Reports Without Borders explains some of the problems with Venezuelan freedom of the press. If you don't have freedom of speech, then you can't have a good democracy.
That's not even a link to an article. That's a link a page of articles tagged Venezuela.
But, lets go ahead and say RWB has some articles on Chavez, Venezuela, and the press. Do they mention the fact that some of those media outlets "repressed" by Chavez openly backed coup attempts against him?
What would have been the reaction here in the United States if it turned out that Air America had tried to overthrow the Bush Administration?
Yes, but the more accurate "fascist" has too many negative connotations to be acceptable.
As opposed to "communist", which has nothing but warm fuzzy connotations? But yeah, Obamacare is fascism, straight up. Forcing citizenry to buy junk products from a bloodsucking industry...and there's that whole continuation of the Unitary Executive thing....
IRV would certainly help another party get a foot in the door, but imho the real issues are still accountability and voter complacency. There was such a move under a two-party system in the mid-1800's, when the Whigs disappeared within ten years of a political re-alignment.
We wouldn't be so far up shit creek without a paddle today, if the GOP had primaried Bush in 2004 for his corruption, incompetence, and power grabbing. Or if the Dems had primaried Obama in 2012, for his corruption and power grabbing. And again as with my European example, if the banks can buy off two parties, they can buy off ten.
To paraphrase NDT, the great thing about facts is that they are true whether or not wingnuts believe in them. And it's a fact that blowjobs did not fall under the definition of "sexual relations" by Judge Susan Webber.
Like being dependent on wage slaves jobs? Being dependent on credit to pay medical bills because you first have to pay for junk health insurance? Once again: Republicans.
And it's a fact that the definition of "sexual relations" did not include blow jobs, which means Clinton did not lie in court. Hell, if he had said "yes", that would have been a lie since it wasn't the court's standard. And even if he did lie, it wasn't relevant to the Jones case, which means it wasn't perjury.
You're in a lose-lose situation here. Deal with it.
Your projection of your programming is noted. Draw up a list of how many countries have been bombed or invaded by North Korea and Iran over the last 50 years, compare that to U.S. and Israel, and get back to me.
Cutting SS (or any other vote-buying scheme) across the board (instead of just targetting the hated rich) is not in character for Obama
How is it not in character for Obama? He's talked about "entitlement reform" for years, appointed his Catfood Commission (after Congress voted it down - hey what happened to needing 60 votes for everything) and stacked it with Social Security gutters like Alan Simpson. He's put cuts in at least 3 different budget proposals, and has been pushing for "chained CPI" for at least the last year.
Sooner or later you gotta take the guy at his word, and stop believing in 11th Dimensional Chess.
This would be not unlikes Bill Clinton's famously disingenuous "The era of big government is over".
Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security, because Clinton was negotiating with Gingrich on privatizing the program when the Blue Dress turned up. And before that, Tip O'Neil got together with Reagan to slash SS by raising the retirement age, and ending the survivor's benefits that Paul Ryan went to school on.
So, cutting earned benefits isn't out of character for right wing Democrats...it's entirely in character.
On 9/11, two National Guard jets were ordered to bring down United 93, which had been hijacked. Thirty three innocent American citizens were on board the airplane along with four hijackers. Due to a passenger revolt that brought the plane down, the National Guard did have to. But no official has ever challenged the validity of the order to bring down a plane full of innocent Americans.
Fixing that analogy as it applies to our current drone wars: did Bush have the authority to bomb flight schools in Florida because he suspected that bad people might be attending them?
4. If the banks can buy off two parties, they can buy off three parties. Or seven.
Case in point: European countries which have a right wing party, a "center-left" party, and/or Labor, and a "socialist" party. All of them have been serving the banks with the bullshit of austerity, which has only served to weaken the working class and give even more power to the banks.
So, the problem isn't the number of parties. It's that the parties are in no way accountable to the voters, either by triangulation, or by herding their base with LOTE voting.
Oh, you mean 70 years ago, five years before North Korea started the Korean War?
Oh, sidestepping the fact that the U.S. rides quite the high horse when it comes to nuclear armaments? Threatening WWIII if the Soviet Union stationed missile sin Cuba, nevermind that it was in response to the U.S. putting missiles in Turkey? Threatens to bomb belligerent countries if they might get a nuclear weapon, while ignoring the fact that the second most belligerent country on the planet, Israel, has a couple hundred nukes? Violating international law in threatening Iran from developing a nuke - in the weapons program both we and Israel admit they don't actually have - to protect the Non-Proliferation Treaty, nevermind that the U.S. isn't living up to the disarmament provisions of the NPT?
