branch fight it. Giving the power of war to one branch makes the system susceptible to serious abuse.
The War Powers Act is the lame requirement devised to cover the unconstitutionality of all our recent wars, and it requires that the President come asking for permission, after the fact, from Congress within 60 days of warring. Obama completely ignored that law with Libya.
So, while Libya didn't attain the scale of Iraq, it moves us one step closer to a Napoleonic Presidency and is in its own way, a signifier that Obama is just Bush III.
Obama cannot win. He has raped his base beyond belief. In fact, we will probably have more freedom if a Republican wins, because then the Democrats will go back to PRETENDING to care about civil liberties. No amount of Democratic party spin however, will cover up the unmitigated disaster Obama has been for peace, the environment, civil liberties, openness, and transparency. As astounding as it is, Obama has taken the Bush II depths even lower. His record speaks for itself and what it says is: Hi There, My name is Obama and I'm a big fat neocon!
Cut deal with insurance industry while touting the public option. In the end, we get the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. Lobbyists got their money's worth.
Whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing should not be treated as Manning has been, and we don't even know if manning was responsible. He'll probably just get indefinite detention because the president says so. Welcome to Napoleonic America.
Iraq probably did this almost certainly because they got tired of our bullshit routine of killing civilians and then lying about it, but that is a debatable opinion.
Great post, but the phrase "almost certainly" understates things. "Certainly" is much more accurate.
That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, "provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking.
Well, the government in Iraq paid attention to the documents and as a result, rejected Obama's pleas to keep troops in Iraq longer. In other words, because of Wikileaks, the US is pulling out of Iraq (at least if you don't count mercenaries etc). Assange deserves a peace prize despite anything else about him.
When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
Sort of prescient, although software is feeling the outsourcing pinch. While it might be nice to think that Congress is finally doing something to protect American jobs (kind of hard to outsource singing if you can't understand the lyrics), we all know this is just another piece of legislation paid for by the giant corps who are bleeding us dry, and as such, like the numerous trade deals with 3d world economies, will be of no actual benefit to Americans.
Small business probably has an even bigger grudge against Wall Street. Governments rape small business on a regular basis while falling all over themselves to give special treatment to the multinationals.
Given the GOP's response vs. Obama's response, I'll take the Obama approach any day, thank you. Vs. the aristocratic, arrogant, self-centered ASSHOLE approach of the GOP, which is to repeatedly do the same thing that hasn't worked for over a decade, and then stand there with their insufferable smug prick-face smiles while the rest of us drown.
As if Obama is actually different from the GOP. The biggest trick the Republicans and Democrats have perpetrated, is the creation of an illusion that there is a difference between the parties. They comprise a monolithic mono-party where power is "traded" (like one would pass a ball from the left hand to the right hand - in either case you still have the ball) back and forth between them for the benefit of their benefactors.
As an astounding example, Marty Lederman excoriated the Bush Administration for using secret legal memos to justify immoral and unconstitutional behavior. Now that he is part of the Obama administration, he is writing the exact same type of secret legal memos supporting policies even more immoral and unconstitutional. Citation.
Welcome to Act 6534 of the onging made for TV drama and talk radio drama: "Democrats v. Republicans, Rhetorical Differences, Indistinguishable Practices"
June 10, 1792
Vancouver survey party in this area [points to William Point on Samish Island (*)] Puget relates... "An animal called a Skunk was run down by one of the marines after Dark & the intolerable stench it created absolutely awakened us in the tent. The Smell is to bad for a Description... The Man's Cloaths were afterwards so offensive that notwithstanding boiling, they still retained the Stench of the Animal & in the Next Expedition others were given him on Condition that those that retained the Smell should be thrown away & happy he was to comply with it.
[odd spellings and capitalizations in the original]
(*) Williams Point is on the upper side of the middle hump just to the left of the B marker. I can't move the marker off the road.
I have this great book of marine charts for the Puget Sound which places historical anecdotes in place context.
There is one entry from early European explorers, which indicates that one of the men chased down a skunk having never seen such an animal before. It continues to note that the stench was unbearable, that no amount of boiling would remove it from the clothes, and that in the end, the skunk hunters were forced to destroy their clothing.
I'd quote it exactly but its on my boat. Anyway, close contact with pure skunk essence is not at all like a whiff on the wind -- it really is unbearable even to people who have never even heard about skunks, let alone people like you who are aware of them but have not experienced their power at close range.
