First, the lies of omission in the story and 90% of the top rated comments: both liberal and conservative groups were scrutinized by the Bush-appointed head of the IRS, and the only group to actually be denied tax-exempt status was a liberal one. More conservative groups were looked at because far more conservative groups were created after Roberts unleashed the hounds with Citizens United, and the Koch-Adelson cash took astroturfing to 11.
Now, back to the lede. Teabaggers are the best thing that ever happened to Obama in multiple ways. They're the only thing that lets him claim liberal cred without his pants spontaneously combusting. They kept his right wing ass from getting primaried in 2012. They keep the Democratic base wimpering in a corner as party hacks browbeat them with the Lesser Of Two Evils bullshit, and cries of "who do you think would do a better job, President Palin/Paul/Ryan/Cruz?"
Obama is farther to the right than either Bush or Reagan on multiple fronts. Teabaggers give him cover by being even more batshit right wing crazy than he is. Teabaggers are part of the reason Obama has gotten away with his multiple attempts to cut Social Security and Medicare, privatize military pensions after spending years attacking Republicans for wanting to do the same on SS, spy on the electronic communications of the entire planet, and so on and on and on and on. The other two parts being the biased conservative media and a Dem party that surrendered all their principles as soon as it was "their guy" doing it.
Obama persecuting the Tea Party? He owes his presidency to the Tea Party.
The problem in closing Gitmo is that there have NEVER been enough people in Congress who are willing to take the political hit of letting anyone leave; witness the fact that we captured Chinese Uyghurs back in 2002
If closing Gitmo was ever a real hot potato instead of an imaginary one, the candidate promising to close it would have lost the election.
How many times do I have to keep saying the same thing. I keep telling you they didn't have the votes and you keep saying they had the SEAT's.
Your moving of the goalposts:noted. Why any Obot keeps going on about 60 seats and the filibuster in 2014 is a mystery, though, since they used the nuclear option in 2013 (with far fewer Dems in the Senate at the time) for judicial nominees.
Nobody is better at debunking Obamabot excuses than Obama himself. See also: the "cave" over the sequester (nevermind it was Obama's idea in the first place) because Republicans threatened to throw the country into default, only for Obama to refuse to sign Ryan's budget and tell the Republicans they'd just have to throw the country into default. Or Gitmo (again), where Obama just released five prisoners in violation of the law he signed, after five years of Obamabots whining that the law tied his hands.
The sad truth about the travesty of Gitmo is that it was attempted to be closed but was blocked via procedural means.
Another travesty: people keep repeating this Zombie Lie even as it was debunked five years ago by people like Greenwald. Obama never intended to close the prison so much as move it to Illinois. The problem with Gitmo wasn't it's location, it was the lawless star chambers and indefinite detention.
You accused me of being "authoritarian" because I pointed out the biggest authoritarian on the world stage was not doing something he could easily do, and I'm setting up straw men?
Pot meet kettle.
Like I said upthread, I wish I had a magic wand, so anyone flinging bullshit of a certain level of stupidity would reflexively mule-kick themselves in the balls. You're overqualified, since you're stuck on the fuckwittery that Putin's a bad guy because he doesn't spend a few million dollars to transport Snowden on a flotilla with nothing in return.
Is there any limit on your willful stupidity? Not that it works - you've spent a whole lot of time blathering about Putin and Snowden but never got around to saying why everyone from Clapper to Alexander to Obama shouldn't be in prison for FISA violations. Cuz that's how you pathetic authoritarian hacks roll.
If what you do makes no difference in the education of the kids you teach then why are you even paid at all? Obviously, there is something you can control, it's just a matter of figuring out how to fairly measure it.
Repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
Cuz in this universe, the number one factor in a student's performance is the home he goes home to at the end of the day. A shitty teacher in Beverly Hills is going to have better standardized test scores than an awesome teacher in Detroit. But that's frequently a feature, not a bug, for social darwinists.
Which is why you wouldn't make a direct comparison between those two.
Thus the problem in standardized testing and "merit" based pay.
If teachers were less afraid of being measured and contributed to better metrics to evaluate teacher performance then the system would already be much improved.
Teachers are already measured. What they are "afraid of" is nakedly bullshit measures like...standardized testing, "merit" based pay, and the farce of forcing schools to compete for money. All of which undermines the professionalism and compensation of the job - by design.
The GP said "a lot more valuable." You respond by stating the hypothetical that it might be slightly more valuable. Riiight.
Willfully obtuse. Unless you're going to tell me that you tell your supervisors that you shouldn't have raises based on expereince because there's little difference between your work now, and when you entered your profession 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago?'