Maybe Cuba, but Cuba had a policy of being the spearhead of a Soviet attack on the U.S., so was genuinely hostile.
Cuba was a response the United States putting missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union. Ah, nothing like American exceptionalism in action.
We're currently at war though, with Al-Qaeda and their allies and people we don't even bother to claim have an Al Qaeda affiliation.
Fixed that up a bit. OBL's Al Qaeda was destroyed years ago, and the AUMF was explicitly limited to those who planned and carried out the attacks on 911. Which, funnily enough, hasn't included invading Saudi Arabia, but countries that didn't have anything to do with it in the first place (Iraq) or where the government offered to hand over OBL if Bush would just give some evidence that our accusations were correct (Afghanistan).
We bombed Al-Qaeda bases and camps in Afghanistan in return for their bombing our embassy in Nairobi; we didn't consider the embassy bombing an act of war.
The problem is that we're trying to have it both ways. We call accused terrorist criminals to deny them the rights of POW's, then say we're in a war to deny the accused the rights of criminals. Pick one and stick with it.
Iraq was our enemy because Saddam Hussein said it was. It's that simple.
Simply BS. Saddam's blustering was for the benefit of his neighbors, chiefly Iran, who for some reason still harbored a grudge over that whole invasion thing. American intelligence agencies knew perfectly well that Saddam had no WMD's or WMD program. Remember the whole PNAC planning an invasion of Iraq months before 911?
The U.S. has never stolen resources from anyone.
Please tell me you're snarking here. Please tell me no one with Internet access and some education is this ignorant.
Never stolen resources? Land is a resource, and we stole most of this country from the people that were living on it. Stole more land in Hawaii after supporting a business coup, a raft of islands in the Spanish-American civil war. Stole Iran's oil by overthrowing their democratically elected government, and tried to do the same thing in Venezuela.
The Iranian leadership is 'intelligent and rational?' What have you been smoking?
Uh....reality? The belligerent powers here are the U.S.:
Overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in '53, backed a brutal torture-loving dictator in the Shaw for over two decades, backed Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, blew up one of their passenger jets murdering hundreds of people, and done multiple acts upon Iran that we would treat as an act of war (stuxnet/destroying their currency) if done to us?
And Israel:
Founded on stolen land, and dramatically increased in size with a war of choice in 1967. Already posses ~200 nuclear weapons. Makes wars upon it's neighbors on a whim, starves an entire population, slaughter Palestinians at will, and maintains an apartheid state.
Suffering like militias shooting every black person on sight because they might have been a mercenary fighting for Gaddafi, or suffering like doctors being asked to revive patients so they can go back to being tortured? You do know that far more people have suffered after the Iraq invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power, yes? Libya could easily be the new Iraq.
US involvement was taken under NATO and UN treaties, there is nothing illegal about fulfilling treaty requirements. Go learn about international law dumbass
Problem 1: war was invalid under those treaties as well, as Ghadaffi had not attacked another NATO member.
Problem 2: no treaty overrides the U.S. Constitution, which places sole authority for declaring war with Congress.
Go get a 3rd grade civics textbook and read up on Constitutional Law. Dumbass.
Anyone remember when every single Democratic senator voted to acquit President Clinton of obstruction of justice when he lied under oath?
Oh, I remember how full of crap you wingers are, why do you ask?
1) What "justice" was Clinton obstructing, exactly? The "justice" of Republicans going on multiple fishing expeditions, multiple times, to try and find something to hang on him?
2) There was no perjury. First, lies have to be relevant to be perjury. Since the judge said whatever happened between Clinton and Monica was not relevant to Clinton and Jones, no lie could have been perjury. And even then, there was no lie. Under the courts definition, blow jobs did not count as "sexual relations". Sad day for Clinton haters everywhere.
So, any other BS you want to bring up? Vince Foster? Waco and Ruby Ridge?
Obama tried to stop it, the the pubs went all 'there isn't anyplace you can put them' and 'You can't let terrorist go! "and then stopped all government action.Obama to move on.