You are totally correct. Let me rephrase that to more appropriately express my feelings:
Astoundingly, Obama has taken the GWB lows to new depths, a feat that prior to his assumption of office would have been thought nearly impossible. If Obama wishes to address the factors that make him the worst president of all time, even worse than GWB, he could work on the following issues. [add my list here]
You need to adjust your humor. The first comment was the type of non-sequitur a prohibitionist would publish. Your second comment, the "I'm giving you this sarcasm" was amusing and is what prompted me to look at the AC. But then the AC's comment was so rational, you end up looking silly rather than funny.
Actually, the GP, and GGGP AC post, are exactly why people with mod points should surf at -1.
AC Said
The short answer would be "No" it is not totally non-addictive. But then again neither is smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, or chocolate for that matter.... The point here their reasoning is disingenuous, they insult our intelligence with their deceit.... By outlawing the drug we... direct those revenue dollars onto the black market and into the hands of gangsters and thugs who in turn do more evil than smoking a little pot.
This experiment failed just as did prohibition did back in the 20s and 30s. It has cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars and made narco traffickers who have cause immense pain and suffering immensely wealthy and powerful.
To which respond you don't even eat chocolate. Seriously, who cares whether or not you are a puritan, this is about a waste of resources and AC's follow up question was a good one not even remotely deserving of sarcasm:
Do you also support the criminalization of those behaviors?
Everyone pissing and moaning about their tax dollars being used to take care of people who overdose on marijuana (SCOFF) should realize that their tax dollars are currently being used to harass and incarcerate marijuana users.
You have every right to reject any pleasure the world has to offer. But you shouldn't have the right to impose that on others AND cause everyone to back your notions with their hard earned financial resources.
Equivalent to 15-20 joints per day? That's a ridiculously large amount and probably not representative of 99.9999% of pot smokers.
They should redo the test. What about for the people who smoke once per week? Or what about those who smoke once per month? What withdrawal symptoms would be measured in people who smoke pot several times per year? The answer to these more realistic tests are self-evident from the inherent spacing between tokes.
Stop unconstitutionally waging war. From Korea onward, all our wars have been illegal, but Obama doesn't even feel constrained by the weak tea requirements of the war powers act. Our founding fathers never intended for the president to be a Napoleon.
End the wars we are in. And please don't cite Iraq. The ONLY reason we are pulling out troops is because Iraq would not succumb to Obama's lobbying for a longer stay with immunity from war crimes. Thanks to wikipedia for that.
Quit sucking insurance industry cock, i.e., real nice move touting the public option while secretly cutting a deal for the No Insurance Company Left Behind Act. I guess they got their money's worth.
Quit sucking Wall Street cock, and don't pretend that the financial reform legislation would have even been a mild hindrance to the meltdown had it already been in place.
Prosecute torturers rather than let them off the hook. Excusing them makes him complicit.
At least make a show of investigating fraud on Street. The S&L crisis was 1/40th the size and 1000 bankers went to jail. This meltdown isn't even being investigated, instead, their handing out bonuses. A big "Fuck You Very Much Mr. Obama" for that.
Almost all money is created by borrowing, so borrowing definitely affects money supply (unless you are talking about the 5% or so of the money supply that is printed on paper or metal discs). Watch money as debt: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544
No, it's not odd. Banks loan out deposits from savers, and the interest covers the risk that the loan won't be repaid in full.
No they don't. Banks create the money for the loan out of the loan. The requirements for deposits stem merely from laws based on fractional reserve banking, i.e., a bank can create money based on some multiple of the amount of its deposits.
Watch the video I linked to. It explains it very clearly, including a section explaining how your belief that banks lend out deposits is a myth. As another example, banks can create about $100,000 in loans from a deposit of $1111.12 in high powered money(*) in a 9:1 fractional reserve regulatory scheme.
Essentially, your mind is rebelling against the disgusting notion that banks create money out of nothing making you a slave to debt.
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.
If you pay off debt the money is gone. Cash, paper foldable money, makes up about 5% of the money supply. The rest is just numbers in a balance sheet. Banks create new money when they create loans, but they don't create the paper -- just a ledger entry. The problem is, the money the banks create must be paid back at interest but they don't also create the interest. As a result, the amount of money owed is always greater than the amount of money in existence, thus ensuring that someone somewhere won't be able to find the money to pay off debts.
It's so odd that the banks can make a profit on something they don't even have -- the money they loan is loaned into existence and then they get real money back as profit.
Out of curiosity, what is your signature referring to?