Riiiight.
If the situation hasn't happened in that first 300 times, then it is unlikely to happen very often in the next 300 times.
Instead of grossly overpaying for that remote possibility I'd rather hire more teachers which I know for certain will result in better educational results.
Grossly over paying? Please, not one of you Bircher-Baggers would touch a teaching position for less than six figures, so take your cheapsake crocodile tears somewhere else.
Russia is a criminal kleptocracy run by a handful of people that are buddies with Putin. The state exists to serve those people and that's about it. This is the literal uncut truth and if you don't understand this then you don't understand how the world works.
You don't understand how the world works if you think a molehill is equivalent to a mountain. The United States has special forces deployed in 70% of the world's countries - how many for Russia? Does Putin have robot planes murdering people on the other side of the planet to him? How many countries has Putin bombed, invaded, or overthrown since 2000?
The U.S. isn't being hypocritical by treating an illegal fascist-powered coup as the voice the people only to turn around and whine that an election to join Russia was totally illegitimate? Same for the rest.
Methinks you're a poutraged American Exceptionalist in denial.
If the students learn more, then teachers would be happy to be paid based of student test scores.
Are you happy to be judged based on factors entirely outside your control? Cuz in this universe, the number one factor in a student's performance is the home he goes home to at the end of the day. A shitty teacher in Beverly Hills is going to have better standardized test scores than an awesome teacher in Detroit. But that's frequently a feature, not a bug, for social darwinists.
If a surgeon has done a procedure 300 times, is it really a lot more valuable to have done it 600 times?
Uh, yeah? That's 300 more times to see something unexpected and learn how to deal with it before he gets to you.
Because teacher salaries are divorced from the value of their teaching.
Says someone divorced from the reality of both work and education.
Nobody bothered to talk about the free blacks that lived in the South prior to the civil war.
Annnnnnnd? That's supposed to make slavery less evil, or that the Confederacy should have beaten the North? WYP?
And the history teachers never bothered to mention the Germans and Italians that were in American concentration camps alongside the Japanese.
There were general orders to round up every person of Italian and German descent? Sounds like you picked up the Blaze edition of Lies My Teacher Told me, instead of finding how how the U.S. was founded on elitist imperalistic shitbaggery that continues to this day.
Except that the vast majority of universities in our country are more like secondary education institutions in that they exist to bring the masses up to speed rather than to foster research by the truly talented
...because the #1 factor in a student's "talent" is how well off his or her parents are. Is the establishment of an aristocracy by cutting down public education a feature or a bug, for you?
And that's gas that isn't traded in Russian currency. The U.S. can huff and puff its imperialistic hypocritical fascist coup supporting chest as much as it wants, but it can't do anything of significance as long as giving up Russian energy supplies would throw the continent into a depression. That, and Russia still has it's Security Council veto pen, and recent American efforts to make another round of "regime change" have stalled everywhere but Ukraine.
Some of the people throwing airplanes into high buildings did study and got starting their plans in Germany. I am not saying Germany is not an ally but things are not as straight forward as this.
And some got flight training in Florida - when does Shock And Awe: Miami debut? And almost all of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, which the last time I checked was a muslim theocratic dictatorship sitting on top of a big pile of oil. Where's their Freedom Bombs?
If I had typed "Chicago, California" instead of "Chicago, Illinois" you guys would be writing letters to your Congresscritters demanding a formal declaration of war against me.
Nah, I've spent enough time around Scandanavians to hear what you meant instead of what you said.
First of all I'm neither an authoritarian nor a hack. Name calling doesn't get you anywhere.
It's not "name calling" when it's true, as it's completely impossible for anyone to make these arguments without being an authoritarian hack. It's as embarrassing as watching John Hagee whine that he's not bigoted towards Catholics, even as he's saying they follow the Whore of Babylon and are all going to hell. Case in point:
Secondly I never said I agreed with the NSA's spying on American citizens, because I don't...but I'm also not one who says that it's acceptable to break a law to show another law has been broken.
You keep saying that, but you keep not saying how everyone from Clapper to Obama - people who are not in foreign countries and we know exactly where they are - should be hauled into court for violating laws and the Constitution. Guess who does that? Authoritarian hacks. More problems your crowd is willfully avoiding:
What about the Oath of Office, which required Snowden to defend the Constitution?
What about the fact that it is illegal to follow an illegal order?
He didn't go through proper channels or even TRY to work within the system first.