Zombie Lie. This has been debunked so many times it's not even funny. Obama's "closure" of Gitmo would have simply moved the system of star chambers to a SuperMax in Illinois. And he's free to start wars without Congressional authorization (Libya) or notify Congress via a letter that he's stationing troops and weapons in a foreign country, but he cannot move a few hundred prisoners to a system that holds 1.6 million without the explicit blessing of Congress?
Saying he wants to do it and actually doing it are not the same thing.
Eh? Are you one of those "Obama doesn't reaaaaly want to cut SS because it hasn't happened yet" guys? If so, do you think that the GOP is bluffing on ending the estate and/or capital gains tax because "it hasn't happened yet?"
It was the Democrats, particularly Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, who prevented ending the disastrous policies of Freddy Mac, HUD, etc. that expanded the home-loan market. Bush tried to overturn those policies, and was given the middle finger.
Repeating right-wing horseshit doesn't make it true. It just makes you a bigger liar for repeating it.
Which is sad, since it's not like the Democrats haven't actually done things to have actually allow the crisis happen. Like Clinton repealing Glass-Stegall, or Biden supporting the 2006 bankruptcy "reform" law that made it much harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. Which then encouraged banks to lend money out to anyone with a pulse.
But noooo, can't mention any real-world event, it has to be stupid right wing bullshit like Frank standing in the way of Bush regulating the housing market. Why is that? Will you guys lose your Wingnut merit badges if you make an honest, fact-based argument, or what?
Are you saying that if I was shooting up a mall, the police should kill me if they can't reasonably stop me?
What is it with authoritarians and irrelevant analogies? We're saying that the police should not open fire on your ass while you're getting your morning newspaper, because one police officer claims that you are a bad guy that might shoot up a mall someday.
Oh, and by the way, when the cops are shooting you getting your newspaper, they're actually killing your brother who came by to visit and got the newspaper for you. Plus your wife, kids, and a few neighbors. They'll just try and shoot you again at the next opportunity, with another round of "collateral damage" to go with it.
Before you come close to actually getting a gun or stepping foot in a mall.
On the other hand, banging an employee fits the sexual harassment laws really well
Not when it's the employee coming onto the boss.
And there was the whole perjury thing.
There's the whole "that's a zombie myth that wont die" thing.
1) Lies have to be relevant to be perjury. If Martha Stewart had lied about her age and weight in her insider trading trial, it wouldn't have been perjury as it wasn't relevant. As the judge in the Jones case ruled that whatever happened between Clinton and Monica wasn't relevant to what happened to Clinton and Jones, it wasn't perjury.
2) "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" might have been a lie in public, but not a lie in court. That's because Starr wanted to use a definition of "sexual relations" so broad that you would have sex with a dozen people when getting on a crowded bus. So the judge adopted a narrower definition that, unfortunately for Starr and Clinton haters everywhere, did not include blow jobs.
They can... but they can't tell ME I can't read or watch it.
But....nobody's done anything whatsoever of the kind here. No censorship, no bannings, just people using their own free speech rights (and wallets) to counter-act someone else's free speech rights that...aren't being questioned.
So feel free to stop this line of idiocy at any time.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not even a link to an article. That's a link a page of articles tagged Venezuela.
But, lets go ahead and say RWB has some articles on Chavez, Venezuela, and the press. Do they mention the fact that some of those media outlets "repressed" by Chavez openly backed coup attempts against him?
What would have been the reaction here in the United States if it turned out that Air America had tried to overthrow the Bush Administration?
As opposed to "communist", which has nothing but warm fuzzy connotations? But yeah, Obamacare is fascism, straight up. Forcing citizenry to buy junk products from a bloodsucking industry...and there's that whole continuation of the Unitary Executive thing....
IRV would certainly help another party get a foot in the door, but imho the real issues are still accountability and voter complacency. There was such a move under a two-party system in the mid-1800's, when the Whigs disappeared within ten years of a political re-alignment.
We wouldn't be so far up shit creek without a paddle today, if the GOP had primaried Bush in 2004 for his corruption, incompetence, and power grabbing. Or if the Dems had primaried Obama in 2012, for his corruption and power grabbing. And again as with my European example, if the banks can buy off two parties, they can buy off ten.
To paraphrase NDT, the great thing about facts is that they are true whether or not wingnuts believe in them. And it's a fact that blowjobs did not fall under the definition of "sexual relations" by Judge Susan Webber.