5th Amendment provides in part, "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."
Obama ordered the execution of an American citizen based solely on allegations by the Executive branch that he was a bad guy. That is not due process. That is summary execution by the President. That should terrify anyone who values American principals. It will be comforting to those who wish we had an authoritarian dictatorship.
What's worse, is that like the Bush Administration's reliance on secret laws, i.e., secret legal memos justifying its own brand of 5th amendment violation, the deprivation of liberty, Obama is following the same practice. So we have secret laws now that allow the president to kill anyone he thinks is a bad guy, without having to justify himself. That's jaw dropping.
And of course, to show the duplicity of the "two" party system, Obama's secret memo author lambasted the Bush administration for its secret laws:
The other take on that is that it will probably save thousands upon thousands of lives. Thanks to Wikileaks, Obama's request for immunity from crimes for US troops was rejected and his desire to prolong the Iraq war thwarted, aided in part by release of a cable showing US war crimes.
That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, "provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi." The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.
In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm).
If there's no profit in it, then there's no market for it.
Like the internet for example?
Conceptualized in 1962, first message in 1969, not commercialized till the early 90s, and just when did it become profitable? Is it even correct to think of it as profitable when it is more like an infrastructure upon which profitable businesses can be built, much like FedEx and Interstate Highway System.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously not, but today, Obama actively sought the Supreme Court's acquiescence in warrantless GPS tracking. So, Obama is actually responsible for this particular usage because it complies with his general policy goals. Do you seriously think Obama had no idea what was being argued in his name at the SCOTUS?
http://www.dailytech.com/Obama+Administration+Fights+to+Allow+Warrantless+GPS+Tracking/article22021.htm
Not just "nothing", but "nobody actually knows" because of all the secret legal interpretations (i.e., secret laws) Bush and Obama have been using. That's sort of worse than "nothing" because in a completely arbitrary system, you know to expect arbitrary abuse. But in ours, where the rule of law is supposed to mean something, there is a the sense that something has been lost.
Sorry, but The Cure was neither a grunge nor a hip-hop group.
This is from my link above: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/
Anyone who exposes such attrocities, whether such exposure is against the law or not, is doing humankind a service and deserves laurels. If that is Manning, he deserves a peace prize, not solitary.
Exactly where did I say he did? Let me paraphrase. Obama ignored War Powers Act. Obama Sucks. Bush sucked.
The scary part about Libya was that Obama ignored even the weakass nod toward the constitution that is the War Powers Act. Our founders wanted to make it so that one person was not able to embroil our country in arbitrary wars. That is why the constitution requires that Congress declare the war, and the Executive branch fight it. Giving the power of war to one branch makes the system susceptible to serious abuse.
The War Powers Act is the lame requirement devised to cover the unconstitutionality of all our recent wars, and it requires that the President come asking for permission, after the fact, from Congress within 60 days of warring. Obama completely ignored that law with Libya.
So, while Libya didn't attain the scale of Iraq, it moves us one step closer to a Napoleonic Presidency and is in its own way, a signifier that Obama is just Bush III.
Great post, but the phrase "almost certainly" understates things. "Certainly" is much more accurate.
Well, the government in Iraq paid attention to the documents and as a result, rejected Obama's pleas to keep troops in Iraq longer. In other words, because of Wikileaks, the US is pulling out of Iraq (at least if you don't count mercenaries etc). Assange deserves a peace prize despite anything else about him.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/
Sort of prescient, although software is feeling the outsourcing pinch. While it might be nice to think that Congress is finally doing something to protect American jobs (kind of hard to outsource singing if you can't understand the lyrics), we all know this is just another piece of legislation paid for by the giant corps who are bleeding us dry, and as such, like the numerous trade deals with 3d world economies, will be of no actual benefit to Americans.
Small business probably has an even bigger grudge against Wall Street. Governments rape small business on a regular basis while falling all over themselves to give special treatment to the multinationals.
As if Obama is actually different from the GOP. The biggest trick the Republicans and Democrats have perpetrated, is the creation of an illusion that there is a difference between the parties. They comprise a monolithic mono-party where power is "traded" (like one would pass a ball from the left hand to the right hand - in either case you still have the ball) back and forth between them for the benefit of their benefactors.
As an astounding example, Marty Lederman excoriated the Bush Administration for using secret legal memos to justify immoral and unconstitutional behavior. Now that he is part of the Obama administration, he is writing the exact same type of secret legal memos supporting policies even more immoral and unconstitutional.