First problem: the "proper channels" are utterly broken. You're going to tell the NSA that the NSA is breaking the law? You're going to tell the Senate that the illegal programs the Senate has been funding are....illegal? You're going to tell the New York Times that sat on the first warrantless wiretapping story to protect the illegal action of the government that there's more illegality to be reported on? How much time did you guys spend on this talking point anyway, before signing off on it for mass production?
Second problem: Snowden, as Manning before him, didtry and go through your "proper channels", and it didn't work.
Today's release is incomplete, and does not include my correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate's Office of Compliance, which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published. It also did not include concerns about how indefensible collection activities - such as breaking into the back-haul communications of major US internet companies - are sometimes concealed under E.O. 12333 to avoid Congressional reporting requirements and regulations.
So, if you're not an authoritarian hack, what is an ethical person supposed to do when confronted with mass illegal government activity that the government refuses to do anything about?
Lastly America is not a democracy.
Not the "we're a Republic not a Democracy" zombie again. If you think there's a contradiction in terms, you don't understand either one. We are a Democratic Republic.
And now, since you have no idea how to respond to a post that indicates the United States is not the only evil country to ever exist, you insist I must be "authoritarian."
You're insulting your own intelligence as well as mine with a straw man that pathetic.
As for Putin's choices, you do realize he has the second largest navy in the world Navy? Including carriers?
And the fact that he doesn't use that to transport Snowden to Ecuador pro-bono makes him as responsible as Obama for his current location on what planet? Try this again without the straw men or crap that's obvious nonsense the second it falls out of your mouth.
Canada by definition, and by virtue of being one of the five eyes, NSA.
By definition, that's to spy on each other's citizenry to get around laws on domestic spying. Not to hand root access to Obama's Blackberry over to Canada's intelligence services.
Nah, they wanted him dead for the same reason they were happy Saddam was tried in Iraq: no awkward questions from the defense, as both Osama and Saddam were tools for the CIA at one time or another. As the terrorism of Al Qaeda is insignificant in scope next to the terrorism carried out by America's military forces, or by America's pets from Israel to Pinochet.
Read through it again and find the public interest exemption that would allow a defendant to argue his actions were justified, or that he was being asked to follow illegal orders. Here, I'll save you the time: that section does not exist, which means Snowden would not be allowed to defend his actions.
In Snowden's case, this is completely hopeless. Everybody has their media-hammered opinion that he is guilty.
In any case, those prosecuted under the Espionage Act aren't allowed to argue that their actions were justified. Even if someone who believed in jury nullification snuck into the jury pool, the other civil servants selected from Langley, Virginia would make sure the result was a mistrial, and they'd get him the second time.
What part of "you guys out yourselves by only caring about the laws violated by Snowden, but not ONE WORD for the lawbreaking revealed by Snowden" did you not understand?
As I said to your fellow hypocritical authoritarian hack downthread, this is how a non-hack who actually gave a rat's ass about the law would approach the situation:
"I want Snowden to stand trial, but thousands of officials from the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/State Department/White House better be in jail before him, since their crimes came first, are far more numerous, and far more severe."
But this never was about the law for you authoritarians.
This isn't about the content of the documents; it's about the fact that you cannot break the law to prove that someone else broke the law.
It's about the fact that demonstrating mass lawbreaking from the surveillance state is impossible without violating laws on classified information.
Congress is cowed and the Executive Branch is incapable of overseeing itself. The only way to the blow the whistle on official lawbreaking is for someone to give classified information to a reporter willing to report on the subject.
And just how long have you opposed democracy, anyway? Democratic government works by the consent of the governed, and Americans never consented to mass surveillance that has nothing to do with "national security".
Clapper got a free pass because Congress held public hearings on top secret programs. He could not reveal the information, and he tried to be as honest as he could be.
Shorter PIllow: we are a nation of the king's men, not a nation of laws. So it's fine and dandy if you violate the law, as long as you're doing it for the king.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you don't go to college unless your parents are well off enough to pay the bill. Which is a feature, not a bug, for some people.
First, the lies of omission in the story and 90% of the top rated comments: both liberal and conservative groups were scrutinized by the Bush-appointed head of the IRS, and the only group to actually be denied tax-exempt status was a liberal one. More conservative groups were looked at because far more conservative groups were created after Roberts unleashed the hounds with Citizens United, and the Koch-Adelson cash took astroturfing to 11.
Now, back to the lede. Teabaggers are the best thing that ever happened to Obama in multiple ways. They're the only thing that lets him claim liberal cred without his pants spontaneously combusting. They kept his right wing ass from getting primaried in 2012. They keep the Democratic base wimpering in a corner as party hacks browbeat them with the Lesser Of Two Evils bullshit, and cries of "who do you think would do a better job, President Palin/Paul/Ryan/Cruz?"