Sad day for you.
Like being dependent on wage slaves jobs? Being dependent on credit to pay medical bills because you first have to pay for junk health insurance? Once again: Republicans.
"Necessitous men are not free men." - FDR
You know what else?
Facts matter.
And it's a fact that the definition of "sexual relations" did not include blow jobs, which means Clinton did not lie in court. Hell, if he had said "yes", that would have been a lie since it wasn't the court's standard. And even if he did lie, it wasn't relevant to the Jones case, which means it wasn't perjury.
You're in a lose-lose situation here. Deal with it.
Your projection of your programming is noted. Draw up a list of how many countries have been bombed or invaded by North Korea and Iran over the last 50 years, compare that to U.S. and Israel, and get back to me.
How is it not in character for Obama? He's talked about "entitlement reform" for years, appointed his Catfood Commission (after Congress voted it down - hey what happened to needing 60 votes for everything) and stacked it with Social Security gutters like Alan Simpson. He's put cuts in at least 3 different budget proposals, and has been pushing for "chained CPI" for at least the last year.
Sooner or later you gotta take the guy at his word, and stop believing in 11th Dimensional Chess.
Monica Lewinsky saved Social Security, because Clinton was negotiating with Gingrich on privatizing the program when the Blue Dress turned up. And before that, Tip O'Neil got together with Reagan to slash SS by raising the retirement age, and ending the survivor's benefits that Paul Ryan went to school on.
So, cutting earned benefits isn't out of character for right wing Democrats...it's entirely in character.
That's called ignoring the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Fixing that analogy as it applies to our current drone wars: did Bush have the authority to bomb flight schools in Florida because he suspected that bad people might be attending them?
4. If the banks can buy off two parties, they can buy off three parties. Or seven.
Case in point: European countries which have a right wing party, a "center-left" party, and/or Labor, and a "socialist" party. All of them have been serving the banks with the bullshit of austerity, which has only served to weaken the working class and give even more power to the banks.
So, the problem isn't the number of parties. It's that the parties are in no way accountable to the voters, either by triangulation, or by herding their base with LOTE voting.
You're lying. Just saying that facts, you know, matter.
Oh, sidestepping the fact that the U.S. rides quite the high horse when it comes to nuclear armaments? Threatening WWIII if the Soviet Union stationed missile sin Cuba, nevermind that it was in response to the U.S. putting missiles in Turkey? Threatens to bomb belligerent countries if they might get a nuclear weapon, while ignoring the fact that the second most belligerent country on the planet, Israel, has a couple hundred nukes? Violating international law in threatening Iran from developing a nuke - in the weapons program both we and Israel admit they don't actually have - to protect the Non-Proliferation Treaty, nevermind that the U.S. isn't living up to the disarmament provisions of the NPT?
Cuba was a response the United States putting missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union. Ah, nothing like American exceptionalism in action.
Fixed that up a bit. OBL's Al Qaeda was destroyed years ago, and the AUMF was explicitly limited to those who planned and carried out the attacks on 911. Which, funnily enough, hasn't included invading Saudi Arabia, but countries that didn't have anything to do with it in the first place (Iraq) or where the government offered to hand over OBL if Bush would just give some evidence that our accusations were correct (Afghanistan).
The problem is that we're trying to have it both ways. We call accused terrorist criminals to deny them the rights of POW's, then say we're in a war to deny the accused the rights of criminals. Pick one and stick with it.
Simply BS. Saddam's blustering was for the benefit of his neighbors, chiefly Iran, who for some reason still harbored a grudge over that whole invasion thing. American intelligence agencies knew perfectly well that Saddam had no WMD's or WMD program. Remember the whole PNAC planning an invasion of Iraq months before 911?
Please tell me you're snarking here. Please tell me no one with Internet access and some education is this ignorant.
Never stolen resources? Land is a resource, and we stole most of this country from the people that were living on it. Stole more land in Hawaii after supporting a business coup, a raft of islands in the Spanish-American civil war. Stole Iran's oil by overthrowing their democratically elected government, and tried to do the same thing in Venezuela.
Uh....reality? The belligerent powers here are the U.S.:
Overthrew Iran's democratically elected government in '53, backed a brutal torture-loving dictator in the Shaw for over two decades, backed Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, blew up one of their passenger jets murdering hundreds of people, and done multiple acts upon Iran that we would treat as an act of war (stuxnet/destroying their currency) if done to us?