Citation.
Welcome to Act 6534 of the onging made for TV drama and talk radio drama: "Democrats v. Republicans, Rhetorical Differences, Indistinguishable Practices"
(*) Williams Point is on the upper side of the middle hump just to the left of the B marker. I can't move the marker off the road.
I have this great book of marine charts for the Puget Sound which places historical anecdotes in place context.
There is one entry from early European explorers, which indicates that one of the men chased down a skunk having never seen such an animal before. It continues to note that the stench was unbearable, that no amount of boiling would remove it from the clothes, and that in the end, the skunk hunters were forced to destroy their clothing.
I'd quote it exactly but its on my boat. Anyway, close contact with pure skunk essence is not at all like a whiff on the wind -- it really is unbearable even to people who have never even heard about skunks, let alone people like you who are aware of them but have not experienced their power at close range.
You are totally correct. Let me rephrase that to more appropriately express my feelings:
Astoundingly, Obama has taken the GWB lows to new depths, a feat that prior to his assumption of office would have been thought nearly impossible. If Obama wishes to address the factors that make him the worst president of all time, even worse than GWB, he could work on the following issues. [add my list here]
You need to adjust your humor. The first comment was the type of non-sequitur a prohibitionist would publish. Your second comment, the "I'm giving you this sarcasm" was amusing and is what prompted me to look at the AC. But then the AC's comment was so rational, you end up looking silly rather than funny.
AC Said
To which respond you don't even eat chocolate. Seriously, who cares whether or not you are a puritan, this is about a waste of resources and AC's follow up question was a good one not even remotely deserving of sarcasm:
You have every right to reject any pleasure the world has to offer. But you shouldn't have the right to impose that on others AND cause everyone to back your notions with their hard earned financial resources.
Equivalent to 15-20 joints per day? That's a ridiculously large amount and probably not representative of 99.9999% of pot smokers. They should redo the test. What about for the people who smoke once per week? Or what about those who smoke once per month? What withdrawal symptoms would be measured in people who smoke pot several times per year? The answer to these more realistic tests are self-evident from the inherent spacing between tokes.
Almost all money is created by borrowing, so borrowing definitely affects money supply (unless you are talking about the 5% or so of the money supply that is printed on paper or metal discs). Watch money as debt: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544
No they don't. Banks create the money for the loan out of the loan. The requirements for deposits stem merely from laws based on fractional reserve banking, i.e., a bank can create money based on some multiple of the amount of its deposits.
Watch the video I linked to. It explains it very clearly, including a section explaining how your belief that banks lend out deposits is a myth. As another example, banks can create about $100,000 in loans from a deposit of $1111.12 in high powered money(*) in a 9:1 fractional reserve regulatory scheme.
Essentially, your mind is rebelling against the disgusting notion that banks create money out of nothing making you a slave to debt.
(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_base
If you pay off debt the money is gone. Cash, paper foldable money, makes up about 5% of the money supply. The rest is just numbers in a balance sheet. Banks create new money when they create loans, but they don't create the paper -- just a ledger entry. The problem is, the money the banks create must be paid back at interest but they don't also create the interest. As a result, the amount of money owed is always greater than the amount of money in existence, thus ensuring that someone somewhere won't be able to find the money to pay off debts.
It's so odd that the banks can make a profit on something they don't even have -- the money they loan is loaned into existence and then they get real money back as profit.
"Money as Debt" is a little hokey, but still interesting: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544
5th Amendment provides in part, "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."
Obama ordered the execution of an American citizen based solely on allegations by the Executive branch that he was a bad guy. That is not due process. That is summary execution by the President. That should terrify anyone who values American principals. It will be comforting to those who wish we had an authoritarian dictatorship.
What's worse, is that like the Bush Administration's reliance on secret laws, i.e., secret legal memos justifying its own brand of 5th amendment violation, the deprivation of liberty, Obama is following the same practice. So we have secret laws now that allow the president to kill anyone he thinks is a bad guy, without having to justify himself. That's jaw dropping.
And of course, to show the duplicity of the "two" party system, Obama's secret memo author lambasted the Bush administration for its secret laws:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/09/the_awlaki_memo_and_marty_lederman/singleton/
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/
Like the internet for example?
Conceptualized in 1962, first message in 1969, not commercialized till the early 90s, and just when did it become profitable? Is it even correct to think of it as profitable when it is more like an infrastructure upon which profitable businesses can be built, much like FedEx and Interstate Highway System.