Obama is farther to the right than either Bush or Reagan on multiple fronts. Teabaggers give him cover by being even more batshit right wing crazy than he is. Teabaggers are part of the reason Obama has gotten away with his multiple attempts to cut Social Security and Medicare, privatize military pensions after spending years attacking Republicans for wanting to do the same on SS, spy on the electronic communications of the entire planet, and so on and on and on and on. The other two parts being the biased conservative media and a Dem party that surrendered all their principles as soon as it was "their guy" doing it.
Obama persecuting the Tea Party? He owes his presidency to the Tea Party.
If closing Gitmo was ever a real hot potato instead of an imaginary one, the candidate promising to close it would have lost the election.
Your moving of the goalposts:noted. Why any Obot keeps going on about 60 seats and the filibuster in 2014 is a mystery, though, since they used the nuclear option in 2013 (with far fewer Dems in the Senate at the time) for judicial nominees.
Nobody is better at debunking Obamabot excuses than Obama himself. See also: the "cave" over the sequester (nevermind it was Obama's idea in the first place) because Republicans threatened to throw the country into default, only for Obama to refuse to sign Ryan's budget and tell the Republicans they'd just have to throw the country into default. Or Gitmo (again), where Obama just released five prisoners in violation of the law he signed, after five years of Obamabots whining that the law tied his hands.
Another travesty: people keep repeating this Zombie Lie even as it was debunked five years ago by people like Greenwald. Obama never intended to close the prison so much as move it to Illinois. The problem with Gitmo wasn't it's location, it was the lawless star chambers and indefinite detention.
Like I said upthread, I wish I had a magic wand, so anyone flinging bullshit of a certain level of stupidity would reflexively mule-kick themselves in the balls. You're overqualified, since you're stuck on the fuckwittery that Putin's a bad guy because he doesn't spend a few million dollars to transport Snowden on a flotilla with nothing in return.
Is there any limit on your willful stupidity? Not that it works - you've spent a whole lot of time blathering about Putin and Snowden but never got around to saying why everyone from Clapper to Alexander to Obama shouldn't be in prison for FISA violations. Cuz that's how you pathetic authoritarian hacks roll.
Repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
Cuz in this universe, the number one factor in a student's performance is the home he goes home to at the end of the day. A shitty teacher in Beverly Hills is going to have better standardized test scores than an awesome teacher in Detroit. But that's frequently a feature, not a bug, for social darwinists.
Thus the problem in standardized testing and "merit" based pay.
Teachers are already measured. What they are "afraid of" is nakedly bullshit measures like...standardized testing, "merit" based pay, and the farce of forcing schools to compete for money. All of which undermines the professionalism and compensation of the job - by design.
Willfully obtuse. Unless you're going to tell me that you tell your supervisors that you shouldn't have raises based on expereince because there's little difference between your work now, and when you entered your profession 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago?'
Riiiight.
Tell that to this girl.
Grossly over paying? Please, not one of you Bircher-Baggers would touch a teaching position for less than six figures, so take your cheapsake crocodile tears somewhere else.
You don't understand how the world works if you think a molehill is equivalent to a mountain. The United States has special forces deployed in 70% of the world's countries - how many for Russia? Does Putin have robot planes murdering people on the other side of the planet to him? How many countries has Putin bombed, invaded, or overthrown since 2000?
The U.S. isn't being hypocritical by treating an illegal fascist-powered coup as the voice the people only to turn around and whine that an election to join Russia was totally illegitimate? Same for the rest.
Methinks you're a poutraged American Exceptionalist in denial.
Are you happy to be judged based on factors entirely outside your control? Cuz in this universe, the number one factor in a student's performance is the home he goes home to at the end of the day. A shitty teacher in Beverly Hills is going to have better standardized test scores than an awesome teacher in Detroit. But that's frequently a feature, not a bug, for social darwinists.
Uh, yeah? That's 300 more times to see something unexpected and learn how to deal with it before he gets to you.
Says someone divorced from the reality of both work and education.
Annnnnnnd? That's supposed to make slavery less evil, or that the Confederacy should have beaten the North? WYP?
There were general orders to round up every person of Italian and German descent? Sounds like you picked up the Blaze edition of Lies My Teacher Told me, instead of finding how how the U.S. was founded on elitist imperalistic shitbaggery that continues to this day.