And Israel:
Founded on stolen land, and dramatically increased in size with a war of choice in 1967. Already posses ~200 nuclear weapons. Makes wars upon it's neighbors on a whim, starves an entire population, slaughter Palestinians at will, and maintains an apartheid state.
YOU are the baddies.
Should have quit while you were ahead.
No such animal.
Suffering like militias shooting every black person on sight because they might have been a mercenary fighting for Gaddafi, or suffering like doctors being asked to revive patients so they can go back to being tortured? You do know that far more people have suffered after the Iraq invasion than if Saddam had simply been left in power, yes? Libya could easily be the new Iraq.
Problem 1: war was invalid under those treaties as well, as Ghadaffi had not attacked another NATO member.
Problem 2: no treaty overrides the U.S. Constitution, which places sole authority for declaring war with Congress.
Go get a 3rd grade civics textbook and read up on Constitutional Law. Dumbass.
Oh, I remember how full of crap you wingers are, why do you ask?
1) What "justice" was Clinton obstructing, exactly? The "justice" of Republicans going on multiple fishing expeditions, multiple times, to try and find something to hang on him?
2) There was no perjury. First, lies have to be relevant to be perjury. Since the judge said whatever happened between Clinton and Monica was not relevant to Clinton and Jones, no lie could have been perjury. And even then, there was no lie. Under the courts definition, blow jobs did not count as "sexual relations". Sad day for Clinton haters everywhere.
So, any other BS you want to bring up? Vince Foster? Waco and Ruby Ridge?
Zombie Lie. This has been debunked so many times it's not even funny. Obama's "closure" of Gitmo would have simply moved the system of star chambers to a SuperMax in Illinois. And he's free to start wars without Congressional authorization (Libya) or notify Congress via a letter that he's stationing troops and weapons in a foreign country, but he cannot move a few hundred prisoners to a system that holds 1.6 million without the explicit blessing of Congress?
Eh? Are you one of those "Obama doesn't reaaaaly want to cut SS because it hasn't happened yet" guys? If so, do you think that the GOP is bluffing on ending the estate and/or capital gains tax because "it hasn't happened yet?"
Repeating right-wing horseshit doesn't make it true. It just makes you a bigger liar for repeating it.
Which is sad, since it's not like the Democrats haven't actually done things to have actually allow the crisis happen. Like Clinton repealing Glass-Stegall, or Biden supporting the 2006 bankruptcy "reform" law that made it much harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. Which then encouraged banks to lend money out to anyone with a pulse.
But noooo, can't mention any real-world event, it has to be stupid right wing bullshit like Frank standing in the way of Bush regulating the housing market. Why is that? Will you guys lose your Wingnut merit badges if you make an honest, fact-based argument, or what?
What is it with authoritarians and irrelevant analogies? We're saying that the police should not open fire on your ass while you're getting your morning newspaper, because one police officer claims that you are a bad guy that might shoot up a mall someday.
Oh, and by the way, when the cops are shooting you getting your newspaper, they're actually killing your brother who came by to visit and got the newspaper for you. Plus your wife, kids, and a few neighbors. They'll just try and shoot you again at the next opportunity, with another round of "collateral damage" to go with it.
Before you come close to actually getting a gun or stepping foot in a mall.
Not when it's the employee coming onto the boss.
There's the whole "that's a zombie myth that wont die" thing.
1) Lies have to be relevant to be perjury. If Martha Stewart had lied about her age and weight in her insider trading trial, it wouldn't have been perjury as it wasn't relevant. As the judge in the Jones case ruled that whatever happened between Clinton and Monica wasn't relevant to what happened to Clinton and Jones, it wasn't perjury.
2) "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" might have been a lie in public, but not a lie in court. That's because Starr wanted to use a definition of "sexual relations" so broad that you would have sex with a dozen people when getting on a crowded bus. So the judge adopted a narrower definition that, unfortunately for Starr and Clinton haters everywhere, did not include blow jobs.
Until the Dixiecrats all jumped ship for the Republican Party after the Southern Strategy.
But then, you knew that already.
But....nobody's done anything whatsoever of the kind here. No censorship, no bannings, just people using their own free speech rights (and wallets) to counter-act someone else's free speech rights that...aren't being questioned.
So feel free to stop this line of idiocy at any time.