"If I can't have that, neither can you!!!!" Who needs due process or protection from political bullshit when you can have crab mentality?
Which is different from console gamers how?
I wonder why Zombie Talking points are so popular, whether they are coming from Obamabots or console fanboys.
And that's gas that isn't traded in Russian currency. The U.S. can huff and puff its imperialistic hypocritical fascist coup supporting chest as much as it wants, but it can't do anything of significance as long as giving up Russian energy supplies would throw the continent into a depression. That, and Russia still has it's Security Council veto pen, and recent American efforts to make another round of "regime change" have stalled everywhere but Ukraine.
And some got flight training in Florida - when does Shock And Awe: Miami debut? And almost all of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, which the last time I checked was a muslim theocratic dictatorship sitting on top of a big pile of oil. Where's their Freedom Bombs?
Thanks, got my destinations swapped around.
Nah, I've spent enough time around Scandanavians to hear what you meant instead of what you said.
It's not "name calling" when it's true, as it's completely impossible for anyone to make these arguments without being an authoritarian hack. It's as embarrassing as watching John Hagee whine that he's not bigoted towards Catholics, even as he's saying they follow the Whore of Babylon and are all going to hell. Case in point:
You keep saying that, but you keep not saying how everyone from Clapper to Obama - people who are not in foreign countries and we know exactly where they are - should be hauled into court for violating laws and the Constitution. Guess who does that? Authoritarian hacks. More problems your crowd is willfully avoiding:
What about the Oath of Office, which required Snowden to defend the Constitution?
What about the fact that it is illegal to follow an illegal order?
First problem: the "proper channels" are utterly broken. You're going to tell the NSA that the NSA is breaking the law? You're going to tell the Senate that the illegal programs the Senate has been funding are....illegal? You're going to tell the New York Times that sat on the first warrantless wiretapping story to protect the illegal action of the government that there's more illegality to be reported on? How much time did you guys spend on this talking point anyway, before signing off on it for mass production?
Second problem: Snowden, as Manning before him, did try and go through your "proper channels", and it didn't work.
So, if you're not an authoritarian hack, what is an ethical person supposed to do when confronted with mass illegal government activity that the government refuses to do anything about?
Not the "we're a Republic not a Democracy" zombie again. If you think there's a contradiction in terms, you don't understand either one. We are a Democratic Republic.
You're insulting your own intelligence as well as mine with a straw man that pathetic.
And the fact that he doesn't use that to transport Snowden to Ecuador pro-bono makes him as responsible as Obama for his current location on what planet? Try this again without the straw men or crap that's obvious nonsense the second it falls out of your mouth.
By definition, that's to spy on each other's citizenry to get around laws on domestic spying. Not to hand root access to Obama's Blackberry over to Canada's intelligence services.
Nah, they wanted him dead for the same reason they were happy Saddam was tried in Iraq: no awkward questions from the defense, as both Osama and Saddam were tools for the CIA at one time or another. As the terrorism of Al Qaeda is insignificant in scope next to the terrorism carried out by America's military forces, or by America's pets from Israel to Pinochet.
Read through it again and find the public interest exemption that would allow a defendant to argue his actions were justified, or that he was being asked to follow illegal orders. Here, I'll save you the time: that section does not exist, which means Snowden would not be allowed to defend his actions.
In any case, those prosecuted under the Espionage Act aren't allowed to argue that their actions were justified. Even if someone who believed in jury nullification snuck into the jury pool, the other civil servants selected from Langley, Virginia would make sure the result was a mistrial, and they'd get him the second time.
What part of "you guys out yourselves by only caring about the laws violated by Snowden, but not ONE WORD for the lawbreaking revealed by Snowden" did you not understand?
As I said to your fellow hypocritical authoritarian hack downthread, this is how a non-hack who actually gave a rat's ass about the law would approach the situation:
"I want Snowden to stand trial, but thousands of officials from the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/State Department/White House better be in jail before him, since their crimes came first, are far more numerous, and far more severe."
But this never was about the law for you authoritarians.
It's about the fact that demonstrating mass lawbreaking from the surveillance state is impossible without violating laws on classified information.
Congress is cowed and the Executive Branch is incapable of overseeing itself. The only way to the blow the whistle on official lawbreaking is for someone to give classified information to a reporter willing to report on the subject.
And just how long have you opposed democracy, anyway? Democratic government works by the consent of the governed, and Americans never consented to mass surveillance that has nothing to do with "national security".
Shorter PIllow: we are a nation of the king's men, not a nation of laws. So it's fine and dandy if you violate the law, as long as you're doing it for the king.